{"id":135004,"date":"2020-10-21T11:57:18","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T19:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=135004"},"modified":"2020-10-23T08:56:27","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T16:56:27","slug":"the-spymasters-how-the-cia-directors-shape-history-and-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=135004","title":{"rendered":"The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Whipple writes in his 2020 book<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* Petraeus, Brennan\u2019s predecessor, had suffered a precipitous fall from grace. The celebrated former commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, and architect of the Iraq War \u201csurge,\u201d Petraeus brought military acumen to the agency, but also a sense of entitlement that one CIA wag called \u201cfour-star general disease.\u201d Rumors of Petraeus\u2019s demands for special treatment while traveling became grist for Langley\u2019s gossip mill, and undermined his authority. Barely more than a year had elapsed, during which Petraeus had recovered from that rocky start, when he was caught sharing top secret information with his biographer and lover; within days he\u2019d resigned.<\/p>\n

* Two directors who arrived on a mission to shake up the CIA\u2014James Schlesinger, for Richard Nixon, and Stansfield Stansfield Turner, for Jimmy Carter\u2014also crashed and burned. Schlesinger, brilliant but condescending and arrogant, abruptly fired more than one thousand veteran operatives; after five months Nixon moved him to the Pentagon as secretary of defense. Schlesinger was so unpopular at the CIA that he was given extra security guards after a slew of death threats. Turner, a spit-and-polish former Navy admiral, was earnest but too straitlaced for the rough-and-tumble spy business, and no match in the bureaucratic wars for Carter\u2019s wily national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Turner would preside over one of history\u2019s greatest intelligence debacles: the CIA\u2019s failure to anticipate the 1979 Iranian revolution.
\n Another cautionary tale comes from the tenure of John Deutch, Bill Clinton\u2019s director. A former deputy director of defense and MIT chemistry professor, Deutch was a visionary intellectual who helped usher in the era of unmanned drone warfare. Michael Morell, a two-time acting director, considered him the most intelligent person he\u2019d ever met, followed by Barack Obama. But Deutch was politically tone-deaf. He insulted the CIA workforce, saying they weren\u2019t as smart as their Pentagon counterparts. And he assured Clinton that he\u2019d get rid of Saddam Hussein through a CIA-sponsored coup; unfortunately, the covert operation was penetrated by the Iraqis and failed miserably, leaving Kurdish allies abandoned. (And not for the last time; decades later the Kurds in northern Syria would be abandoned again by Donald Trump.) Deutch resigned after seventeen months. Soon thereafter top secret classified material was found on his home computer, and he was stripped of his security clearance.
\n Other directors were towering figures who transformed the CIA. Allen Dulles, who served Dwight Eisenhower, was a fierce Cold Warrior who ran the agency like a personal fiefdom; to combat the Soviets, he launched audacious covert operations that toppled governments in Iran and Guatemala. William Colby, who\u2019d fought behind enemy lines as a young paratrooper for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA\u2019s precursor, during World War II, made public the agency\u2019s darkest secrets\u2014the so-called Family Jewels. In so doing he earned the enmity of the CIA\u2019s secretive old guard, but the respect of those who valued his transparency, and arguably saved the agency. Colby\u2019s death by drowning in 1996\u2014at the age of seventy-six\u2014while canoeing near his weekend house in Maryland, still strikes some of his colleagues as suspicious.<\/p>\n

* When George H. W. Bush, with no intelligence experience but with a stint as envoy to the People\u2019s Republic of China, became director, he was convinced it was the end of his political career. But Bush rescued the agency from scandal, restored its morale and reputation, and set the stage for his eventual presidency.
\n Few directors wielded more power than William Casey, who was empowered by Ronald Reagan to fight communism around the globe. A disheveled character who careened around CIA headquarters, mumbling unintelligibly, Casey waged covert wars against the Soviets and their proxies; on his watch, the mujahideen, armed with Stinger missiles by the CIA, turned the tide against the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan. But later, in a bid to free American hostages in Lebanon, Casey spearheaded a harebrained plot to trade arms to Iran and illegally divert profits to the Central American guerrillas known as the contras. At the height of that scandal, Casey died of a brain tumor; he was so famously devious that one senator, unconvinced, asked to see the body as proof.
\n No one knew more about the CIA than Robert Gates, a suffer-no-fools analyst who rose through the ranks to become director under President George H. W. Bush. On his first bid for the top job, Gates withdrew his nomination after fierce criticism of his role in the Iran-contra scandal. He succeeded on his second attempt a few years later, though he was accused of exaggerating Soviet military capabilities, a charge he denied. As director, Gates helped President George H. W. Bush navigate the dangerous shoals of the post\u2013Cold War world after the Soviets\u2019 collapse.<\/p>\n

