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America's Unhappy Spies
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Morale at the CIA is approaching 30-year lows, six insiders tell The Daily Beast’s Gerald Posner, as spies perceive that Barack Obama and Director Leon Panetta are hanging them out to dry.
Morale at the CIA is the lowest it’s been since the Jimmy Carter administration three decades ago, according to six current and former intelligence officials. These insiders paint a picture of an agency that, after eight years of a broad Bush-era mandate to take the covert lead in the war against terror, now collectively feels the Obama administration unfairly puts them under fire.
“We’ve gone from chasing the bad guys,” says one retired case officer, “to being portrayed as the bad guys ourselves.”
The officials, who all spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity due to fears of retribution and the continuing criminal investigation into the destruction of 92 al Qaeda interrogation videotapes, spent an average of 20 years at the Agency, with two having served during the Carter administration. All had expected that the election of a Democratic president would mean less free rein than the virtually unprecedented tenure under Bush. But a series of administration actions have amplified the early fears, not just sending the message that the good times are over, but making many in Langley feel the Agency has become a political football and that some senior officials might pay a criminal cost for the hard interrogation techniques authorized under Bush.
“We’ve gone from chasing the bad guys,” says one retired case officer, “to being portrayed as the bad guys ourselves. As other countries watch the government eviscerate its intelligence service, they just think we are crazy.”
My sources stressed the parallels to the Carter administration. After Carter’s election in 1976, he selected Admiral Stansfield Turner as the CIA chief, someone who shared the president’s skeptical view of the spy service. Turner conceded later years that he had been consistently outmaneuvered by an entrenched bureaucracy that treats hostile outsiders like a foreign enemy.
President Obama’s choice to head the CIA, Leon Panetta, a former Clinton White House chief of staff and director of the Management and Budget Office, is similarly suspect, according to those interviewed, both for his lack of experience and previous public criticism of the CIA. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein, the incoming chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, initially questioned Panetta’s qualifications when it turned out she was not briefed by the president on the selection and instead learned about it through news reports. "My position has consistently been,” said Feinstein, “that I believe the Agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."
The six officials interviewed say uniformly there was hope early on when Obama had retained Stephen Kappes as the Agency's second-ranking official. Kappes had direct oversight of the Agency's network of secret prisons when he held, in succession, the top two jobs at the covert section from 2002 to 2004. But Panetta has not relied on Kappes and has sought his counsel infrequently. As the CIA has been pummeled by congressional attacks—especially House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s pointed charges that the Agency lied repeatedly to her and to Congress over what it was doing after the 9/11 attacks—insiders are upset that Panetta has not rushed to defend them.
The most-cited source of low morale: possible criminal prosecution of those involved in interrogating terror suspects. President Obama visited the Langley headquarters on April 20 and gave a pep talk to the Agency’s employees, promising that his administration wanted to put the issue of the Bush interrogation practices behind it, and no one at the CIA would be held accountable for following legal guidelines approved by the Justice Department under the Bush administration.
“Almost no one believed him when he said that,” says one officer. “And the next day proved he wasn’t to be trusted.”
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Gerald Posner is The Daily Beast's Chief Investigative Reporter. He's the award-winning author of 10 investigative nonfiction bestsellers, ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism. His latest book, Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth and Power—A Dispatch from the Beach, was published in October. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, the author Trisha Posner.
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Gerald Posner is The Daily Beast's Chief Investigative Reporter. He's the award-winning author of 10 investigative nonfiction bestsellers, ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism. His latest book, Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth and Power—A Dispatch from the Beach, was published in October. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, the author Trisha Posner.
Mr Panetta is a terrible choice. He must resign, sorry Hillary.
What a "duh" article this is. Of course the CIA has a low morale. Under the flag of liberalism, the CIA are the bad guys who are a threat to America. Obama can't protect them because he is under constant threat from the liberal left of his party like Pelosi and Reid. Pelosi accused the CIA of lying and can't prove it. The CIA follows orders under Cheney and now the liberals want to investigate Cheney as well. The CIA is in a no win situation with the political climate right now and the climate under former President Bush.
Problem is a little different:
Laws were broken under the previous administration. Cheney has practically been bragging about what he's done on national television for months. The left says that these laws should be investigated and enforced. Rightly so in my opinion.
Obama is in a no-win situation. On one hand, he can support the left and follow the law. This will lead directly to Cheney. Washington will spend the next three years doing nothing but fighting over the past. This will almost guarantee that the Democrats get pounded in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Or he can continue to push back on the left. This means that the laws never get enforced.
