Inside the CIA (2 page)

As explained in the author’s note, once the book was well under way, William H. Webster, then director of Central Intelligence, gave approval for limited CIA cooperation—the first time the CIA has cooperated on a book about the agency. He and Joseph R. DeTrani, E. Peter Earnest, and Gwen Cohen of the CIA public affairs office are due special thanks.

A number of former employees of each CIA directorate,
of the office of the director of Central Intelligence, and of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, read portions of the manuscript. While some cannot be named, they include Herbert F. Saunders, Robert R. Simmons, Nancy D. McGregor, John B. Bellinger, Russell J. Bruemmer, and Roland Inlow. The fact that they read portions of the book does not mean that they agree with everything in it. However, by investing their time and energy, they helped to make it a richer and more accurate book.

My wife, Pamela Kessler, applied her sharp editing eye to the manuscript and improved the quality of the book. My friend Daniel M. Clements also read the manuscript and came up with insightful advice on themes and organization.

By being both friend and professional colleague, Pam Kessler did more than anyone to make this book a reality. My children, Greg V. Kessler and Rachel Kessler, now pursuing their own careers, have been a source of pride that helped sustain me.

The book would never have been written without the valuable time devoted to it by those who consented to be interviewed. While all of them cannot be named, those who were interviewed or who helped in other ways include:

John (Jay) T. Aldhizer; Moria Arsenault; John P. Austin; Dr. William Bader; William M. Baker; Howard T. Bane; Isabella Bates; Sean Beeny; David W. Belin; Bestor T. Bell; John B. Bellinger III; Abram Bergson; Igor Birman; Richard M. Bissell, Jr.; Nancy H. Blanchet; Sylvia Blanchet; Lane Bonner; Col. Russell J. Bowen; the late John A. Bross; Russell J. Bruemmer; Dino A. Brugioni; Coralie Marcus Bryant; Donald F. Burton; and Plato Cacheris.

Vincent M. Cannistraro; Leo Carl; Francis D. Carter; Douglass Cater; David Chavchavadze; Walter M. Clark; John Clarke; Dr. Ray S. Cline; Gwen Cohen; William E. Colby; George C. Constantinides; Elizabeth M. Cooke; Alexandra Costa; Robert T. Crowley; James Currie; Kenneth E. de-Graffenreid; Joseph R. DeTrani; John T. Downey; E. Peter Earnest; Walter N. Elder; Stephen Engelberg; Andrew T. Falkiewicz; David E. Faulkner; Richard G. Fecteau; Horace Z. Feldman; and Charles Fenyvesi.

Harry E. Fitzwater; Dr. Harold P. Ford; Gary E. Foster; Thomas B. Fricke; Graham E. Fuller; Robert M. Gates; Clair E. George; Cathie Gill; Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham; John K. Greaney; James W. Greenleaf; Howard W. Gutman; Samuel Halpern; Howard P. Hart; William T. Hassler; Richard Helms; Allan Bruce Hemmings; Herbert E. Hetu; William Hood; Eugene J. Horan; John B. Hotis; Dr. Lee S. Houchins; Lawrence R. Houston; Col. David L. Huxsoll; and Roland Inlow.

Adm. Bobby R. Inman; Donald F. B. Jameson; Louise R. (Lisa) Jameson; F. Peter Jessup; Paul Joyal; D. Barry Kelly; Charles M. Kerr; Richard J. Kerr; William Kucewicz; Conrad E. LaGueux; George V. Lauder; William T. Lee; Stanislav Levchenko; Arthur C. Lundahl; Douglass S. Mackall II; Henry C. Mackall; Andrew W. Marshall; John L. Martin; Linda McCarthy; Rep. Dave McCurdy; Nancy D. McGregor; John N. McMahon; Clayton E. McManaway, Jr.; and Ann Medinger.

Cord Meyer; Herbert E. Meyer; William G. Miller; Judge William H. Orrick; Phillip A. Parker; Thomas Polgar; Edward W. Proctor; Oliver (Buck) Revell; Juan Antonio Menier Rodriguez; Steven Rosefield; Henry S. Rowen; Jim Sanborn; Richard Sandza; Herbert F. Saunders; Daniel F. Sheehan; Joe Shimon; Rear Adm. Donald M. “Mac” Showers; Rep. Bud Shuster; Rep. Robert R. Simmons; Russell Jack Smith; L. Britt Snider; Bruce Solie; Mary Spaeth; Judge Stanley Sporkin; Sol Stern; Gen. Richard G. Stilwell; Philip Stoddard; Lawrence B. Sulz; John E. Taylor; and Eric Tobias.