* The most popular directors of the modern era were George Tenet and Leon Panetta. Charismatic, energetic, and down-to-earth, Tenet warned George W. Bush\u2019s White House of an imminent Al Qaeda attack in the summer of 2001, months before 9\/11, a warning that went unheeded by the Bush administration. He also launched the CIA\u2019s lightning invasion of Afghanistan, routing the Taliban.<\/p>\n

* The notion that the CIA has bungled its way through the last fifty years\u2014missing real threats and ginning up false evidence for fake ones\u2014is a common belief. It\u2019s a version of history culminating in the agency\u2019s botched estimate of Iraq\u2019s WMDs. And Iraq has hardly been the agency\u2019s only debacle. The CIA has had its share of intelligence failures\u2014from missing Iran\u2019s 1979 revolution to misjudging Russia\u2019s social media assault on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
\n But that is a skewed version of history. The CIA has succeeded in disrupting terrorist plots and saving lives. It has also sounded alarms that politicians chose not to hear. Contrary to conventional wisdom, in the months before 9\/11, though it could not specify the target, the agency repeatedly warned of an imminent attack by Al Qaeda; it was the Bush White House, not the CIA, that was asleep at the switch. More than an intelligence failure, the 9\/11 attacks represented a dereliction of duty by policymakers. As Director Helms observed, \u201c
\nIt\u2019s not enough to ring the bell; you have to make sure the other guy hears it.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Founded in 1947 to prevent a repetition of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the CIA mostly met that challenge during the Cold War: It was never blindsided by a Soviet attack, or surprised by a military advance that altered the balance of power.<\/p>\n

* Perhaps the only president who understood the agency\u2019s capabilities was George H. W. Bush, a former director. Another exception, arguably, was Dwight Eisenhower, who knew something about intelligence from his stint as D-Day commander.<\/p>\n

* Leon Panetta was shocked to discover that he faced life-and-death decisions as director every day. When it came to authorizing lethal drone strikes\u2014when innocent civilians were in the crosshairs\u2014the devoutly Catholic director lamented: \u201cYou have to be true to yourself\u2014and just hope that ultimately God agrees with you.\u201d In the aftermath of 9\/11, when prisoners were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, Director Tenet and his defenders insisted the methods prevented attacks and saved innocent lives. But McLaughlin, one of those defenders, concedes, \u201cThere\u2019s an answer to that, which is: Slavery worked too but it was still wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Helms\u2019s standing with LBJ improved markedly after war broke out in the Middle East in 1967.
\n In the fall of that year, the Israelis warned the U.S. that without American help they faced defeat at the hands of their Arab enemies. Helms assured LBJ of the contrary. The CIA estimated that not only would Israel defeat her Arab neighbors but that the war would last no more than seven days. That prediction looked prescient after Israel\u2019s lightning victory in the Six-Day War. Helms proudly called it \u201cthe intelligence bingo of my time.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Now that he was outside the tent, [James Jesus] Angleton started lobbing stones back in. He gave rambling, apparently inebriated interviews, lambasting Colby for his na\u00efvet\u00e9. One Sunday morning, he called Hersh at his home. \u201cDo you know what you have done?\u201d he asked. \u201cYou\u2019ve blown my cover. My wife, in thirty-one years of marriage, was never aware of my activity until your story.
\n Now she\u2019s left me.\u201d In fact, Cicely Angleton had left him to go live in Arizona, but it had nothing to do with Hersh\u2014and she knew exactly what her husband did for a living. The master spy seemed a lost soul. Leslie Gelb, who\u2019d left the Defense Department to become one of Hersh\u2019s colleagues at the Times , remembered seeing Angleton on a Georgetown street corner. \u201cHe was the scariest-looking thing, slouched against the window of a store with his feet out in front of him, smoking a cigarette, just looking up at the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

* It is remarkable how rarely CIA directors know when they\u2019re about to be fired. They may be able to predict the duration of the Six-Day War to within twenty-four hours. But when their necks are on the chopping block they\u2019re usually the last to realize it.<\/p>\n

