{"id":163770,"date":"2025-09-20T22:29:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T06:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=163770"},"modified":"2025-09-20T14:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T22:30:09","slug":"the-competency-crisis-at-the-cia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=163770","title":{"rendered":"The Competency Crisis at the CIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edward Luttwak reviews this new book in Compactmag<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century
\nBy Tim Weiner
\nMariner, 464 pages, $28<\/p>\n

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\u2019s current appointee John Ratcliffe, Tim Weiner quotes Bob Gates, the former director of central intelligence and future secretary of defense: \u201cThe reality is that on 9\/11 we didn\u2019t know jack shit about al Qaeda \u2026 we\u2019d just been attacked by a group we didn\u2019t know anything about.\u201d But Weiner does not ask why there was so much ignorance, given that the CIA\u2019s dedicated \u201cAlec Station\u201d a.k.a. the \u201cBin Laden Issue station\u201d was in its fifth year of operation. <\/p>\n

When I met its head Michael F. Scheuer, I discovered the probable cause: Bin Laden\u2019s 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\u2014speeches 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\u2019s port of Aden that killed 17 navy men, Bin Laden used Yemeni locutions, and wore a Yemeni recurved dagger in his belt. <\/p>\n

But it was all lost on Scheuer, who knew no Arabic. <\/p>\n

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. \u201cNo need, there is Fibis.\u201d Yes, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service translates some speeches at some level of accuracy with some delay\u2014and with none of the tonality. And it was not until a chance encounter in Kurdistan that I discovered that Scheuer\u2019s eventual successor, Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, whom he had specifically hired for the Bin Laden unit\u2014and later married\u2014also knew no Arabic, and had also made no effort to learn any, like her mentor.<\/p>\n

But it would be unfair to single out Scheuer Mr. and Mrs. When John Brennan, Obama\u2019s appointee as CIA director, joined an encounter with the then new FBI director Wray, during which I stressed the need to multiply the FBI\u2019s Chinese language expertise\u2014without relying on the Chinese-born\u2014I 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 \u2026 there was always too much to do.<\/p>\n

Nor are Scheuer and Brennan exceptions. When I was summoned to address the National Intelligence Middle East team\u2014with at least 40 \u201ctop Middle East analysts\u201d\u2014I 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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … 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-163770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163771,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163770\/revisions\/163771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}