Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story

by Jack Devine

  For instance, I convinced Robert C. Bonner, administrator of the DEA, to let us send over a few CIA analysts from CNC to rummage through his files looking for data relating to the Cali Cartel. Bonner was friendly and open, but clearly had long-standing concerns about the Agency being up front with him and sharing everything that was appropriate. Over the years, a number of U.S. agencies and officials have been suspicious of the CIA, its motives, and the possibility that it is withholding information. Sometimes this suspicion has been grounded in truth, but much of the time it is just a natural reaction to the fact that the CIA’s collection and analytical capabilities expand beyond those of others in the U.S. government. At the same time, there is a significant cultural difference between how intelligence and law enforcement officers approach information and the purposes for it. In its simplest terms, intelligence officers spend their time collecting information to put together a strategic mosaic, while law enforcement officers try to collect evidence for a judicial prosecution and assiduously work to avoid contaminating that evidence. Two months after our analysts had dug through the DEA files, they produced a very thorough and rich report. We sent it to DEA, and a few days later I received a call from a very upset Bonner. “I thought we had an agreement,” he said. “How could you produce all this information without sharing it with me? This is all new information to me. I feel sandbagged.” To his relief and slight embarrassment, I pointed out that it was his own information. We had merely given it some analytical horsepower, in the spirit of broadened collaboration. After that, he became more trustful of the CNC, and a number of his senior leaders became major supporters of the center.

  Beyond this new trust and cooperation among federal agencies, the other new and innovative component of the linear strategy was the way we started dealing with our liaison partners in foreign intelligence agencies. Brian Bramson, a veteran CIA operations officer and Latin America hand, led the way here—and has never been fully recognized for this achievement. Traditionally, we tried to give liaison partners as little support and intelligence as we could get away with to stay in the game. We did not want to develop their skills to the point where they could jeopardize our other unilateral operations if they turned against us. I understood this reluctance, having seen trusted liaison partners become criminal liabilities.

  Nevertheless, when it came to attacking drug cartels at the CNC in the early 1990s, we made a decision to truly build up liaison capabilities and share with the locals even high-end resources—everything that could be used to damage the narcotic-trafficking networks. Our strategy was to use our liaison partners as a genuine force multiplier. Combining their on-the-ground knowledge, language abilities, and existing networks with our skills, training, and equipment, we went from minimal bilateral liaison to enhanced multilateral liaison. “The kind of information we were looking for had to be gathered in-country by our good liaison contacts that we trusted … liaison relationships were key,” Brian Bramson said.5

  Soon we were building powerful and effective intelligence collection units. An Andean region drug-trafficking organization was dismantled from “stem to stern” in the early 1990s due in large part to a carefully cultivated liaison relationship. This was a classic example of how good liaison relationships could result in significant advances against these cartels, Bramson said. We had not, in my view, structured an intelligence-collection program quite so coherently up to that point in time.

  In order to sell the linear strategy, I felt I had to become a regular user of the CIA’s Executive Dining Room, which—thanks to Bill Casey—had the best kitchen in federal Washington. Apparently, he had found the cuisine at Langley wanting and called upon the other CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, to infiltrate the kitchen. Since it was against regulations for the federal government to pay for meals for government employees, I used my own scant money as I sold the linear strategy over lunch to most of the heads of the sixteen agencies, whom I invited one by one. This strategy remained for many years a cornerstone of what is now the Crime and Narcotics Center. The CNC’s focus expanded in 1994, a couple of years after I had departed. One of those who came over for lunch was Rich Haver, then secretary of defense Dick Cheney’s chief of staff at the Pentagon. He was instrumental in talking to all the Defense Department intelligence people and getting them to support the CNC. He invoked Cheney’s name and told them the defense secretary was fully behind this strategy. In the end, all the agencies signed on to it and moved forward in implementing it. The power of cooperation, instead of competition, was so obvious that the linear strategy remained a “blue plate special”—highlighted annually to Congress for more than a decade as an example of the intelligence community’s effectiveness at a joint endeavor—and was used as justification for continued funding.

  It wasn’t hard to sell the CNC’s ability to target an entire network or cartel. Indeed, the linear strategy helped make “targeting” a recognized discipline at the CIA and “link analysis” a necessary tool for mapping connections, one that has since become critical in mapping and attacking al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks. Targeting is a means of identifying the most important people in a network by using link analysis to understand their roles, their connections to one another, their communication patterns, their locations, and the way they move money.

  Just as targeting became a recognized discipline thanks to the linear strategy, counternarcotics started to become a recognized focus at the Agency. The linear strategy had become so well embraced and well funded that it moved the CNC toward a career service, as opposed to a rotating assignment, which served to boost morale and attract top talent from within the Agency.

