Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story (32 page)

From where I sat, I had two tasks in front of me: one was to preserve the integrity of the directorate from any whimsical actions; the other was to help the new DCI become grounded in the DO. It was a balancing act. He clearly saw that I was trying to be helpful, which in fact is the responsibility of all deputy directors. He did not see as clearly my efforts to protect the directorate, but it truly was in everyone’s interest to ensure that there weren’t any missteps in the early days of his administration. Trust between the new DCI and the DDO had to be built before new initiatives could be pressed on the directorate, no matter how worthwhile. Deutch instinctively seemed to understand this, and gave me free rein during my stint as acting DDO.

Once, during this leadership transition, I was over at the Pentagon with Deutch for a briefing when a secretary came huffing and puffing into the room. “Senator Warner wants to speak with Mr. Devine immediately,” she said. Deutch was on my right, and everyone else in the room, all military flag-rank officers, were looking at me in dismay. Despite the senator’s gentlemanly manners, they were fearful of the Virginia Republican and former navy secretary who had served on both the Intelligence and the Armed Services Committees. They thought that I might have a particularly close relationship with him, and I was not eager to dispel this notion. I quickly got up and followed the secretary to the phone. The Pentagon being what it is, I must have walked for five minutes. Finally, we got back to the secretary’s office and I picked up the phone while she got the senator on the line.

A few days earlier, I had briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee on our ongoing covert actions. During my testimony, Warner, who normally was very genteel in his demeanor, started needling me. It became so obvious that eventually the majority chairman, Senator DeConcini, leaned over and whispered to Warner, “He’s a good guy. Go light.” DeConcini remembered me from the trip we had taken together to Latin America several years earlier. The microphone was still on, and it was easy to ascertain what was being said. When the hearing was over, Warner came quickly around the table to me and said, “You know, I had you confused with a person I didn’t like.”

“Senator,” I said, “no problem. Ask away.”

“Sir, what can I do for you?” I asked when Senator Warner eventually joined me on the phone in the Pentagon. In a most pleasant manner, he said, “I’m just checking to see if you’re okay.” I quickly assured him I was doing just fine and thanked him for his concern. And that was the end of the discussion. The consummate southern gentleman, he apparently was still feeling bad about having needled me during the hearing a few days before.

I deliberately took my time walking back to the meeting. It seemed as though I had been gone about a half hour by the time I sat back down in the briefing room. Nobody asked me why Warner had called, since it would have appeared to be intruding on a possibly sensitive topic, so I let it just sit in the air. I’m sure Deutch was wondering what the senator had wanted to talk to me about, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. On purpose, I didn’t comment about it and let the mystery of the call linger to my advantage, partly for fun and partly for ulterior motives.

I learned quickly that Deutch’s decisiveness could pose challenges for me. Not long after he took over as director, President Clinton and the First Lady paid a call to Langley. This was not a regular event for sure. Presidents rarely visit CIA headquarters. In fact, it seldom occurs more than once or twice in each administration. But Deutch knew the president well and pressed him to make a visit, which is always a morale boost for the troops. A full program was put together for the president and First Lady, along with several briefings on key topics, including one on terrorism that was particularly well done.

The DCI and I sat across from the president and Mrs. Clinton while the briefing was conducted. Near the end of it, the DCI slipped me a note asking about the briefer: “What grade is she?” I took a stab at it and responded, “Probably a GS-13.” His note came back saying, “Promote her.” I sent back a note, “Can’t do it. It would circumvent the process and raise hell with her peers.” One terrific briefing does not warrant a promotion at the CIA. The bar is set high for promotions, and the competition is stiff. It was an impressive and high-quality briefing, but most of us expect to see that kind of performance from our top briefers on a regular basis. It would have been a disappointment to many analysts to have one of their peers leapfrog the review process on the strength of a single briefing, no matter how good it was. It likely also would have caused problems for her with the employees in her own office, who undoubtedly would have seen the promotion as favoritism and resented her for it. Deutch didn’t like my response but did not press the matter further. I often wondered if the president saw the exchange of notes. If so, he probably assumed it was related to a serious operational or intelligence issue rather than a personnel matter.

