The Human Factor. Ishmael Jones
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we arrest them, a lot of the hats tend to get left behind. We pin them up on the wall.”
Each day I went to the office in the morning to complete paperwork, then usually headed out for a lunch meeting, then back to the office, then sometimes to an evening or dinner meeting. I kept up my rigorous exercise routine, usually taking a break in the day for a workout or a run.
The word processors in the office were linked, so messages could be passed from computer to computer. Messages which were to be sent to HQs were revised as they went through the layers of management in the office, each manager making changes as the message came through. After a while, I had a large number of proposals and requests in the system still waiting for forward motion. I began to feel the same frustration I’d felt during the training course. Several layers of management, I saw, did nothing but process and edit the cables created by the OJT trainees.
As my operational proposals and requests for approval to meet foreigners built up, the system seemed to freeze up. I filled the time—and vented my frustration—by turning once more to language study, this time Arabic. As with the German I’d practiced during training, I could memorize Arabic unobtrusively by occasionally glancing at lists of words.
The cable, having passed through many layers of management, rarely read as it had going in. It was like a game of Telephone. Many “editors” seemed to make changes to suit their personal agendas. My cables often mutated into something shapeless, flaccid, and always risk-free.
DURING MY DOMESTIC ASSIGNMENT I worked with a professional group of FBI agents. The FBIʹs work was easier to measure than the Agency’s—either they caught criminals or they didn’t—and I thought this gave their organization a clearer sense of purpose. They weren’t perfect. A key FBI manager I dealt with was suing the Bureau for passing him over for a promotion—due, he believed, to his country of origin. He tended to be brittle and he was especially sensitive to any suggestion that the Agency knew the intelligence business better than he did. For the most part, however, FBI agents struck me as forthright and professional.
An immense tension existed between FBI agents and Agency officers because there was an overlap of mission—both were trying to recruit foreigners in the US. Many Agency officers incorrectly believed that FBI agents were little better than unsophisticated cops, good at catching bank robbers but inept at intel work. FBI agents, for their part, felt snubbed by Agency officers.13
At a joint conference of FBI and Agency officers I attended, the Agency speaker talked down to the FBI without realizing it. “You FBI agents don’t operate in the intelligence realm a lot, so naturally we know more about these topics that you do. You guys can’t concentrate on this stuff because you are out doing bank robbery investigations.” In protest, FBI agents began getting up and walking out of the conference. Eventually, only Agency employees remained. The speaker and the other Agency people present seemed oblivious that the FBI agents had just walked out.
Agency officers were supposed to check with the FBI before doing any operation involving the more important targets such as Soviets, Iranians, and Chinese. Anything with a possible criminal angle required coordination with the FBI. Working with the lower-level FBI agents was more effective than having our managers talk to their managers, so I got a badge that enabled me to roam the FBI building at will, and it was very useful in building relationships with my counterparts.
USING FALSE DOCUMENTS and a cover company’s address and phone numbers, I contacted a rogue state citizen doing graduate research in nuclear engineering at a local university. I expressed interest in his field. His education was sponsored and paid for by his government. I left him my phone number.
The next time we spoke, he said, “I tried to call you, but your number did not work. They say you are not working there.”
“Of course that’s my number. It must have been a temporary secretary who answered the phone when you called.”
“But she was forceful. She said she worked there a long time, in a very small office, and she knows everyone, but not an Ishmael.”
It had taken me two experiences to learn an important lesson: Never rely on the backstopped phone numbers issued by the Agency. From then on I used my own answering services.
I’d cleared all my routine Agency and FBI approvals to contact the scientist, but the local FBI office in his small university town wanted to be notified personally prior to any meetings on his turf. It was a one-man office. The other OJT trainees had dealt with this agent before and they instructed me in how to deal with him: “He never picks up his phone, so you have to go there in person to talk to him. He’s usually asleep at his desk, with the window shutters closed, so you have to knock. Knock softly so as not to startle him, but knock persistently. If he thinks you might go away, he won’t answer the door.”
Softly but persistently, I repeated to myself. There was something absurd in all this, but at least it turned out that when correct procedures were followed, the agent in question invariably granted his approval.
My scientist was a suspicious fellow, and I had little doubt that he’d been briefed by his government to expect someone like me to give him a call. CIA officers, traditionally working as part of the US Department of State, usually posed as government employees, so I hoped that my approach as a businessman would be more plausible. I planned to ask him to help me solve a technical problem. I’d say that his help might lead to my offering him a job.
I rented a car using my alias identification and credit card, then traveled to the pretty campus where the rogue state scientist studied. We’d planned to meet in the cafeteria. Within fifty paces of it I could feel the heat from the eyes of American graduate students loitering in the area. Several of these scruffy kids followed me as I entered the cafeteria. They affected a studied nonchalance; they were the worst surveillance team I’d ever encountered.
I found my target and greeted him warmly, but he had a smug look that practically sing-songed, “I know something you don’t know.” Some pouty members of his impromptu surveillance team flopped down at adjacent tables, pretending not to listen, and others lurked nearby exchanging glances and whispers.
I pulled some “litter” out of my briefcase, brochures on Acme Software Solutions products, and launched into a discussion of the products and the technical problem which, if solved, might lead to desired product improvements. I set my voice to a drone, my demeanor suggesting nothing out of the ordinary. After half an hour of this, some of our “neighbors” lost interest and drifted away.
Our meeting concluded, I headed back to my car. The surveillance team had dwindled to one long-haired fellow in a dirty tee-shirt. As slyly as possible, he wrote down the license number of my rental car.
Over the next few months, I continued to meet the scientist on campus. Each time, there were fewer graduate students lurking nearby, until finally there were none. He agreed to move meetings off-campus as we came closer and closer to an intelligence relationship.
IN THE SPIRIT OF COOPERATION, HQs asked our office to maintain better relations with other CIA offices in the city. Our chief followed these instructions with enthusiasm. He visited our colleagues in those offices and invited them to visit ours for meetings and cocktail parties. When HQs required the chief to send a list of our office’s achievements each month, half of our list dealt with these efforts to improve good fellowship.
The chief needed more than that, though. He wanted to recruit an agent. Searching our files, he found a former agent who had worked for us in the Middle East for many years. Eventually, things had heated up in the agent’s home country, revolution broke out, and the agent had been exposed as an American sympathizer. He’d fled the country with Agency assistance and had taken refuge in the US, where, for the last ten years, he’d lived a quiet life.
Our chief contacted the former agent and asked if he’d be willing to discuss events in his home country, and keep an eye out for any of its citizens visiting the US. The agent readily agreed to help. He’d missed working for the Agency, had all but been waiting by the phone for a call.
The chief handled the paperwork as though the agent were a brand-new contact.