Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story

by Jack Devine

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  My life in the private sector has been immensely gratifying, but I still find ways to weigh in on issues of concern. As far afield as my new career took me at times, my attention never strayed too far from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the intelligence wars in Washington. I suppose it was force of habit and continued allegiance to the cause. You never really emotionally leave the CIA.

  In August 2004, after the 9/11 Commission issued its report roundly criticizing both the FBI and the CIA and calling for the creation of an intelligence czar, the director of national intelligence, to bring the nation’s warring intelligence agencies together, I wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post. I thought the idea was a bad one then, and it’s a bad idea now—another costly layer of bureaucracy that has grown so large that its ability to fulfill its original mission is highly suspect. During a follow-on Washington Post Web chat in August 2004, I sounded what would become a consistent refrain of mine: focus on killing or capturing Osama bin Laden.

  Starting in 2003, I began periodically contributing op-ed pieces to The Washington Post, Financial Times, and The Miami Herald on intelligence reforms. From 2006 to 2008, I served on an advisory panel established by Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter to rethink the capabilities of naval intelligence. Also, because of my role at the Agency Counter Narcotics Center, I was invited in 2012 by the Council on Foreign Relations, of which I’m a member, to serve as the “presider” over a presentation by the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske, entitled “Paradigm Shift: Efforts to Reform Drug Policy.”

  Earlier, in August 2009, I had served on a panel on private-sector intelligence at the National Press Club with former CIA director Michael Hayden and Michael Chertoff, former homeland security secretary, both of whom were also in the private sector. That morning, The New York Times ran an important front-page article on how the CIA had used a contractor, Blackwater USA, to take part in a “lethal” covert action to find and kill al-Qaeda members, which raised questions about accountability in such highly sensitive operations. The issue was obviously relevant to the panel, and I addressed it head-on in my remarks.

  I explained that after spending a third of my life and almost all my adult years at the Agency, I had a significant investment in that institution. “I spent thirty-two years in CIA, and when an autopsy is done, you’re going to find that part of my heart contains the CIA’s stamp.” I went on to share my conviction that the Times article reflected a huge historical shift that had not—and still has not—been fully appreciated. For the majority of my career, if you mentioned the word assassination inside the CIA, you were immediately castigated. An assassination does not necessarily resolve the issue, and in many ways may make the problem worse. I had attended a meeting several years earlier with the DDO at that time, who said he wanted to fire all the contractors because of the sharply increasing outsourcing of traditional DO work. It is my conviction that sensitive HUMINT operations should never be outsourced. As for the assassination program, I told the audience at the National Press Club that day, “It’s alien to my experience, and I’ll leave it at that.”

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  In the fall of 2009, I learned that Charlie Wilson was near death. He had had a major heart operation several years earlier, but now his medical situation had deteriorated. Like many of us who had worked on the Afghan program, I had a soft spot for Wilson and I wanted him to know how I felt as the end approached for him. When I called, I was surprised how chipper and optimistic he was about his health. We made a date for a December dinner at Sparks Steak House, in the East Forties in Manhattan. Charlie loved Sparks. It was where the Mafia don Paul Castellano was shot and killed while leaving the restaurant, and the historical drama associated with the place appealed to Charlie. In late November, I received a call from his wife, Barbara, a lovely former ballerina. They would have to postpone our dinner, she said. I knew what this meant and was deeply saddened. It was the end of an important chapter in my life.

  Charlie Wilson died in February 2010 at seventy-six of a chronically bad heart. He had served twelve terms in the House, from 1973 to 1996. The man had such charisma, energy, and passion for life that I could hardly believe he was gone. Not long afterward, I was invited to attend a memorial service for him at the House Appropriations Committee Room in Washington. I welcomed the opportunity to pay tribute to him and his great service to our country. The room was packed when I arrived, but it seemed I was the only one there from the CIA, which was too bad, given Wilson’s history with the Agency. Milt Bearden and Frank Anderson would have been there for sure, but they were in Kabul. Charlie’s old friend Gust Avrakotos surely would have been there as well, but sadly he had died in 2005.

  Many of Wilson’s former assistants were there, tearful about their loss. They clearly admired Charlie and were proud to have worked for him. There were several members of the House Appropriations Committee present as well. Each felt compelled to eulogize Wilson, but the best eulogy that day was a video taken of Wilson in 2006, which played on a large flat-screen TV, muted while others spoke. He looked full of life, and he was delivering a great speech, talking about the importance of bipartisan foreign policy and why that had been a key aspect of the successful Afghan program. How right he was.

  Back in New York, Stanley and I began negotiating what would become Madison Intelligence. We began the partnership in early 2012 with the former head of Mexican intelligence, Jorge Tello. Several years ago, Tello and I reestablished a friendship when we serendipitously met in a New York City elevator. Madison provides strategic intelligence services to Mexican companies and international firms doing business in Mexico, and its success is another indication of the ever-growing demand in the corporate world for sophisticated intelligence. I had also been serving for several years on an advisory board established by the Mexican secretary of public security, thanks largely to my background as former director of the Counter Narcotics Center and chief of the Latin America Division. The final meeting took place in Mexico City in early June 2012, with heavy police presence everywhere we went. The police clearly did not want to lose any of the foreign guests to an armed attack by drug traffickers. President Felipe Calderón gave the keynote address at the event and took time to have a brief sidebar discussion with the advisory board members. The Mexican government was looking for foreign input on tackling its cartel problem, but more important, it was hoping for international support for its efforts.