Deutch’s strongest hour came after a European service shared with us an explosive report about an Iranian terrorist threat. When they sent the report over, Deutch made it clear that he needed to know the source before he would take the report to the White House, which the content required in this case. When informed that he was insisting they identify their agent, the service exploded. They refused to give up his name, even to the director of the CIA and the president of the United States. After Deutch was told of their adamant refusal, he picked up a secure direct line to the head of the service who had been installed at headquarters at their insistence, and made it clear that he needed the name of the source—and this wasn’t negotiable. Whatever he said to make his case, in the end they relented. This incident did not go down well in the service, and it certainly did not help Deutch’s relationship with them. However, it was an important point. When top secret intelligence required significant policy action, the director has to be willing to say, “You have to verify this and put it on the table.”

As time marched on and as I developed a closer working relationship with Deutch, I suspected he was becoming uneasy about how long I could continue to operate in an “acting” capacity before he would have to bite the bullet and cut me loose, even though, by then, he realized how well I understood the culture and the DO’s capability and appreciated the need for reform. In July 1995, after a detailed briefing on the DO strategic plan, it became clear that we had reached the Rubicon, and he asked that we chat following the briefing. I understood what was coming.

“I have to make the changes I promised,” he said.

“John, I understood that when you came in,” I responded.

Referring to my next assignment, he said, “You can have anything you want.” Then he proceeded to organize a bittersweet seventh-floor farewell event for me in an upscale Georgetown restaurant with the Agency’s top officers. Pat, loyal as ever, could not forgive Deutch for denying me the opportunity to continue running the DO. She refused to meet or even speak to him.

A few days after the farewell dinner, I started to prepare myself to depart the seventh floor and begin my new assignment, which would require me to begin spending a considerable amount of time abroad. Despite the hectic pace of the office, moments of peace crept into my last days that allowed me to reflect on my long career and the unique view I had had from the top of the Clandestine Service. This produced a mixture of emotions, which I’m sure many of my predecessors also experienced.

On the one hand, I felt an overwhelming sense of pride and good fortune in having served at the highest level of the CIA, where I had daily influence over world events, oftentimes over issues of life and death. In that context, I had looked forward every day I walked into my office to the high-stakes challenges that came from working on America’s key foreign policy issues with the best and most important players in Washington. The environment forced us all to adapt constantly to the subtlest shifts in the political and operational landscape, which made for exhilarating and intense mental gymnastics. And above all, I was honored to have been given the opportunity to lead a very special and elite group of professionals in a highly complex mission in defense of America’s national security interests.

But by the same token, as I headed out the door to serve abroad once again, I experienced an unsettling feeling of frustration. So much still needed to be done—operations half-completed, personnel problems unresolved, professional relationships underdeveloped. Under these conditions, I had a deep-seated desire to continue indefinitely in this unique job. But everyone has to move on, and so did I.

In the following days, I wrapped up my work on the seventh floor and left, savoring the joy of personal accomplishment and the sadness of unfulfilled goals.

TWELVE

Undisclosed

1995–98

Tom Polgar, the legendary Saigon station chief, told me early in my career that when I got to be a senior-level Agency official, I would have to speak up and be counted. I couldn’t imagine, as a young case officer, that I would ever run the Directorate of Operations. But I never forgot Polgar’s counsel. For that reason, I felt compelled to speak candidly to Woolsey, Deutch, and Tenet when they headed the Agency. I tried consistently to speak truth to power, although not all directors wanted that.

Deutch was among the most receptive to this candor, and whenever we met I told him what I thought. Deutch also delivered on his promise—he had given me “whatever you want.” The job I chose was a traditional Agency career capstone. It was prestigious and, in its own way, highly sensitive, the equivalent of a combat general serving a final tour at NATO. I would encounter one amazing figure after another, some of them secret intelligence officers, others conspicuously on the world stage. I would get a glimpse of what was coming in Iraq. And I continued to share my views regularly with Deutch, giving me input at the highest level of the U.S. intelligence community.

