THE EXPERT WITNESS
The Trillion-Dollar Gang That Can't Spy Straight
The New York Times (10/29/98) featured an Op-ed piece by ex-Director of CIA, Robert Gates, entitled "The CIA's Little Known Resumé," in which Mr. Gates opines that the CIA's "discreet role in international negotiations" qualifies them for their new suggested role as Middle East peace keepers. He calls their new role a "realistic manifestation of the credibility that the CIA has built with both parties...in the region."
Credibility? Can anyone who's paid even scant attention to world news during the past several decades still use the word credibility and CIA in the same breath? Can this be the same CIA that was unaware that in May, 1998, India was about to detonate nuclear weapons? Can this be the same CIA that did not know that the economy of our one-time arch enemy, the USSR, was collapsing? The same CIA whose head of Soviet Counterintelligence, Aldrich Ames, was working for the KGB for 8 years? This is credibility? In DEA we used to say that "CIA's got to go to Tom Clancy movies for morale and training," meaning that they've got nothing real to be proud of. With world terrorists now having nuclear and bio weapons within their grasp, it's about time we let America in on the joke.
A recent report authored by retired Vice Admiral David E. Jeremiah-appointed by DCI George Tenet to investigate CIA's conduct in some of its known failures-indicated that the Agency "needs to be scrubbed from the top down, from its spies to its analysts to its bureaucratic barons." The report concludes that: ·The CIA has little or no human intelligence (spies). ·The agency's ability to use people instead of machines to gather intelligence, is weak. ·Spy satellites produce far too much intelligence for the allegedly overworked and under-trained intelligence analysts to handle. ·The CIA had an "underlying mind set" that India would never set off a bomb, that literally made it deaf and blind to the massive amount of intelligence to the contrary. Are these the guys we want policing the Middle East?
The Jeremiah report is apparently a lot lesser known to the American public than "the CIA's little known resumé." But let's take a closer look at the author of this op-ed piece. Robert Gates is the same man who became chief of CIA by convincing Congress that when he was second in command of the Agency, during the Iran-contra debacle, he had no idea that his boss, Tom Casey, and Claire George, his immediate subordinate were running massive and illegal operations all over the globe. Sound incredible? Well , Congress apparently believed that being second in command of the costliest spy agency on the globe and not knowing what was going on around him qualified him to be its leader. So why would he know anything now?
The Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, accepted the findings. After meeting with President Clinton, Mr. Tenet said, "In a perfect world, the CIA would never again miss an event that changes the course of history."
To which I say that the American taxpayer has a right to expect that, even in an imperfect world, the CIA should not miss every event that changes the course of history and damages our national security, i.e. the Islamic revolution; Afghanistan's use of drug money and CIA training to support international terrorism; the Bay of Pigs; Vietnam; the collapse of Russia; the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; the fact that CIA agents and officers have protected the biggest enemies of the American people in our history, from Klaus Barbie to Manuel Noriega, etc.
What is really sad is that this is an agency that-according to well-respected covert operation analysts- has cost the American people over $1 trillion dollars in the past decade. At a time when our nation is 16th in the world in education, when most hard-working Americans cannot afford health care or medical insurance, when our social security system is going bankrupt and our government is looking for new ways to tax us, we should demand a lot more than we are getting. So is it any wonder I begin each broadcast of THE EXPERT WITNESS show with this advice to those CIA agents assigned to tape-record the show: "Guys, don't forget, it's press the red button to record."
-Michael Levine, is a 25-year veteran federal agent and author of NY Times best seller "DEEP COVER" (just optioned for movie), "THE BIG WHITE LIE" (the fact-based thriller now in paperback), and "THE TRIANGLE OF DEATH." THE EXPERT WITNESS RADIO SHOW ,WBAI, New York City (99.5 FM-Tuesdays 7-8pm), KPFK Los Angeles (90.7 FM), Expert53@aol.co 212-209-2800 (voice mail #2970), http://www.radio4all.org/