88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary

by Grenier, Robert L.

  It was quite rare for a clandestine operator to become an NIO, but by no means unheard of, particularly for the Near East and South Asia. A number of legendary Near East case officers had become NIOs, and they were my role models from an early point. I became convinced that operators had a huge natural advantage over desk-bound, bookish analytic types, as there was simply no substitute for having a visceral, on-the-ground familiarity with the culture and the mind-set of a place. I felt that to be a first-rate operations officer, and to give Washington all it really needed, you had to be a skilled analyst as well. I didn’t accept the usual categories and boundaries that existed in my profession, and when I took over my own station, I made it a point to become a thorough expert on all the relevant issues and to weigh in actively in the Washington-based analytic process, at least as far as distance would allow.

  In the summer of 1991, Paula and I returned to Washington, our toddler son and his Filipina nanny in tow. Right away I tried to land a job on the National Intelligence Council, and sought the help of my deputy division chief, who had himself been an NIO in the past. “Not so fast,” he said. “You’ve been out for eleven years, and you owe us time on the desk.”

  With the end of the First Gulf War, the U.S. government was trying to contain Saddam Hussein, and if possible to engineer his ouster. Within months, regime change in Baghdad was the stated policy of the U.S. administration, and CIA was expected to produce it. I became the first deputy chief of a new and very large headquarters unit in the Near East Division, the Iraq Operations Group. This was my first serious introduction to “covert action.” The normal authorities of the CIA only permit it to gather intelligence around the world, not to try to influence or change the course of events. To do that requires specific authority from the president, contained in what is called a Presidential Finding.

  The process of drafting such a finding, working it through the bureaucracy to the president for signature, briefing members of the Congressional Oversight committees, and gaining the necessary support from the Pentagon, the State Department, and others was new to me, and I threw myself into the task with great enthusiasm. I thought the George H. W. Bush administration had made a great mistake in allowing Saddam’s military to violently suppress the post–Gulf War insurrections in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq and in Kurdistan, in the far north, and I was eager to do my part to set things right. Within a short time, I was traveling back out to the region to consult with our chiefs of station and to hold initial meetings with a prominent Iraqi would-be revolutionary.

  Naive as I was, this provided an education for me in the politics of covert action. The Near East Division chief at the time was convinced by past history that nothing good would come to the agency from an involvement, yet again, in trying to mount a foreign coup. It was a common sentiment in an organization that had been burned frequently and badly in the past, taking the fall for bad decisions by presidents who wanted the CIA to provide magic solutions to intractable foreign problems. The chief could not refuse the White House outright, but he did not want his fingerprints on our activities either, and he essentially ignored us. His passive opposition did not make a whit of practical difference to me, but I carefully noted it. In my view, CIA should not get to pick and choose its missions. We were a tool of statecraft; so long as what we were asked to do was legal, I felt, we owed the president our best efforts.

  We also had an obligation, I believed, to illuminate the potential downsides of what we were being asked to do, and to make the case for the overt policy enablers that would be necessary for a realistic possibility of success. The world had changed radically since 1953, when a CIA-sponsored coup in Tehran had restored the Shah of Iran to his throne with relative ease. At the very outset, I sent a memo to my seniors within the agency, providing a negative assessment of the chances for success in Iraq, stating that we would not simply walk into Baghdad and engineer Saddam’s overthrow “like some latter-day Kermit Roosevelt overthrowing Mossadegh.” With the support of CIA’s deputy director for operations (the “DDO,” now referred to as director of the National Clandestine Service, or D/NCS), and although still only a GS-14—the civilian equivalent of a lieutenant colonel—I paid individual calls on each of the members of the Deputies’ Committee, the second-highest foreign policy-making body in government, to seek their support for overt actions, such as setting up humanitarian “safe zones” along Iraq’s borders. In each instance, I was received politely, but left with expressions that said, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” The only member of the Deputies’ Committee at the time who seemed willing to entertain my ideas on Iraq was the then-under secretary of defense for policy. It was hard for me to gauge his seriousness as a thinker, but he was willing to explore unconventional ideas and seemed willing to take risks. I would come to know Paul Wolfowitz far better during the George W. Bush administration.

  Less than a year after my return from overseas, an opening appeared at the National Intelligence Council for a deputy NIO for the Near East and South Asia. With the grudging acceptance of my division managers, I applied for it, and was selected. The following year opened up new worlds for me, as I was frequently the face of the intelligence community with senior administration officials and with Congress. The NIO, Ellen Laipson, and I made a good team, in part because our backgrounds were so different: I was the operator; she the scholar, from the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. We produced a series of National Intelligence Estimates, including yet another on Iran. Life could not have been more stimulating. On any given morning, I could look at the papers to see what would be on the minds of policymakers and Congress, and immediately convene the best analysts in the community to produce an instant, ad hoc assessment for them. This was the sort of access and impact I had dreamed of.

