A Spy's Journey

by Floyd Paseman

  The other problem greatly affecting our ability to run operations, recruit spies, and produce good intelligence relates to the badly conceived plan relating to a program called the Capital Working Fund. The program began around 1995 or 1996. The idea of it was that activities had to pay for themselves and that everyone had to manage their own support budget. It has been a disaster, and has left the Agency in general, and the Directorate of Operations in particular, without the mechanisms it needs to focus on spying. Instead, our operating divisions spend the time of our operations personnel trying to get supplies, air tickets, and other necessities instead of doing what they were hired to do. The scheme, unfortunately, came from the administrative top. The result was the dismemberment of the very services we had come to rely on to support the difficult activity of spying.

  In the meantime, the support mechanism was sold off. We no longer have our own airline; people thousands of miles away that never heard of spying and have no idea of the risks involved handle our health coverage; and, what was once the greatest retirement system in the world was handed over to the Office of Personnel Management. You can no longer get anyone to personally answer a telephone on any question regarding retirement pay or medical claims.

  It is essential that we recognize that spying is not a quantifiable activity with a product that comes off the assembly line like a television set. There are some times we spend a huge amount of time, and yes, dollars, attempting to secure a spy in a needed location, and fail. We still have to pay for that. It is an imprecise art form that does not allow us to always look at the bottom line. It has led to us not having enough spies where we need them most.

  Further, the Agency developed way too many superstructures over the past decade. Senior positions that are needed in the field have been taken for headquarters positions. And I cannot help but note this goes all the way to the ridiculous—a case officer was and is assigned to liaise with television and Hollywood. It would seem to me that he would be more productive spying in the back alleys of Algeria.

  I am not in the minority feeling this way. During the year before the publication of this book, a whole series of articles were published delineating virtually the same observations. I believe in the CIA. I believe it has the greatest work force in the world, and it continues to hire and attract the very best and brightest. I believe its future is secure, and it will continue to gather and collect the best intelligence it can under the circumstances. But I believe in order for this to happen, the CIA needs to go back to the basics of spying and quit trying to look like a private business conducting its work for profit.

  And, sadly and lastly, the Agency has lost its way in recognizing its people. Awards and recognition used to be significant individual affairs. Now, they are done in large groups to make it easier. Formerly, when any DO officer retired, he was given an individual ceremony, with a senior officer no lower than the associate deputy director of operations presenting the award. By way of example, I was honored with the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal upon retiring. When I was called regarding the ceremony and received the paperwork, I discovered that I was one of many who would be getting awards that day. It was to be a massive ceremony in the CIA auditorium, where all awardees simply walk up to the stage when their name is called and walk off. In reality, I was quite disappointed by this. I had nearly 35 years of service, had risked my life for my country and the Agency, had been in the Senior Intelligence Service ranks for over a decade, and had served in many senior assignments. It seems to me that it merited at least a private meeting with one of the Agency senior officials for my family and me. We used to move heaven and earth to see that each of our people retiring had what Andy Warhol called their 15 minutes of fame. I called in and asked for my award to be mailed to me instead. I am not bitter about this, simply disappointed. We ought to do better than put an assembly line together for recognition.

  So, what’s right with the CIA? The answer is, a lot.

  The Agency had consistent and good leadership at the top for the past nine years. The leadership began tackling the problems I mentioned above as early as 1998, and the expansion of our human intelligence system is well underway, although we cannot expect it to be a quick fix.

  The Agency’s analytical capability is second to none. The establishment of the Kent School of Analysis put the emphasis back on quality analytical work and the development of a professional cadre for the future.

  The Agency continues to recruit the best and brightest from America’s youth. It is extremely gratifying to refer numerous colleagues who are honor roll graduates to the Agency for employment consideration. It is this quality of new employees that will guarantee the continued excellence of the CIA.

  The Agency continues to have the support of not only the political leadership on both sides of the aisles of Congress, but also of the American people. I continue to be amazed and gratified by the almost universal support for American intelligence I find everywhere I go and everywhere I speak in public. I am always moved when, as frequently happens, someone in an audience stands up and says, “I just want to thank you for what you did with your life.” It doesn’t get any better than that.

  TWENTY TWO

  PASEMAN’S

  TEN AXIOMS OF SPYING

  I spent nearly 35 years as a spy. I moved through the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency from a GS-07 to an SIS-04, with a total of 12 promotions. Over 20 of those years I spent spying overseas. As a result, when I retired, I had more years in the spying end of the business than anyone else who was still on active duty. Reflecting on all of my years as a spy, I’d like to offer my 10 axioms of spying, which I believe are relevant to our problems in the post–9/11 world.

  Axiom 1: Not everyone is cut out to be a spy.

  Let’s be careful whom we bring in to be professional human spies. If you can’t bring yourself to ask someone to commit treason against his or her own government, you are not going to be a good spy.