Because the Agency views information about this assignment and my activities there as potentially causing “serious damage to the national security,” I cannot write about it. So be it.

Early on, from this new perch, I’d had a chat with Fred Hitz, the Agency’s inspector general, when I bumped into him in the basement executive parking lot. I had just finishing reading a draft of his report on the Guatemala controversy involving Terry Ward and Frederick Brugger. I asked what he thought of the review. “There’s no hanging offense,” he said. Hitz was a pretty tough inspector general, but his assessment agreed with what I had thought all along. Whatever Ward and Brugger had not told Congress was inadvertent. There indeed was no hanging offense; there was no firing offense; there was not even a major disciplinary offense. Ward and Brugger seemed to be out of the woods, but that certainly did not turn out to be the last word on the incident, as I would learn soon enough.

I was taken completely by surprise when Deutch fired Ward and Brugger for failing to brief Congress on the intelligence report about Colonel Alpirez in Guatemala. Leo Hazlewood, who was then the Agency’s executive director, reportedly told a group of station chiefs that it was “a political firing,” which greatly upset the employees of the Directorate of Operations and lost the director a tremendous amount of support among the rank and file. Word of all this spread like wildfire through the building and eventually overseas. I explained all of this to Deutch. He was accompanied by his aide, Marine major general Mike Hagee, who later became the commandant of the Marine Corps. Hagee likely hadn’t expected such a frank discussion. It was an emotional issue for me because Ward, a longtime colleague, had been devoted to his work and had accumulated a very impressive track record. Even though we had never served together, he represented the best of the service and had put his career on the line in support of our country abroad.

In a voice that was probably too loud, I told Deutch that his decision to fire Terry and Fred could cost him the directorate’s support. I have always felt in the intelligence business that there should be no room for a political firing. The CIA simply cannot put people on the line, risking their lives and their families, and then have the Agency say, “It’s politically necessary: you’re fired.” It breaks the fundamental social contract between the institution and its people—namely, if you take the risks, we will stand behind you. It’s the wrong business for politically based personnel decisions. Most important, there wasn’t anything in the inspector general’s report, in my opinion, that warranted a firing, as the IG himself had remarked weeks earlier to me in the CIA garage.

To his credit, Deutch took my comments in stride—he allowed me to speak my mind. Hagee, who looked visibly pained, did not say a word; a strained disagreement between the DCI and a senior Agency officer was not what he had bargained for. We eventually moved on to other subjects and the meeting ended without rancor.

Pat, on the other hand, was still refusing to speak to Deutch for cutting short my stay as deputy director for operations and for the treatment of Terry Ward.

“I’d like to see Pat,” Deutch said that evening.

“She won’t talk to you,” I said. “I understand why you did what you did, but she still thinks you were wrong.”

Deutch sent her a gift of a small Agency clock, but Pat did not budge. Not long after that, Deutch and his wife, Pat, invited us to dinner. I told my Pat that it was her call. “It’s great that you stood up for me, but I have a job to do, so don’t you think enough is enough?” I said. In the end, she acquiesced, and the four of us went out and had an excellent dinner, including, unlike 007, “stirred but not shaken” martinis. Everyone had more than a few laughs—as I remember, at my expense.

As Clinton’s first term came to a close in 1996, Deutch had hoped to become secretary of defense. He resigned when Clinton appointed William Cohen instead, leaving Deutch out in the cold. Clinton nominated Tony Lake, his national security adviser, to take Deutch’s place. Deutch had made the White House unhappy for telling Congress that Saddam Hussein had not only survived the 1991 Gulf War but also had gained strength in the five years since. His judgment was both true and unwelcome. When Senate Republicans made it clear they would not confirm Lake, he withdrew in March 1997, and Tenet soon became Clinton’s nominee, running the Agency as acting director.