* But there is one family member for whom Bill Colby, in life and death, is still a mystery. A few years after his father\u2019s death, filmmaker Carl Colby, Paul\u2019s younger brother, made a documentary, The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby . The film drove a wedge between Carl and the rest of the family; Paul and Sally stopped speaking with him. On one level, the film is a straightforward, even admiring account of Colby\u2019s journey from the OSS to the pinnacle of the intelligence world. On another, it suggests Colby\u2019s complicity in the atrocities of Phoenix, implying that his father endured a kind of dark night of the soul.<\/p>\n

* The notion that heading the CIA would be a political death sentence spoke volumes about the agency. Bush returned to Washington the following month to a flurry of terrible headlines.<\/p>\n

* Bush would be starting cold, knowing almost nothing about the clandestine service. And he would have to gain the respect of its covert operatives, those \u201cScottish tribes waiting for the English King,\u201d as Cofer Black, the veteran operative, had described them. Frank Wisner Jr. summed up Bush\u2019s challenge in his own colorful way: \u201cHe had to master the spies, find a way to live with them, and direct them to be successful\u2014or be hung up by his balls.\u201d<\/p>\n

* The CIA, unlike the FBI, was unaccustomed to pleading its case to the public. There was no agency equivalent of the hagiographic hit television show, The F.B.I. , starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr. \u201cIntelligence has no constituency,\u201d explained Richard Kerr, an analyst who spent thirty-two years at the agency, rising to deputy director. \u201cThe bureau has always had a constituency, they\u2019ve been very good at PR. The Marines have always been really good at it. The CIA has no people out there who say, \u2018Oh yeah, it\u2019s a great organization,\u2019 except the people who work there.\u201d<\/p>\n

* There were many reasons for the CIA\u2019s Iran debacle: incompetence, wishful thinking, a failure of imagination, deception by the Shah himself\u2014and secret deals that rendered the agency blind. Iran was virtually the only major country in which the CIA had no contact with the government\u2019s opposition. How could that be? Because the Shah wanted it that way. Everyone\u2014including, ironically, the ambassador to Tehran, Richard Helms\u2014was willing to wear blinders to keep the Shah happy. Even more than his oil, the U.S. needed access to listening sites on Iran\u2019s border with the Soviet Union. Helms\u2019s old friend Burton Gerber, then an operative stationed in Tehran, recalled: \u201cEveryone in the leadership gang\u2014that includes Helms and my station chief\u2014was very nervous about doing anything that could upset the Iranians because of the importance of the sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

* William Casey would become the most powerful CIA director since Allen Dulles, fighting covert wars against the Soviets in every corner of the globe. But Casey\u2019s determination to run the CIA like an off-the-books enterprise, and his flouting of rules, would trigger the most serious political crisis since Watergate.<\/p>\n

* Because there were no rules, in Casey\u2019s view, congressional oversight was an annoyance.<\/p>\n

* Casey chose an unlikely person as his Deputy Director of Operations (DDO): a streetwise entrepreneur named Max Hugel. Hugel (pronounced Who -gull) had made a fortune selling sewing machines and investing on Wall Street; as a businessman, he was even less scrupulous than Casey. Five-foot-two inches tall, sporting a toupee, a shirt open to his navel, and gold chains, Hugel cut a ridiculous figure amid the gray suits of Langley. He knew nothing about spycraft. This didn\u2019t faze Casey; he thought Hugel was exactly the kind of unorthodox, idiosyncratic thinker the Directorate of Operations needed.<\/p>\n

* Casey believed the showdown over Soviet expansionism would come in America\u2019s backyard. Alan Fiers, who ran the CIA\u2019s Central American Task Force, recalled a conversation with the director: \u201c
\nAlan, you know the Soviet Union is tremendously overextended and they\u2019re vulnerable. If America challenges the Soviets at every turn and ultimately defeats them in one place, that will shatter the mythology\u2026 and it will all start to unravel. Nicaragua is that place.\u201d
\n During the 1980 election campaign, the head of French intelligence had made a prediction to Reagan. As Admiral Inman recalled: \u201cHe told Governor Reagan, \u2018You are going to be tested, militarily, by the Soviets in your first year in office. And that will probably take place in Central America.\u2019 \u201d A leftist faction known as the Sandinistas had taken power in Nicaragua and they were supplying arms to a guerrilla insurgency fighting a rightist government in El Salvador. This was the threat Reagan and Casey had been expecting. During the final days of his presidency, Carter had approved covert opera tions to thwart this communist menace. At Casey\u2019s urging, Reagan accelerated those programs.<\/p>\n

