Hard Measures

by Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr.

  Rob Richer met with our division chiefs for months hammering out such a plan. When we had a document that we felt accurately reflected the path we wanted to take, I called back to headquarters every one of our chiefs of station. This was the first time in history that a worldwide conference of station chiefs had ever been held. Gathering them in the Agency’s auditorium, the Bubble, we laid out the draft plan and invited vigorous debate. I told the assembled senior officers that if they had any concerns or disagreements that that was the time to express them. “Once you leave this conference,” I told them, “this is not ‘headquarters’ plan’ and this is not ‘Jose Rodriguez’s plan,’ this is ‘our plan.’” I had seen too many instances in the past in which people would pay lip service to headquarters direction and then anonymously snipe at it due to narrow parochial interests. There was a lot of spirited debate during that conference—every chief of station seemed to think that his or her country was the center of the universe. But in the end they came to agreement on a strategic plan. The plan was a good one; it continues to be the strategic plan of the NCS and is paying dividends to this day.

  The intelligence community, Congress, and the White House came to recognize the limitations of a too-small clandestine service. As a result, President Bush authorized doubling the size of the clandestine service over a period of five years.

  All this happened while we were dealing with a great deal of public skepticism. The CIA had taken quite a beating from the 9/11 Commission and also from another “blue ribbon” panel, the Silberman-Robb Commission, which had been appointed to look into why the intelligence community had gotten the WMD in Iraq story so wrong. On top of that the newly created director of national intelligence was being stood up with an uncertain mission and unclear lines of authority but with an apparent mandate to “go fix” what Congress and the administration saw as a broken intelligence apparatus.

  When a major power player like the CIA appears to be wounded, all the other animals in the jungle (in this case, the DOD and the FBI, for example) start circling, trying to see if they can take advantage of any weakness. And the CIA was certainly wounded. It had gone from being the center of the intelligence universe to just one of the sixteen agencies that made up the intelligence community. Things were in danger of getting worse. Everyone had his own reorganization plan. Some elements of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, supported by Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, proposed splitting off the Directorate of Operations (my organization) and making it an independent agency known as the National Clandestine Service. From my time working at two “centers”—the Crime and Narcotics Center and the Counterterrorism Center at the CIA—I knew that the Agency’s best work was done when operator, analyst, scientist, and support officer all worked together. Fracturing a working organization made no sense to me.

  But I did see some advantage in cementing the DO’s grasp on human intelligence collection. Too many other agencies were trying to get into the line of business we had been working on for over sixty years. They were trying to take over big chunks of our mission. There was something we could work with, however, in the WMD Commission report. While the commission was critical of many things, it did conclude that the CIA’s Directorate of Operations was the gold standard for clandestine human intelligence operations for the United States and the world. Using this as a wedge, we began a series of negotiations within the administration and in particular with the DNI’s office that led us in October 2005 to announce the establishment of the National Clandestine Service (NCS), which would remain part of the CIA. The CIA director was named the national human intelligence manager, and day-to-day responsibilities for running human intelligence was delegated to me as head of the NCS. I got an additional deputy, a two-star Marine general, whose job it was to coordinate human intelligence collection throughout government outside the CIA. The establishment of the new organization gave us a better view of what other agencies were doing and the capability and authority to step in when agencies started to work at cross-purposes. Most important, it gave us a leadership role in working together against the hardest of targets and sharing best practices with other intelligence collectors in the U.S. government. Many old-timers regretted that we gave up the title of DO—the Directorate of Operations. And despite the change in name, many of them insist on calling the organization “the DO” to this day. But I saw the change as important both because it presented an opportunity to be recognized not just as a “directorate” but as a “service” and also because it allowed us to gain more authority and undisputed claim to clandestine human intelligence supremacy in the U.S. intelligence community.

  Grabbing this new authority wasn’t easy. I ran into a lot of resistance from around the government, but surprisingly, nowhere was the resistance stronger than within the CIA. Dusty Foggo, the executive director, was particularly opposed to the move. I had the impression that he thought the Directorate of Operations was about to get too strong, particularly in comparison to its sister directorates at the Agency. “Here at the Agency,” he explained to me, “we are four tribes of equal importance.” As someone who spent his career in one of the other “tribes”—the support directorate—I could understand why Dusty would like to think that, but it made no sense to me.

  “Wake up and smell the coffee!” I told him at one particularly heated meeting. “What makes the CIA special, what makes it unique, is its ability to send people out to collect clandestine human intelligence.” I told him that lots of agencies had analysts, lots of them had scientists, and everybody had support staff. While I greatly respected and loved our analysts, scientists, and support officers and thought they were the best in government, what gave us our special cachet was the group of men and women who went out and stole secrets for the American government.

  Eventually I won the argument and NCS was created. Dusty threw some bones to the other directorates by changing their titles. Previously the head of analysis, for example, was known as the “deputy director for intelligence” (a deputy to the CIA director, that is). Now he was to be known as “director for intelligence.” If that made people happier, fine. I never saw the creation of the NCS as anyone else’s loss, only a gain for the entire Agency.

