“It’s the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies? Who can smell out the fox without running with him?” He made an awful stab at humour: “Mole, rather,” he said, in a confiding aside.
Today I discovered an interesting blog at the Washington Post site: Spy Talk, all about what’s going on in the secret world. I’ve always been fascinated by reading news accounts about intelligence, and not just because I’m a big Le Carre and Len Deighton fan. There’s something ironic, a certain existential tension, between the worlds of intelligence-gathering and journalism. They are two universes that are not supposed to intersect — or rather, they intersect if the journalist is good at his job and the spy is bad at his. Unless, of course, the journalist is being used by the spy for disinformation, in which case it’s the other way around.
The fascinating thing about the intelligence world is that everything is up for question as to whether the reality you’re perceiving is real. It’s that way looking at it from the outside, and it’s that way on the inside. Are you dealing with a defector, or a double agent? Or a triple? (Not to start another argument about Iraq, but I’ve always thought it odd that people will look at Bush administration intelligence errors and assume, simplistically, “Bush lied,” utterly ignoring the fact that with intelligence, you very often have to make an active decision as to WHICH intelligence you will believe and act on, and if you assume that the policymaker who chose the wrong intelligence KNEW it was wrong, you’re essentially assuming that person was omniscient — which is ironic, given that Bush’s detractors generally think the opposite of him.)
Anyway, that ambiguity found a dramatic, and deadly, expression in the Khost bombing in late December. You know, that was the terrorist attack that actually killed seven Americans, as opposed to the one that didn’t kill anybody that same week, but which the news mavens went on and on about. In the actual deadly attack, seven CIA officers who should have known better let a double — or triple, depending on how you’re counting — agent get close enough to blow them and himself up in the Afghan province of Khost.
Now, Jeff Stein reports on the Spy Talk blog:
Nearly three months after an al-Qaeda double agent obliterated an important CIA team in Afghanistan, veteran spies remain agitated over the incident and the agency’s seeming inability to fix longtime operational flaws.
The latest eruption over the Dec. 30 incident that killed seven CIA officers and contractors in a powerful suicide fireball comes from Robert Baer, the former clandestine operations officer who has been pillorying his former employer in books, articles and television interviews since shortly the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But other agency veterans have been weighing in as well, and increasingly, on the record.
Writing in the April issue of GQ magazine, Baer depicts a spy agency where “the operatives’ sun started to set” in the 1990s and never recovered.
So it was that the spy agency sent an analyst to do an operative’s work in Khost, in desolate southeast Afghanistan, last year. Traditionally, the CIA’s station chiefs, or top agency officer in a country, and its base chiefs, deployed in outlying offices, were veteran case officers, or seasoned spy handlers….
I don’t know whether this Baer guy is right, but apparently we still have a ways to go to get humint where it should be…
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Remember that the objection to Bush’s actions wasn’t merely that his intel was imperfect, but that his White House had been interfering in data collection and analysis, burying contrary data and “stovepiping” findings right to the president which “confirmed” the wrong things. Mid-level analysts who weren’t on board would get a phone call from Dick Cheney, challenging their work. A lot of good people fled the agency, and likely still are missed.
Yup. Which is another reason NOT to say “Bush lied”…
To change the subject — isn’t Google Books amazing? I can now find any quotation I recall from almost anything I’ve ever read, such as the quote from “Tinker, Tailor” above.
Only problem is, it’s not in text form, so I can’t just define and copy and paste. I have to retype it. But it’s still pretty wonderful…
“The fascinating thing about the intelligence world is that everything is up for question as to whether the reality you’re perceiving is real.”
Something I find to be all too true in the world at large, don’t you.
Okay, Bush didn’t lie. He grossly mismanaged. He let the buck stop with Cheney. He brought Cheney to the party. He has to “own” what happened thereafter.
I know a spy. He’s always said “the company” are a bunch of experts in distraction.
Quick look over here…. and the real deal is around the other corner.
So this weekend watching healthcare pass, I found it quite interesting to see all the Tiger interviews, complete with Ari Flescher’s assistance.
Frequently in the middle of big deals, we find Natalie Holloway popping up.
People will always follow the human interest stories.
Did you notice Michael Jackson being recycled in the news this week too??
People, keep your eye on the ball and refuse the distraction.
Bush prevaricated?
Bush was selective?
During the invasion and occupation of Iraq, previously drawn CIA plans just for that contingency were ignored by that administration because they had been created when Clinton was president. The result — chaos due to wishful thinking. Or maybe the chaos was deliberate.
BTW, the original Iraq invasion of Kuwait, under Bush the Elder, was a complete surprise to the CIA, which really annoyed B41.
Yeah, Google Books is amazing. I find books I’ve published there completely scanned, and they have no permission to use our copyrighted material.
Thoughts regarding Iraq and weapons of mass destruction: 1. that S. Hussein helped perpetuate the lie by planting seeds that he did have the wmd thinking our forces would be afraid to go in -kind of like a skunk throwing his tail in the air. 2. that Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were selective in their information because that’s where they wanted to be before 9/11 and were ready to take advantage of the situation. 3. the media was complicit because they were in shock from 9/11 and were ready to believe anything. 4. ditto with the Pentagon. 5. Bush’s stubbornness allowed Cheney and Rumsfeld to run the country instead of him. – Oh, heck, there was so much wrong here – like it was all lined up to come together.
(Don’t we all remember thinking “HUH?” when we already knew that 11 of the 15 were from Saudi?) Kathryn is right, though…Bush was the commander in chief and he grossly mismanaged; he has to own what he allowed.
Yeah but if the books aren’t in print, or no one realistically is going to pay for the content by buying the whole book, wouldn’t you rather have your writing preserved and accessible than not? I realize there *could* be other options, but given just the choice of “available and free” or “unavailable except from used booksellers,” which, as an author, would you prefer?
I saw Baer (is he kin to Max?) on TV last week. He seemed to be blaming the military for insisting that the CIA be in Afganistan in such numbers that they had to resort to sending the analysts because they are so short on operatives.