Large organizations have difficulty keeping poor performers and misfits out of their ranks. This is often true even in their most mission-critical jobs. There are numerous cases of airline pilots, even on the major airlines, showing up at the cockpit drunk. A NASA astronaut who had won the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, and the Navy Achievement Medal allegedly wore space-flight diapers to drive hundreds of miles non-stop in order to menace or kidnap or murder another astronaut who was a rival in a love triangle.
The CIA has not been exempt from such difficulties. Here is an excerpt from a report by the agency’s Inspector General concerning the case of the Soviet mole Aldrich Ames, who steadily rose through the ranks of the mission-critical Soviet division despite some significant performance issues:
[W]e have uncovered a vast quantity of information about Ames’s professional sloppiness, his failure to file accountings, contact reports and requests for foreign travel on time or at all. We have found that Ames was oblivious to issues of personal security both professionally–he left classified files on a subway train–and in his espionage–he carried incriminating documents and large amounts of cash in his airline luggage; he carried classified documents out of CIA facilities in shopping bags; and he openly walked into the Soviet embassy in the United States and a Soviet compound in Rome. We have noted that Ames’s abuse of alcohol, while not constant throughout his career, was chronic and interfered with his judgment and the performance of his duties. . . . By and large his professional weaknesses were observed by Ames’s colleagues and supervisors and were tolerated by many who did not consider them highly unusual for Directorate of Operations officers on the “not going anywhere” promotion track.
Michael Scheuer was also for a time in charge of a mission-critical assignment in the CIA, running the group in charge of countering Osama bin Laden. I have written about his sub-par performance, most recently in The CIA Examines Itself.
How bad apples make their way through organizations large and small is a question that has long fascinated me. And Michael Scheuer is a particularly fascinating case, especially because he responds to my questions, even while seldom if ever answering them.
There are many dots about his life and career that I still intend to connect. And in the interests of piecing together the story, and using the Internet as a form of collaborative journalism, I have been wondering about some basic facts regarding his biography. I hope readers, if they have information, will assist me.
Some questions for today:
1. Wikipedia states that Scheuer resigned from the CIA in 2004 after a 22-year career. Is Wikipedia accurate on this point? If accurate, it would mean that Scheuer began his career in the agency in 1982.
2. But Scheuer earned a Ph.D. degree from the University of Manitoba in May 1986. Did he accomplish this while associated with the CIA? Was he stationed at Langley during this period, or was he based in that hotbed of international intrigue, Winnipeg, Canada?
3. Why did Scheuer choose to attend the University of Manitoba? That, too, seems interesting, and I admit that so far I’m stumped.
I have many more questions, but those are enough unconnected dots for today. If you can help me connect them, write to letters@commentarymagazine.com and put Michael Scheuer Watch in the subject line. Confidentiality is guaranteed. (But see my Why Journalists Are Not Above the Law to understand exactly how far I would go in protecting your identity.)
A complete guide to other items in this Michael Scheuer Watch series can be found here.
I am struck this past year by the Democrats’ and Democratic voters’ repudiation of direct experience as a major qualification for running the highest levels of US government.
Starting with Obama himself, an undistinguished junior senator, to Al Franken, a comedian and satirist, to Caroline Kennedy, a socialite with a very special last name, and now Panetta, there seems to be no bottom to whom the Democrats will pick for running things.
Goss had been a CIA agent before running for Congress. It was tragic that Bush did not support him when the CIA bureaucracy rebelled. Half of Bush’s problems in office came from the incompetent and hostile CIA. Obama should have less trouble with CIA since they share world views.
“It is one thing to bring in an outsider who may not be part of the CIA culture; it is quite another to bring in someone with virtually no substantive expertise”
You know what, The leadership is largely irrelevant. A great intelligence organization is one that has great agents,on the ground floor,gathering the best info from the best sources. The best management of that process allows its “stars” to do their job. Very often however, the bosses don’t like what their agents tell them,sound familiar,all organizations have these problems with reality that is not “official” reality. By the way, the best agents,don’t need waterboarding to get the info. they use more powerful tools. Mata Hari had her targets talking their heads off.
“The last pol who tried to shake up the CIA was Porter Goss, who lasted less than a year. At least he actually had some core experience–specifically as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.”
Porter had more than that–he was a former intelligence officer himself, the first person from the Directorate of Operations ever elected to Congress. He was an insiders’ insider–but he refused to play the game of protecting the Agency’s rice bowl. Most efforts at ‘intelligence reform” involve moving people laterally, shuffling the boxes on the wiring diagram, setting up new committees and working groups to coordinate things, and the like. Of substance, there is very little, as a rule.
Goss wanted to change that, and above all he wanted to change the risk-averse, empire-building mentality that afflicts Headquarters. He wanted more emphasis on human intelligence, more use of non-official cover, and in effect, a gradual shift of power within the Agency from the analysis side to the collection side. And that upset the permanent bureaucracy in a big way–at which point, Goss was doomed as DCI.
To understand the Agency, first understand that it is merely the Department of Agriculture with a more exotic title. The people who run it on a day-to-day basis are bureaucrats, acting in accordance with Parkinson’s Laws. Their mission is entirely incidental to what they do, and what they want more than anything else is an easy, predictable career with no potholes, leading to either a relaxed or lucrative retirement twenty or thirty years down the line.
