The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From Al Qa'ida to ISIS (44 page)

Tenet and I walked into the Oval Office and greeted the president. He was already sitting in his chair next to the vice president. I handed him his book and distributed books to Dick Cheney, Andy Card, and Condi Rice. As I was handing out the books, Tenet told the president that we had lost an officer in Afghanistan overnight. Tenet told the president that I had put the reporting cable in his briefing book but that “it simply boiled down to a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The president did not say anything in response. He just started to read. It quickly became clear to me that he was not just reading the highlighted text; he was reading the entire cable. And he was not skimming; he was reading every word carefully. It took him almost twenty minutes to finish the cable. The president closed his briefing book without reading anything else in it and asked if Mike had a family. Tenet said, “Yes, Mike has a wife named Shannon, who is also an Agency officer, and three children.” The president looked at Card and said, “I want to call Shannon.” I was fighting back tears.

* * *

The prison near Mazar-e-Sharif was the location of CIA’s first post-9/11 casualty, but the CIA base near Khost, Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan, was the site of our heaviest post-9/11 casualties. There, on December 30, 2009, a suicide bomber—who had pretended to be a CIA source and who had said he might be able to pinpoint the location of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two of al Qa‘ida—detonated his vest filled with explosives, killing
seven CIA officers and severely wounding several others. It was the first time in the history of the Agency that someone who was a source—or at least pretending to be a source—had killed his CIA case officers.

At the time I was serving as the director for intelligence, the Agency’s chief analyst. My family and I had spent the Christmas holiday in Florida, returning to Washington late on Wednesday, December 30. On the morning of the thirty-first, an official government holiday, I came to work to catch up. As I often did, I stopped in Deputy Director Steve Kappes’s office on the way to my own. When I walked into his office, he and several senior officers from the operations directorate were sitting together. I immediately sensed that something was terribly wrong, as the mood in the room was deeply somber. I sat down and they told me what had happened. I was stunned—not only because of the size of the loss and the nature of the tragedy but because I knew one of the victims, base chief Jennifer Matthews, very well. We had served together for three years earlier in our careers.

Just a few days later Panetta asked the Agency’s senior leadership team to attend with him the dignified transfer of the remains at Dover Air Force Base. We were met there by the commanding officer of mortuary services. He briefed us on what would transpire. He explained that the families of the seven fallen officers were in a large room not far from where we were, adding that we would meet with them first. He said that there were nearly one hundred people in total—mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, spouses, and children. He told Panetta to say a few words to the entire room; then we should all mingle and talk to the families. He added, “Many people in your shoes worry about what you should say in a situation like this. Don’t. Realize that they are still in shock and will not remember what you say. What they will remember is that you were here.” He
finished by explaining that after about an hour with the families, we would move to the tarmac for the transfer.

While perhaps the families do not remember what he said, Panetta was masterful. To the large group and then in the small groups, he told the families about the work of the Agency at Khost and about its importance. He told them about the potential of this particular operation, going into detail about why we’d been so interested in the person who had turned out to be a suicide bomber.

In similar circumstances since then, I have learned that the families of fallen officers want desperately to know three things. They want to know that the work of their loved one was important to the security of the nation. They want to know that their loved one was good at that work, that he or she made a difference. And they want to know that their coworkers respected and loved him or her. When I became deputy and then acting director, I would pore over the personnel files of the fallen, so I could give the families specific examples of these three simple, yet powerful, points.

The dignified transfer involved the CIA leadership team standing on the flight line as seven metal caskets were carried, one at a time, from the back of a C-17 to vehicles that would transport the caskets to the base mortuary. A single transfer would begin with a prayer by a chaplain over the casket in the back of the C-17 and the saluting of the flag-draped casket by the white-gloved eight-man transfer team. As the transfer team lifted the casket and started down the ramp of the C-17, the commanding officer would call, “Present arms.” This was the order to render honors—military officers going to the salute position, civilians putting their right hand over their heart. The transfer team would then carry the casket the hundred feet or so to the transfer vehicle. Each transfer took about ten minutes; the entire event took well over an hour. It was bitterly
cold—with a temperature just below freezing and the winter wind gusting.

Over the next several weeks, I attended with Panetta the funerals and memorial services of our officers. Each was special but two have been seared in my memory. The first, a funeral for Harold Brown, was in a small town outside Boston. The funeral mass was beautiful, but what occurred after the mass was extraordinary. As we left the church for the cemetery, I saw a family of five—a mother, a father, and three children—standing on their front porch, at attention, with their hands over their hearts. A few blocks more brought additional people standing in honor—in driveways, at intersections, and along the road. Families, scout troops, civic groups, and lone individuals. The crowds grew as we got closer to the cemetery. In the thirty-minute ride, there were hundreds—perhaps a thousand—Americans standing to honor our officer. They stood in fifteen-degree weather, holding American flags of differing sizes, many with hands on their hearts, some with signs that simply read “Thank you for keeping us safe.” Panetta said, “I wish every member of Congress could see this.” I was thinking, “I wish every American could see this.”

The same day, a few hours later, I attended a memorial service in my hometown of Akron, Ohio, for another of our fallen colleagues. This officer, Scott Roberson, had left behind a wife and an unborn daughter, whom Scott and his wife had already decided to name Piper. One of the eulogies was given by one of Scott’s close friends, a military officer. At the end of this eulogy, this military officer said that he had a vision of the future. He said that he saw a young woman, her husband, and her children standing in front of the Memorial Wall in our lobby at CIA. He said that this young woman had her hand on one of the black stars on our Memorial Wall as she told her family about Scott, about his life, and about his
service to his country—his contribution to freedom. He said that in his vision, this young woman—named Piper by her parents—was as proud as she could be of the father she had never met.