  My time on the NIC was not to last long. Only a year into the assignment, I was asked by the deputy director for operations, Tom Twetten, to be a candidate to serve on the staff of Peter Tarnoff, the under secretary of state for political affairs. Tarnoff, the third-ranking official at State, a member of the Deputies’ Committee, and the day-to-day foreign policy manager for the department, was an old friend of Twetten’s and was interested in broadening representation on his staff beyond the State Department. Tarnoff selected me from among the available candidates, and made me his senior staff advisor for the Near East, South Asia, and counterterrorism.

  My year of direct involvement in the policy-making process provided stunning insights into the hidden realities of Washington politics. It was an intensely disillusioning experience. In that first year of the Clinton administration, it was obvious that the president was not particularly interested in foreign policy, and seemed only to get engaged when a developing problem turned into a crisis. At that point, the various cabinet secretaries and other senior officials would learn what the president wanted and fall into line. But in the meantime, left to their own devices with little policy direction from the White House, they and their respective departments and agencies fought one another like children in a sandbox. They seemed primarily interested in protecting their bureaucratic turf and their departmental prerogatives. No agency head wanted to be seen by those in his or her organization as failing to defend its interests; that would be a sign of weakness. Bureaucratic strength, I learned, was the coin of the realm. The national interest seemed incidental.

  Similarly, within the Department of State the bureaucratic infighting was vicious, as the various bureaus contended with one another to press their settled positions on whatever issue was at hand. No one, it seemed, was willing to take an independent view, or to consider the relative merits of another bureau’s argument. More often than not, even the most trivial issues would have to be taken to the secretary of state for decision.

  And that was when things worked well. Just as frequently, department seniors behaved like schoolyard bullies. If someone seemed to have senior-level backing on an issue, regardless of its merits, others would be re
luctant to offer a contrary view unless they, too, had the support of a department senior, and preferably someone who had the ear of the secretary, to back them up. If not, it was better to capitulate early and act as though you supported the prevailing idea all along: the last thing you would want was to appear to have been “rolled”—forced to back down. As a State Department friend pointed out, the natural posture of the Foreign Service officer was to have a finger in the air to determine which way the political wind was blowing. I often found myself at a disadvantage in this sort of infighting, as my “principal,” the under secretary, generally did not engage on Middle East issues and would defer to others, such as Dennis Ross, the Special Middle East Coordinator in charge of the Arab-Israeli peace process, instead. In a typical exchange, I’d send Peter a carefully reasoned memo advising him to take a certain position on an issue. “Sounds good,” he would scrawl in the margin. “Take it up with Dennis.” That was a non-starter for someone inclined toward contrarian views. No one was going to be interested in what I thought unless I had the backing of someone who was feared.

  The consensus view of me in the department, conveyed to me by a friend, was telling: “Smart guy, articulate, knows the issues; but strangely oblivious to political considerations.” They had it partly right. I wasn’t oblivious; just headstrong, and a tad self-righteous. If anything, though, a year in their building actually increased my respect for State Department officers, who were almost uniformly smart and dedicated; but I pitied them the corrosive, soul-destroying environment in which they worked, and wondered how they tolerated it.

  It was with considerable relief that I recrossed the Potomac to return to Langley. For all that CIA could be arrogant, insular, and parochial, I found life among those whose profession demanded lying, cheating, and manipulation an oasis of decency compared with what I’d found in the policy community. That said, my year at State was invaluable, and I would not soon forget its lessons.

  Back at CIA, I was given a management job that again threw me into controversy. The Counter-Proliferation Branch was the largest in the Near East and South Asia Division, and no wonder. With the exception of North Korea, all the primary countries of nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile weapons concern were in those two regions: Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Although we had clear direction from the White House to aggressively confront a growing problem of global proliferation, my immediate superior was no more inclined toward risky operations against proliferators than he was against Saddam Hussein. My predecessor as chief of the Counter-Proliferation Branch had catered to the division chief. Not wanting to be in the position of having to provide a report to the president as the last screw was being placed in some rogue state’s nuclear device, I set out to encourage field stations to launch new reporting initiatives, and to assure them of technical and financial support when they did. My chief made his contrary views known to me but did nothing to stop me.

  I quickly found that headquarters’ support to counterproliferation operations in the field outside the Near East and South Asia was a disorganized mess. Because it was a global problem, with technology transferred across continents, several of the geographic divisions in addition to the Near East had set up branches to deal with their parts of the problem. Coordinating my branch’s actions with those of other divisions across multiple lines of independent bureaucratic authority was a nightmare. I showed up one day at the office of the deputy director for operations to brief a routine operation with nine other people, representing seven other offices, in tow. The DDO was predictably appalled.

