who had passed it to Dr. B—. I described all communication with Dr. B—as having been initiated by him: He called me and told me he planned to visit Warsaw. He emailed me his travel details.
And he invited me to visit him in his country. This was an impossibility. HQs was afraid even of making phone calls there. A CIA officer visiting a nasty rogue state to conduct an intelligence operation was out of the question.
Having established contact with Dr. B—, my request to meet him in Warsaw now had to be approved through all the above-mentioned layers. I wrote my request to make it seem completely devoid of risk. In truth, I planned to start prying secrets from Dr. B—as soon as I could, in the interests of American national security. In my request to HQs, I made it sound as though he and I would just exchange pleasantries.
Layers of management above me weakened my proposal even more in their edits emphasizing how incredibly light my contact with Dr. B—would be. In the end, it sounded like we’d be two ships passing in the night. That way, HQs would perceive the proposed meeting to be absolutely harmless.
The request to meet Dr. B—percolated through the layers at HQs. It didn’t seem to be meeting any resistance, but the sheer number of layers and hurdles meant the pace was slow. I had several weeks before Dr. B—’s arrival in Warsaw, but still the approval hadn’t come in by the time he left his home country. I decided to get on an airplane and fly to Warsaw, approval be damned.
At the airport in Warsaw I met the portly Dr. B—.
“Hello, my friend,” he said, “it is a pleasure to meet you.”
We dropped off our suitcases at the hotel and strolled through Warsaw. The old town center, obliterated during the war, had been completely rebuilt. We sat at an outdoor café and ordered large glasses of beer.
After making polite introductory conversation, we discussed the scientific problem I needed to solve, a commercial application in Dr. B—’s specialty, then adjourned to my hotel room to work on the problem. This was a key step, as it placed us in a businesslike setting. I asked questions and took notes.
In discussing the technical problem, I learned much about Dr. B—’s background and education. While describing his past work experience, he unwittingly furnished interesting information of clear intelligence value.
His field was nuclear weapons. I had wanted to give him a technical problem that would not arouse his suspicions, then allow him to steer the conversation to the areas he best understood. Dr. B—’s ability to help with the problem I had described was limited because it wasn’t his specific field. But scientists like to talk about their areas of expertise, and the conversation drifted to his work. As he went on about it, I told him I didn’t know much about his specialty, and asked him to teach me a bit about it.
We met for several meetings of two hours each. Between meetings, I reviewed my notes and listed questions for the next, which would later form intelligence reports.
At the end of the meetings, I reimbursed Dr. B—for his travel expenses, gave him some walking-around money, and supplied an advance on expenses for his next trip out of my own pocket. I knew it was too early to expect HQs to commit money to the operation. We drove to Warsaw’s airport together and boarded our separate planes.
A few days after I returned home, a message from HQs arrived approving my plans to meet Dr. B—in Warsaw. The operation was on and I was simply a few steps ahead. I had learned after years in the organization that this was the only way to accomplish anything, and accomplishing something was the reason I had joined the CIA. God willing, if all went well, Dr. B—might provide information that could prevent a nuclear war—information that could save millions of lives.
THE HUMAN FACTOR
PART ONE
★ 1 ★
Daring Greatly, Perhaps
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
When I was a boy, my family lived in different countries in eastern Asia, Eastern Africa and the Middle East. As I grew up in these dictatorships and tribal kingdoms, I was acutely aware of being different, as an American, and of the special status and privileges conferred by my nationality. My family’s household wealth, ordinary by American standards, was enormous by the standards of our host countries. During upheavals in these unstable places, my family needed only to board the next plane home, while the country’s native inhabitants had to stay and suffer. The United States was a refuge we could always seek in times of trouble.
During our rare visits to the US, I felt a weight lift, knowing that I could think or speak as I chose. Prosperity, openness, creativity, and freedom surrounded me in a great roaring tumult. In Africa and eastern Asia, I’d never seen a road larger than two lanes, usually potholed or unpaved. The Los Angeles freeway system, with its six and sometimes eight lanes, astonished my young eyes. Even then, I foresaw the immigration of coming decades, when getting to the United States became the goal of people everywhere in the world. I understood that a person could earn more in the US in a few hours as an unskilled laborer than he could in a month in most of the rest of the world. Everything functioned in America. The tap water flowed, the electricity worked, and the police were honest.
Despite the disillusionment of the 1970s, I thought an American living in America must be in heaven, going about daily life in a state of elation. I also felt a bit out of place in the US, and as if I had something to prove, to show that I genuinely belonged there.
The most visible Americans in our African city were the Marines who guarded the US embassy. They lived in the Marine House, just a block away from our own residence. Before sunrise each day, the Marines ran in formation through the neighborhood. The tropical climate and open drainage systems kept the city awash in powerful smells. As they ran, they chanted in time with the pace, in restrained voices so as not to awaken the neighborhood. At that early hour, Africans walking to work or setting up outdoor stands selling fruit and bread softly sang out greetings in English and Swahili upon first seeing the Marines, contributing a sort of accompaniment to their chants.
The Marines raised the American flag in front of their house each morning after their formation run. That’s my flag, I said to myself. The Marines were my connection to my home country. I often ran the same route they did on my way to school in the morning.
I came back to the US to go to college and the Marine Corps boot camp for officer candidates—that head-shaving and hollering introduction to the Marine Corps’s unique culture. It took two summers. Most of the candidates from the first summer never returned for the second. I was proud to be one of the few who stuck it out. It was truly difficult to go back for a second summer and endure boot camp all over again.
It was particularly unstylish on college campuses of that era to join the Marine Corps. Fashion dictated that long hair was chic, while shaved heads signified some deep emotional disturbance. It was the path less traveled—not the path of conformism. I was an infantry officer for three years and I thoroughly enjoyed the Marines’ camaraderie and sense of mission. Although most Marines leave the Corps after their first three- to