Down inside the bowels of the Agency there are good people swimming against the tide to do their jobs, but they are hindered at every turn by the very officials who are supposed to be managing the Agency and facilitating its mission. Eventually, a sort of Gresham’s Law takes hold–the good people, the professionals, get frustrated and leave, or age-out and retire. The people who remain are the careerists, incapable of doing anything other than clawing their way up the bureaucratic ladder. In short, the Agency has achieved the kind of institutional senility that gradually affects all government bureaucracies, even the most dynamic and driven (for another example, see NASA).
The only thing that can be done at this point is the de jure or de facto dismantling of the CIA, and its replacement with a new, streamlined and aggressive organization dedicated to the collection and analysis of human intelligence. All other functions should be farmed out to other agencies, so that the new human intelligence agency can focus on its core competency.
Good luck with that.
>>>Mata Hari had her targets talking their heads off.<<<
Maybe, and it would have been helpful if Mata Hari had in fact BEEN a spy, instead of the silly strumpet she was. Mata Hari, German agent extraordinaire and femme fatale, was largely a product of the French intelligence service, embarrassed at its inability to find the real German spies within France, some of whom were, in fact, members of the French military.
By the way, water boarding, like everything else, has its place. I’ve always wondered where the idea that torture (not that water boarding qualifies) doesn’t work got its start. The history of the resistance movements in Western Europe during World War II tells quite a different story.
#5,” some of whom were, in fact, members of the French military”
Who revealed them? She got results,which were an embarrassment to her “runners”.
“Who revealed them? She got results,which were an embarrassment to her “runners”.”
[Sigh] There are several recent biographies of the notorious lady. Read one of them. There is no evidence whatsoever that Margarethe Zelle ever spied for the Germans. She was a victim of French spy hysteria and CYA within the French military. Look up the name “Georges Ladoux”.
Well isn’t this what the CIA asked for by constantly working to undermine Bush? They got some faceless bureaucrat who knows next to nothing about what they actually do, but who agrees with them politically. They should be as happy as pigs in their own filth.
Hmmmm.
“She was a victim of French spy hysteria and CYA within the French military.”
The French military is pretty famous for framing people. Dreyfus anyone?
Hmmm.
“They should be as happy as pigs in their own filth.”
I doubt it. Bureaucrats and bureaucracies prefer to have insiders leading them. That way there is an … understanding already built in.
It’s pretty obvious that Panetta was put in charge of the CIA to offer wholesale slaughter to anyone or any group in the CIA that so much as puts a toe out of line. Panetta doesn’t have any interests in the CIA. No friends there. Nothing to restrain him from taking a red pen and crossing off entire departments.
IMO Panetta is there to go Tamerlane on the CIA, making mountains of skulls out of -former- CIA employees.
There is a lot of nonsense being written about CIa generally and Panetta in particular.
By way of a hypothetical comparison, suppose someone with no law enforcement experience of any kind — as a cop, a prosecutor, a judge — was appointed to head the FBI? Suppose a law graduate who had never practiced law was appointed Attorney general? For that matter, suppose we still had the ancient practice of awarding generalships in the army to political leaders and made some such a theater commander?
CIA is a highly specialized organization, no less than the FBI, Justice or the military. It demands more than just generalized competence to lead and manage it. What’s more, a great deal of the criticism of CIA as “dysfunctional”, overly bureacratic, etc. is vastly overblown by bureacratic rivals and political enemies of aggressive intelligence actions.
It’s sad to see supposed conservatives joining in attacks on the one agency of government that had the speed, competence and resourcefulness to swoop into Afganistan and send al Qaeda packing within weeks of 9/11. Would that it had been allowed to do so before 9/11.
>>>What’s more, a great deal of the criticism of CIA as “dysfunctional”, overly bureacratic, etc. is vastly overblown by bureacratic rivals and political enemies of aggressive intelligence actions.<<>>It’s sad to see supposed conservatives joining in attacks on the one agency of government that had the speed, competence and resourcefulness to swoop into Afganistan and send al Qaeda packing within weeks of 9/11. Would that it had been allowed to do so before 9/11.<<<
The Agency was there–a very small, very compartmentalized part of the Agency that was, up that point, largely despised by its bureaucratic masters, and not at all typical of the CIA’s usually dismal level of performance. And, it needs reminding, that had the Agency done its job, there would have been no need for us to send armed forces into Afghanistan in the first place.
In spite of what you may have read by Agency members flying the flag for Langley, the Agency’s paramilitary operatives were only one element of the U.S. early entry forces in Afghanistan. Also present on the ground were members of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), including Army Special Forces teams, Air Force Controller teams, Navy SEALS and several spookier units. They all worked together as a team, and each had its strengths and weaknesses. Both the military and CIA forces in Afghanistan were hampered in the early going by the risk aversion and hidebound bureaucracy of their upper echelons. Both had successes and failures. Both the military and the intelligence communities could do with a good overhaul, and we do ourselves no favors by pretending it is otherwise.
By the way, it’s usually the Assistant Director who is the career professional at the CIA. The DCI, like every other political appointee in this town, needs only to be able to fog the mirror and advance the President’s policies. If he has a clue as to what’s going on around him, it’s a bonus.