  Asked to come up with a way to fix the problem, I and my people drew up plans to create a new division, which would combine the various DO proliferation shops in one coherent organization capable of coordinating activities on a global basis. To my amazement, the plan was approved. As I was deemed too junior to receive a divisional command, Jim Pavitt, who would become a good friend and mentor, was named chief of the new Counter-Proliferation Division; I was its first chief of operations.

  Not everyone was happy with this arrangement. The Near East Division, whose loyal officer I still remained, had just lost its largest unit, and its leaders did not fail to notice that I was the culprit. No sooner had I been assigned to the new division than I received a call from Near East’s deputy chief, who summoned me to his office for a little avuncular advice. “Keep in mind,” he said, “that if this new division fails—as it might—you will still need a place to come back to.”

  By this time, I had spent five years in Washington, and was more than eager to return to the field. Although in a bit of a doghouse with the Near East Division, I managed in the next few months to line up a chief of station assignment with help from elsewhere in the Directorate. Paula was at least as eager as I was to return to overseas living. In fact, our plans were already quite advanced when I got an unexpected call.

  Dave Cohen had recently been elevated to DDO. As a career analyst, he was an unusual selection, and in the insular and chauvinistic Directorate of Operations, an unpopular one. A brash, outspoken Bostonian from the tough Dorchester neighborhood, Cohen was not one to be intimidated, and seemed determined to leave his mark on the Clandestine Service.

  This was a time of considerable ferment in the DO. The arrest of Aldrich Ames for treason two years before, the first known instance of a currently serving case officer being “doubled,” had been an unprecedented shock. Many of us felt a deep sense of shame. The shame was compounded when it was revealed that Ames had clearly been a troubled and grossly inadequate performer for some time before his recruitment by the Soviets, but that his managers had consistently failed to address his shortcomings. There was much soul-searching over this, and it led to a number of reforms, including a new emphasis on training in leadership and management that the directorate had long lacked.

  There were other changes afoot. Huge advances in technical collection and information technology were making it possible to provide much better guidance and support to operations. The support ranks were no longer solely the province of secretaries, clerks, and logisticians. Highly skilled technical and analytical professionals were gaining a place in the directorate, and case officers like me could feel their relative dominance in the organization starting to slip away. New categories of DO professionals, such as so-called “targeters,” were being created. Case officers felt threatened by these changes and many lobbied against them, claiming that this was evidence that the Clandestine Service was becoming distracted from its core mission. Cohen organized a number of discussion groups, typically of mid-ranking officers, to talk through these issues and build consensus for reforms.

  I had first come to Dave’s attention through my work in counterproliferation, and he included me as a participant in these groups. I was quite vocal in these forums, telling my fellow case officer colleagues, in effect, that they should “get over it.” As case officers who recruited and ran agents, they were going to remain the “jet jockeys” of the CIA. But if the Clandestine Service was to remain relevant and continue to improve, we were going to have to encourage more involvement by highly skilled technicians and analysts. That was going to mean providing both them and the often-overlooked reports officers, the substantive intelligence experts of the directorate, a far greater share of the credit for success, greater organizational prominence, and a share of management positions that had traditionally been the exclusive domain of the spymasters.

  Dave was impressed by my progressive views, and he wanted me to help institutionalize them. He asked if I would take over as chief of training at the DO’s famous school of espionage, “the Farm.” This was completely unexpected, and a huge departure from normal practice. Typically, chiefs of training were very senior officers, for whom the appointment was a final “retirement tour,” a mark of respect and a reward for years of service. In giving the position to a young up-and-comer, and one who had not yet even entered the “super-grade” ranks, Cohen was signaling change. Complaints were not lo
ng in coming; Dave ignored them. To one senior officer who pointed out that I was still several promotions shy of the requisite grade level, he replied: “Well, that’s easy to fix.”

  Dave gave me the option of declining the position, but it was an easy decision for me to make. This was a huge honor, and a tremendous opportunity to effect change in the directorate. Not incidentally, it also carried the promise of promotion. Keeping our son, who had some special educational needs, in the United States for a bit longer would not be a bad idea either. Rather than the Middle East, we made plans to move to southern Virginia.

  With typical good fortune, I was arriving at just the right time. The personnel cutbacks of the post–Cold War “peace dividend” years had largely run their course, and recruitment of new officers was again on the upswing. Blessed with a strong staff, many of whom had just returned from overseas, I was able to turn them loose to reform the training curriculum and make it reflect the current state of the art as cutting-edge espionage was being practiced in the field.