* Jack Devine, a veteran operative who\u2019d worked under every director since Richard Helms, thought no one topped [Robert] Gates at working the levers of power in the intelligence community, the White House, and Capitol Hill. \u201cPound for pound, he was the best bureaucrat we ever had. He knew how to run the U.S. government.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Upon becoming director, Gates had reached out to his old boss, Richard Helms, the iconic CIA director, then retired for twenty years. The old spymaster and the new director had lunch alone in the private dining room high above the woods of Langley. They surveyed the state of the world and compared notes on intelligence-gathering and covert operations. Then Helms paused. He looked his young prot\u00e9g\u00e9 in the eye to make sure he had his attention. Helms had one more bit of wisdom to impart. \u201cI just have one piece of advice for you,\u201d Helms said. \u201cNever go home at night without wondering where the mole is.\u201d
\n Gates was stunned. Was it possible that the CIA, at that moment, was compromised by a Russian mole?<\/p>\n

* When it came to killing bin Laden, the legal bureaucracy reinforced Clinton\u2019s skittishness. As Clarke explained: \u201cJanet Reno, the attorney general, had a problem with saying, \u2018Just go kill him.\u2019 So we\u2019d say, \u2018Try to apprehend him.\u2019 We already had bin Laden under sealed indictment, so we could arrest him. But only if that failed could you kill him.\u201d The legal contortions drove Cofer Black up the wall. \u201cI mean, I love this,\u201d he said sarcastically. \u201cThis is such a Washington thing: Our instructions were to capture him. And that\u2019s what we attempted to do. And the difference between capturing\u2014and the alternative\u2014is significant.\u201d
\n Tenet was equally reluctant to kill bin Laden. His reasons weren\u2019t just legalistic. \u201cThe CIA always used that as their excuse for not killing him,\u201d said Clarke, \u201cbut in fact they just didn\u2019t want to get in the killing business.\u201d In Tenet\u2019s view, the issue went to the heart of his role as CIA director.<\/p>\n

* Now, in the spring of 2001, the warning lights were flashing again. Tenet presented to the Bush national security team an updated version of the Blue Sky paper, an aggressive paramilitary assault on the Afghan sanctuary. Bush\u2019s NSC team not only rejected it, they deep-sixed it. \u201cThe word back was, \u2018We\u2019re not quite ready to consider this,\u2019 \u201d said Tenet. \u201c \u2018We don\u2019t want the clock to start ticking.\u2019 \u201d What did that mean? Tenet would not say. But the message seemed clear: In the event of a major Al Qaeda attack, the Bush administration did not want anyone to know that they\u2019d been warned.
\n To Bush\u2019s advisers, the enemies were nations, not terrorists. This group included Vice President Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, and Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy. \u201cRumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and others were worried over Saddam Hussein, Iran, and missile defense, getting radar in Czechoslovakia, ballistic missiles in Poland,\u201d said Charlie Allen. \u201cThat\u2019s what was driving them. They were in another world, a time machine.\u201d
\n Dick Clarke pressed Condoleezza Rice, Bush\u2019s national security adviser, to convene a principals meeting to address the Al Qaeda threat. But there was no getting through to her. \u201cThey were mentally stuck back eight years ago, the last time they were in power,\u201d said Black. \u201cThey were used to terrorists being euro-lefties: you know, drink champagne by night, blow things up during the day. So it was very difficult to communicate the urgency to this.\u201d
\n In truth, the administration was obsessed with one country: Iraq. \u201cIt was transparently clear to me and to George Tenet very early in the administration,\u201d said Clarke, \u201cthat the Bush inner circle had come into office with the intention of going to war with Iraq.\u201d The very first National Security Council meeting was devoted to Iraq. There\u2019d be seventeen NSC meetings devoted to Saddam in the first year alone. \u201cGeorge knew what they wanted from day one,\u201d said Clarke. \u201cWe all did.\u201d
\n But Al Qaeda demanded attention. At the Counterterrorism Center, Black and his team were monitoring a constant stream of threats. \u201cFor us the system was blinking red in the sense that we thought what we were uncovering was a top-down plot,\u201d said Tenet. \u201cSomething was being ordered from Afghanistan out. But it was very difficult for us to figure out what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

