EXFIL

by Anthony C. Patton

  That said, I derived masculine satisfaction from being married to a stay-at-home mother. Historically, this was the Army way, and the American way.

  I was punching above my weight with Beth, but she had a masterful way of praising my manly virtues both in public and in the bedroom. The good news was she had a plan. She was setting the stage for a tenure-track professorship at West Point, which the Army was salivating to offer, with the implicit understanding that I would follow her there for my next assignment.

  The assignment in Bangkok was supposed to set the stage for my promotion to brigadier general, but options at West Point would be limited and not without conflict or compromise. Beth was confident we could make it work, but the school didn’t exactly fit into my plan of one day heading a Combatant Command as a four-star general.

  As much as I nodded, I resisted the idea of returning to West Point.

  After graduating many years ago, I had followed the traditional path of an infantry officer, checking all the right boxes and excelling as a company commander while serving in Fort Clayton, Panama. I lived and breathed Army. Many officers and enlisted soldiers were obsessed with qualifying for Special Forces, but I had a long-term plan and understood that, regardless of how much fun kicking down doors might be, there were better paths to the top.

  Many officers and enlisted soldiers also acquired a taste for Panamanian women. Week after week, the most ordinary dudes bagged stunning young women, far more physically attractive than they could ever hope to find back home.

  Each Friday night, a line of eager dolls waited outside the auxiliary gate near the NCO club of Fort Clayton, a stone’s throw from the Panama Canal. The soldiers had their pick to sign in for the night and the girls never said no, as long as free food and drinks were on the menu.

  Between this ritual and the ridiculously low liquor prices at the Class Six stores, I concluded that the Army condoned this behavior, or at least turned a blind eye to it.

  As a Southern gentleman raised on more traditional values, I could appreciate the urge to indulge in carnal pleasures, but not as a matter of course and certainly not without restraint or as the basis for assessing a mate. As a company commander, I saw the results of this debauchery, including broken marriages and desperate young women showing up at the front gate with babies or signed marriage documents, only to discover that the loves of their lives had left without reporting anything up the chain of command.

  Love is blind, but many soldiers couldn’t distinguish love from lust.

  Admittedly, I indulged once myself, with a refined lady of the Panamanian oligarchy. She lived in an affluent yet materialistic and transactional space that didn’t interest me, but also showed me a world of delirious passion that left an indelible mark, even to this day.

  As a captain, I was ripe to take a wife, but the American talent in Panama was limited, until I met Beth. After a grueling deployment in the jungle, with more venomous snakes and torrential rain than I hoped to ever see again, I joined the boys for a cold beer at the officers’ club.

  There, I made eyes at a table of cute company grade officers from the 470th Military Intelligence Brigade, but they all had boyfriends or husbands or didn’t seem remotely interested in a knuckle-dragger like me. Time slowed, however, when Beth joined them.

  Imagine a 1980s teen angst film with a beautiful woman descending the stairs in a prom dress, wind blowing her hair as a rock ballad plays.

  She was both beautiful and out of place with her sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, full red lips, and the most darling freckles. She said she was visiting for a conference.

  I can only imagine how idiotic I must have looked gawking at her, but much to my surprise, her gaze turned out to have been an invitation. After mustering the courage, I strode over to offer a drink. I don’t recall everything I said, but it was love at first sight, for me at least. As luck would have it, we both had follow-on assignments to San Antonio, home of the Alamo.

  At the risk of glossing over important memories, our courtship was brief but passionate.

  We were soon living in nuptial bliss with plans to start a family.

  I never understood couples opting for long engagements or waiting years to have children, but I soon learned that married life would change everything, especially when husband and wife were both Army officers on different career tracks. Many a military couple imagined that both careers would work out, but the tandem option worked best if one career took a back seat to the other. In the Army, and for a Southern gentleman, that meant the wife.

  I challenge any man to say “six of one, half a dozen of the other” whether his or his wife’s career would be the one to bring home the bacon.

  Anyway, my sense was that Beth agreed without hesitation, but second-wave feminist norms dictated that we at least give the perception to others of having considered both paths.

  The good thing about being a captain was that it gave officers time to spread their wings and explore other career options. In my case, as I transitioned from company command to the repetitive grind of staff work, I was bitten by the Military Intelligence and Foreign Area Officer bugs.

  Week after week, we faced the choice of beer-soaked happy hours and war stories with my infantry buddies, or more cerebral evenings with Beth’s MI and FAO friends, which included dinner parties and sophisticated banter. I soon found myself reading The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and other respectable media, both to not embarrass myself and because it opened my eyes to an otherwise unseen world beyond infantry and civil engineering.

  The warrior profession was noble, with infantry standing firm on the tip of the spear, but I also reflected on how the Army nested into the National Security Strategy. The more I read, the more I realized I could never be a news junkie. While academic types, Beth included, found satisfaction in splitting hairs over policy issues in the abstract, I was curious about the biases of the publications and the quality of the sources. After all, if I were a general for a Geographic Combatant Command, I wouldn’t consult mainstream media to make important decisions.

