The Cost of Criminalized Intelligence
Poor Leadership in the 1970s handcuffed the CIA for decades to come
By Ilario Pantano
American Legion Magazine, May 2010
A man who once parachuted into Nazi-occupied France for Operation Jedburgh, former Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer John K. Singlaub is eminently qualified to answer questions about the historical precedent of prosecuting intelligence officers during a time of war. If he or his men had been captured by the enemy, they would have been tortured and executed. Many of his friends suffered that fate. NOw a retired Army major general, Singlaub's career in intelligence began before the CIA or many of its officers were even born. Recently questioned about the idea of prosecuting agents during wartime, he paused and said, "If we prosecute anyone, we need to go after Jimmy Carter and his appointee to head (the) CIA, Adm. Stansfield Turner. (No one) has done us more harm. Turner gutted covert-action capabilities when he reduced the Directorate of Operations by a thousand experienced officers in 1977, and exposed the United States to crises which continue to haunt us 30 years later: Afghanistan and Iran."
[Editor's Note: Article continues below. You can also view the article in PDF format by clicking on the files below.]
It was a loaded question. I already knew there was no precedent for the steps Attorney General Eric Holder had taken in reopening in 2009 a criminal investigation of CIA operations. Eugene Poteat, the President of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), himself a 30-year CIA man, had already set me straight. "Nope, there is no precedent," he explained. "Even the worst mistake in CIA history, the Bay of Pigs invasion under President Kennedy, had no criminal investigation. Men were fired, including my boss, but no one was tried as a criminal."
He shook his head, looked at me, and described the context. "We were in the height of the Cold War, doing what the president asked us to do. Prosecuting the CIA would have been a disaster. It would have put a freeze on everything."
In order to help me understand the historical parallels and consequences of Holder's investigation, Poteat introduced me to Singlaub, who helped organize the French resistance in support of the Normandy invasion and ran intelligence operations in Manchuria and, later, special ops in Vietnam. "At the time, Carter wanted to rely on reconnaissance satellites and electronic surveillance. He was looking for white-glove ways to combat Soviet-sponsored subversion of the Third World, which is how we got into trouble in Iran. CIA officers in France actually had agents inside the operation of Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini. The station chief warned that successful penetration would be compromised and that this was the wrong time to make Turner's drastic cuts. 'We've got operations going!' was the objection. The response from Washington: 'Let the French handle it.'"
Blinding the agency had devastating consequences for Carter and the world. In 1979, months after a newly gutted CIA assured the administration that Iran was stable, Islamic revolution gripped the country and 54 embassy staffers were taken hostage. The Sandinistas seized Nicaragua. The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan was bombed. The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, was murdered. (Dubs, incidentally would be the last ambassador posted to Afghanistan until 2001.) Topping it off was the Soviet Union's Christmas invasion of Afghanistan. "I can't believe (the Soviets) lied to me," Carter famously moaned.
There was more to the degradation of U.S. intelligence capabilities than Turner's cuts in personnel. The biggest loss, intelligence insiders agree, was of the agency's appetite for risk.
Former deputy national counterintelligence executive and current professor of intelligence studies Kenneth deGraffenreid, a retired Navy captain, recounts the 1970s cultural shift that bastardized the uniformed and clandestine services in the wake of Watergate, campus protests and the Church/Pike committees. Carter "ran his '76 campaign against the 'troika of evil' - Watergate, Vietnam, and the CIA," deGraffenreid recalls. "We saw it again in 2008, when Obama ran against Bush, Iraq, and the CIA. I pray the results of that chronic naiveté are better this time around, but with SEALs being prosecuted, terrorists suing federal officials, ringleaders like Kalid Sheik Mohammed being tried in New York instead of (before) tribunals, and CIA officers prosecuted at home and overseas, where 23 were convicted in Italy, I'm just not convinced."
