The Reluctant Spy

by John Kiriakou

  Cofer informed headquarters while Billy put a tail on Carlos so our guys could figure out where he lived. We didn’t have a warrant out for him, but France wanted him for murder for three car bombings in Paris.

  With the help of Sudanese authorities, Carlos was seized, drugged, and handed off to French officials. In Paris, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in late 1997. By that time, Cofer Black’s star was rising fast at the CIA, ascendant in part because of his involvement in the capture of this notorious terrorist.

  Cofer Black didn’t need to surround himself with buddies, and he didn’t need to be the smartest guy in the room. He brought together the best operations officers in the building during his time as head of CTC—people who had worked all over the world and knew what to do after 9/11 when Cofer and others set their sights on Afghanistan. One of them was the indomitable Billy Waugh, who was still a contract employee, or “Greenbadger,” at the agency. I ran into him in the hall at headquarters in early January 2002, just short of his seventy-second birthday.

  “Billy, you still around?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been in Afghanistan.”

  “What were you doing in Afghanistan?”

  “Blowing up bridges, but don’t tell anybody,” he said with a grin. I didn’t know whether to believe him. I later learned that he’d gone in with Gary Schroen’s heroic team to aid the Northern Alliance and help crush the Taliban.

  During that period, Jim Pavitt was deputy director for operations. Another major figure in one of the agency’s most troubled times, Pavitt was smart, accomplished, and highly respected. I can’t be sure, but my hunch is that the attacks of 9/11 were a burden that weighed heavily on him, as it probably did on many other top people at the agency. During the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, there were regular briefings in his office. As Bob Grenier’s executive assistant, I was the junior officer and briefer among the heavyweights, which meant, among other things, that I got the most uncomfortable chair. It happened to be situated at one of the front corners of Pavitt’s big desk, perfectly positioned for its occupant to see a letter perched on an acrylic stand. The letter was always there, clearly a piece of paper that Pavitt valued. I was able to read most of it—anyone sitting on that chair could have done so. It was from Mike Scheuer, a prominent participant in the Osama bin Laden unit that the agency had set up to target and ideally seize or kill the world’s top terrorist.

  Since leaving the CIA, Scheuer has been a serious critic of Bush administration policy and of the agency’s timidity when it came to pulling the trigger on bin Laden. The letter began: “Dear Jim, I think you suck.” That was the diplomatic part: The rest of his critique of Pavitt was laced with language that might impress the screenwriters for any number of HBO dramatic series.

  On the last day I was briefing, I had a small moment alone with Pavitt and couldn’t help myself: “Sir, do you mind if I ask you, why do you have this letter from Mike Scheuer up there on your desk?”

  He chuckled for a brief moment. “Because Mike Scheuer is the only person at this place who ever had the balls to talk to me like that. Seeing it every day keeps me grounded.”

  I thought that was an excellent answer.

  A CHERISHED AXIOM at the CIA is that its successes necessarily remain shrouded in secrecy while its failures and embarrassments get ample attention from congressional overseers, book authors, investigative reporters, and others who simply detest the very idea of clandestine activity by a democratic government. What isn’t much discussed in the ongoing debates and controversies over the agency’s efficacy are the CIA’s internal operating procedures and its corporate culture, if you will.

  Others may decide to examine such matters at length. For the purposes of this book, let me make two observations based on my nearly fifteen years at the agency. First, the CIA is a remarkably insular organization, and not by accident. Other organizations may frown upon intimate relationships among colleagues. The CIA, without explicitly saying so in any policy manual, seems to encourage such relationships or, at a minimum, does nothing to discourage them. The reason makes perfect sense. Agency officers work awful hours—long, irregular, at night, and on weekends. Unlike the vast majority of employees in the public or private sector, CIA people cannot discuss their assignments and daily labors with their spouses. The exception to the rule, of course, is when the husband or wife is also employed by the CIA. I’m cleared, she’s cleared, we can bring the office home at night and talk about it.

  My first marriage fell victim to the insider-outsider dilemma; my hunch is that it would have failed anyway, but my inability to discuss with JoAnne what I was doing on those odd-hour assignments certainly hastened the outcome. Our problem was magnified exponentially at the CIA. There are doubtless solid marriages between CIA and non-CIA spouses. But office affairs are commonplace, and the divorce rate at the agency has to be significantly higher than the national average. Once, on an overseas assignment, I was bemoaning the breakup of my first marriage, mainly because of the impact on my sons, Chris and Costa, when one of the other three officers in the room started laughing. In a moment, three CIA men were comparing notes about marriages made and marriages ended. When the last guy finally rested, it added up to quite a tally: Three alpha males had recorded fourteen marriages among them.

  My other observation derives in part from the first. With so many office affairs, it’s inevitable that advancement within the organization does not always seem earned by the quality of the work. The CIA ought to be a meritocracy, certainly among its people who are not political appointees. When that system breaks down, morale suffers and every promotion is somehow suspect.