* July 10, 2001. Tenet picked up the white phone that connected his office to the White House. George W. Bush was traveling that day in Boston, but Tenet got through to Rice. \u201cI said, \u2018Condi, I have to come see you.\u2019 It was one of the rare times in my seven years as director where I said, \u2018I have to come see you. We\u2019re comin\u2019 right now.\u2019 \u201d
\n When they got to the White House, Tenet, Black, and Blee met in the national security adviser\u2019s office with Rice and Clarke. To underline the urgency, the CIA team sat not on the couch but at the table. Then Blee began his briefing with a PowerPoint presentation. \u201cI always did PowerPoint,\u201d he said, \u201cand I personally wrote, \u2018this is what I am going to tell Condi Rice, this is what I am going to tell the DCI,\u2019 because I knew after the fact everybody would say, \u2018Yeah, Rich never told me that.\u2019 \u201d
\n Blee got straight to the point. \u201cThere will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months,\u201d he said. \u201cThe attacks will be spectacular. They may be multiple. Al-Qaeda\u2019s intention is the destruction of the United States.\u201d He continued: \u201cThis is an attack that is intended to cause thousands of American casualties somewhere. We cannot say it will be New York City or the United States, but it is geared toward U.S. citizens.\u201d
\n When Blee finished, Rice spoke up: \u201cWhat should we do now?\u201d
\n Cofer Black slammed his fist on the table. \u201cThis country\u2019s got to go on a war footing now!\u201d he snapped. Tenet was silent. He left the talking to his deputies.
\n Afterward, on their way across the West Wing parking lot, Black and Blee high-fived each other, convinced their message had been heard. \u201cCofer and I came out and said, \u2018Boom. We hit a home run. She got it,\u2019 \u201d said Blee. \u201cI mean, Condi said all the right things: \u2018We\u2019ve got to do something, policy papers need to move forward, we\u2019ve got to be more aggressive.\u2019 \u201d Even Black, the eternal cynic, was sanguine: \u201cWe congratulated each other: We thought we\u2019d finally gotten through to these people. We had executed our responsibilities.\u201d
\n The trouble was, their warning had not been heard. One might expect the nation\u2019s top national security official to do something when alerted to an imminent, catastrophic attack. But Rice took no action. Alert levels were raised for U.S. personnel abroad, but there was no White House follow-up; no principals meeting was convened to discuss how to respond to the threat. \u201cWhat happened?\u201d I asked Black, almost fifteen years later. He paused. \u201cYeah, what did happen? Nothing happened.\u201d To Blee, Rice\u2019s inaction was incomprehensible. \u201cWe\u2019re going to her and saying, \u2018We need help.\u2019 There should have been some order that said, \u2018INS do more, FBI do more, NSA do more, DOD get ready.\u2019 She didn\u2019t do any of that. From July to September, nothing happened.\u201d
\n Rice would later write that that her memory of the meeting was \u201c
\nnot very crisp because we were discussing the threat every day.\u201d It makes you wonder what it would have taken to get her attention. As one senior intelligence official put it: \u201cWhen the director of Central Intelligence, the chief of counterterrorism, and the head of the Bin Laden Unit are saying, \u2018Fuck me. They\u2019re coming. Thousands of people are going to die. Get it on,\u2019 the correct response is not to do nothing. The correct response is to call a principals meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n

* At the end of the month [of July], George Tenet and his counterterrorism team met in the conference room outside his office. \u201cWe were just thinking about all of this and trying to figure out how this attack might occur,\u201d Tenet recalled. Until now, the intelligence had pointed to an attack on American interests overseas. Suddenly Blee spoke up. \u201cThey\u2019re coming here,\u201d he said.
\n In the silence that followed, Tenet said, \u201cYou could feel the oxygen come out of the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