  Axiom 2: Spies need to be experts in the craft of espionage, master a foreign language, and be an expert on one region of the world.

  We must return to the days in which an officer could spend his entire career in one area of the world without the career-broadening assignments out of area. A spy should be a person with the most knowledge of his assigned area.

  Axiom 3: You cannot force anyone to spy for you.

  The most misunderstood aspect of spying is that most people spy for ideological reasons. Some do spy for money, sex, revenge, or the thrill of it. But most spy because they believe in the cause of the nation for whom they spy.

  Axiom 4: Integrity is one of the most important traits of a good spy.

  The temptations are many in the world of espionage. Officers have access to money and opportunities to do pretty much whatever they wish. It is well known in the business that under no circumstances will you operate against your own organization.

  Axiom 5: A spy must have state-of-the-art technological support.

  Spy gear such as secret writing, miniature cameras, disguises, and agent communications are important. But so is access to imagery and analysis. The spy needs it all and needs the best there is.

  Axiom 6: Spies without good analysis behind them are useless.

  A spy has to be told what to collect, what is important, what is already known, and so forth. You don’t want your spy collecting information that’s already known or that can be collected by other, less costly means.

  Axiom 7: Anybody can be a great spy, male or female, all races and creeds.

  The spy business needs diversity to complete its mission in a diverse world.

  Axiom 8: Not everyone can or should become a manager.

  Our system has let us down. At a certain stage, officers are promoted into the ranks of management whether or not they have demonstrated that they are management material.

  Axiom 9: Our senior management structure needs more officers who have actually spied overseas for a living.

  We
have three to four layers of top management without enough people who have actually spied overseas.

  Axiom 10: You can’t do human spying from Washington, D.C.

  We need to move the increasingly large numbers of people gathering in headquarters back out to the field, where the spying is done.

  TWENTY THREE

  9/11

  Having finished the original manuscript for this book before the terrible events of September 11, 2001, I was urged to put together some short thoughts about intelligence after the tragedy. The following are my observations:

  The 9/11 tragedy was an intelligence failure.

  I am amazed that there is even any debate about this. Given the Pearl Harbor nature of the attack and the terrible devastation, given the tremendous amount of money spent on intelligence by myriad organizations, and given that the creation of the behemoth intelligence apparatus was precisely to provide warnings to prevent such a disaster, how can it be judged anything other than an intelligence failure?

  The flaws that allowed 9/11 to happen must be repaired.

  The degradation of our intelligence capabilities, which happened over several administrations, both Democratic and Republican, is well on the way to being fixed—again. Enormous amounts of money are being spent, and relatively productively—particularly on satellite imagery and on the human intelligence side. But these fixes take time, and my main concern is whether or not the American public has the tenacity to stay with the process. Recruiting, training, and dispatching good case officers, with the language skills and other tools needed, takes years. From being recruited into the Agency to being deployed out on the street takes somewhere around four years. And satellite development and deployment also takes considerable time and money to bring to full capability. Repairing the flaws that led to 9/11 will require a long and heavy commitment in fiscal and personnel resources, the likes of which we have not seen since the onslaught of the Cold War.

  We must not only maintain our overseas presence, we must increase it with properly qualified and trained personnel.

  Following the tragic events of 9/11, we indeed did build our centers (the Washington-based organizations working on terrorism, counterintelligence, and crime), but did so at the expense of our overseas presence. Spying is still best done on the ground overseas.

  A non-governmental blue-ribbon panel is needed.

  Simply put, neither the intelligence apparatus nor Congress is equipped to investigate themselves. Already the partisan quarrelling in Congress has stymied the committee set up to conduct such an investigation. Better that the administration set up an independent panel of well-respected intelligence veterans, business leaders, and former members of Congress, and give them wide latitude and support to conduct this inquiry. The danger is that once all the dust from the Iraq operation settles, efforts to effect needed changes will simply go away.

  There was no intelligence really indicating that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or that he was affiliated with al Qaeda.

  As this book goes to press, neither allegation has been substantiated.

  The CIA should not be in the business of assassination.

  It’s one thing to destroy an enemy in combat; it’s another thing altogether to compile lists of people and order your intelligence apparatus to kill them. The New York Times reported that, “President Bush has provided written legal authority to the CIA to hunt down and kill the terrorists.”1

  I don’t know if this report is true or not, and I have no difficulty with terrorists being killed during attempts to bring them to justice. But my worry is this can easily get out of control. Already we have seen innocent people killed as part of the collateral damage from several assassination attempts, particularly the November 2002 attack in which an al Qaeda leader was reportedly assassinated by use of a Hellfire missile. In that attack, five people other than the target were also killed. Who decides who is on the list? Who decides when enough is enough? Under what circumstances does this authority end? And it’s important to remember that the presidential prohibition on assassinations first laid down by President Gerald R. Ford for good and compelling reasons has not been rescinded.

