by Ted Gup
Tenet has been popular within the CIA and on Capitol Hill. He defends his Agency vigorously and is politically savvy. He has brought stability after years of turbulence and has overseen recruiting efforts designed to offset the hemorrhaging of experienced officers who have retired or resigned. Though he has steadfastly refused to speak with me, I know him to be a congenial figure and, by all accounts, a decent man. But his capacity to shield his Agency from the full brunt of operational and intelligence failures also reflects the vagaries of Washington’s Old Boy Network. As the former senior staffer on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Tenet’s links to Capitol Hill, and the residual loyalties that go with them, have protected him from what might have been a more withering criticism from his former colleagues.
So too it has been with the House oversight committee. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is headed by Porter J. Goss, a conservative Florida congressman who seemingly cannot do enough to promote the interests and ambitions of Langley. Before becoming a congressman, Representative Goss was himself a CIA case officer. Such pervasive CIA influence also contributes to public cynicism and the perception that the Agency’s tentacles of power render it answerable to no one.
Most ominous was a sweeping provision requested by the CIA and championed by Goss that Congress attached to the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2001. That measure, passed behind closed doors and without a public hearing, would have made it a crime punishable by three years in prison for any official to disclose classified material. It was a thinly disguised antileak provision aimed at silencing those who talk to the press or who would challenge the near-absolute control that the U.S. national security apparatus exercises over what and when the public learns of its activities.
The bill was ultimately vetoed by President Clinton, but only after a concerted campaign by the nation’s foremost news publications to sound the tocsin. Such a measure would have had dire consequences for the First Amendment and for the ability of reporters like myself to inform the public. Had such a provision been law at the time of my research for The Book of Honor, some four hundred current and retired covert operatives—all who spoke with me—might well have gone to prison. Of course, the more likely outcome would have been that the chilling effect of such a measure would have blunted my efforts to identify the anonymous stars.
In either case, there would have been no The Book of Honor. The measure would have created the perfect chokehold on the public’s access to information concerning the conduct of foreign affairs and covert operations. It bears watching whether the new Bush administration will be emboldened to resurrect that measure.
Even as the bill made its way through Congress there was evidence aplenty that government secrecy had already gone too far rather than not far enough. The ordeal of Wen Ho Lee, the Chinese American scientist accused of security breaches at Los Alamos National Laboratory, finally came to an end, but not before his reputation and career were in ruins. Federal prosecutors never produced any evidence to support the allegation of espionage.
Then too there was the case of Mazen Al-Najjar, held in an American prison for three and a half years without being charged with a crime. He was seen as a security threat and held on “secret evidence” to which neither he nor his lawyers had access. His recent release would have been cause for celebration by civil libertarians were it not for the fact that so many others are still being held on “secret evidence.”
We are forced to wonder whether it is not lax security but excessive secrecy that poses by far the greater threat to the interests of the American people.
A final word. In the wake of publication, the book was widely and favorably reviewed, but among the reviews were two recurrent observations with which I would take exception. First, that the men and women of whom I wrote understood that if they were killed their sacrifices would remain anonymous. Such is the nature of espionage, it is argued. Granted, these men and women accepted that if they were killed, security concerns would prohibit their roles and identities from being made public so long as security sensitivities remained. But it is equally true that in service to government they had every right to expect that when common sense dictated that such security concerns were no longer applicable, the strictures would be lifted and their surviving family members would no longer be made to suffer the cruelties of what would then be a blind and obsessive secrecy. In short, they could expect the government in whose service they gave their lives to behave humanely and not to use secrecy as a way to escape accountability.
The second criticism was that those whose deaths are recorded in this book died for naught, that their missions were failures and therefore their lives were wasted. It is true that in some cases these lives might have been saved and that in others the missions accomplished little. But I do not believe that it follows that their lives were wasted or devoid of meaning. Though I do not share many of the agendas in whose service they were deployed, I believe that in most instances these men and women were doing that which was most important to them. I am uncomfortable judging the value of another’s life or sacrifice by outcome alone. I would not want my own life to be measured against such a standard. These men and women understood the risks attendant to their chosen careers. They acted out of love of country. If the wisdom of their missions was suspect— as often it was—then it casts a shadow not upon the individual but upon the institution that dispatched them.
What we, the living, can do, is honor them both by remembering them and by insisting that the very secrecy under which they died is not permitted to threaten the values for which they lived.
—Ted Gup
January 2001
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
A decade ago, when I first stood before the CIA’s Wall of Honor and contemplated a book that would attempt to identify the nameless stars, I knew that I would meet with stiff resistance from the Agency. In this the Agency did not disappoint me. What I could not have foreseen was the courage of those CIA families who chose to defy Agency pressures and who broke years of silence in the belief that the stories of their loved ones’ lives and deaths could be told without jeopardizing national security. Many of these families came to believe, as I did, that the accounts of those who died on covert missions were not the sole property of the government, that they belonged to history. For allowing me to be the one to tell those stories I am deeply grateful and hope that in this work they will not find me unworthy of that trust.