Adm. Stansfield Turner; Robert N. Walewski; John S. Warner; Doris Webb; Lynda Jo Webster; William H. Webster; David D. Whipple; John Wiant; Donald Wortman; F. Mark Wyatt; Dr. Keith R. Yamamoto; Roger S. Young; and Norman A. Zigrossi.

They have my gratitude.

My introduction to the spy business came in the fall of 1986, when
Regardie’s,
a Washington magazine, asked me to write a piece about an espionage case that had been investigated by the FBI. Having written off and on about the FBI for twenty years, I knew a good deal about the bureau but nothing about its counterintelligence program, which entails catching spies.

To my surprise, the FBI’s Washington Metropolitan Field Office allowed me to interview the agents who had worked on the spy case and go out in their cars as they checked out Soviet establishments. From the agents, I learned firsthand how intelligence and counterintelligence really work.

The world of spies was entirely different from anything I had encountered. It was not at all like the portrait that emerges from most spy novels. While just as exotic, it was governed by rules understood by both sides. Unlike murder
or drug cases, intelligence cases were pursued by the superpowers of the world, not by punk drug dealers.

I expanded the magazine piece into
Spy vs. Spy,
a book about the FBI’s counterintelligence program. To round out the picture, I interviewed the other side—Karl Koecher, a Czech Intelligence Service officer who became a mole in the CIA. After he had been caught, he was traded for Anatoly Shcharansky.

I went on to write other spy-related books—
Moscow Station,
about the security breaches at the American embassy in Moscow;
The Spy in the Russian Club,
about a Navy spy who defected to Moscow and committed suicide there; and
Escape from the CIA,
about the 1985 defection and redefection of KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko. For that book, I again obtained the other side’s view by interviewing Yurchenko for fourteen hours in Moscow.

Each of the books touched in some way on the CIA. Most of the references painted the agency in an unfavorable light. In Yurchenko’s case, I wrote that the CIA had treated him coldly and as a prisoner; William J. Casey, then CIA director, had leaked stories about his defection to the press. In the area of counterintelligence, I wrote that James J. Angleton, the CIA’s chief spy hunter, was an amateur at catching spies and in fact, had never caught one in the U.S. Moreover, Angleton had paralyzed the agency with his paranoid theories.

Like those of most Americans, my impressions of the CIA had been formed during the 1975 and 1976 Church Committee hearings, which depicted agency officers as bumblers who were a law unto themselves, administering LSD to unknowing subjects. FBI counterintelligence agents, who were in natural competition with the agency, reinforced those impressions. The only other notion I had was that the agency was adrift—paralyzed by the devastating impact of the Church Committee hearings and weighed down by bureaucracy.

These impressions came from secondhand or thirdhand accounts. Until I was well into the book about Yurchenko, I had never spent any time with a modern-day CIA officer. That was soon to change.

When I finished the Yurchenko book, my editor, Paul D.
McCarthy, senior editor at Pocket Books, suggested as my next book
Inside the CIA.
The book would tell what the agency is all about—its failures, successes, and secrets—and depict CIA officers and what they are like.

No book like this had ever been done before. John Ranelagh’s
The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA
was an excellent and authoritative history. But it did not really tell what the CIA does and how it does it.

Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks’s 1974 book,
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence,
had attempted to give an inside view of the CIA. But because Marchetti had previously worked for the agency, the book had been censored by the CIA. It was one-sided and was now out of date.

Other books by former CIA directors and officers, while exceptionally well done, had had to go through prepublication review by the agency. As a result, they could reveal little of the CIA’s operations. Moreover, most of the books had focused on one or another of the CIA’s directorates, or on personalities within the CIA. None had portrayed in detail how the directorates work together.

At first, the idea seemed overwhelming. Each directorate was a book in itself. How would I penetrate each of these areas in an agency where practically everything is, after all, classified? But having developed CIA sources in researching the book on Yurchenko, I decided that I could do it.

After discussing the idea further with Paul McCarthy and with retired CIA officers, I decided to focus primarily on the modern agency—the CIA since the Church Committee hearings. The last detailed look at the CIA’s operations came during the Church Committee hearings. What had the agency done since 1976? At the same time, by referring to past events, the book would serve as a history of the agency.