  While all this bureaucratic warfare was going on, the Agency and NCS were fighting a couple of real wars. The security situation in Iraq oscillated between bad and worse, and while we had some successes in the war against al-Qa’ida, the number of top AQ leaders being captured slowed to a trickle. While our concern about an imminent second-wave attack was slightly lessened, we remained convinced that al-Qa’ida was still working hard at pulling off another spectacular assault. The 2004 Madrid train bombings, July 2005 London subway attacks, Sharm el-Sheikh assault, and the November 2005 Amman, Jordan, hotel bombings gave plenty of cause for great concern.

  But in the United States, for many people, the memories of 9/11 were starting to fade, and there was increasing political pressure to ratchet back our ability to interrogate any prisoners we might catch.

  With all the attention the subject of interrogation was getting, it was inevitable that Congress would get involved. As part of the FY 2006 Defense Appropriations bill, various amendments were offered to try to restrict the ability of the executive branch to carry out certain forms of interrogation. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) proposed an amendment that eventually became the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which directed that no agency of the U.S. government, including the CIA, could subject people in its custody to “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” It did not, however, define those terms. The amendment was passed by a vote of 90–9 in the Senate on October 5, 2005.

  While the McCain amendment was being debated and after it passed, the DNI’s office and the White House were leaning on CIA Director Goss to both continue the interrogation program and accept some new restrictions. At one point in late 2005 the NSC proposed some language to Goss that he accepted as a sho
rt-term holding position until he could consult those of us at headquarters. We convinced him that the proposal was unacceptable, and he wrote a very gutsy memo that he sent to National Security Advisor Steve Hadley. In the memo, dated December 23, 2005, he said that in his view the McCain amendment did not adequately defend CIA officers from potential prosecution, and in light of that, he suspended the use of all enhanced interrogation techniques. Goss told the White House that he could not in good faith allow CIA officers to be at risk of criminal prosecution for taking actions that appropriate legal authorities had previously told them were legal.

  Goss’s memo went over like a bomb at the White House. They believed they had a deal with him to keep pressing ahead with the detainee interrogation despite the risk presented by the McCain amendment, which had now become law. His relations with the DNI and the White House were never the same. A little more than four months later, on the morning of May 5, 2006, Goss was called to the White House and a short while later his resignation was announced. I do not know if this was the only cause for his dismissal, but it certainly contributed in a big way to his firing.

  Goss made a number of gutsy decisions while CIA director. At one point the inspector general wanted to single out individuals within the Agency’s ranks and hold them personally responsible for shortcomings before 9/11. Goss, however, felt strongly that any shortcomings were institutional and collective and that it would be unfair to hang the responsibility of 9/11 mistakes on the shoulders of a few hardworking officers. It would have been much easier for him politically to take the opposite stance. This, too, was a courageous decision. Before he left the Agency for good, he and I had an opportunity to travel to the CIA’s clandestine training facility, where a new class of case officers was graduating. Traditionally the CIA director is present to send off each class. In front of the new graduates, I surprised Goss by giving him “the Donovan Award,” a medal honoring the founder of the CIA’s World War II predecessor, the OSS. It is bestowed by the head of the Directorate of Operations and now the NCS on rare individuals who have done extraordinary work on behalf of the clandestine service. I told those present that Porter Goss had given his heart and soul to protect the men and women of the clandestine service. What I did not add was that he had also sacrificed his job in that effort.

  Goss was succeeded by General Mike Hayden. A four-star air force officer, Hayden’s arrival was cause for concern among some in our ranks. He came to us from being the number-two man in the DNI’s office. Before that, he was head of the National Security Agency. It was easy to imagine that he might have been sent to the Agency to complete the job of putting us in our place and remove the “central” from the “Central Intelligence Agency.” Those fears were unfounded.

  Shortly after he came on board, I briefed him on the status of the clandestine service. I told him that we had just completed a banner year with considerable operational and bureaucratic success.

  Over a period of three years we had more than doubled the number of recruited assets (spies) in one of the most opaque targets on the planet. Elsewhere we had had remarkable success in penetrating hostile intelligence services and making inroads in collecting intelligence against foreign military powers and terrorist groups.

  And yet, I told him, our potential momentum had been squandered by infighting within the Agency, where all the components were treated as equal, and by attacks from the outside (including from the organization he had just left—the DNI), in which other agencies were intent on eating our lunch.

  Hayden proved to be the right man for the right time at the Agency. He studied the organization intensively and probed what he was told by us and others. As far as I could tell, he arrived with no preconceived notions. He listened carefully as I explained our most controversial operations, including the enhanced interrogation program, and after immersing himself in the details he became not only our defender but our champion. One of my greatest concerns, I told him, was that there seemed to be no “end game” for the detainees the CIA continued to hold. The general got it, and within a few months found a fix to a problem that had seemed to have no solution.

