Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story (45 page)

Mary Margaret Graham, a twenty-nine-year CIA veteran who served as U.S. deputy director of national intelligence for collection from 2005 to 2008, has also described the effects of the war on how the CIA functions. “War is what it is,” she has stated, “but as we get away from the wars, we have to get back to the fundamentals, of spotting, developing, and recruiting. It will take five to ten years after we’re done in the war zones, if Vietnam is any model, but current leadership is starting to and will reemphasize the basics.”

It is undeniable that we need a clandestine service that can do more than fight shooting wars. Understanding and manipulating the political and economic environment in foreign countries, a core mission of the CIA, is also one of the most powerful ways to protect American interests abroad. And it need not always be geared toward regime change, as many wrongly believe. For example, the operations we undertook in Latin America while I was there were focused on influencing and monitoring government officials for signs that they were moving toward the Communist camp, rather than on fomenting any kind of active opposition. This type of covert action would be—and I hope is right now—very effective in places such as Egypt and Libya, where, in the aftermath of popular revolutions, a complicated political game is under way. The United States should be using covert influence and action to monitor these situations for signs of trouble as well as to subtly promote the interests of our allies and counter the efforts of our adversaries.

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Finally, there is the issue of strategy and how we actually determine what is in our best interest at large. In order to properly direct the CIA as a tool, with covert action as one of its mechanisms, the executive branch needs to be clear-eyed in determining what our country’s strategic vision should be in the face of a new set of threats. For too many years we have looked at operations from a tactical standpoint. But what will be more important is looking at how each discrete tactical operation fits into a larger campaign to achieve a specific set of goals. Policy makers will always be forced to respond to the crisis at hand, but simultaneously taking the time to pull together real strategic analysis based on how we reasonably believe the future will look is also critical to any successful foreign policy and the correlated intelligence business. This will become all the more important in the face of the localized political and economic threat environment I’ve described here.

This applies in particular, but not only, to our current struggle against Islamic extremism, which has been dominated by a tactical response to terrorist acts. It is reminiscent of my experience fighting the drug epidemic in the 1990s, when we vigorously attacked the supply side (production) of the narcotics trade and destroyed many cartels and “kingpins” throughout Latin America. Despite our best efforts and our great success against those producers, we never really stanched the flow of drugs, because it was fundamentally a demand problem. As long as there remained a high-paying demand for drugs, the market would always find entrepreneurial risk takers who would meet that demand for the right price. This cycle could be changed only by our altering narcotic consumption trends in the United States and by lessening the appeal of certain drugs. It is hard to pinpoint why, but in the late 1990s demand started to decrease, especially for cocaine. If I had to put a finger on it, I would attribute the change to the coverage of the theme by mass media, and specifically television and movies, which portrayed drug use as a less “cool” lifestyle, especially for upper- and middle-class Americans. So, essentially, it was the psychological “war of ideas” that portrayed a desperate lifestyle and made drug use a less appealing endeavor. This, rather than our kinetic efforts against the sources of the drugs, eventually changed the trend. This battle continues today, and unfortunately there has been a resurgence among the young in believing that marijuana and other drug use is “cool” again. This belief, and the subsequent increase in demand for drugs, can be deterred only by images to the contrary.

The same dynamic applies today in our fight against terrorism. We have become quite successful and adept at using drones and high-grade technology to kill and dismantle terrorist cells. But much like drug traffickers, the terrorists continue to spawn new recruits because the ideological motivation persists for engaging in violence against the West, its allies, and even other Islamic sects. In order to reverse or at least slow down this trend, we have to face up to the driving force behind Islamist terrorism, which has propelled hundreds of young people to become suicide bombers against targets they consider inimical to their belief system. We are confronting a fundamental difference in a worldview underpinned by political and economic factors, and we must meet it head-on, including using the CIA’s covert action capabilities to counter the widely held view that the West is corrupt and bent on destroying Muslims’ religious beliefs and culture.

What is required to do this is a robust multiagency program to promote moderate nonviolent leaders, opinion makers, and media outlets in the Muslim world. This should be coupled with an equally robust clandestine program directed by the CIA, drawing on its age-old covert action and influence skills. During the Cold War, the United States and its allies waged a relentless ideological war against the Communists. It was above all a “war of ideas,” where selling Western ideas and values played a central and, I would argue, decisive role in the outcome. While the economic failure of the Soviet empire and its retreat from Afghanistan contributed greatly to the Soviet Union’s collapse, what inevitably did it in was its failure to win the ideological battle between democratic, free-market economic thought and its authoritative, state-driven economic planning. People across the world were convinced—both through compelling evidence and years of concerted messaging by the West—that communism was a failed system, and they rejected it. With the subsequent loss of zeal and the inability to win over converts to its beliefs, the air was slowly but surely sucked out of the system until it collapsed under its own weight.

Ideas do matter in international struggles as much today as they have in the past. The better ideology almost always prevails, and, to be sure, we hold the stronger ideological hand in dealing with Islamic extremism. It remains my belief, having lived and traveled extensively around the world, that there is an almost universal drive toward freedom, civil liberties, and economic independence. This sentiment flies in the face of today’s extremists, who have little regard for any of these values. Their worldview is bankrupt and grossly distorts Islam, one of the world’s great religions, which at its core has deeply held tenets about the well-being of families and social structure. It is not a belief system that promotes mindless bloodshed. We should capitalize on this sentiment to the maximum extent possible and push it within the Muslim cultural and religious context using all the tools at our disposal, including covert action.