  The CIA is a place where office politics is played with a vengeance, where duck and cover can become a smart career move, and where who you know can trump what you know and drive a career well beyond its level of competence. Think of it as the Peter Principle gone berserk.

  17

  IN SEPTEMBER 2000, when I reported to Langley after my home leave in New York, I was like Joe Btfsplk—the Li’l Abner character who always walked around with a dark cloud over his head. The biggest beef against me was the fistfight in Athens that almost got me booted out of the agency. That criticism was well deserved. We were trained to keep our cool in all situations, even under personal stress, and I’d simply lost it.

  But in some agency quarters, the rap went beyond my dustup with the baker. The top CIA official for Europe at the time was reading the cable traffic, including reports of my pitching eastern European generals, breaking off side-view mirrors as part of a plan to pitch a Middle Eastern diplomat, and other assorted ploys that covert operatives improvise. Training cannot account for every situation, and the best of the bosses in the CIA encourage their case officers to exercise their creativity so long as they remain within the boundaries. That’s what I was doing. But the European operations official, who had never served in the field as an operations officer, didn’t see it that way. She argued that I had used a “heavy hand” and spread the word that I’d never work for her. Mary Margaret Graham was wrong: I did end up working for her—and it didn’t turn out well.

  My year as Bob Grenier’s executive assistant, working fourteen-or fifteen-hour days, six days a week, was regarded by my superiors as a success. My reward was the flexibility to choose any position for which I was qualified by talent and civil-service grade. Jim Pavitt, then the deputy director for operations, threw out a bunch of possibilities: a deputy slot in a major European station or a senior position in a country where my fluency in Arabic would be a huge plus for our operations.

  I was flattered by this display of confidence in me, but it wasn’t what I wanted—or, more precisely, what I needed. The job with Bob had put a real strain on my ability to see my children every other weekend.

  “They’re young boys, and they need their father,” I told Pavitt. “You know, what I’d really like is a domestic assignment.” In addition to its headquarters in suburban Washington, D.C., the CIA has a
substantial operation in another area of the United States where my background and talents could be put to good use as a case officer monitoring foreign nationals from South Asia, the Near East, and the Middle East.

  “You know, that sort of assignment is not really career enhancing at all,” Pavitt told me. “It’s going to hold you back the whole time you’re there as far as promotion is concerned.”

  I told him I understood, but in this case, family had to come first. Okay, he said, the domestic assignment it is.

  Pavitt sent me to the region, over the vehement objections of our senior CIA officer there, one Mary Margaret Graham. The funny thing was, she was short of officers and had appealed to Langley for help. I happened to see the cable and sent her an e-mail saying that I would volunteer for whatever she needed me to do, because I wanted to contribute to our work in the area. I was headed her way, and I laid it on thick, hoping to get off on the right foot. In retrospect, I should have known better.

  The trouble began almost immediately. On my first weekend, I attended a diplomatic function and met a colonel from a foreign country who was on assignment to an international organization I cannot name here. I asked him about his work.

  He said he was involved in military research for a certain African country that I should not identify by name.

  “No kidding,” I responded. “Sounds very interesting.” It did. In fact, Langley had sent a cable appealing for information on military research in that African country.

  I took him out to dinner one night, and another time I had a barbecue and invited him over. In short order, we became fast friends. Meanwhile, I’d sent a cable to our office in the colonel’s country, alerting them to the opportunity and the risk.

  The opportunity was a chance to enhance our understanding of the African country’s military programs. The risk was blowback from the colonel’s superiors if they found out he was cooperating with us. I asked permission to go forward, and our office in the colonel’s country, now apprised of the potential pluses and minuses, gave me the green light.

  Things were moving well; I thought we’d come to a point where I could try to recruit him. I would drop my cover, tell him who I was, explain what I needed, and offer to put his children through college if that’s what it took.

  We were set to have dinner at a restaurant in midtown Manhattan; the reservation was for 7 p.m. At 4 p.m., I was wrapping up in the office, locking up my computer hard drive in the safe, and getting ready to do my surveillance detection route to the restaurant. My secure line rang. It was Mary Margaret, which was a shock because Mary Margaret never called me for any reason.

  “I want you to stand down on this meeting tonight,” she said.

  “Are you kidding me? I’m going to recruit him tonight. I’ve been working on this for months.”

  “Stand down.”

  I didn’t understand. “Well, did something come from headquarters?” I thought maybe the office in the colonel’s home country had second thoughts and wanted the operation spiked.

  “No,” she said. “You’re a GS-14. You should be recruiting hard targets like the Chinese, not wasting your time with low-hanging fruit.” (GS, for General Schedule, is a grading system for federal employees, running from entry-level GS-1 to GS-15, the top level before moving up to the Senior Executive Service.)

  “Mary Margaret, this is a headquarters requirement. They specifically said they need somebody to report on [this African country].”

  “I’m telling you to stand down,” she repeated. Then, without another word, she hung up the phone.

