Summer Series 2010: The Human Factor by “Ishmael Jones”
Orrin Deforest and David Chanoff, Slow Burn: The Rise and Bitter Fall of American Intelligence in Vietnam
David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service
which covered clandestine case officer activities, first person, in Vietnam and Latin America.
Like these two aforementioned titles, Human Factor focuses on the day-to-day challenges of being a covert case officer … the “teeth” in any intelligence organization. It is noteworthy that the Director of Central Intelligence has rarely, if ever, been one of those covert (non-State Department) officers. It’s as if your dentist was being overseen by experts in small-engine mechanics.
Ishmael recounts the minutiae of what reports he needed to write, the porous e-mail systems he had to manipulate, and the permissions he needed to gain. The timing and delays of decisions from Langley … the phrasing and terminology that was necessary to get anyone back in the US to allow any activity whatsoever. As a former stock broker, Jones was entirely comfortable with the challenges of “cold-calling” and dealing with “No” over and over again. But this wasn’t the case for his fellow trainees or for any of his superiors. At every turn, he was able to contrast his experience in the Marines (and military culture), and with Wall Street’s “make the call” ethos, with what he was experiencing as one of the most at-risk members of the Agency
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Joseph Fouche:
September 9th, 2010 at 4:52 am
We should just merge all government bureaucracies into a single Comfy Lifetime Sinecure Provision Agency.
onparkstreet:
September 9th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I can’t even finish my nice, gentle, carefully-selected-to-calm-me-down Barbara Pym novel and you’ve got all these reviews up! Aargh. Zen, you are responsible for about 90 percent of my antilibrary! I do appreciate these reviews despite my protests. Love book reviews.
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(On an unrelated note, you’ll likely find my confusion in the following SWJ comments section amusing. You’ll see why 🙂 )
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http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2010/09/summer-2010-issue-of-parameter/#c013033
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– Madhu
seydlitz89:
September 9th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Jones seems familiar, perhaps he was one of the NOC’s who are James Bamford’s contacts. Funny, but the general attitude in say 1992 was essentially the same in regards to the CIA – too broken to fix, better off handing out the gold watches and shifting whats left to State and DoD. Still, the executive is loath to give up the political advantages the Agency provides.
On the other hand, Humint has been on the ropes since Dick Cheney gutted DoD’s Humint collection expertise after the Cold War. Pretty much a whole generation was let go and seeing that the military provides the training ground for a lot of other agencies (the place where young ops learn the trade) this had a profound knock-on effect. Of course this is somewhat far down the list of Cheney’s strategic blundering and incompetence, but the pattern is obvious.
I can only add additional praise to Orrin Deforest’s book. It is the how to as far as both overt and covert Humint collection go. Also his total condemnation of the self-defeating practice of torture (it’s not about intelligence collection, it’s about domination!) is unfortunately necessary to point out again.
So, Jones seems to be plouging ground already turned, but seemingly definately worth a read.