So far he's been trying to slow down investigations. But the reality is that it's out of his hands. This is the Attorney General's call. All Obama can do is sit and watch.
Cheney is the most dangerous person for Obama's agenda in America. He's going to force congress to investigate him. The Republicans are going to tie the investigations to Obama. Nothing else will get done.
What a mess.
Obama is in a no-win situation
No. Obama is a President and like all of them should be able to deal with the past. What else is his job otherwise?
Ortega,
His job is to fulfill his promises made to Americans, which happens through the legislation of new laws that must be approved through congress. Right now, that imperative is health care reform.
You appear to live under a rock, ignorant of political realities. Every president is most powerful their first year in office, and it is critical that any new president use that period wisely to push their most ambitious reforms through congress. That is a very short period of time that you have to hold every congressman's hand and push, cajole, reward, threaten, and bully pulpit the majority to agree on a final damn bill that he can sign into law.There's plenty of time left to deal with the past, but a very narrow window of opportunity for such monumental reform such as healthcare. Your assumption that he 'should' be able to deal with the past does not mean that he can do so without it affecting his essential year one agenda.
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Which laws were broken? Enlighten us, please?
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I don't recall any sympathy for members of our military serving as Abu Gharib guards or hearing any concerns about 'low morale' when those soldiers were court-martialed for committing acts that we now know were likely ordered by the highest levels of government. Anybody reviewing that evidence in light of new revelations?
Good Grief !
The CIA is collectively whining ? Off to bed without dinner !
I worked overseas fo 15 years, andin places that allowed me know know a lot more about what's going on "out there" than many people in Washington--in either party. I am a liberal and social democrat, and support most of Obama's policies more than those the Republicans.
We have come to the end of the line for Republican "free market" policies, both at home and abroad, and many people like me figured this out quite a while ago. I organized for Obama abroad, and my colleagues supported him by about 10-to-1. I emphatically do not want to see the Republicans restored to power since they have led the United States to disaster, the worst disaster since the Great Depression.
That said, I also see no alternative but to continue the war against the Islamic Nazis, since they really do want to attack us again. I KNOW this is true, just as I KNOW they are trying to get their hands on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and are now trying to recruit Americans to carry out these attacks. They will keep trying, which is why we don't dare let them have bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, etc. If they cannot be defeated in these places, then they have to be contained there.
I think we have to fight the war in a smarter way, with more emphasis on soft power--social, political and economic development--as opposed to using only the military and intelligence agencies. I do not mind that Obama has issued clear guidelines about the need to follow the laws of war, the Geneva and Hague Conventions. I am glad that the Cowboy Era is over in that respect, even though I agreed with certain things that Bush-Cheney did in Central Asia, the Middle East and other areas.
To me, the main question revolves around the unchecked and uncontrolled powers of the presidentsn in foreign affairs, especially in wartime.
Seymour Hersh should have written this article. though Posner is aware of the "Forrest of mirrors" that is the cia there are hugh gray areas unattended in his article.
he fails to mention the great purge in the co. by dick cheney of what was considered to be leftist or democratic loyalist. he leaves out that cheney supplanted these leftist with people he and goss felt would stove pipe information that credited his operation "montage" or anything else he considered valuable.
he also fails to mention that to this day there are cheney loyalist still in key positions within the company, and that "Operation Wrath of God," wasn't deconstructed but transferred to army intelligence under donald rumsfeld so as to avoid mentioning it to congress. also by all accounts the operation was a failure, having targeted the wrong people from its outset.
the past eight years at the cia deserves a comprehensive revisit by an author willing to truly investigate what occurred. by virtue of this article i question posner's motives. it deservers someone willing to unravel its cordian events not unlike those inspired by james jesus angleton's of pain and torture without benefit of a moral glade where to operatives or anyone could point for value of purpose.
Poor babies. It's not like they got balmed for missing the intelegence that Iraq had no weapons of mass destrcution and left out to dry by the Bush White House. It's not like one of their own was "outed" by the BUsh adminstration. I could go on about all that Cheney and Bush did to destroy that agency. They're like a disfucntional family that's being abused by the republicans and they like it because its one of their own. But then someone comes in to clean up the mess and they7 cry about being mistreated. It's a very sick culture with very sick people within it.
