I knew Jim Woolsey well. He was DCI when I was chief of the East Asia division. I traveled with him, and took a number of visitors up to see him in informal situations. He was a good, decent man who really enjoyed being DCI. He understood the power of his office, and he used it well and wisely. He was a joy to brief. He listened, asked great questions, and you only had to tell him something once.
During one of the trips we took, we began briefing foreign governments on issues on which Woolsey had no particular reason to be well informed. He set up a structure in which several key analysts and I would meet with him in the morning for breakfast. Prior to that, he had us submit on note cards the key points that we were going to discuss in the breakfast meeting. By the time breakfast was over, he was prepared for the day’s activities. I noted that in the early phases of a trip, he would occasionally call on one of the analysts to answer a question or two, but after several stops, this was no longer necessary, as he had mastered the subject well enough to tackle things himself.
I remember well Woolsey’s first day as DCI. He came into the auditorium to make his first comments to the Agency he now ran. The audience stood up, and he quickly asked everyone to sit down. Rather than use the podium, he strolled around the auditorium and informally took questions and answers. It stunned some in the audience. Some liked the new, informal approach, others did not.
And I remember early on the fuss over the fact Woolsey had declined to take a polygraph test, citing “concerns over the legal aspects of it.” He finally did take the exam. I understood his reluctance, and hoped he would not take the damned infernal test. I never believed the polygraph works (ask Aldrich Ames, who passed it), and believe to this day that it is absolutely overly intrusive and insulting to our employees. Added to this, there is an unhappy history—you are bound to have a hard time if you have to take one right after one of our frequent counterintelligence flaps, when the screws get tightened. In the aftermath of the Ames case, the vigorous use of the polygraph resulted in the destruction of hundreds of officer’s careers solely because the results from the damned machine were inconclusive.
Woolsey was also one of the first to really focus on the fact that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we were in reality no safer than we had been before the demise of communism. I recall that, at every opportunity, he would raise the specter of terrorism as the threat for the future. His line was prophetic: “America has slain a large dragon [the Soviet Union], but we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes.” It was, of course, all too true.
I recall well also the uproar over the actions Woolsey took in the aftermath of the Ames case. He scheduled a meeting in the CIA auditorium to announce his findings and decisions. Everyone was absolutely certain that heads were going to roll. There was dead silence when he announced that there would be letters of reprimand (eight, I believe) and a host of verbal reprimands, but that no one would lose their job. The whole community was shocked—some, I would say, were actually disappointed. But I remember his comment about why he didn’t take stronger measures: “Based on the evidence, I have determined that the punishments are suitable. I realize some would prefer firings and stiffer punishment. But that is not the American way, it is not the CIA way, and it is not Jim Woolsey’s way.” I believe this was illustrative of the character of this DCI.
In the aftermath of his tenure as DCI, Woolsey undertook, pro bono, the case of Kurdish and Iraqi personnel who had served the Agency attempting to carry out a covert-action rebellion against Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, in the aftermath, no one in the Agency stood up for these people to plead their case to be admitted to the United States in accordance with what was surely our tacit agreement with them. To his great credit, and despite criticism, Woolsey successfully represented them, and justice triumphed.
Jim Woolsey had one of the finest senses of humor of anyone I have ever known. He was delightful to be around. He was never pretentious about his position, and whenever we traveled with the VIP aircraft, he would abandon his private DCI’s cabin early on and spend his time with the rest of us. He had a story about every situation, some of them hysterically funny, and he had a great delivery. He also knew more German drinking songs than most Germans. This came from his days at Stanford, when he was, I believe, president of the German Club.
The sad truth was that President Clinton simply neither understood, nor had any use for, intelligence. In the nearly two years he was DCI, Woolsey reportedly had only two face-to-face meetings with the president. That may have been why Woolsey decided to resign.
John Deutch (May 1995–December 1996)
John Deutch was forced by President Clinton to take the job of DCI. In my mind, that set the stage for the troubles that followed. Deutch never wanted the job; he loved being at Defense, and in fact hoped to land the job of secretary of defense. Nevertheless, he did what any good public servant would do when the president asked him the second time—he took the job.
That turned out to be unfortunate for Deutch and for the CIA. Deutch in reality had no use for the CIA. It was obvious everywhere, from his first suggestions to close most of our overseas field stations, to the fact that he brought all of his top personnel in from outside. He either felt he couldn’t trust the CIA personnel, or he simply didn’t believe that they were capable of advising him on anything. In either case, the result was that he stacked the upper level with people who didn’t know the job of intelligence. He brought in an outsider as executive officer, moved an operations officer over to head administration, and brought an analyst in to oversee the clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations. Furthermore, he brought in his own legal counsel. To those inside the CIA, the message was clear—he didn’t like us.