  Another part of the business that has really begun to flourish is our use of tailored and strategic intelligence to test a trading or investment strategy, particularly in emerging markets. Emerging markets represent a fertile opportunity for TAG because they are an enormously dynamic driver of the global economy while at the same time ranking low on corporate transparency. When firms invest in U.S. publicly traded entities, they implicitly rely on the policing powers of the SEC and the open press to encourage companies to provide accurate disclosures and auditing statements. However, publicly traded companies from developing markets aren’t subject to the same scrutiny or policing, which creates a huge incentive for them to lie. Surprisingly, it is only recently that the financial industry has become fully aware of the enormous risk of fraud inherent in developing economies, including the Chinese market. Risk associated with Chinese public companies listed on the U.S., Canadian, and European exchanges was placed in stark relief when the short-selling firm Muddy Waters Research put the Toronto-listed Chinese timber company Sino-Forest Corporation in its crosshairs in the spring of 2011. Muddy Waters accused the company of greatly exaggerating its landholdings and its profits. Sino-Forest filed for bankruptcy in March 2012 and was placed under investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission in May 2012, which inflicted enormous losses on investors such as famed hedge fund manager John Paulson. As of May 2014, the OSC proceedings remain ongoing.

  Sino-Forest was able to pull off the fraud because entities that should have conducted rigorous due diligence accepted S
ino-Forest’s falsified information reportedly without kicking the tires hard enough on the ground. For one client, we took a close look at a publicly traded Chinese green energy technology manufacturer whose ability to sell extremely low-cost solutions seemed too good to be true. What we found was a viable entity with a big factory and many employees. But when we looked at its supply chain, we discovered that it was buying a critical raw material at a significantly discounted below-market rate from a state-run company presumably being kept afloat by government largesse. We also found strong indications that the company was using a series of Hong Kong–registered shell companies to siphon off shareholder value to the benefit of family members. As the client suspected, this was not a commercially viable entity.

  In order to protect ourselves and our clients from the threat of inadvertently passing along insider information in these types of cases, TAG pays close attention to our sources of information. As a fail-safe, we filter all our findings through Stanley’s law firm, which has considerable familiarity with the relevant rules regarding insider trading and a deep background in financial securities matters. As far as I know, other investigative companies have not developed similar structural safeguards.

  Many of our clients are well-known business leaders who have interesting lives. From time to time, we are able to kick back and enjoy social time with them. A few years ago, Stanley and I were invited to the Louisiana bayou for a weekend of fishing and duck hunting at the hunting lodge of our client Jim Bob Moffett, chairman of Freeport McMoRan. On the first morning, long before daybreak, we headed out to the duck blind to await the arrival of the ducks. I wasn’t having much luck, and our host gently chided, “I brought along all this ammunition. Use it up.” Not to miss the point, the next time a group of birds headed in our direction I got off the quickest round of shots. To my chagrin and the chagrin of the bayou lads, I had blasted out of the sky not ducks but off-season birds, which everyone thereafter assured me were New York teal (ducks)—presumably to fend off the game warden and save me embarrassment. I have no doubt my duck-hunting skills were a subject of great humor around the campfire.

  I’ve always been able to laugh at myself. One of my clients wanted to introduce me to Roger Waters of Pink Floyd because Waters was keenly interested in developments in the Near East. The client asked if I had heard of Pink Floyd. Of course, I responded. My first thought was of a guitar player all dressed in pink. After hanging up, I immediately Googled Waters and realized that I had had him confused with Prince, who was usually dressed up in flashy purple attire. I didn’t mention this to Waters when I met him, but my children and staff in the office were incredulous about my lack of hipness. Along these same lines, I was once invited, during Fashion Week in New York, to meet with the famous clothes designer Elie Tahari about a complicated business matter. I fortunately checked him out before the meeting and had a good understanding of his prominence in the fashion industry ahead of time. Pat certainly knew who he was and decided she would make sure I was properly attired for the event; her selection included a French cuff blue shirt with a white collar. I arrived a bit early and refrained from eating any of the breakfast treats set out, for fear of staining my tie. I did, though, try one blackberry from the fruit bowl. And apparently I touched my white collar afterward, leaving two purple fingerprint-size stains on either side. When Tahari entered the room, he immediately spotted the faux pas and had his staff scurrying to repair the damage, which only heightened the embarrassment.