The sense of déjà vu strikes Singlaub as tragic. "Carter favored sterile forms of intelligence like satellites, things that couldn't blow up in his face," he said. "The rest, he chopped. Apologists will tell you Carter's cuts were about cleaning out the bad eggs. Tell that to the Navy SEALs, the Green Berets and all of the other paramilitary forces that Carter wanted to either cut, or in the case of the SEALs, eliminate completely."
Singlaub's 35-year military career included vanguard action and command of various intelligence and special-ops missions in World War II, China, Korea, Vietnam and Latin America. Today, the 88-year old Legionnaire still lectures at the advanced Special Forces course.
Carter was "simply not comfortable with unconventional operations and deemed them too politically risky," Singlaub says. 'Desert One' (the failed mission to rescue hostages from Iran) would prove beyond a doubt the degree to which he let our capabilities atrophy.
"No operation worth doing is without risk. If you go out on the street to conduct an operation, and there is no possible downside, you are wasting your time on something that is not worth doing," says Charles Faddis, a retired CIA operations officer who in 2002 ran secret ground teams inside Iraq. "We do not pay men and women of the CIA to do what is safe and secure," says Faddis, who served as department chief at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and as a chief of station in the Middle East. "Somebody else can do that. We pay them to take risks, to steal what no one thinks can be stolen, to do the impossible."
Faddis' book, "Beyond Repair," paints a jaw-dropping picture of the agency's paralysis, a malaise compounded by Holder's decision to criminally investigate CIA officers, he says. "I have no doubt that the attorney general is a good man," Faddis says. "I have no doubt that he is acting in what he believes to be the country's best interest. I also have no doubt that this action of his in launching this inquiry will have an absolutely catastrophic effect on the CIA and the entire intelligence community."
Maj. Gen. Bill Donovan, OSS founder, recipient of the Medal of Honor and fathger of U.S. intelligence, once said, "If you fall, fall forward." Faddis claims that inside today's CIA, that mantra has mutated into: "don't fall."
"Donovan would not make it in the CIA today," Faddis says. "He would be branded as too aggressive, a cowboy, and someone lacking the requisite corporate attitude. He would in due course, if he decided to stick it out, find himself riding a desk somewhere in a corner at headquarters, shelved, put someplace where he couldn't do any harm.
"Every CIA ops officer who is worth his salt has been prevented by (the) political climate and bureaucracy from doing what has to be done," Faddis says. "As demonstrated by the decision in 1998 to walk away from the attack on bin Laden's Tarnak Farms compound, we have let a lot of targets get away over the years, because someone in headquarters was uncomfortable with the potential downside of the operation."
Faddis recounts a saying he claims has become popular at the Directorate of Operations: "Big ops, big problems; little ops, little problems; no ops, no problems."
What does the current president of the OSS Society think of Faddis' assertions about the agency's current culture? Singlaub, who worked for Donovan, says the status quo of risk aversion is unacceptable and would have made it impossible for him to get anything done in their day. "We need to take a hard look at reforming our intelligence bureaucracy and returning the incentive to take risk," he says.
He suggests a hearing with the House and Senate Select Intelligence committees as a place to start. "Congress and the President need to take some responsibility because these problems start at the top. I witnessed the politicization of intelligence in Korea and every war since. It's not a new phenomenon. Let's bring in the old guys and put the issues out there for the American people. Let's talk openly about what has worked and what hasn't, and why. The shooting at Fort Hood reminds us that good leadership demands tackling thorny issues before they become disasters."
Ilario Pantano is the author of "Warlord: No Better Friend. No Worse Enemy." He has served as a Marine officer in Iraq and as a deputy sheriff in North Carolina. He founded an intelligence advocacy group called Stand With Intelligence and is a member of The American Legion.
| File Attachments | |
|---|---|
| 125.26 KB | |
| 99.63 KB | |
| 413.79 KB | |
| 393.92 KB |
Printer-friendly version
Post new comment