serious, it would be one of the funniest books of the year. . . . The Human Factor is an enormously important book and a surprisingly accessible read. Hopefully, it will propel the reform debate beyond the usual tinkering. . . . Call him Ishmael, or not, but I call him a patriot.”
David Forsmark, Frontpage Magazine
“Scathing - and unauthorized.”
Congressional Quarterly
“One good spy is worth 10,000 soldiers.”
Sun Tzu
“I would trade every satellite in the sky for one reliable informant.”
Army Lieutenant Colonel Ross Brown,
Cavalry Squadron Commander,
3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment,
South of Baghdad
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Human source espionage in its most basic form is just a one-on-one meeting in which a CIA officer gathers secret information from a human source—a person who has access to secrets, for example, on terrorist organizations or nuclear proliferators. These meetings tend to occur in dingy hotel rooms in dysfunctional countries. It’s hard, lonely work, far away from friends and family, and there’s always the chance that the local police will break down the door and rearrange your schedule. But it’s the fundamental work of espionage, and an intelligence service must be designed to motivate its officers so that they are eager to get out each day and gather the intelligence that the president needs.
The CIA drives its officers to do other things instead, and this is why the CIA must be fixed.
Many CIA officers spend their careers within headquarters rather than out in the field, because that’s what the system requires them to do. CIA officers naturally want to advance their careers, to gain power and praise, and to be promoted. The CIA system plays into these natural desires and perverts them. For example, any CIA officer who had gone out to hunt Osama Bin Laden would have had to live and work for years in remote countries, alone, outside of American embassies. Such a person would have been unable to network and build connections and friendships with CIA managers at headquarters, unable to manage the budgets or to rise through the management layers—processes that are vital to a CIA career. Anyone who had gone out into the field to find Bin Laden would have returned years later, unknown to anyone at headquarters and unpromotable.
Spying is important. It’s the second-oldest profession. The president, as commander in chief, needs good intelligence to defend Americans. Whole cities could be lost to nuclear attack, and a small ally like Israel could be completely destroyed. Nuclear weapons are based on 1930s technology and are increasingly available. Some nations are proud of having joined the elite club of nuclear powers—like the unpopular schoolboy who brings a semiautomatic rifle to school one day to show everyone that he is a person of consequence.
The CIA has few of the human sources of intelligence that the president needs in order to deal with threats such as nuclear proliferation. I remember looking over one list of sources that was to be shown to the president and members of Congress. At first glance this list looked impressive, each source with his official cryptonym. Then I realized, hey, the number-one source is a guy I’ve met only a couple of times, and he hasn’t been recruited. And I know this guy on the list, and I know that guy, and they don’t have any real access to secrets. And I know these other guys on the list, and they’re American citizens who live in the United States, and they shouldn’t be sources at all.
Since the hardcover edition of this book was published, I’ve continued to work for reforms to improve the quality of intelligence provided to the president. I’ve taken aim at the CIAʹs lack of operational and financial accountability. I’ve proposed solutions to the two groups that can make a difference: politicians and journalists. I’ve explained that the CIA is systemically flawed but the quality of its employees is high.
Working to fix the CIA resembles the often lonely and boring work of espionage: finding the right people to talk with and going to meet them. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling, staying in hotel rooms, walking the halls of Congress, meeting people, visiting scholars at institutes, and writing articles. Just as during my spy career, I work in alias.
There have been some minor, incremental improvements in CIA intelligence collection since The Human Factor first came out. The U.S. military has sought to fill gaps in CIA intelligence by collecting some human source intelligence on its own. The FBI has taken over elements of terrorist interrogations. But ultimately, as I stated in the hardcover edition, we will need the window of opportunity opened by the next major intelligence failure to enact real reform. The CIA bureaucracy is simply too powerful to be shaken up otherwise. My work is designed to build credibility and contacts, and to convince Americans on what needs to be done, so that when a dirty bomb detonates over New York or Washington, D.C., we’ll be positioned to enact intelligence reform.
A step toward operational accountability by President Obama upon winning the election was the appointment of Leon Panetta as CIA chief. Panetta was significant for what he was not: a career CIA bureaucrat. The CIA and its allies had championed one of the Agency’s own, who happened to be the man I nicknamed “Suspenders” in The Human Factor. Suspenders had a charismatic ability to rise within the CIA, but no record of producing intelligence. Panetta’s appointment caused some dismay among conservatives because he was a political operative with no intelligence experience. But the important thing was that the new CIA chief be someone the president trusted. I wrote articles in support of the nomination in the Washington Times and National Review.
It turned out that Senate Democrats had cut a deal with the president in which Obama could have Panetta as CIA chief, but Suspenders would be appointed as a powerful deputy. Panetta dutifully praised Suspenders at his confirmation.
Surrounded by people who wanted his job, Panetta was quickly co-opted by the bureaucracy, and he showed resistance to reform. But had Suspenders been selected instead, any improvements would have been more unlikely. As it is, the key indicator of the CIAʹs lack of operational accountability remains in place: no top manager has ever been disciplined or demoted or even reassigned for failure to provide the intelligence that the president needs.
In working toward financial accountability, I focused on a single issue. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress gave the CIA more than $3 billion to increase its deep cover capabilities overseas. During the years after 9/11, the CIA was not able to field a single additional effective deep cover case officer overseas. The money was swallowed up into higher pay packages, expensive boondoggles, the enrichment of contracting companies run by former CIA employees, and the expansion of CIA offices within the United States. More than 90 percent of CIA employees now live and work stateside.
When I met with members of congressional intelligence committees to discuss financial accountability, I was in for a surprise. I had expected a variety of reactions, but not the one I got. They politely interrupted me. They already knew about the missing $3 billion. They already knew about this accountability failure, the waste and theft. They agreed with me. But they couldn’t do anything about it.
There is simply no financial accountability mechanism to deal with waste and fraud at the CIA. This point was highlighted by a 2001 report from the Government Accountability