* At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, George Tenet was having breakfast at Washington\u2019s St. Regis Hotel with former Oklahoma senator David Boren. \u201cThe head of my security detail came over to me and said a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center,\u201d he recalled. \u201cMy instinctual reaction was, \u2018This is Al Qaeda. I\u2019ve gotta go.\u2019 \u201d
\n The drive to Langley took twelve minutes, an eternity to Tenet, who had no secure phone reception. Upon his arrival at CIA headquarters, the director went to the seventh floor and huddled with Cofer Black, head of the Counterterrorism Center, and his senior staff. Both of the World Trade towers were ablaze; Tenet, remembering an Al Qaeda plot to crash a plane into Langley headquarters, ordered nonessential CIA personnel to go home, and the rest to move to another building. But Black was having none of it; he refused to evacuate his staff. \u201cPeople could die,\u201d Tenet told his notoriously gruff lieutenant. Black replied: \u201cWell, sir, then they\u2019re just going to have to die.\u201d The Counterterrorism Center was staying put.
\n George W. Bush had been speaking to an elementary school class in Florida that morning. Later, aboard Air Force One, he summoned his CIA briefer, Michael Morell, to his cabin. \u201cMichael, who did this?\u201d the president demanded. Morell replied that he\u2019d bet his children\u2019s future that it was Al Qaeda. For hours, Tenet tried to reach Bush but couldn\u2019t get a clear connection. Finally, a little after 3 p.m., in a video conference with Tenet from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, the president learned the truth: On the passenger manifests of the hijacked planes were the names of known Al Qaeda terrorists Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
\n The 9\/11 Commission would famously call the nation\u2019s inabil ity to prevent the attacks a \u201cfailure of imagination.\u201d But that wasn\u2019t really true: Not only had the CIA been warning all summer about an imminent attack but it had previously warned of an Al Qaeda attempt to hijack commercial airliners. In 1995, in the so-called Bojinka plot, Al Qaeda operatives had planned to commandeer as many as ten commercial flights out of Manila in the Philippines and blow up the planes over the Pacific; the plot was foiled when the terrorists\u2019 safe house caught fire. The CIA had warned that its failure wouldn\u2019t deter Al Qaeda from deploying airliners as weapons again. \u201cSo dismissing something because it didn\u2019t occur,\u201d said Tenet, \u201cturns out to be a terrible, terrible mistake.\u201d
\n In retrospect, Tenet thought the real failure was the administration\u2019s refusal, in the face of the CIA\u2019s warnings, to take defensive precautions on a national scale. Only an effort involving the CIA, FBI, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and other agencies could have thwarted the attacks. \u201cAn entire government failed to recognize all the things that needed to be done,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you don\u2019t have a system of protection and defense built in place, when you don\u2019t understand what\u2019s going on inside the United States, when you don\u2019t button up your airports, button up your buildings, harden your cockpits, change your visa policies, create a mechanism where there\u2019s a quick swivel between foreign and domestic intelligence, you\u2019re going to get hurt.\u201d
\n But no one wanted to hear that prior to 9\/11, and afterward the CIA bore the brunt of the blame; after all, in Washington there are only policy successes and intelligence failures. The 9\/11 Commission Report never mentioned the July 10 meeting at which Tenet and his team warned Condi Rice. That was odd, because Tenet testified about the meeting in a closed session. Rich Blee, head of the Bin Laden Unit, who led the July 10 briefing, believed that both the commission and Congress were determined to deflect blame. \u201cA deliberate effort was made by both the Democratic and Republican leadership to give Bill Clinton a pass and George Bush a pass\u2014and I think Condi Rice got a pass.\u201d<\/p>\n

