Edward Luttwak reviews this new book in Compactmag:
The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century
By Tim Weiner
Mariner, 464 pages, $28
On page 48 of his book, which is replete with admiration for the CIA, for many of its officers, and for each one of its directors except for Trump’s current appointee John Ratcliffe, Tim Weiner quotes Bob Gates, the former director of central intelligence and future secretary of defense: “The reality is that on 9/11 we didn’t know jack shit about al Qaeda … we’d just been attacked by a group we didn’t know anything about.” But Weiner does not ask why there was so much ignorance, given that the CIA’s dedicated “Alec Station” a.k.a. the “Bin Laden Issue station” was in its fifth year of operation.
When I met its head Michael F. Scheuer, I discovered the probable cause: Bin Laden’s particular talent was to recruit and direct his followers with his speeches delivered in a very fine classical Arabic in plaintive rather than fiery tones—speeches in which he made a point of dropping hints of forthcoming attacks. Thus, before the October 12, 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen’s port of Aden that killed 17 navy men, Bin Laden used Yemeni locutions, and wore a Yemeni recurved dagger in his belt.
But it was all lost on Scheuer, who knew no Arabic.
Astonished to learn that, I was more astonished to hear him say that he had made no effort to learn any during his years on the Bin Laden detail. Why? I asked. “No need, there is Fibis.” Yes, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service translates some speeches at some level of accuracy with some delay—and with none of the tonality. And it was not until a chance encounter in Kurdistan that I discovered that Scheuer’s eventual successor, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, whom he had specifically hired for the Bin Laden unit—and later married—also knew no Arabic, and had also made no effort to learn any, like her mentor.
But it would be unfair to single out Scheuer Mr. and Mrs. When John Brennan, Obama’s appointee as CIA director, joined an encounter with the then new FBI director Wray, during which I stressed the need to multiply the FBI’s Chinese language expertise—without relying on the Chinese-born—I noted that Brennan himself had learned his Arabic as a student in Cairo. Brennan immediately interrupted me to say that he had enjoyed his time in Egypt very much, but had learned almost no Arabic … there was always too much to do.
Nor are Scheuer and Brennan exceptions. When I was summoned to address the National Intelligence Middle East team—with at least 40 “top Middle East analysts”—I started with a really funny Cairo joke, which I had carefully rehearsed to get the Masri right. But I was immediately interrupted by raised hands: Please speak in English. So I asked how many did know Arabic and saw three raised hands. That induced me to ask about Farsi, which yielded two hands.
Weiner keeps praising the many CIA officers he names for their intense patriotism, deservedly so in regard to most of those I worked with. But it seems that in the CIA patriotism does not extend to a willingness to make the effort needed to learn languages, not even easy ones like French or Spanish, or not-hard Arabic, let alone Chinese or Korean.
