Читать книгу The Human Factor - Ishmael Jones - Страница 8

Introduction

Human sources are those individuals who provide information about terrorist organizations and hostile governments. Gathering intelligence from human sources is the fundamental purpose of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine service. Some of the most important foreign policy decisions made by United States Presidents require this intelligence.

Lack of good human sources can be a President’s downfall.

George W. Bush’s presidency was poisoned by a lack of human source intelligence on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Iraq war, and the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). President Clinton’s legacy was tarnished by the 9/11 attacks, and he was taken by surprise by the arms race on the Asian subcontinent. Presidents Reagan and Carter were humiliated by hostage crises. Lack of reliable information about the Soviet Union nearly led to war on several occasions. The 1973 Arab/Israeli war took President Nixon by surprise. The war in Vietnam ended the Johnson presidency. The Korean War ended the Truman presidency. The handling of the U-2 incident was President Eisenhower’s greatest regret. The Bay of Pigs was President Kennedy’s greatest failure. In each of these cases a lack of good human sources was largely to blame.

CIA officers are, of course, skilled and well-trained, but the structure of the organization discourages human source operations. In the darkness of secrecy, with unlimited billions of tax dollars, and with little or no accountability, the CIA bureaucracy has mutated into a living, breathing leviathan that serves its own aims. It has grown some very unruly tentacles: layers of unnecessary managers, lucrative pay and benefits packages for current and former employees, obscene contracts for companies run by former employees, and massive expansion of the CIAʹs operations within the continental United States. Very few of the CIAʹs top managers have ever recruited a good human source.

I joined the CIA in the late 1980’s with one purpose in mind: to serve my country. My service, except for initial training, was in continuous field assignments overseas, in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe while working on WMD targets, and in Iraq while working on terrorist targets during the war. Few have equaled my record of consecutive, successful foreign assignments. My service was unblemished.

I resigned when I decided further service was pointless and that my best contribution to our nation’s defense would be to enter the debate on the reform of the CIA. This book is the story of a deep cover case officer, the day-to-day obstacles to survival during dangerous operations—and without the benefit of diplomatic immunity—and the challenges of pushing intelligence operations through an unwilling and dysfunctional bureaucracy.

The CIA, a corrupt, Soviet-style organization, is not serving the purpose for which it was created, and the result is that our lives and the lives of our allies are in jeopardy. The Agency must either be restructured as an American organization—which encourages achievement, creativity, and accountability—or it must be dismantled. I have offered suggestions and solutions informed by the wisdom of experience.

My profits from the sale of this book will go to the children of American soldiers killed in action.