Date: July 11, 2006 5:52:49 PM PDT
Subject: cia slc
Some insider tips for the new CIA director
By Garrett Jones
Special to the Los Angeles Times
(Because this is the season for gratuitous and unsolicited advice, I thought
I would offer some thoughts for former Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who
recently took over as CIA director. I am sure many people are sharing their
wisdom on the "big picture," so I will confine myself to advice on the care
and feeding of the denizens of the building where I once worked.)
They are an odd bunch at the Central Intelligence Agency, and your
predecessor, Porter Goss, did not adapt well. He seemed unable to make it
out of the lobby each morning without starting a fistfight. You can do
better.
For starters, resist any impulse to "demonstrate who is in charge." The
people at the agency have never had any problem understanding who is in
charge; they have on occasion had trouble believing that the person in
charge knew what he was doing.
As CIA director, Goss said he did not "do" personnel, and inside the
agency, it was easily the most resented remark he ever made. You have
talented people working for you. Use them, and do not go to the retirees
looking for the "perfect" person. They don't make them like they used to,
and that's probably a good thing.
Do not try to undo all the personnel changes made by Goss. Some people
needed to be pushed out. You're trying to hire back Stephen Kappes, the
former field operations boss, as your deputy, and this is good and bad. Many
officers respect his operational judgment, and many are angry about his
alleged leaks to the media. On your team, he should keep his mouth shut.
Goss let his entourage alienate the entire building before he ever got
there. Get your assistants under control. It's better to make your own
enemies. You probably brought some military aides with you. Remind them that
half the agency does not know the difference between a full colonel and a
milkshake; those who do know don't care.
Don't ask anyone to dumb down their work for you. The CIA has a jargon
that you need to learn. Before you change anything about agency culture,
first you need to understand it.
The executive dining room is a bad idea. You and your staff should be in
the cafeteria meeting people, not huddled up in a bunker wondering what
folks think. Listen to people. They are smart and sophisticated and will
usually tell you what is wrong if you give them a chance.
The RUMINT (rumor intelligence) on you is that you like "corporate
speak" and prefer large, impersonal gatherings to one-on-one encounters.
Work on that. Blunt, plain speech will get you further with those in the
agency than anything else. If something is going to happen to them, tell
them before they see it in the Los Angeles Times. "I do not know" or "I
cannot tell you" are statements that spooks accept as sometimes necessary,
but they will always find out if you lie to them. You are working with a
bunch of spies, so you should not be surprised that RUMINT travels quickly
and is surprisingly accurate.
Yes, you are busy, but your first job is to make people motivated and
effective. Screw this up and you are doomed.
The directorate of operations is where all the spies live. Frankly, this
is a tough room. Your best move is to pick someone whom they respect to lead
them -- lead them, not manage them. When they are in some sand-blown
flyspeck in Iraq with their lives on the line, they want a leader who cares
about them and their mission, not a nice guy who is good at managing his
paperwork. Once you get them a leader, you need to expect the impossible
from them. Right now, everyone is afraid to make mistakes. Make it clear
that you have confidence in them and will back them even if they do not
succeed. This directorate exists to run high-risk, high-payoff operations;
otherwise, it could be replaced by Al-Jazeera.
The directorate of intelligence is where the analysts live and where the
National Intelligence Estimates are produced. This place is a mess. Since
the fiasco over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, it has been full of dead
men walking, paralyzed with fear of making another mistake. Start over.
Anyone associated with the WMD mess -- and there are such people still there
-- needs to be retired, kicked upstairs or otherwise moved on. It may not be
fair, just or efficient, but you must do it to blow the smell of failure out
of the organization. Then appoint a pit bull as the quality-control officer
for analysis.
Your job is one of the most important in Washington, and one of the
toughest. You are playing "bet your country's future" every day. History has
not been kind to your immediate predecessors. They got famous in the worst
ways. Good luck. You're going to need it.
Jones served as a case officer with the CIA in Africa, Europe and the
Middle East for 17 years before retiring in 1997. A longer version of this
article appears at
www.fpri.org. Disclaimer: This material has been reviewed
by the CIA as required by agency regulations. That review neither
constitutes CIA authentication of information nor implies CIA endorsement of
the author's views.