  The counternarcotics mission required an unusual bureaucratic arrangement to keep all our efforts aligned. The CIA’s Latin America Division, headed at the time by Terry Ward, controlled those who worked out of the stations across the region. We controlled the money they received for counternarcotics operations and provided, with Bramson leading the way, technology, direction, and powerful analytic support. Because the cartels extended beyond country borders, Agency case officers across Latin America benefited greatly from feeding the raw intelligence they were gathering from human and technical sources to the CNC in Washington, where analysts were able to connect the dots with what their counterparts were collecting. And the fruits of that analysis went back out, not only to the CIA stations, but also to DEA, the State Department, and military units working in the field on counternarcotics. While my immediate supervisor was John Helgerson, head of the Directorate of Intelligence, Roeber noted that he is still amazed how much time we spent up on the seventh floor meeting with the Directorate of Operations, which spoke to how operationally oriented the CNC had become.

  The power of the linear strategy, and enhanced liaison with the Colombian military and intelligence service, was evident throughout the collaborative campaign to take down Escobar and the Medellín Cartel. Shortly after President George H. W. Bush signed NSDD 18, he dispatched U.S. Army Special Forces trainers to work with the Colombian police and military on quick-strike tactics. Roeber and I heard from a fair number of people that we were never going to get Escobar. But the linear strategy put pressure on him from every angle, and we remained confident. “When you start putting the full weight of the U.S. against a target, you will get him,” Roeber said. “Getting Pablo Escobar was a cumulative effort, and intercepts played a huge part in counternarcotics.” The Colombians were then able to zero in on Escobar’s movements by intercepting his communications.

  Back at the CNC, Bramson was rightfully convinced that the only way to get the upper hand on traffickers was to arm the local police and our intelligence counterparts with first-class equipment, including analytic and operations hardware. I visited one of the units in Colombia and was very impressed with the caliber and skill of the officers. The chief of the unit bluntly noted that part of their success came from the fact that they had handpicked the police recruits and put them undercover so that they never
worked the streets. Otherwise, he noted, these officers would be approached by a trafficker their first day on the job and be offered a bribe “they couldn’t refuse.”

  Escobar understood politics and used substantial sums of money in developing a Robin Hood image, spreading some of his wealth among the poor. It won him goodwill among the masses. Nevertheless, his violence against the political system became unsustainable. As pressure mounted against him, he was able to negotiate his surrender to the Colombian authorities in June 1991 in exchange for a reduced sentence and special imprisonment conditions. Colombia’s Constitutional Assembly voted to prohibit his extradition to the United States, ensuring he would not be tried here and receive a long, hard sentence, or worse. His confinement in La Catedral prison became an international joke, given the royal treatment he received there, as well as the ease with which he could exit the prison under seemingly loose controls. Still, the linear strategy had worked. When I took over the CNC, Escobar and the Cali Cartel were virtually seen as untouchable. Now Escobar was in prison and the cartel was collapsing.

  EIGHT

  Jousting with the Soviets: When I Knew It Was Over

  Washington 1990–92

  Escobar may have been our number one target, and Latin America was clearly our focal point at the CNC, but the war on drugs was global. In the spring of 1991, Milt Bearden phoned, hoping I could help him cultivate a new relationship with our old enemy, the Russians. My presence, he realized, would underscore for them our mutual interest in combating the drug trade. It wasn’t hard for Bearden to talk me into this escapade.

  “I’ve got a sweetener,” he said. “I think I can cut a deal with the Russians if you come, and we can make them take us to the poppy fields of Uzbekistan, along the border of the river that flows under the Friendship Bridge. I can get us out there.”

  “That would be great,” I said. “You and I cavorting with the KGB on the bridge where the Russians retreated from Afghanistan.”

  Bearden had become head of the former Soviet Division, now called the Russia Division, of the Directorate of Operations after he left Pakistan. The Cold War was coming to an end, a new world order was at hand. I saw it as a sign of the changing times and something we needed to do. I thought we should have more heartily embraced the Russians when the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, but the policy then was “They’re still the Russians.” This reticence eventually contributed to Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. If we had moved aggressively to work with more reform-minded forces in Russia, things might have been different.

  Philosophically, Bearden and I were on a similar track on this point. Despite our role in fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan, we shared a conviction about the need for a new approach. But a lot of the old-timers at the Agency thought Bearden’s cultivation of KGB contacts was virtually treason. I may have disagreed with them, but it wasn’t hard to understand why they felt that way, given the years, the decades, all of us had invested in the Cold War maniacally focused on the Soviet threat.

  Even though I spent my first five overseas tours in Latin America, I constantly found myself dueling with Soviet officers. I was trying to recruit them; they were trying to recruit us. Central America was a rich hunting ground in the late 1970s and ’80s. The Soviets maintained one of their largest missions there, both to gather intelligence and to project propaganda in the region. Similarly, our operation was a flagship there for the Latin America Division, which had a legacy of robust counterintelligence operations. This was the era of the KGB’s “Golden Boys”—smart, well-educated officers with excellent language skills who would stay in a post for years perfecting their knowledge of the local geography and culture and building a network of contacts. They would taunt us with the ease they had moving about, dropping into a conversation a reference to a recent trip to Dallas, for example, then taking it back when we called them on it, as if they had let it slip by accident.