* The trouble began on Petraeus\u2019s first day. All over Langley, a rumor had spread: Arriving at his suite on the seventh floor after a brisk morning run, the director was served a plate of bananas. But there was a problem. The bananas were sliced improperly. Petraeus wasn\u2019t happy. Henceforth, he let everyone know, his bananas should be sliced\u2026 just so.
\nThere may be no workplace in the world where gossip travels faster than at CIA headquarters at Langley. That\u2019s because the work force handles top secret material that can\u2019t be discussed with anyone else. Within hours, Petraeus\u2019s rumored commandment about bananas was the talk of the CIA.
\nThe bananas episode was followed by other stories of entitled behavior. Petraeus complained that his apples were too small. One aide was chewed out for failing to properly hand off a water bottle during a morning run. Before leaving a room, the new director supposedly would wait for someone to put his coat on for him. \u201cSir, we don\u2019t do that here,\u201d someone finally said.
\n\u201cPetraeus was just a fish out of water,\u201d said Ned Price, a former analyst. \u201cHe came from a culture that is just about the opposite of Langley\u2019s culture. The military is hierarchical. It\u2019s large. It\u2019s bureaucratic. The agency is relatively small. It prides itself on its ability to be nimble. And he brought a formality and hierarchy to the building that I think rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.\u201d
\nEyebrows were also raised by Petraeus\u2019s exacting and specific travel demands. \u201cIf you ever really want to get the unvarnished view of what a director is like, talk to the people who support him,\u201d said one officer. \u201cHoly Christ, the eye rolls, I mean, the faces people made.\u201d The pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance for Langley gossips was an instruction sent to CIA stations before Petraeus\u2019s visits. \u201cThere was this cable that was circulated around that was guidance to station chiefs,\u201d recalled a former senior intelligence official. It reminded him of a story about the 1980s rock group Van Halen; the band had a rider in its contract demanding that all the brown M&Ms be removed from its candy bowls. \u201cPetraeus had his own rider\u2014with everything he wanted in his hotel room,\u201d said this official. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a thousand brown M&Ms\u2014but it was a bathtub of ice, thirty-one bananas\u2026 stuff like that.\u201d
\nAccording to one other official, there was something else in Petraeus\u2019s rider that was unusual. Station chiefs were advised: \u201cDon\u2019t ask him tough questions.\u201d
\nPetraeus told me that accounts of his entitled behavior are untrue. The story about sliced bananas, he insisted, is \u201cabsolute nonsense\u2014I eat my bananas whole.\u201d After years of being deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan,\u201d he said, \u201cmy needs were pretty simple\u2014just don\u2019t keep me from doing my morning run!\u201d Yet multiple CIA officers said that Petraeus suffered from \u201cfour-star general disease.\u201d The perception damaged the new director\u2019s leadership right out of the gate. \u201cThe slicing of the bananas and the prep, all of that stuff, the support guys were just completely repulsed by all that,\u201d said one officer. \u201cIt was a real contrast with directors who came up through the agency and treated all of those people almost deferentially. That was not Petraeus\u2019s style.\u201d
\nPetraeus\u2019s management style also took getting used to. \u201cHe\u2019s not a warm and fuzzy guy,\u201d said a former top intelligence official. \u201cHe\u2019s not Leon Panetta or George Tenet. He\u2019s not a hug-you kind of guy. He\u2019s a give-an-order kind of guy\u2014and his attitude was, \u2018I expect it to get done and I\u2019m going to ask for the next five days whether it\u2019s done yet.\u2019\u200a\u201d
\nPetraeus was better at managing up; Obama respected his knowledge and experience. But some of Obama\u2019s inner circle said he was slow to grasp the CIA director\u2019s role as honest broker. \u201cWhat the president needs when he\u2019s making a decision is the best available intel,\u201d said McDonough. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t need another policy voice from his intel guy. I think that was a really hard transition for General Petraeus to make.\u201d
\nObama was a stickler about separating intelligence from policy; he expected his CIA director to deliver his brief and depart. \u201cHe was meticulous about that,\u201d said James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence. \u201cWhenever I\u2019d go in the Oval to brief him, he wouldn\u2019t start a conversation with his team until I was out of the room.\u201d But Petraeus opined on policy. \u201cA lot of times Dave would come straight with a policy brief,\u201d said McDonough.
\nObama and his CIA director locked horns over Middle East policy. Petraeus had strong views on the unfolding disaster in Syria; he argued for arming rebel groups to take the fight to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. After all, Obama had declared publicly that the Syrian dictator would have to step down. When Petraeus made his argument, the usually professorial Obama got right in his CIA director\u2019s face. \u201cThe president was sparky,\u201d said McDonough. \u201cHe\u2019d push back. Notwithstanding his respect for David, they went at it.\u201d Petraeus\u2019s advocacy for the rebels stemmed from deeply held conviction about the stakes. Petraeus, according to a former senior government official, believed that Obama\u2019s indecision\u2014and his refusal to establish a no fly\/no drive zone\u2014had led to more than half of Syria\u2019s population being displaced, the death of over 500,000 Syrians, and the establishment of the ISIS caliphate.<\/p>\n