  Even back in my CIA days, dealing with foreigners was not always hard work and occasionally you had the opportunity to laugh at yourself. From time to time, you get to socialize with your counterparts under interesting circumstances in special locations. Such was the case one evening when Richard Dearlove and his wife, Roslyn, joined Pat and me for dinner at the popular River Café in London. At that time, the restaurant was a very hot location because it had received a glowing write-up in an upscale New York magazine, and everyone was clamoring to get in. The waiting list was several weeks long. To speed up the process, I invoked the U.S. ambassador’s name (with his permission) and was able to get on the three-week list!

  Not long after we were seated, none other than James Bond, in the person of Sean Connery, and several companions came into the restaurant and were ushered discreetly to a corner table. Roslyn and Pat, almost like teenyboppers, began making a fuss and insisting that we introduce them to Connery, or at least get an autograph. In a moment of hubris, either Richard or I had the silly notion to point out “that we were the real 007s.” This brought loud, derisive cackling from the women: “You have to be kidding. There is only one 007, and he is sitting in the corner with his friends.” Appropriately humbled, we beat a retreat and were relieved when the check came.

  Years later, I had a chance to tell this story at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. A friend and client, T. J. Maloney of Lincolnshire Management, asked me to give a talk at his exclusive club, noting that Connery was a member. As a tease, he said he thought Connery would attend and join us at a small dinner table after the talk. True to his word, 007 patiently listened while I regaled the audience with the story of how we had spotted him at the River Café. I’m not sure he found it as ironic as I did, but he was a good sport about it, and we had a delightful dinner together discussing Scottish politics and the making of his movie From Russia with Love.

  In the spring of 2010, I was invited to the Sixth International Conference of the Paris Forum for Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. I was one of two keynote speakers, along with the former French foreign minister. I also participated in a sharp-edged panel discussion that touched on U.S. efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. I was satisfied with my performance, fielding, as diplomatically as possible, questions on potentially explosive issues, especially relating to Israel and the Palestinians.

  As I exited the stage, I caught up to Pat, whom I rely on to give me my most constructive feedback. I asked how she thought I had done parrying the tough questions. With a mischievous grin, she responded, “You mean sitting up there with your big Irish legs showing above your socks!” Besides producing a pronounced laugh on my part, it brought me a more grounded view of the event. But she allowed that I had done pretty well carrying the American flag in the back-and-forth with the French and Middle Easterners.

  About a month after we returned from that trip, in June 2010, President Obama fired General Stanley McChrystal as commander of the war in Afghanistan for comments he made in Rolling Stone magazine, and replaced him with General David H. Petraeus. Around the same time, I wrote a rather controversial op-ed for The Wall Street Journal saying the military effort in Afghanistan was flawed and should be replaced with CIA-led covert action. I had seen firsthand the Soviet military fail in Afghanistan, and we were making the same mistakes. Afghanistan is a collection of tribes, not a functioning state, and relationships need to be forged with tribal leaders, not the corrupt and ineffectual government of Hamid Karzai.

  A smart covert action program should rest on worst-case scenarios. Afghanistan will likely enter a period of heightened instability leading up to and following our planned departure, so we should figure out now which tribal leaders—and, under specially negotiated arrangements, which Taliban factions—we could establish productive relationships with. We must also consider the possibility that our departure could precipitate the eventual collapse of the Karzai government. Thus we should cultivate relationships with leaders inside and outside the current regime who are most likely to fill the power vacuum.

  WHERE IS OSAMA BIN LADEN? was the headline on another op-ed I wrote for The Washington Post, in October 2010, in which I argued that finding Bin Laden must remain our number one priority, something that didn’t seem pressing at the time.

  I also felt that the delicate matter of our relations with Pakistan seemed to underlie our unwillingness to find Bin Laden at all costs.

  I had the opportunity to press Pervez Musharraf, the former president of Pa
kistan, on the issue when he spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations a month later. After listening to him talk for more than an hour, I raised my hand to ask a question. “Mr. President, do you believe Bin Laden is in the North-West Frontier?” I said. “And if so, after nine years, why is he still on the loose?”

  “My guess will be as bad as your guess,” Musharraf responded on the record. “I don’t know, and that’s an honest fact … Intelligence is doing its best. And when I say intelligence, intelligence is human intelligence, which ISI has in abundance. It is technical intelligence, which you have in abundance there, in that area, in Pakistan. And then it is aerial surveillance, which is—only you have … The military, the CIA, all intelligence, is doing their best. And I don’t know whether he is dead or alive, and whether he is in Pakistan or in Afghanistan, or maybe he’s gone somewhere. I don’t know. I can’t say.” His answer was made up of equal parts “officialspeak” and double-talk.

  The world learned six months later, shortly before midnight on May 1, 2011, where al-Qaeda’s leader had been hiding, after members of Navy SEAL Team 6 stormed a heavily fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. They opened fire on four occupants until they found Osama bin Laden, code-named Geronimo. The raid was conducted under Title 50 authority of the U.S Code, which allows the U.S. government to conduct covert actions, or “deniable” missions. The CIA director, Leon Panetta, headed the chain of command, which went from him to the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command. Bin Laden was killed by shots to the chest and the forehead, above his left eye. The raid was the culmination of a CIA operation years in the making. It began with efforts to penetrate a network of couriers who serviced Bin Laden.