Deutch loved the pomp and ceremony of the military. His marine aide told me once, “John loves to move battleships around, and likes motorcycle outriders and sirens and flags flying.” That, of course, was not possible for a traveling DCI who himself would be the target of any terrorist who knew he was in the vicinity. I remember handling arrangements for one of his first visits. Everything was laid on well. The ambassador, the head of the local intelligence service, and the government chief of protocol and I were at the ramp when Deutch’s plane landed and he deplaned. His first words, before any welcoming comments, were, “Where is everybody?” I told him our people were out doing surveillance and providing escort and safety patrol to get him safely and securely to his next stop. He didn’t like the lack of a large retinue, as he would have had in his positions at Defense.
Deutch had a manner that aggravated many of the foreigners he dealt with. He was exceptionally bright, but he was impatient with those he felt were not up to his standards, and, in those cases, he could be downright rude.
I personally like Deutch. I learned from experience when he was deputy secretary of defense that John would ride roughshod over anyone who let him—and I never did. One time I led a delegation of two foreigners over to the Pentagon when he was deputy secretary for a meeting about sensitive subjects. Deutch walked in, said a few words to one of the guests, then turned suddenly to me and asked, “Who the hell are you?”
I looked directly at him and said, “I am your chief in Germany, who the hell are you?” It went very well after that.
At another time, after he became DCI, we were in a small meeting with foreigners when social talk led Deutch to declare, “I am the smartest mathematician in the United States.” Unfortunately, our foreign guest chuckled a bit at that, and Deutch responded, “I am at least the smartest mathematician in the United States government.”
Things were tense, when the foreign guest turned to me and said, “How about you, Floyd, what are you the best at?”
I paused a second, looked directly at him and replied, “As you should know, I am the best spy in the United States government!” Everyone laughed, and we continued on.
I was very sorry to see the troubles that plagued Deutch at the end of and following his tenure as
DCI. Was I surprised? No. The evidence I have seen indicates his taking of classified information off the computer to take home started way before the CIA. I can’t help but note reactions to this: first, I have heard numerous people say, “It’s the same thing Wen Ho Lee did.” And, of course, “Do you suppose if I had done it I would only have my clearances revoked?” It is hard not to believe a double standard was at work here.
George Tenet (July 1997–July 2004)
I believe history will judge George Tenet as one of the best directors in CIA history. He followed the mold set by Judge Webster—he came in as director at a very crucial time, and cleaned things up and restored the morale and reputation of the CIA. I think a fair assessment must wait until the aftermath of his sudden resignation settles down, however long that turns out to be. And, I believe that the assessment will have to consider what happened on 11 September 2001. (The panels investigating the intelligence failures of 9/11 have made their reports, which we need not rehash here.)
Few give credence to the notion that Tenet resigned in order to spend more time with his family. While he is indeed a devoted family man, waiting until his son’s senior year in high school to resign to spend more time with him simply does not ring true to many. Nor, in my view, does the idea that Tenet chose his time to resign—just before the congressional committees put out their highly critical reports on the intelligence failures not only for 9/11 but also a litany of other supposed intelligence failures.
The most prominent failures during Tenet’s tenure as DCI:
Missing the signs of India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear test preparations and tests in 1998.
Failure to prevent the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in August 1998.
Failure to apprehend Osama bin Laden and penetrate his organization.
Failure to properly substantiate claimes that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” (he supposedly guaranteed the president that it was a slam dunk that Hussein had a robust WMD program).
The failure to detect and provide early warning of the 9/11 plot.
It is not within the scope of this book to address these failures one by one and in depth. All of the above are of course intelligence failures. But let’s also look at the facts about the CIA at the time Tenet took over:
By 1996, the CIA in particular and the intelligence community in general had undergone six years of ferocious budget and personnel cuts. The Agency closed many of its overseas posts in the very locations where the terrorists operated—in the Mideast and Africa in particular. The truth was, the human intelligence apparatus that Tenet inherited was weak and inadequate.
At the same time, the CIA was languishing with terrible morale and inadequate numbers of case officers, the people who were responsible for recruiting spies. One of Tenet’s first accomplishments was to drastically increase the funding to attempt to rebuild and repair the United States’ human intelligence capability. Even now, seven years later, that job is not complete, so great was the damage from a decade of neglect.
Nor had the CIA’s analytical capability survived the terrible cuts. As a result, at the time of the India/Pakistan nuclear detonation, no one was tasked solely with following India and Pakistan nuclear developments. At the time, only one analyst was charged with following worldwide proliferation.
Lastly, what about 9/11? Given the lack of human sources to penetrate the terrorist’s organizations, the CIA and the community were left with interpreting what they could from Signals Intelligence and Overhead Imagery. DCI Tenet provided warnings to both Presidents Clinton and Bush, but barring detailed information from human sources, the entire intelligence apparatus was unable to provide the most important element of all: timing and intent to harm.
