Jan
21
A Plan for Fixing the CIA
“The only organization that has a prayer of providing the necessary insight into [the multiple international threats we face today] is the CIA. We have no time to waste in returning it to fighting form.” — Charles ‘Sam’ Faddis, author and 20-year veteran as a CIA operations officer
You might remember that I wrote a post back in July 2023 titled “A Plan for Fixing the FBI”, in which I addressed current problems with the FBI and, well, ways to fix it. The expert doing that analysis was Steven Bradbury of The Heritage Foundation. This week, we look at a similar analysis and proposed solution for the Central Intelligence Agency.
The analyst this time around is the somewhat controversial Charles S. Faddis, who is a former department chief at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) and also served as a chief of station in the Middle East. Faddis spoke on the topic at Hillsdale College last October, and my primary resource in the Imprimis article adapted from that talk.
“The CIA was created after World War II with one overriding primary mission — to prevent a reoccurrence of what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We were never going to allow an enemy to surprise us on that scale again. We were never going to find ourselves blind regarding a threat of that magnitude and immediacy. We would be forewarned and forearmed.
Then came 9/11….”
Despite many years of Al Qaeda threats and actions (e.g., attack on USS Cole), we were caught flat-footed by the 9/11 attacks. It took another 10 years to find and locate Osama Bin Laden.
Then there was the recent worldwide pandemic stemming from gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.
“Biological warfare threats are real and have been considered so for many years. Collecting intelligence about both state-sponsored and terrorist biological warfare programs is one of the CIA’s top priorities. The existence of the lab from which COVID emerged was not a secret. Neither was the fact that the Chinese were working overtime to make coronaviruses more dangerous to humans.
Yet we received no warning prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. When people began to get sick here and around the world, the CIA could apparently provide no useful information regarding the origins of the disease. Even now, years later, it seems unable to tell us precisely how the pandemic began.”
The reason for these intelligence failures? Lack of motivated, skilled, properly-placed human resources.
Why was this? Faddis proposes two primary reasons: bureaucratization and politicization.
Regarding the first…
“Forget for a moment all the gadgets and technology. The core business of the CIA is recruiting spies inside target organizations, handling them securely, and producing intelligence for policymakers in Washington, D.C. At its heart espionage is a very old business. Its essence has remained unchanged for thousands of years. And it is not a science — it is an art. There is a reason intelligence officers talk about tradecraft. Espionage requires innate skills. Not everyone can do it….
CIA recruiters no longer focus on the key psychological traits critical to success in the world of spying. They look at academic degrees, existing levels of language proficiency, and increasingly at things like skin color and sexual orientation. Training has been softened and is increasingly formbook in nature. We act as if anyone can be taught to conduct espionage — as if this is no longer an arcane craft to be practiced by a select group of unique people.
We have buried operations under endless layers of middle management. Case officers in the field may spend days just trying to complete the requisite paperwork for a single asset meeting. Every moment they are sitting behind a desk is a moment they are not out meeting sources, recruiting new sources, or learning the environment around them. In Washington, the management ranks are increasingly filled with individuals who seldom travel far from Langley and have never demonstrated that they can accomplish anything on the street.”
Regarding the second…
As an example, Faddis points to the 9/11/2012 attacks on two American compounds in Benghazi, Libya, by Islamic militia group Ansar al-Sharia. (Remember the 13 Hours movie?) Throughout the attacks, Washington was consistently and accurately informed via field reports that “a large-scale assault had been launched on two American-occupied compounds by a heavily armed Islamic terrorist group.”
Afterward, however, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others in the Obama administration changed the official narrative. According to them, “a peaceful demonstration in Benghazi had simply gotten out of hand” and “this was not an act of terrorism.” Yeah, tell that to the families of the four Americans who died (including Ambassador Chris Stevens), as well as the others who feared for their lives! The Obama administration was caught in an obvious lie and came under harsh criticism.
“Enter Mike Morell, acting director of the CIA, who stepped forward to take the blame for the erroneous claims of a peaceful demonstration. Analysts at the CIA, Morell said, had written an assessment to this effect, and he had passed it on to the White House. Obama and company were blameless. The CIA had given them bad intelligence.
This was absurd on its face. CIA analysts do not review a mountain of reporting about ongoing attacks using heavy machine guns, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades and then write up an assessment saying, “We think they meant this to be peaceful.” Nor, obviously, has any evidence of such an assessment been produced.
In short, the Director of Central Intelligence had injected himself into a domestic political dispute, covering for a blatant lie concocted by the administration. He did so, presumably, because he believed that Secretary of State Clinton would become the next president and that he would be named to a senior post in her administration.”
Another example of politicization brought up by Faddis involved the since-debunked “Russia Collusion” theory leveled against Donald Trump by the Clinton campaign. While best known by the FBI codename “Crossfire Hurricane” due to the FBI’s involvement, the CIA also played a role. Faddis explains,
“American intelligence sought the involvement of a number of allied intelligence services, most notably the British. It has also [been] shown that with the passage of time, the British in particular became decreasingly enthusiastic about their involvement as it became clear to them that this activity was inappropriate and illegal.
Such interaction with close allies doesn’t happen without the involvement and assistance of the CIA. That is not the way it works. If you are in London, for instance, meeting with British intelligence and counterintelligence services, you are doing so not only with the knowledge of the chief of station in London, but also with his or her permission and assistance.
John Brennan, the CIA’s director at the time, not only had to know about Crossfire Hurricane; he also had to approve it. When Brennan stepped down as head of the CIA, he was replaced by Gina Haspel. She had been the chief of station in London throughout Crossfire Hurricane and had to have been directly involved in the interactions with the British services that were part of this plot.”
A quick rundown of Faddis’ recommendations for fixing the CIA problem follows, though they are obviously much easier said than done.
o “[W]e need to appoint someone to run it who knows the terrain. The new director will have to understand what is meant in describing espionage as an art.”
o “The new director will also need to have the full support of the president,” just as FDR had Bill Donovan’s back when he set up the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA) in 1942.
o “The new director must, from the very beginning, make crystal clear that there is no more business as usual, that the organization is returning to its roots… and that individuals who involve themselves in politics will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
o “A significant number of senior officers should be removed immediately,” whether they were complicit in the actions detailed above or stood by silently while the damage was done.
o “The records of every single person in a command position in the CIA — both at Langley and in the field — should be reviewed.” Those who made rank by playing it safe and/or currying favor with superiors “should be replaced by individuals with the brains, guts, and audacity to do what is needed.”
o “We must be interested solely in intelligence that gives us a decisive advantage over our adversaries.”
o “Recruiting must be completely revamped. [Forget ‘woke’ requirements.] We want the best, and that means those people who possess the unique blend of skills and abilities that enable them to do what everyone else considers impossible.”
o “Training must be toughened,” so that case officers are prepared to “crawl into the belly of the beast, get the intel we need, and come back alive.”
o The structure of the CIA must be flattened, simplified, and field-centric. “Anything and everything that impedes those in the field in the accomplishment of their missions must be eliminated.”
All of this needs to happen immediately upon the appointment of a new director. And, as Faddis said in the opening quote of this post, “We have no time to waste in returning [the CIA] to fighting form.”
For more of Faddis’ earlier — and perhaps less optimistic — writing about the Agency, see his book, Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA (2009).