Let us wait a little for the dust to settle. It seems to me that over the last few years reporters found more than six insiders telling them the perverse effect the Bush administration policies had on the agency.
There are always folks outraged by any position you take in the clandestine services. Unfortunately, Pannetta's handling of these issues has been so very Suspect all the spies that get results are going into the bunker for the next 4-8 years.
They now view Panetta as an invading disease to be avoided at all costs. The whole CIA hit squad story is a perfect example of it.
What a debacle. When the next big attack happens, look for Obama to blame it on the culture of Hate that we have engendered around the world, nevermind that these AL Qaida attacks have been happening since the early 90's, and will continue due to the radical factions of the Islamic faith.
The question that Obanma's hollow rhetoric avoids is thus: Is there ever a situation where tens or hundreds of innocent American lives warrant hard interrogations of terrorist leaders? In other words, is his version of Morality worth your sons or daughter sacrificing their life? I'd love to hear him honestly answer that without his teleprompter.
Very well said, akcita!
The question becomes, can you trust them [CIA] any more? If thery are willing to violate the law, lie to congress, you have to ask yourself, who do they answer to anymore? Until they reestabilsh the trust they should be concerned.
The CIA wants to stand up to Obama to boost morale. They should have stood up to Cheney when he asked them to break the law. Torture should belong to the Natzi party not the CIA. Some very serious lines were crossed here. Destroying those torture tapes is clearly criminal at the very least. Where's the remorse?
What a f***ing joke.
The CIA leaked and politicized intelligence to "get" Bush/Cheney.
They wanted Obama.
They got him.
They're worthless anyway.
I agree with everything but the last line of your post.
I trust the CIA considerably more than I trust Congress, the President, the Fed, the Treasury, any alphabet agencies, etc.
This is only an issue because Panetta is trying to take the heat off of Pelosi for getting caught in a lie.
How unfair it is to hold government officials accountable for breaking the law. They thought that being CIA members insulated them from all criminal liability! Don't people know that the process of investigating and charging criminals is a witch hunt? We the People understand that, while any and all crimes we commit will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, CIA officials are above the law because, after all, they meant well!
Hello? Could anyone please tell me when the CIA became immune from the laws the rest of us peons have to follow? It (the article) seems to reverberate with the attitude of "...we can't even do illegal shit now and they want to bust us...." No matter who does the bad stuff, they should be held responsible for it. The agency answers to the sitting president, not themselves or to the staffers with 20 in. If they don't like it, get out. The days of doing what they want, when they want, to who they want is over, out with the crooked bastard Bushes and hopefully, with the Bushes, answering to any illegal acts in court. Lying to Congress is bad, wrong, and if they don't get it, they need to be taught.
Ha, you act as if Congress really WANTS to hear the really dirty stuff. Why do you think there were no verifiable records of who briefed whom on what. It's called Plausible Deniability.
They don't tell them every detail, but they do give them a high-level discussion of the critical issues.
Think of Mission Impossible with the CIA getting the recorded statement that if they are compromised Nancy will "Deny all knowledge..."
Is there a sky in your world?
A world where terrorists are given constitutional rights and chocolate chip cookies (the chicken-shit FBI world).
A world where the Democrat (demcong) party hates America and loves it's enemies.
Where is that world?
Inside the beltway, Cambridge, Berkeley, NYC.....
Of course morale at the CIA is low. Because the CIA is about defending the country. And Democrats suck at national defense.
This is not a myth. This is not a stereotype. This is the truth since 1968.
Actually, 1960. Kennedy's interference with the Bay of Pigs, and escalation of Vietnam sucked as well.
Panetta did the right thing in standing up to Pelosi a few months back when she called the CIA "liars".
Now he's likely been chastised by the president because he's wussing out and backing down.
Why does the country have to relearn what they already knew-- you can't trust Democrats to defend the nation.
Good point, the Republicans haven't let anyone through their impenetrable picket line of national security godliness! It would be some serious egg on their face if the Repubs allowed foreign terrorists to, say, destroy a pair of skyscrapers in New York. But that, of course, never happened, or if it did happen, it was somehow Bill Clinton's fault.
I just finished reading "A Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Wiener, which made a few points I will reiterate here. http://tinyurl.com/mjy9mg
1) The Central Intelligence Agency's mandate is to collect intelligence, but it has largely focused on covert operations throughout it's history.