From my personal perspective, I continue to believe that 9/11 was a terrible intelligence failure. I believe the real question, however, is not “Was it an intelligence failure?” but “Why was it an intelligence failure?” I believe I have made the case in earlier chapters that the continual disembowelment of our human intelligence system, beginning with President Carter and escalated by President Clinton, must surely shoulder the preponderance of any blame assigned. And, it must also be recognized that under Tenet, the rebuilding process began well before September 11, 2001, and is on its way. Still, that effort is yet incomplete. As DCI Tenet himself told Congress, the Directorate of Operations is still at least five years away from having adequate trained personnel deployed to the field.
I knew Tenet well, and offer a few observations. He gets tremendously high marks for his involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process. He was exceptionally proactive, and I believe without his personal involvement the process would have died long ago. Most people are not aware of the historical involvement of the CIA in the Middle East Peace Process, but Tenet knows it well, and made a major contribution to world peace by pushing the process.
He understood and embraced support to the military like no other DCI before him. I believe he understood early that the CIA was going to be forced to operate to provide the “war fighting commanders” in ways they had only done during crisis operations. With the current war against terrorism, the CIA is providing more and better support to the military than ever done before.
In discussions with many of my colleagues after Tenet announced his resignation, it was generally agreed that, although his family reasons were important, Tenet cared more about keeping the CIA and the DCI position out of the politics of the upcoming election of 2004. With the highly critical reports due to be released, he made his move in the hope that neither the intelligence community—nor the CIA in particular—would be a political football. Tenet realized resigning later could be seen as giving in to political pressure, and leaving when he did allowed the president the option of not getting a new DCI nomination into the works until after the election as well. Thus, he protected both the CIA and the DCI position. As usual, Tenet chose nation above self.
I believe this to be one of the most decent, effective, caring men to ever occupy the position as Director of Central Intelligence. He was great with Congress; he cared deeply about the job; and he was approachable. He was an exceptional DCI, and the Agency—and the country—were lucky to have him.
1. Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979).
2. William Colby, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978).
3. William Colby, Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam (Chicago: Contemporary Press, 1989).
4. Stansfield Turner, Secrecy and Democracy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991).
5. Frank Anderson, The CIA: America’s Secret Warriors; Part I: The Brotherhood/Betrayal, The Discovery Channel, 1997.
6. New York: Warner Books, 1990, pp. 172–98.
7. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.
8. New York: Viking Penguin Books, 1990.
9. Robert Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
NINETEEN
PRESIDENTS AND INTELLIGENCE
Presidents have been users and abusers of intelligence since the inception of the republic. Some have been great users, some have been indifferent, and some have had no use for intelligence—particularly human spies. But they all have had one thing in common—they had some idea of what they expect intelligence to do. Bob Gates, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 1991 to 1993, may have said it best: “Presidents expect that … the product [of intelligence] should be able to predict coups, upheavals, riots, intentions, military moves, and the like with accuracy…. Presidents and their national security teams usually are ill informed about intelligence capabilities; therefore they often have unrealistic expectations of what intelligence can do for them.”1
I’ll now offer some observations about U.S. presidents and intelligence through history, and I’ll confine most of my c
omments to those presidents who were in office during my active days with the CIA from 1967 to 2001.
None other than the father of our country, President George Washington (1789–1797) ran spy networks himself, and set the precedent for requesting contingency funds from Congress for that purpose. Washington also used ciphers and directed several covert action operations. Perhaps the best-known failed American spy, Nathan Hale, was in fact one of the first spies recruited and dispatched by Washington. The successful interception and decryption of Lord Cornwallis’ dispatches precipitated Washington’s final victory at Yorktown. Washington’s spy adventures were reputed to have been the inspiration for James Fenimore Cooper’s highly successful novel The Spy, which was first published in 1821.
With the precedent set, most presidents since have actively used intelligence for a variety of purposes. One of the great advocates of democracy, Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809), used covert action against the pirates of the Barbary Coast. James Madison (1809–1817) and John Tyler (1841–1845) both undertook overseas actions based on intelligence, although Madison may also be best known for one of the first intelligence failures—the failure to learn of the British approaching Washington during the War of 1812. The British thus burned the White House, giving Madison and his wife time enough only to save Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of Washington and the original draft of the Declaration of Independence.
President James K. Polk (1845–1849) also dispatched secret agents on missions, but is best remembered for his eloquent defense of the contingency fund and the right of the president to protect sources and methods from an inquisitive and demanding Congress. In Polk’s own words: “… in time of war or impending danger the situation of the country may make it necessary to employ individuals for the purpose of obtaining information or rendering other important services who could never be prevailed upon to act if they entertained the least apprehension that their names or their agency would in any contingency be divulged.” That defense remains legal precedent today for the protection of U.S. intelligence agency sources and methods.
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