  And whereas Beth loved sharing ideas with her friends, I preferred to get to know them on a personal level, to discover what made them tick. This was the only way to make sense of their ideas and perspectives. It turned out I had an uncanny ability to put people at ease and make them feel comfortable discussing sensitive information that they might not otherwise reveal. I sometimes felt like the odd one out, but Beth said the others enjoyed my company and said I had “the gift.” She couldn’t explain it, but I think I know what she meant.

  During one of our dinner parties, I spoke with a visitor and learned that he was working at the DIA Directorate for Operations to reform the training courses to certify DIA personnel in HUMINT collection, including the Defense Debriefing Service, the overt collectors; the Defense Attaché System, the military attachés; and the Defense Clandestine Service, the traditional spies who lived in their own secret world. He said the DIA couldn’t rely on CIA to satisfy all of our collection requirements, and that we would have to train and deploy our own collectors.

  I don’t know if he had been sent to meet me specifically, but he said DIA could use someone like me, that there were opportunities for aspiring military attachés. I wasn’t disappointed at the time, but did later wonder why they hadn’t considered me for clandestine collection.

  The more I learned about the world of intelligence, the more I knew I wanted in. As was the case with Special Forces, I was advised that the military attaché track wasn’t the best path to attain the rank of general, but for reasons I couldn’t explain, I no longer cared. Just thinking about this move resonated with me at a deep level. Best of all, Beth supported me and understood that it would involve extended training away from home to learn the new craft.

  Like most initiates, I had to overcome many preconceptions about the craft of HUMINT as it was portrayed in movies or books. We weren’t issued shoe phones or sports cars with gadgets, and we wou
ld never require a license to kill to accomplish the mission. The learning curve was steep, but as my muscle memory quickly developed and my synapses got rewired, it was clear that I was manifesting a natural talent. Unlike many students, I could adjust my personality like a chameleon to collect intelligence, most of which was ripe for the taking. I learned to walk the fine line of building a genuine friendship and collecting intelligence, without appearing manipulative. Most people like to talk.

  Just as learning a foreign language expands our grasp of English to help us better understand why we say what we say or why the subjunctive matters, the intelligence business helps us better understand why we think and act the way we do, which frees us from our own personality quirks and bad habits. For example, once men realize that much of what we do in life is instinctively directed toward replicating our DNA, we are free to step off the dance floor to focus our efforts on pursuing other objectives. This is why marriage was one of the secrets of success in the intelligence business. Single dudes gave out the wrong vibe. Plus, the presence of a beautiful woman like Beth put people at ease and stirred the conversation in interesting ways.

  After graduating, I was assigned as the Assistant Army Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. I arranged an administrative job for Beth, but by this time we had Andrew and Troy, and we didn’t like the idea of leaving the boys at home with a stranger from an Islamic country, so she took a break from her career. Another motivating factor for her decision, in my humble opinion, was the prestige of a diplomatic career.

  Unlike our security assistance colleagues, the military attachés were the wining-and-dining diplomats for the Department of Defense—diplomatic passports and all.

  While our security assistance brethren executed training exercises in the frigid Himalayan Mountains of Kashmir or promoted the sale of U.S. weapon systems, we endured no such hardships. Instead, we attended diplomatic functions in five-star hotels with hors d’oeuvres and alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages, depending on which country was hosting.

  The Muslim diplomats often served fruit juice to impress other Muslims—the Pakistanis were especially proud of their selection of mangoes—while drinking alcohol in private.

  Although Beth wasn’t on the payroll, everyone recognized her as my better half. She did a stellar job of facilitating my work by putting other wives at ease or eliciting tidbits about their husbands that I could use to my advantage. This exciting work brought us closer together, and it was no secret in the office that she gave me a competitive advantage.

  During one of the many diplomatic functions we attended in Islamabad—I don’t recall what we were celebrating—Beth and I were making the rounds and small talk with the other military attaché couples we had grown accustomed to seeing, sometimes two or three times a week.

  I always kept my eyes open for new blood. We focused our attention on foreign military officers, but struck up conversations with civilians or anyone willing to talk, for that matter. This often turned into a game of hustling to be the first person to bump the new guy.

  The event was on track for the circular file, but the arrival of a young Chinese PLA captain forever changed my life. While scanning the crowd, Beth squeezed my hand with a gentle tug.

  After a casual turn of my head and a few seconds to focus, Captain Li came into view.

  At the time, I was a major and didn’t see any of the other sharks circling the new prey.

  Beth and I did the diplomatic double-time and adjusted our arrival to coincide with his accepting a glass of deep red wine from a passing waiter.