* * *

One of my first overseas trips as deputy director was to Afghanistan, where the Agency had many officers deployed. I insisted on visiting the site of the attack at Khost. I saw the scars that were still visible from that awful day. In particular I saw small holes in the corrugated roof over a patio—and even one in a steal I beam—made by the ball bearings that had burst with extreme force from the suicide vest. And I saw the plaque that Director Panetta had dedicated a few months before. The plaque contains a few verses from Isaiah chapter eight: “And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here am I. Send me.’ ”

* * *

I met the vast majority of the families of the thirty-one officers who have perished in the line of duty post-9/11. And, through the emotion and the tears, I would always tell them the same thing—that the Agency would forever be there for them and that if they had a problem, they needed only to pick up the phone and call me. A few days after I decided to retire, I awoke in the middle of the night with the thought “Who is going to take care of these families going forward, who is going to live up to the commitment that I made, who is going to be on the other end of the phone?” I reached for the pen and pad of paper on my nightstand and simply jotted down, “Transfer responsibility for the families to the new leadership team.” This note became two actions for me as my days at the Agency wound down. First, I wrote letters to the families to whom I had made the commitment and I told them that my departure would have no
impact on my commitment to them. “The Agency will always be here for you,” I wrote.

At the very end of the speech I gave at my retirement ceremony on the evening of my last day on the job, I challenged the senior leadership team. I told it about the meetings that I’d had with the families of many of the fallen, about the commitment that I had made to them, and about the letter I had just sent. I explained that I was passing on to the members of that team the responsibility to keep that commitment. I concluded by reading aloud the names of the officers and the locations where they’d fallen in the line of duty. You could have heard a pin drop. I have no doubt that my colleagues are meeting the challenge.

* * *

The CIA Officers Memorial Foundation is an organization that assists the families of Agency officers who die while on active duty. The Foundation was created in the immediate aftermath of the death of Mike Spann. Its primary mission is to fund the educational expenses of the children and some of the spouses of such officers. In addition it provides financial assistance to families immediately after a tragic loss. Nearly eighty students have benefited from scholarship grants amounting to more than $3.1 million since the program’s inception. The Foundation has identified over one hundred people who, over the next seventeen years or so, will be eligible to apply for scholarships and related assistance. Among those who have already benefited from the Foundation’s generosity is Alison Spann, Mike Spann’s oldest daughter, who received her bachelor’s degree from Pepperdine University in 2014.

A share of my proceeds from this book will be donated to the CIA Officers Memorial Foundation. For more information visit http://www.ciamemorialfoundation.org/.

* * *

I would like to close by telling the story of how I came up with the title for this book. When I retired, many different offices in CIA gave me gifts—small, medium, and large plaques and other mementos. For the last month or so of my service as deputy director, I was taking home three or four such gifts every night. I placed them in a closet in our attic, vowing to appreciate them fully at some point. One such plaque came from the Counterterrorism Center, the organization within CIA that I had worked most closely with during my time as deputy director and acting director, and a group of people I deeply admired and respected. No one was more committed to their mission than the women and men of CTC. But even that plaque went into the closet.

Two years earlier, during the daily meeting with my personal staff, one of my executive assistants had said that a nine-year-old boy with a complex genetic disease had a dream of becoming a CIA officer. Some of the people in our Office of Security had heard about it and wanted to make his dream come true—at least for a day. They had invited him—along with his parents—to visit the Agency and were hoping I would spend a few minutes with him. “Absolutely,” I told the EA. I did not know it at the time, but this young boy and his family would become close friends of my family and me.

Brandon has mitochondrial disease. Mitochondria are components of every cell in the body, except red blood cells, and they are responsible for producing 90 percent of the energy in the body. In those who suffer from the disease, the mitochondria do not function properly, which robs the body of the energy it needs to sustain life and maintain growth. Depending on the particular mitochondria that are malfunctioning, symptoms of the disease can include muscle weakness and pain, gastrointestinal disorders, swallowing
difficulties, poor growth, developmental delays, susceptibility to infection, heart disease, liver disease, and many others.

Brandon has long suffered from some of these symptoms, but the disease has not diminished his amazing spirit. Nor had it dampened his desire to visit the Agency and “catch bad guys,” a request that we gladly granted. Brandon spent hours at the Agency. Analysts from the Counterterrorism Center put together mock intelligence reports that Brandon pieced together to uncover a terrorist plot, identify the terrorists, and pinpoint their location. Then our security officers suited up Brandon in fatigues (to size) and a battle helmet and led him on a raid that resulted in the capture of the “terrorists.” His final responsibility was to come to the deputy director’s office to brief me on what he had accomplished. I met him at the door to my office and he introduced himself with a strong handshake, looking me straight in the eyes. I led him to the sofa in my office and offered him some of the fresh chocolate chip cookies that the director’s dining room had prepared for the visit. Brandon, ignoring the cookies, said, “Sir, I am here to brief you.” Without touching a cookie, he proceeded to walk me through the analysis, the preparation for the operation, and the operation itself. I told Brandon that his was one of the best briefings ever in my office, and I meant it. I was immensely proud of what my officers had done to make Brandon’s visit to the Agency so memorable for him.

Brandon struck me immediately as special. He was whip-smart, inquisitive, kind, and full of love. I certainly fell in love with him. Since his initial visit to my office, my family and I have spent many hours with Brandon and his family—when he was feeling well and not so well. But he is always full of life; he always has something new to show us, something new to share.