  I canceled dinner, making some excuse. “No problem,” he said. “We’ll schedule it for another night.” But there wouldn’t be another night. I ducked his calls, not having the guts to break it off. Three months later, on New Year’s Eve, I took his call. He wanted to wish me a happy new year. But he was a bit angry and certainly disappointed, saying that I turned out not to be the friend he thought I was. We had become buddies, in his mind and in my own, and my cutting him off so abruptly proved his point: I wasn’t what he thought I was. The whole episode broke my heart.

  ABOUT THE SAME time, my personal life was going through fresh turmoil. I had remarried on August 16, 2003, one of the happiest days of my life. But there was one bad omen: My parents couldn’t attend because my dad had to have emergency back surgery the morning of the wedding day.

  My divorce decree, meanwhile, said that either I or my representative had to pick up my children by 6 p.m. on those alternate Fridays or I’d lose the weekend. If I lost too many weekends, I risked losing joint custody. As I said before, my parents had been heroic in helping out, driving from New Castle to Warren, arriving before 6 p.m., then driving back. I’d dash to the airport, catch a plane to Pittsburgh, rent a car, and get to New Castle in time to tuck the kids into bed. It made for a very long day.

  On November 18, 2003, my dad fell down the steps and hit his head—hard. They life-flighted him to Pittsburgh, but he died eight hours after the fall. My mother was so distraught by his sudden death that the stress aggravated a case of diabetic retinopathy, and she began to go blind. Needless to say, she couldn’t drive anymore.

  I took two weeks of leave to settle my dad’s estate, to get his finances in shape, and, of course, to do my best to console my mom. I also made arrangements with my cousin Maria, who lived nearby in New Castle, to pick up my kids and get them to my folks’ house. But I also needed at least a small change at the office, too. I didn’t think it would be too much to ask, but I guess I forgot who’d have to sign off on the request.

  When I returned to my new assignment in early December, Mary Margaret called and asked me to come to her office. She had the deputy chief with her, a spineless cipher who’s now the chief, and she expressed her condolences. I thanked her and used the opportunity to ask her for a favor.

  I explained the personal situation I now faced. Official hours were 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

  “Would it be possible,” I asked, “if I worked eight to four every other Friday so I could get to my kids an hour earlier?”

  She just stared at me, then said, “Well, eight to four isn’t nine to five, is it?”

  “Mary Margaret, I risk losing my kids here.”

  “You should have thought of that before you came here.”

  “Okay.” I got up and left.

  Later on, as I sat in my office with my head in my hands, a colleague wandered in.

  “Rough day?” she asked.

  Oh, yeah, I said, then replayed my little drama with Mary Margaret.

  She asked whether I remembered an Alice Callahan, an analyst for the agency in the early nineties. Alice had left the CIA and was now working for a big accounting and consulting firm. Apparently, the firm had a group that did risk analysis and competitive intelligence and had been hiring people with our skills.

  I gave Alice a call; she reported that her firm had an opening in its McLean, Virginia, office and that I should fax my résumé to her.

  I did just that, but before sending it off, I vetted every single word and entry against a booklet the CIA’s career center made available; the booklet said exactly what a CIA employee could say in a résumé without violating the agency’s secrecy rules.

  The interview process was familiar: There were a lot of psychological tests that posed ethical dilemmas. One that I found particularly interesting was this: Did you ever consciously violate the rules and not regret it?

  My answer, I told my interviewer, would have to be yes. She asked about the context.

  “I worked with a guy who had a series of security violations,” I said. “He’d forget to spin the dial on the lock on his safe. Or he’d forget to put some classified paper in the safe. Well, the room was vaulted and alarmed, so nobody was going to wander in off the street and say, ‘Oh, look at this classified document on trade secrets’ or something like that.”

  The chief warned him: One more time and you’re out and on the next plane to headquarters. Sure enough, I
walked into the vault one morning and saw a classified document on his desk. So I shredded it. Am I sorry I did that? Not really. I knew it hadn’t been compromised. But did I violate the rules? Yes, clearly, I did.

  I won’t belabor the back-and-forth with the firm. They offered me a job, and I accepted. I really had no other alternative. Mary Margaret had made it clear that she didn’t give a fig about my dedication to the CIA and my belief in its mission, my years of award-winning service, or my desire to continue a career in an organization that had become an emotional, as well as professional, part of my life. She was demanding that I make a choice between my second family and my first family. Ask any committed parent: That’s not a choice at all.

  Still, my journey with Mary Margaret was far from over. It was like being pecked to death by ducks.

  When I told her I would be leaving and where I was going, she asked whether I’d sought the job.

  “No, they sought me,” I said. The truth was, it was a mutual courtship. But it was none of her business how I came to the job.

  She asked whether I’d had my résumé cleared. I told her I didn’t write a résumé. Okay, that was a lie, but I’d had enough. At that point, I figured I owed that woman nothing.

  “Oh, so you’re saying they just decided they had to have John Kiriakou and came and got you?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  She dropped it, but we weren’t done.