  The chemistry between us never ignited, though, and he was unwilling to meet informally outside the diplomatic circuit. I had learned to be a chameleon, but you can’t fake chemistry forever, so the best way to initiate a lasting relationship was to base it on something natural and mutual. I understood that the Chinese often didn’t respond predictably to a typical Western approach, and Beth assessed that we had a lot of work ahead of us if we were to have any chance of gaining traction. The important point was to not take it personally, but any information about Chinese military activities in Pakistan would be well received.

  I wasn’t surprised when a CIA officer named Brett Phelps casually approached Captain Li later the same evening, probably after witnessing my attempt. They seemed to hit it off. I could see it in Captain Li’s smiles, his nods, and his shrinking personal space. As someone who supposedly had the gift, I could see that Brett had it, too, and he also had the advantage of operating in the clandestine world.

  The ethos of the Intelligence Community was that when the CIA boys stepped in, it was time to step aside. Needless to say, I wasn’t pleased that CIA was poaching my mark, but I didn’t want to interfere because the most important thing was a victory for the good guys.

  Anyway, to my odd satisfaction, Brett told me later that his relationship with Captain Li failed to launch as well, which showed that all the training in the world couldn’t convince a target to cross a line. Captain Li would one day become Lieutenant Colonel Li, the most lethal cyber-spy in the world: enemy number one for the United States.

  My rookie assignment in Islamabad was a success—my source cultivation and reporting numbers were “unprecedented”—and this was followed by a number of other assignments at overseas embassies as I worked my way up the ranks.

  I understood that a military attaché career would limit my promotion potential and I was given opportunities to return to the infantry to check all the right boxes. However, by this time, I identified as a military attaché and couldn’t see myself returning to the regular army.

  At one point in the journey, CIA offered me an opportunity to join the “dark side,” as we called it. Turned out they had an Office of Military Affairs that was always in the market for new talent. However intrigued I was, the status and respect that went with being a military attaché motivated me to decline, which, looking back, might have been a mistake. But as long as I was still in the Army, Beth had godfathers who could work behind the scenes to facilitate her Ph.D. program and lay the groundwork for a tenure-track professorship at West Point.

  I recognized that my assignment to Bangkok would be my military attaché swan song, a fact difficult to accept because although I had hoped to be selected as the Senior Defense Official/Defense Attaché (SDO/DATT), I was selected to as the Army Attaché instead. Most officers would be satisfied to serve in the position, but Beth struggled with what felt like a demotion. Given the size of the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, one of the largest in Southeast Asia, the ambassador often had to limit event invitations to the Defense Attaché and his wife, which meant the arc of my career had peaked.

  It was apparent that Beth struggled with playing second fiddle to a couple with no previous military attaché experience. We spent several uncomfortable nights at home after I explained that her role as the informal leader of the officers’ wives’ club didn’t give us real status in the diplomatic hierarchy.

  I could tell that this pained her, which was why we focused on preparing for my promotion to brigadier general. The Commandant of Cadets position at West Point might be available at the end of my assignment. There were no guarantees, but Beth was working the issue behind the scenes and seemed confident about our chances. Leading up to the promotion announcement, she took steps—too many steps, I might say—to plan a promotion party, which only made my non-selection and the selection of the Defense Attaché all the more painful.

  I would later learn that my non-selection had been due in part to a backlog of officers eligible for promotion. My below-the-zone promotion to major had put me in the mix with more experienced officers. The promotion panel said I would have an excellent chance the next year, but you’re only as good as your latest book, and the judges rotated each year.

  When I spoke with Beth about the option of extending for a third year (West Point wouldn’t allow a colonel to fill a brigadier general position) she seemed pragmatically indifferent. Turns out she had arranged fo
r me to take a colonel-level teaching position, without consulting me first.

  Her tenured professorship was on track now and she was in the final stages of writing a book, so it wasn’t clear to her or anyone else why I would want to delay the move for a promotion that might never happen. Several West Point classmates told me that teaching cadets was a blast; that molding the minds of the next generation of Army officers was a meaningful experience. I never considered teaching a proper use of my talents and it wasn’t something to which I had ever aspired. But as much as I longed for the promotion, I couldn’t deny her this opportunity, until a sequence of events unfolded in Bangkok that resulted in my extending for a third year and Beth moving to West Point with our boys.

  THREE

  Many countries have red-light districts designed for men to indulge their baser impulses—drinking, gambling, sex, etc. Of course, women like to let off steam, too, but in different ways and for different reasons. In the United States, Las Vegas serves this purpose.

  The debauchery displayed there is usually offset by how infrequently people indulge or how they behave after they return home.

  Most people do have boundaries, however—what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas—and would look askance at anyone admitting to weekly Las Vegas binge sessions.

  In other countries, especially developing ones, behavior such as prostitution, mistress culture, and a general lack of constraint vis-à-vis the rule of law, traffic laws, and closing hours for bars is more tolerated, possibly even woven into the social fabric.

  This lawlessness proves somewhat exciting for people without responsibilities or who are itching to escape the restraints of America (we’re not as “free” as many imagine), but the tolerance of such behavior was one reason these countries struggle to achieve economic growth.