In the spring of 1990, I set up a lunch with E. Peter Earnest, the CIA’s deputy director of public affairs. I let him know what I was doing and elicited the agency’s cooperation. While the book would be done regardless, the CIA’s help would enable me to write a more complete account.

Meanwhile, I approached people who are politically well connected in the spy world—for example, David D. Whipple,
the former CIA officer who heads the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. I wanted to give them a feel for the types of questions I would be asking. At the same time, I began interviews with other former CIA officers I had come to know while writing the Yurchenko book and the previous spy books.

Most of the interviews were with people who had been in the field—the officers who had recruited spies overseas, placed bugs in embassies, directed overhead surveillance, prepared intelligence estimates, and debugged the offices of the CIA director. Some of them gave up weeks of their time to give me a feel for the agency and what it does. I also made it a point to interview nearly all the living former directors of the CIA and deputy directors.

During this time, I kept in touch with the CIA’s public affairs office. Joseph R. DeTrani, the CIA’s new chief of public affairs, invited me to have lunch in his office on September 14, 1990. As with Peter Earnest, I went over with him what I was attempting to do: present an honest and fair picture of what the CIA does, portraying both its weaknesses and strengths. I also gave him an idea of the sorts of people I would like to interview at the agency and the issues I would be exploring.

A few weeks later, DeTrani told me that the first interview had been approved. It was to be with analysts who work on the Soviet economy. After the interview, DeTrani said that William H. Webster, the director of Central Intelligence, had personally approved CIA cooperation on the book—the first time the CIA had ever cooperated on a book about the agency.

For the next nine months, I conducted interviews at the agency, including with Webster and his deputy, Richard J. Kerr. The interviews were on such diverse subjects as the CIA’s counternarcotics effort, the President’s Daily Brief, the agency’s employment program, and the future of the agency. In addition, when they could, DeTrani and Earnest answered my questions.

I was allowed to tour the CIA building, eat lunch in one of its cafeterias, see offices where the President’s Daily Brief
is prepared, and sit in on a Career Training Program session, where potential spies are recruited to work at the agency. Meanwhile, I continued to interview recently retired CIA officers in an effort to penetrate the more sensitive areas that the agency’s public affairs office could not discuss.

Some of these former officers asked the public affairs office for guidance on whether to talk to me. They were given a favorable account of what I was doing and told to “use your judgment.” I also learned that Webster had given the goahead to former aides—and even to his wife, Lynda Webster—to submit to interviews.

Later, DeTrani would say that the decision to cooperate was based on my reputation and on the fact that the CIA knew I already had a substantial amount of knowledge of the agency anyway. Still, it took guts for Webster and DeTrani to approve even limited cooperation. Traditionally, the CIA has dealt with the media by paying someone to say “no comment” when reporters call. While the CIA under Webster had come a long way from that posture, cooperating on a book that would undoubtedly contain criticism of the CIA and give away secrets required a longer-term vision of where the public interest lies.

As with any sensitive subject, most of the interviews were conducted on a background or not-for-attribution basis. Under these ground rules, the information can be used but the source cannot be quoted. However, an account can usually be given of what the individual did or what the individual said to others. This same information may have been obtained from other parties to a conversation, or from people to whom the individuals later related the incident.

Where possible, the notes at the end of the book cite people interviewed and the date of the interview. If they help illuminate the subject and are believed by the author to be accurate, publications are also cited in the notes. Confidential interviews are not cited in the notes because such references would not shed more light on the subject or help the reader to judge the veracity of the information.

Any sensitive information was verified by at least two people. This is the same standard used generally by the media
for investigative or exclusive stories where the source cannot be disclosed. In addition, former employees of each of the CIA’s directorates, of the office of director of Central Intelligence, and of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence read portions of the manuscript for accuracy. While they could not vouch for all the information and do not necessarily agree with everything in the book, their suggested changes lent an additional layer of authenticity to the finished book.

For William H. Webster, the day began routinely enough. A heavily armed Central Intelligence Agency car equipped with three telephones picked him up at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, and drove him to the White House. Just before eight
A.M.,
he met with President Bush to present the President’s Daily Brief, a top-secret document that contains the most sensitive secrets in Washington. At eight-thirty
A.M
., Webster arrived at Langley in McLean, Virginia, taking his private elevator to his seventh-floor suite of gray-carpeted offices.