I would also thank the more than four hundred current and former employees of the CIA who were willing to speak with me, even when the institution for which they worked forbade it. They had nothing to gain and much to lose. Deciphering the motives of those whose profession it is to deceive others is a fool’s errand. But at the risk of sounding naive, I believe they shared a common interest in recognizing the sacrifices of former colleagues and in providing the public a more human, if not more vulnerable, side of America’s clandestine service. Thanking them by name would be seen as a consummate act of ingratitude.
On a personal note I would thank several colleagues and friends without whom this book would in all likelihood have been stillborn. Len Downie, executive editor of the Washington Post, and Steve Coll, the paper’s managing editor, are among these. I am also grateful to my former editor and colleague Bob Woodward, who taught me that there was nothing sacrosanct about secrecy, that often it was merely a way to avoid public scrutiny. Ben Bradlee, former editor of the Post, was the first to show me that there was nothing higher than being a reporter and nothing more humbling.
After spending three years with spies I came to think like a spy, demonstrating my own brand of obsessive secrecy. I compartmented my information and developed a kind of cover story for outsiders, telling them simply that I was writing a history of the CIA. The few with whom I felt comfortable sharing my true objectives and who did not unduly make fun of my paranoia deserve praise. First to mind comes Mike Riley, editor of the Roanoke Times,
who gave me great support and sage advice along the lines of “get a life.” Other friends to whom I am indebted include Ira Abrams, Barbara Feinman, Dick Thompson, and Tom Ewing.
I must also express my deep appreciation to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Their generosity in the form of a grant provided the seed money with which this research was undertaken. Their willingness to accept so unorthodox an investigative project when other foundations shied away will not be forgotten.
This was my first book and I was spoiled to have David Black as my agent and Bill Thomas of Doubleday as my editor. David understood what I was attempting to do long before I did. His devotion to words and story, not just making a sale, and his friendship in times of doubt will not go unpunished—I shall come to him as often as he will allow. Bill Thomas shared my passion for the subject and contributed both vision and discipline. He was the perfect editor, at times an ally, at times an adversary, and always at the right times for each. Never did he let me down.
Anya Richards, my researcher, proved to be an invaluable resource and friend.
As for my family, my wife, Peggy, and sons David and Matthew endured three years of intermittent absence and inattention. I am looking forward to making good on that debt.
Finally, I cannot take credit for the book’s strengths, if any. That belongs to those whom I have cited above. Its shortcomings are mine alone.
—T.S.G.
Epilogue
. . . the courage to bear great grief in silence . . .
DIRECTOR CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE GEORGE TENET
FROM AROUND the nation they came, arriving at CIA headquarters shortly before 11:00 A.M.—mostly widows, fatherless sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, dressed in the somber colors of grief and remembrance. Some cradled flowers, others photographs of long-departed loved ones. What they had in common was that their losses were now represented with a star on the Wall of Honor. It was May 14, 1998, a cloudless and sticky-hot Thursday. This was the Agency’s twelfth annual memorial service to its own.
Family members had been told not to bring cameras or recording devices. There would be no reporters, no foreign dignitaries, no curious outsiders. Indeed, if the Agency had its way, no one beyond Langley’s 258-acre compound would ever know such a convocation had taken place. No one was to speak of it afterward. A year later a warning was added to the program: “Due to cover considerations, we ask that no details of this ceremony be discussed outside of this building.”
The invitations had gone out six weeks earlier in plain envelopes, sent by the CIA’s Office of Protocol. Family members were met at the entrance and led to the rows of folding chairs that had been set up in front of the Wall of Honor inside the cavernous marble lobby. Already Agency staffers had begun to congregate in the upper lobby. They would have to stand—a token of honor due those assembled below.
Among the earliest to arrive was the family of John Merriman. His name appears in the Book of Honor beside the year 1964. It was Merriman whose plane was shot down in the Congo and whose injuries went untreated for days while he waited for the Agency to rescue him from a remote air base. To this day his death certificate records that he died in a car crash in Puerto Rico.
On this morning his widow, Val, carried an arrangement of pink lilies, white and lavender delphiniums, and three large mums. In her other hand she clutched a photo of her husband dressed smartly in a commercial pilot’s uniform.
Sons Jon and Bruce, now adults, stopped in the men’s room to wash up. A man with a trumpet wandered in and practiced playing “Taps,” his instrument muted with a cap. When they left the bathroom, they noticed the clock on the wall said 3:45. They wondered if it was broken or perhaps it was the time in Moscow or Beijing. Then the Merriman brothers took their seats some eight rows back.