* Bruce Riedel, the former Middle East analyst, had left the agency for a job at the Brookings Institution. One day he got a phone call from a woman who was working on a book about Petraeus. She was attending a Brookings dinner event that night; could she stop by his office beforehand for an interview? Her name was Paula Broadwell.
\n\u201cAt about 5:00 p.m. in the evening she shows up,\u201d Riedel recalled. \u201cAnd she is dressed in this tight little black cocktail dress with platform heels six inches high. I was sitting there saying to myself, \u2018Who comes to a Brookings dinner in a cocktail dress? That\u2019s not our thing.\u2019 And it never occurred to me. Thirty years in the intelligence business! It was right in front of my face and I couldn\u2019t put it together!\u201d
\nBroadwell was researching All-In: The Education of General David Petraeus. Since November 2011, she\u2019d also been having an affair with the celebrated general, whom she\u2019d met during his tour in Afghanistan. Broadwell had sent harassing emails to a Florida socialite named Jill Kelley, a family friend of the Petraeuses. After Kelley reported the emails to the FBI, the Bureau traced them to Broadwell\u2014and discovered intimate messages to the CIA director in an email account they shared. The director and Broadwell had tried to conceal their email correspondence by accessing them in a draft folder. But with the FBI\u2019s discovery, their secret emerged.
\nOn October 26, 2012, agents from the bureau\u2019s Tampa, Florida, office came to Langley, where they questioned the CIA director about his secret email account. Petraeus admitted to the affair with Broadwell, saying he\u2019d lost his \u201cmoral compass.\u201d When asked if he\u2019d shared classified information with his lover, Petraeus denied it.
\nBut that wasn\u2019t true. Executing a search warrant at Broadwell\u2019s home, investigators found more than one hundred photographs of highly classified information from eight bound notebooks belonging to Petraeus. They included code words for secret intelligence programs, the identities of covert officers, and confidential discussions with the NSC. Disclosure of these secrets could have caused \u201cexceptionally grave damage,\u201d according to the government.<\/p>\n

* [Michael] Morell had set his sights on becoming director. He was respected but not beloved by his fellow analysts. \u201cI think he had a tendency to kiss up and to kick down,\u201d said one. \u201cI think the power went to his head a little bit. It wasn\u2019t all that long ago that he was writing PDBs and briefing them. Now he would pepper us: How do you know this? And why do we think that? And who is the source of that? When was it collected? And he would follow up with twelve taskings a day. And whether he wanted to make his authority known, or whether he really needed the information, I never quite understood.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Trump believed the CIA had been emasculated under Obama. Director Brennan had imposed strict rules on the Directorate of Operations. (\u201cSome of the country\u2019s greatest heroes were there,\u201d Brennan told me, \u201cbut there were also people who thought the end justifies the means.\u201d) Now Pompeo declared that the gloves were coming off; operatives would be left alone to do their jobs. A retired senior intelligence official spoke to a friend in the DO: \u201cI asked, \u2018So how are things going?\u2019 He said, \u2018It\u2019s great. We can do what we want to do. We don\u2019t have a lot of handwringing. We don\u2019t have to go down to the White House, or if we do, they all kind of approve it.\u2019\u200a\u201d
\n\u201cOne of my colleagues was a longtime CIA guy,\u201d recalled Rasmussen, the NCTC head. \u201cAnd when Trump won and Pompeo was named director, he said, \u2018It\u2019s not Make America Great Again, it\u2019s Make CIA Great Again.\u2019\u200a\u201d That meant \u201cmore willingness to put more people closer to harm\u2019s way, to work with the Syrian rebels, or to spot for Iraqi forces in Mosul as they\u2019re doing bombing campaigns. Or being closer to the fight. It wasn\u2019t as if they went from zero to sixty, it was that they went from sixty to eighty.\u201d
\nWhether this made the CIA great or not depended on your point of view. During the campaign Trump had said that the U.S. should kill terrorists and take out their families. Early on, Trump was shown video of a lethal drone strike on a terrorist\u2019s lair; the drone operator waited before pulling the trigger until innocents cleared the area. Trump seemed baffled by this. \u201cWhy did you wait?\u201d he asked. \u201cBecause killing noncombatants is a crime!\u201d one CIA officer said to me privately. While some at the agency welcomed Trump\u2019s anything-goes ethos, others were appalled by his complete lack of empathy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Whipple writes in his 2020 book: * Petraeus, Brennan\u2019s predecessor, had suffered a precipitous fall from grace. The celebrated former commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, and architect of the Iraq War \u201csurge,\u201d Petraeus brought … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42722],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t