  The Agency’s relations with the White House and Congress were at an all-time low, and Hayden suggested that he might be able to do the most good for the CIA by defending us “from the perimeter out.” General Hayden’s leadership was critical in reasserting our central role in the intelligence community and in our relationships with Congress and the White House.

  Chapter 7

  INVESTIGATIONS

  During my three decades at the Agency we fought against totalitarian dictators, weapons proliferators, drug kingpins, and terrorists. But there were many times when it felt that we were spending more time battling so-called human rights organizations, congressional overseers, fame-seeking disgruntled former CIA employees, and our own inspector general’s staff.

  Going after terrorists and dictators was, in many ways, considerably more straightforward. It was clear our opponents were “the bad guys” and we were generally recognized as being on the side of good. But the second group—the gadflies and meddlers—had great success at convincing outsiders that they were fighting the good fight and that we were the source of evil.

  You don’t join the CIA if you have an overwhelming urge to be universally loved. But it is hard to explain how debilitating it can be to be constantly undermined and second-guessed.

  My first significant experience with inquisition-by-overseer came during the mideighties when I was stationed in Central America. The CIA found itself embroiled in the so-called Iran-Contra controversy. Agency officers following the orders and fulfilling the desires of their political leaders found themselves at odds with ever-changing and often countervailing guidance from Congress. Actions that were encouraged one month were banned the next. Covert action programs designed to achieve laudable goals, such as stopping drug traffickers, undermining terrorists, and promoting democracy, were painted as rogue actions by politicians who periodically disagreed with our methods but not the desired results. CIA officers found themselves caught in the middle. If they moved cautiously they were called “risk-averse” by their bosses. If they moved aggressively they were called cowboys and even “criminals” by politicians and prosecutors anxious to score points against their rivals. To top matters off, tactics that were deemed perfectly appropriate for a period of time suddenly became off-limits due to changes in the mood of Congress.

  In November 1986, I was working in El Salvador when we got word that William J. Casey, the director of Central Intelligence, was coming to pay us a visit. Normally the senior Agency officer in country would be in charge of hosting such a high-level visitor, including social events. My boss had just arrived in country, however, and didn’t yet have a home suitable for throwing an event for the visiting DCI. So Patti and I volunteered to put on a dinner for Casey, his entourage, and select senior U.S. and Salvadoran officials. We could not help but notice that Casey appeared unwell. He struggled, not always successfully, to stay awake during the dinner. While at our home he received a call on a PRT-250, one of the earliest satellite phones then in use by the Agency. Casey’s staff back at headquarters informed him that the Iran-Contra story was about to break in the press and summoned him urgently back home to deal with the mess. The director’s staff quickly bundled him up and headed back to Washington. A few months later, on December 11, just hours before he was to testify before Congress, Casey collapsed in his office as a result of what was later revealed to be a stroke and brain tumor. He resigned from the Agency six weeks later and died in May 1987.

  The brouhaha over Iran-Contra seemed to launch a thousand investigations. As with so many scandals, it was made worse by the fact that it happened on the eve of a presidential election. A group of investigators descended on San Salvador to dig into the matter. Quite fortunately, my boss had kept me out of much of the most controversial aspects of support for the Contras.

  El Salvador had suffered a devastating earthquake i
n October 1986. Nearly fifteen hundred people had been killed, and much of the city’s infrastructure was in ruins. The Agency’s offices were unusable, and we had four officers crammed into a makeshift space inadequate for one. It was in this temporary workspace that IG investigators elected to grill me on what I knew about Iran-Contra. There was no privacy in our cramped quarters, and my colleagues couldn’t help but eavesdrop on my whole interview. To this day my former boss enjoys telling what he heard. The IG interrogator asked question after question and I (honestly) kept saying: “I don’t know.” In frustration my inquisitor said, “You don’t know much, do you?” To which I replied, “I don’t know shit, man!”

  Unfortunately, some of my former bosses, mentors, and colleagues did. Many of them, unfairly in my view, paid the price for taking actions that their superiors asked of them. The Latin America Division of the CIA was devastated, as some of our best officers were made scapegoats in Iran-Contra and a series of other largely trumped-up investigations, which continued through the early nineties. Among the officers were Jim Adkins and Jack McCavitt, two highly professional officers of high integrity and sterling reputation, who were mentors and friends of mine. Their premature departures were losses to the Agency and to me personally.

  It was that environment that I walked into in 1995 when, at the request of CIA Director John Deutch, I became chief of the LA Division. A highly respected former chief of LA had been fired, and others retired under black clouds of controversy. The IG had recommended disciplinary action against more than a score of other division officers. Deutch had fired a number of the most popular and respected officers. In a meeting in “the Bubble,” he told assembled remaining LA Division officers that he wanted them to be operationally aggressive and go out and take chances. The response was openly derisive laughter. In a show of solidarity for some of the fired officers, many LA Division officers began to wear black armbands in the headquarters or black bands across their ID badges.