Soon after, Michael Maloney’s widow, Adrienne, and sons Michael and Craig arrived and quietly took their places in the second row of the middle section. Michael Maloney had died in a chopper crash in Laos in October 1965. For thirty-two years his death was marked by an anonymous star. His widow had asked that his name be inscribed in the Book of Honor, but her requests always seemed to get lost in the bureaucracy. Now she had come from Connecticut to at last hear his name read aloud, a final tribute to Michael Maloney and a final act of emancipation from the secrecy that had smothered them all.
But the CIA’s secrecy often defied explanation. There was no such lifting of the veil on the identity of the man who sat beside Michael Maloney on that fateful helicopter mission in Laos. For yet another year Mike Deuel’s name was to remain in the limbo that befalls most nameless stars. Not until 1999 was it added to the book. Dick Holm, one of Deuel’s closest friends and Agency colleagues, and the man who later married his widow, attended the ceremony in remembrance of Deuel. It was Holm who was himself disfigured in a fiery plane crash in the Congo but whose scars now seemed to melt away after a moment’s conversation. He had gone on to a distinguished CIA career clouded at the last by a bungled covert operation in Paris.
Not far off sat Janet Weininger. She was seven when her father, Thomas “Pete” Ray, and three other Alabama Air National Guardsmen lost their lives in the fiasco known as the Bay of Pigs in 1961. For thirty-six years she had waited for the Agency to acknowledge that her father and the others had flown for the CIA and to publicly pay homage to their sacrifice. For decades the government lied and dismissed them as mercenaries. Now at last, the Agency was about to speak the truth, to recognize that he and the others had died in service to country and to the Agency in particular. She and her children had come from Miami just to hear her father’s name read aloud.
Sitting close to the podium was Page Hart Boteler, sister-in-law of Bill Boteler, the handsome twenty-six-year-old covert operative killed by a pipe bomb in a café in Nicosia in 1956. Odd memories flooded her mind—the four wisdom teeth he had pulled, his jazzy little sports car, a last dinner together. Now he was one of the named stars, though like so many others, his name would mean nothing to those who daily passed by the wall.
Page Boteler introduced herself to a young woman who sat behind her. The woman said her last name was Bennett and that she was two years old when she lost her father. William E. Bennett had been a thirty-six-year-old covert operative working under cover as a political officer in Vietnam. He was reported killed on January 7, 1975, in an explosion at his home in Tuy Hoa on the central coast.
Many family members either could not make it to the ceremony or did not receive invitations. Sylvia Doner, sister of Larry Freedman, who was killed by a land mine in Somalia in 1992, spent that morning at her office desk. Antoinette Lewis, mother of James Lewis, who died in the 1983 bombing of the Beirut embassy, was at home in San Diego, having her morning coffee and toast. On son Jimmy’s birthday and on the anniversary of his death, she has the priest read Mass for him and his wife, Monique, who died with him in the blast. Nor was anyone at the ceremony to represent the family of Richard Spicer, a nameless star killed on October 19, 1984, in a plane crash in El Salvador while on a covert mission. It was said at the time that he died in a car crash in Florida. Few were fooled.
Buford Robbins, a Denver butcher, had hoped to live long enough to have daughter Barbara’s name inscribed in the Book of Honor, replacing the nameless star that tormented him. The twenty-one-year-old CIA secretary had been killed in the 1965 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Three weeks before this memorial service, on April 22, 1998, he died of liver cancer. “I wish I had an answer,” his widow, Ruth, would say. “It sounded like they were still trying to protect someone or something. I didn’t know how to interpret it. If they have a good reason, I guess it’s something we will never find out.”
At precisely 11:30 the memorial service began. As Director Central Intelligence George Tenet took his seat, many in the audience sensed that the air-conditioning had finally come on. An African American woman, Keesha Gibbons, moved slowly to the front of the room and sang a gospel song, “Beams of Heaven.” A soprano,
she sang a cappella and the power of her voice brought all whispers to a halt. Then Jack G. Downing, deputy director for operations and overseer of the clandestine service, introduced Director Tenet.
This was not a day that Tenet looked forward to. An emotional man, he knew it would be hard to get through the service. Some of those in the Book of Honor behind him were much more than mere names to him. Four of the stars, two named and two nameless, had been lost on his watch.
“We stand together before this sacred wall of stars,” he began, “united in fellowship as we remember our fallen colleagues. This silent constellation is the most eloquent testament we can give to CIA’s half century of devoted service to the nation.
“We will never forget that each one of these stars also symbolizes a family’s loss—the irreparable loss of a parent, a husband, a wife, a brother, a sister, a child, a grandparent.
“Each star, too, represents the loss of a friend, a colleague, a mentor.”
While he spoke, an Agency camera mounted on a tripod was recording the event. It focused not on Tenet, but on a woman dressed in pink who was using her hands to capture Tenet’s words in sign language for the deaf.
Then Tenet spoke of those singled out for honor this day. He mentioned a young man, an Arabist named Matt, who sported a roguish mustache, detested filling out travel vouchers, and was once arrested for driving the wrong way down a one-way street. There would be no last name offered. His identity was still cloaked in secrecy.