OPINION — What occurs when an intelligence officer who has sworn to guard labeled data can’t refute an misguided information report or a point out in a guide about her or him? I used to be but once more reminded of that conundrum when point out of me in writer Tim Weiner’s new guide, The Mission, was delivered to my consideration.
Recalling that writer’s earlier anti-CIA tome, Legacy of Ashes, the chance – certainly chance – that he would get many issues incorrect was excessive. What was considerably stunning was that in The Mission, he attributed actions and selections to me with out making an attempt to confirm with me the accuracy of his assertions.
Lies and twisted truths are, after all, not labeled. However it’s typically the case that refuting or correcting them would require the publicity of labeled data {that a} CIA officer has sworn to guard. Adhering to such obligations doesn’t make the reputational value of doing so any much less galling.
Fame is of no much less significance in a occupation that rests upon perceived judgement, trustworthiness {and professional} talent. There has all the time been an inherent stress between public notion – typically even caricature – of intelligence professionals and the personal integrity they have to train by turning the opposite cheek in response to falsehoods and misguided data regarding them in fealty to their oaths of secrecy.
The present cadre of Company officers is, certainly not, the primary to be confronted with this case. Earlier generations lived with the likelihood that their names may very well be uncovered or their actions known as into query in books, newspapers or on community tv. Fortunately, such incidents, nonetheless aggravating or unjust, have been – by advantage of the knowledge mediums of the analogue period – much less frequent and nearly invariably much less broadly disseminated than what we see in at the moment’s click-driven tradition.
In our age of mass media and leaks, it has change into nearly de rigueur for CIA officers to have actions, statements, or conduct attributed to them which are both distorted or flat out incorrect.
Over the course of the final decade of my profession and after my departure from CIA, I’ve skilled many such cases, most notably with respect to press protection relating to my 2011 project in Islamabad and my purported downplaying of the potential for a human spy inside CIA whereas I served as Chief of Counterintelligence.
With respect to the latter, the reality was fairly the other as attested to by my staff’s identification of Jerry Chun Shing Lee as a traitor and my request for the FBI to hitch that investigation, each of which have been rooted in my perception we have been coping with a human spy.
As for the previous, the circumstances of my departure from Pakistan have been sensationalized and my identify recklessly uncovered in reference to the Bin Laden operation, with all that probably meant for the protection of my household. In most such circumstances, I’ve taken solace in the truth that the written, labeled report will – when finally made public – convincingly set the report straight. With respect to the Weiner guide, nonetheless, I’m ready to make an exception.
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At one level or one other over the course of my profession, I made nearly each error an intelligence officer could make. The cases cited by the writer weren’t amongst them. I received’t try to handle intimately all of the errors, mischaracterizations, and prevarications contained in what he wrote about these with whom I served. That will take an excessive amount of time and contain too many labeled points. I’ll, nonetheless, attempt to deal with usually phrases a number of of the writer’s misguided assertions the place my identify is invoked.
First, he claims I expressed doubt concerning the intelligence relating to the potential presence of Bin Laden within the Abbottabad compound. The truth is, I used to be satisfied Excessive Worth Goal 1 – the moniker by which Bin Laden was then identified – was there. Inside the small group of these aware of particulars of the operation, I repeatedly acknowledged that we wanted to behave towards the goal compound saying, amongst different issues, that ‘The American individuals wouldn’t tolerate one other Tora Bora’ and that ‘You possibly can’t depart Hitler in his bunker and finish the struggle’. The requirement to acquire further intelligence with a view to improve confidence that Bin Laden was, in actual fact, there, got here from Washington. My staff and I acted pursuant to that instruction, using the very best requirements of tradecraft and professionalism in so doing.
(As an apart, the writer’s assertion that the then-Director of the Counterterrorism Heart (CTC) and I fought furiously over this matter is nonsense. We could have had variations of perspective on operational issues frequent to – certainly required of – intelligence professionals, however we have been, and stay, colleagues and mates.)
Second, the writer asserts that actions taken relating to Senate Workers and the so-called “Panetta Overview” of CIA’s former enhanced interrogation program shocked the then-Director. The writer claims I acted alone initiative to analyze an unauthorized intrusion from the Senate’s CIA-hosted laptop enclave – in violation of agreed procedures – into the broader Company system to entry the “Overview.” The truth is, I used to be not within the workplace when CIA management ordered my staff to hold out that investigation. As I subsequently advised the board conducting the after-action evaluate of the incident, all actions undertaken by me, or these working for me, relating to that concern have been carried out pursuant to directions from CIA management.
Lastly, the writer’s supply or sources are in error relating to consideration of a potential legal referral of me on this case. Different officers who have been wrongly accused of performing inappropriately have been thought of for such referrals. That consideration ended after I advised the enquiry board that these officers acted on the path of CIA management.
Lastly, the writer says I retired from CIA in 2015, partly as a result of I used to be not chosen because the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO). I definitely was disillusioned I didn’t get that job. And I did, because the writer writes, help then-DDO Frank Archibald in his opposition to the diminution of the authorities of his workplace as a part of the so-called “Modernization” of the Company being applied by the then-Director. My opposition was rooted in my deep concern over the probably hurt implementation of that reorganization would wreak upon the Directorate of Operations. Among the many most problematic elements of “Modernization” was the severing of the DDO’s chain of command in directing CIA operations worldwide in favor of an association whereby the DDO oversaw, because the then-Director put it, ‘the standard of operations;’ a transfer I felt would undermine each operational safety and productiveness.
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It was apparent to me that my future prospects within the Company have been bleak after the then-Director concurrently eliminated me from my place as Chief of Counterintelligence and the Director of CTC from his publish as a part of what he characterised as an effort to finish the ‘fighter pilot mentality’ within the Directorate of Operations. However my remaining determination to retire from CIA solely took place after a consultant of the then-Director advised me I may solely have one other job if I publicly supported the “Modernization” plan. This, I mentioned, I might not do due to the harm I believed that reorganization would do to CIA’s capability to execute its core mission: the gathering of human intelligence. Occasions since then have, sadly, confirmed me proper.
As I’ve beforehand written in these pages, a secret intelligence service occupies a novel house in a democratic nation. I perceive that the actions of that service and its officers will probably be topic to public scrutiny and questioning, and rightly so. In lots of such circumstances – significantly when the identities of personnel and brokers, or the safety of sources and strategies are at stake – silence is the one reply accessible. There are, nonetheless, uncommon events when honor dictates a extra public response, whereas nonetheless defending labeled data. That is a kind of moments.
All statements of truth, opinion, or evaluation expressed are these of the writer and don’t replicate the official positions or views of the U.S. Authorities. Nothing within the contents must be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Authorities authentication of knowledge or endorsement of the writer’s views.
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