  Most important, we must remember who we are and the principles that made the United States great. We do not want to become like our enemies.

  There have been numerous articles by columnists of courage stressing this point. Perhaps Leonard Pitts Jr. said it best in a column published in March 2003: “For better or for worse, a new nation will be born here … we stand on the edge of a change that feels fundamental, profound, and permanent. We are a giant that is no longer inclined to watch its step. Less involved with or concerned by the world around us. We are becoming a go-it-alone nation, a don’t-give-a-damn-what-anybody-else-says nation.”2

  As former DCI Jim Woolsey remarked, “We also have to remember who we are. We are creatures of Madison’s Constitution and his Bill of Rights….”3

  1. James Risen and David Johnson, “Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to Kill Terrorists,” New York Times, December 15, 2002.

  2. Leonard Pitts Jr., Hampton Roads, Virginia, Daily Press, March 22, 2003, p. 17.

  3. Jim Woolsey, speech at the National War College, Nov. 16, 2000.

  EPILOGUE

  As you probably gleaned from my stories, the intelligence profession is replete with acronyms, things like HUMINT (human intelligence), IMINT (imagery), and SIGINT (signals intelligence). Mark Lowenthal has noted in his excellent work, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy, that intelligence professionals, in some of their lighter moments, also refer to:

  PIZZINT The intelligence Soviet officials gathered by noting the number of pizza vans carrying pizza into CIA headquarters late at night—a sure indication that a major event was underway.

  LAVINT Information gathered from men’s rooms.

  RUMINT Rumor of any kind without any value.

  DIVINT Intelligence gleaned via revelation from the Almighty.1

  Similarly amusing—and formulated by someone with real experiences—are the six stages of any intelligence operation. These came to me from my military assistant in Germany. I have no idea of their origin, but everyone engaged in intelligence will see that the chain of events is closely linked to reality. The six stages are:

  1. Enthusiasm

  2. Promises of support

  3. Disillusionment

  4. Alarm

  5. Search for someone to blame

  6. Reward all the non-participants

  1. Mark M. Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2000), p. 71.

  GLOSSARY

  agent An individual, other than a staff employee, employed by an intelligence organization for the purpose of clandestine intelligence collection, counterintelligence, or covert action; a spy.

  agent of influence An agent who is in a position to influence public opinion in favor of certain causes and in the interests of a given foreign nations. Such a person may be a journalist, politician, military leader, labor leader, author, scientist, or commentator. The agent of influence may be recruited under a FALSE FLAG.

  asset Any agent, SAFEHOUSE, network, DEAD DROP, or other component of clandestine operations. When in reference to a person, asset is generally exchangeable for AGENT.

  black Being free of hostile surveillance while on a clandestine mission; also refers to being in place undetected or unknown, such as flying in black.

  blown To have one’s cover exposed; to have an operation become public.

  case officer A Central Intelligence Agency officer who recruits and runs spies.

  Central Intelligence Agency The U.S. government organization responsible for coordinating all overseas intelligence operations.

  Chief of Station (COS) The senior CIA officer overseas in charge of the intelligence activities in a particular country.

  clandestine Secret, or done in secret.

  clean To be free of hostile surveillance.

  compartment
ation The insulation of personnel from information that they have no reason to know (or need to know), to protect the operation/information from discovery by people unauthorized to know the information. Generally, there are various levels and channels or compartments concealed from discovery.

  contact plan/instructions A schedule for agent meetings or communications with their CASE OFFICER. Contact plans contain meeting times, or broadcast times, visual or oral recognition signals, danger and safety signals, and meeting spots or dead-drop sites. They may also contain bona fides for another case officer.

  counterespionage A form of counterintelligence in which operations are run to negate, confuse, deceive, subvert, monitor, or control the agents and operations of a foreign power.

  counterintelligence The activity of gathering information to protect one’s operations, self, and government against the espionage of others on behalf of a foreign power. Generally, all clandestine operations have a counterintelligence requirement to protect them from discovery, dependent upon the sensitivity of the information being gathered.

  cover The identity and occupation used by a case officer or agent to conceal his espionage activities. It may be OFFICIAL COVER or NON-OFFICIAL COVER and is used to protect the person using it.

  cover story The background legend you have developed to explain who you are and why you are where you are.

  covert action One of the distinct categories of intelligence, covert action is the secret activities carried out under presidential authority, designed not to reveal the involvement of the United States. It generally involves paramilitary activities, propaganda, or political action in supplying financial and technical assistance to political parties or action groups designed to overthrow an existing political order or party, consistent with secret United States policy decisions. Even though the U.S. does not want its involvement in covert action revealed, this generally fails. The Bay of Pigs, the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran in 1953, and current activities like secret radio broadcasts into Iraq are examples of covert action.