The no-good, down-home spookhouse blues
By the time George Tenet was sworn in as CIA director in 1997, America's pre-eminent intelligence agency was on the ropes. Tenet was the agency's fifth boss in six years. CIA veterans complained of low morale, risk aversion, and suffocating bureaucracy. Recruitment had come to a virtual halt. Fed up, many of the CIA's most experienced officers headed for the door. "The biggest mistake was the loss of our veterans," says Milt Bearden, who helped run CIA covert operations for 30 years. "There was no transference to a new generation."
It is the CIA's Directorate of Operations--its clandestine side--that garners the most public attention, running espionage and covert operations around the world. But times have changed for the spooks. The agency's longstanding MO--operating from embassies under diplomatic cover--is less effective in an age of terrorists and nuclear black marketeers. Indeed, the CIA never tried to penetrate al Qaeda with its own officers before 9/11. Nor did the agency have a single significant agent inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq after 1998.
CIA officials insist they're on the rebound, that new funding and talent are revitalizing the agency. They cite major successes, such as the prevention of terrorist attacks and the breakup of Pakistan's nuclear black market. At "the Farm," the legendary training center in Virginia, the CIA recently graduated its largest ever class of operatives.
But the agency's many critics say the clandestine service has yet to change with the times. In June, the House Intelligence Committee issued a blistering assessment of the DO, citing misallocation of resources, poor prioritization, micromanagement, and "aversion to operational risk." One key problem: The agency may simply not have the troops to do the job. Despite its popular image, the CIA has never had a large presence overseas. DO chief James Pavitt said in April that he had fewer officers abroad than the FBI had agents in its New York field office--and that number is only 1,100.
Since 9/11, the worldwide war on terrorism has stretched those officers thin, but the Iraq war is now putting them at a breaking point, say insiders. "Iraq has been a great drain on the intelligence world," says Jack Devine, a 32-year CIA veteran who ran the DO from 1993 to 1995. "The notion that you could support a military initiative in Iraq, combat worldwide terrorism, and cover other critical issues was wrong." The CIA has cycled into Iraq over 300 case officers--more than a quarter of its overseas staff, say other sources. Hit hardest, complains a veteran case officer, are the CIA's stations abroad. "They're standing empty all over the world where there's stuff to do," he says. "You're either in Iraq, going to Iraq, or just back." To help out, the agency has turned to contractors, who have long worked as key support staff in CIA operations, such as Air America pilots in the Vietnam War. Since the late 1990s, the agency has increasingly used them in operational work, including not only interrogations but surveillance of suspected terrorist hideouts and assessments of security at foreign airports, sources say.
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