  I was particularity interested in a Russian Foreign Ministry officer who reportedly had shown signs of disaffection on an earlier assignment. I tried a number of ploys to get to him. I knew he was a fan of the band Chicago, which was coming to the city for a performance. I obtained tickets and invited the official and his wife. His KGB controllers allowed them to go, but he clearly was instructed to beg off any follow-on socializing after the performance. We all enjoyed the show immensely, but the entire auditorium was a mist of marijuana smoke. No doubt, we all ended up with a bit of a contact high.

  We learned shortly thereafter that the officer was returning to Moscow, and we decided to make an unusually forward advance. I arranged to drop by his apartment unannounced when we knew he would be alone. The intent was not to pitch him but rather to allow him an opportunity to step forward if, in fact, he was disaffected. He handled my arrival smoothly. We shared his bottle of Courvoisier, and as Russians tend to do, he waxed philosophical about the meaning of life and human nature. While the conversation was deliberately oblique, I’m sure he understood why I was there and was telling me between the lines that he was contented enough with his lot in life and that I should not expect him to show up on my doorstep anytime soon.

  We were not above using artifice to curry favor. My colleague Brad Handley had a famous cousin, Peter Benchley, author of the book Jaws, on which the blockbuster movie is based. Back in 1975, we arranged a special showing of the film for our Soviet counterparts and told them we were able to get a copy of the movie, still in its first run, only because of Brad’s relationship with Benchley. Brad had another great in, this one with the international community: he played rugby. His team was well-known and played regularly, which put Brad in contact with a whole different group of people. He often told me what a rich source of potential targets this was and urged me to join him. Finally, one day in the elevator, he implied, not so subtly, that if I didn’t join him in the scrum, it was because I was just another “empty suit” case officer. This hit the right button, and I soon found myself on the rugby pitch, at the bottom of a scrum where the Australian beside me had a French opponent by the neck of his jersey and was yelling, “If you bite me one more time, I’m going to smash in your teeth.” I knew I was in the right operating environment!

  These occasions were often diverting, but they were never just for fun. We would all have our targets, and we would plan in advance our method of approach. If one of us was rebuffed, another would move in, and there was always a plan C and plan D. We planned meticulously and left nothing to chance. When it came to seducing and recruiting potential assets, we considered and reconsidered every detail and always had contingencies. All this would have been invisible to the uninitiated, but Brad saw it from the inside. On those occasions when Pat and the children were able to join me, we were, for all appearances, just energetic hosts—throwing parties, arranging special entertainment, organizing outings. Each occasion, though, was carefully devised to build a strategic social network and to cement relationships in the international diplomatic community in the hope that eventually we would persuade our new friends to become agents.

  I don’t think I was fooling the KGB. The Russians were working us the same way we were working them. We made it a habit of crashing each other’s National Day celebrations, usually going along with an embassy official who had been officially invited. Once they spotted me, the KGB officers would take turns making a beeline for me to offer a toast, hoping that the repetitive vodka shots would get me intoxicated. You play that game only once. On one occasion, I spotted the Russian embassy code clerk, the most protected target in the mission, and quickly headed toward him. Almost like a Western wagon train, a group of KGB officers suddenly appeared and literally formed a human circle to block my talking to him. Too bad—that would have made for an interesting report for both of us the next day.

  The KGB’s Golden Boys were also very active. One of their tactics was for one of them to ride the same bus that a number of female U.S. embassy staff used. One male KGB agent boarded the same bus each day but didn’t
sit down beside his target right away; he sat in various spots for several days, until there was a natural opportunity to sit next to the U.S. embassy employee. Little by little, he followed up on the light banter until it seemed natural to suggest a rendezvous, with the objective being a sexual tryst that would lay the groundwork for the ultimate goal: a pitch for classified information. All his careful planning was for naught, however. He had hit up the wrong employee. She reported the incident immediately, and we were able to gracefully break off the relationship and alert other members of the staff to this clever technique. It’s not hard to imagine that this ploy didn’t always fail.

  We also ran some interesting technical operations, including one that nearly ended in disaster. A senior Communist leader from Central America came to town and we were able to install an audio device in his hotel room. Not a great idea in retrospect, since he was sexually ambitious and spent most of his time frolicking in bed with his mistress. Our bug produced no intelligence whatsoever. At one point, the interaction with the mistress became rather vigorous, and the bed actually broke. We heard the mistress screech, “A bug!” and we thought the audio device had been exposed. After a few moments of panic, it became clear that she had seen, in fact, an insect! In another case, our “tech op” went smoothly from a technical standpoint but failed for the worst of reasons. Our technical staff had manufactured a sophisticated voice-activated audio device to be installed in the ambassador’s office in an unfriendly embassy. It was a masterpiece of craftsmanship, and we were able to observe from a discreet distance its flawless installation. But it never worked. We wrongly assumed that it had somehow been picked up by their “sweep team,” the team that searches a room for such devices. We later learned from a defector that the unfriendly government had a penetration agent in the government service who had alerted them to the device.