Some rightfully will point to existing U.S. government programs to promote moderation—the Department of State’s International Information and Public Diplomacy programs, Voice of America, USAID funding of foreign media, and even the Department of Defense’s strategic communications efforts—to suggest that we are already waging this battle. But even a cursory look will show that it is a very modest effort, and is neither a central element of our strategy to confront terrorism nor even an integrated effort, with different departments promoting different agendas at different times. The funding for these programs is also woefully inadequate. Our strategy instead continues to rest almost exclusively on physically destroying terrorists—a worthwhile goal, to be sure, but not one that will effectively stop the spread of Islamic extremism.

The CIA clandestine mission in this regard should be tasked to “hunt” for and provide support to individuals, groups, social mechanisms, and media outlets that can promote moderate Islamic thought much in the style we did with communism during the Cold War. In that struggle, we promoted many diverse groups who shared a common cause to block communism but who were not expected to sign up to our Bill of Rights or the “American way.” Similarly, this effort should target a big tent that incorporates diverse groups with the common goal of neutralizing radical Islam. This program should not and cannot look as though it has a U.S. stamp on it or be made to coincide completely with our belief system; this is precisely why the CIA is the right organization to implement it. It is only on the battlefield of ideas that we will truly be able to reduce the terrorist threat, in turn enhancing our national security and protecting the homeland in the long term.

While I do believe tactical operations have been overemphasized in recent years, it is actually in this very environment, where ideas are supported by subtle, under-the-radar acts, that special operations in the military and the CIA’s covert action are really going to come into their own. “While there are some structural things reinforcing a defense strategy based on conventional forces, principally the inertia of having large and highly institutionalized conventional forces,” says John Hillen, former assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, “there is a great attraction to the use of smaller, unconventional forces because of their unique capabilities, and that will likely see an increased reliance on them in the near future.” This is no less the case with the CIA and the many options it grants to policy makers. Years ago Ray Warren astutely opined that the strength of the Agency is that “it plants the flag everywhere in the world.” I’ve shared that view unwaveringly for many years, even as its popularity among policy makers has ebbed and flowed. I do believe, though, that we are seeing the beginning of a new period of ascendancy for this approach.

As we march forward in this new century, espionage and “planting our flag” globally will be as important as ever. With limited diplomatic access to places such as Iran, the CIA may provide our best hope if we want to reliably protect global stability. Our ability to run spies inside Iran and other inaccessible countries who can tell us what is happening at the policy levels of the government may end up being the cornerstone for encouraging change in those places. And encouraging change—including regime change where required—is a critical piece of the CIA mission. While regime change is not always the goal of covert action, in cases where large portions of the population are genuinely behind a movement toward revolt, support from the CIA can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, should the right conditions be met.

There is no reason to shy away from support to campaigns of regime change. In cases where regime change is a genuine goal of U.S. foreign policy, it must absolutely be in concert with efforts by indigenous forces. In most cases our activities will look more like support to allied actors, even in nondemocratic states. And if we do not like a government, the worst thing we can do is spark something we cannot finish. This has often led to disaster. We need to be strategic, use our assets as they were designed to be used, and ensure we have a feasible endgame supported by solid collection and analysis before we start stirring the hornet’s nest.

Even if the pointy end of these endeavors is covert action, we also need espionage, because we should not base our assessments on speculation. Drawing general conclusions about a regime’s plans and intentions simply isn’t good enough. We have to understand what makes the leadership tick in order to build effective international action, conduct strong American diplomacy, and create shrewd and prudent covert action plans. We also need to be able to protect our investments and assets abroad. The United States spends billions annually on counternarcotics programs in Mexico and Colombia. Without robust intelligence capabilities, how can we know whether our police and military contacts, which we rely on for information, are on the take and cooperating with our enemies? The United States needs to be able to answer these questions in order to smartly act on them.

Indeed, a smarter, leaner, proactive foreign policy with a robust covert action program will position the U.S. government best to anticipate and influence major political and security shifts and reduce any major foreign policy surprises. And this gets to the heart of where the intelligence enterprise as a whole is going in the future. After all, a smarter, leaner foreign policy rests on a smarter, leaner intelligence community and, more specifically, a robust and empowered CIA covert action strategy. To get to this point, the policy makers and the Agency will need to undertake a series of important initiatives, some of which will mark a return to its past activities, and some of which will break into new territory to keep up with advances in technology and a changing world order.

Postscript

Intelligence is about “hunting”—for information about our enemies as well as for ways to neutralize them. This has been the case in our pursuit of Kansi, Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, the Russians in Afghanistan, and kingpins such as Escobar and the Cali Cartel in Colombia, as well as Russian moles such as Ames and Hanssen within our own national security system. This account points to the CIA’s record in bringing these enemies to heel through covert action and in seeking accurate intelligence that protects our country and allows our leaders to make informed policy decisions.

Francis Thompson, the nineteenth-century poet, wrote lyrically in
The Hound of Heaven
about man’s seemingly perpetual flight from God. Thompson’s language applies to our relentless pursuit of our adversaries in this world: “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days … down the labyrinthine ways … Across the margent of the world…” But in the end, Thompson concludes that man cannot outrun his destiny. So, too, America’s enemies cannot outrun the CIA’s long reach.

People Consulted

Charles Allen, former assistant secretary for information analysis and chief of intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security