2) While Bush/Cheney did expand their authority to use "enhanced interrogation techniques", the Bush admin's relationships w/ the CIA was hardly rosy. According to the Weiner, Bush et. al. mistrusted the agency they saw as inept. Bush Sr., a CIA man himself, may have been the only US Pres to have a good relationship w/ the agency.
3) Morale is also low b/c of internal reports (some which have been recently declassified), speaking to the agency's inability to perform its core duties.
this kind of stuff is inevitable because public opinion is split on how the cia should operate. it's unfortunate because the world is a dangerous place and it would be valuable to have a vigorous cia. but therein is the dilemma, a strong secretive agency is scary if you don't trust it. we have a problem.
Panetta is really in a terrible position. The Democratic Party is in a CYA mode on anything remotely aggressive against terrorism, and he will also be held accountable for any Intelligence failure. It must truly suck at Langley these days.
The way I see it, he can either try to keep Faith with his Agency, and enable as best he can the spies in doing their job, OR he can use his position to keep a steady flow of CIA activities from the Bush era on the headlines to keep the Liberal dems happy.
I think he's screwed, and it seems he's taking the latter approach.
The CIA was misused and abused during the Bush/Cheney maladministration. Instances of CIA coercion by Cheney are too numerous to count. And when the CIA did produce intelligence about Iraq not having WMDs, intelligence that Bush/Cheney didn't want to hear, they ignored it, and made up lies.
To say that Bush/Cheney or the Republicans "defended the country," is asinine. They deviated from the real enemy of al Qaeda in Afghanistan to chase Bush's delusions of grandeur in Iraq.
The Republican Party and their poor choices of incompetent men for high office, have left America more vulnerable to terrorism - not less.
Speaking of delusional.....
"And the next day proved he [the president] wasn't to be trusted." But we can certainly trust an anonymous CIA operative, right?
These guys need to go waterboard each other.
"We've gone from chasing the bad guys to chasing Cheney" would be a better way to put it.
I say those in the CIA that are griping about low morale or have it had just better grow up. You signed the dotted line and if you don't like it, resign. Get another job someplace else if you aren't happy.
akcita, I think you make good points. But, if Panetta shows some spine, does his job, defends his people and the agency, he can simply move forward and do the right thing.
What the hell is Obama going to do, fire him? If he's canned for making the CIA effective there will be a firestorm. And he'll be a hero-- set for life. But, maybe won't get to hang out with Rahm Emanuel and Pelosi.
So what. It's his country or his party. Panetta needs to choose.
It is a shame that people who have spent their lives keeping us safe now fear the government they gave their hearts to. Pelosi should be ashamed and so should those who denigrate the clandestine services. Whether we like it or not the CIA and their methods keep us safe from some very evil people who have no morals and no problem with slicing off the heads of innocents. Those who have problems with the CIA need to grow up and recognize the world for what it is. we do not live in a fairy tale and the Bill of Rights does not mean we need to slit our own throats.
I think the CIA has mostly endangered America and its interests by its meddling, by its covert operations, and by its sheer incompetence over the last several decades. I hope Panetta cleans house, and that the congress has the courage to trim the CIA's sails. It is time for this un-american agency to be hung out to dry for sure.
If you didn't want to be portrayed as the bad guys, maybe you shouldn't have tortured a hundred people to death. Actually, maybe you shouldn't have broken the Convention against Torture at all. Or forged the Habbush letter. And that thing? In Beirut? In 1985? And that thing, in Iran? In 1953?
If you people want to have a sterling reputation, you've got a funny way of earning it.
Jeez, can't we at least have quality yellow journalism? First we get "[Obama]promising that his administration wanted to put the issue of the Bush interrogation practices behind it, and no one at the CIA would be held accountable for following legal guidelines approved by the Justice Department under the Bush administration." Then we have, "no one believed him when he said that," says one officer. "And the next day proved he wasn't to be trusted." Not quite Q.E.D. Putting the words in the anonymous officer's mouth doesn't get us past the fact that no one HAS been prosecuted and whatever Obama may have wanted, the demand for exposure was overwhelming. The article, taken as a whole, is a blatant suck-piece designed to allow the author to cozy up to the embattled spies. Coming soon: Inside the CIA by Posner. Maybe it'll help to pay for a decent cosmetic surgeon.
"Almost
The CIA has failed America more often than not. Sometimes it hasn't been their fault, but the fault of willful miscreants like Bush and Cheney. But on many occasions the CIA has misled the Congress and even the president. Allen Dulles lied to Ike and George Tenant lied to Clinton and Bush.
The Bill of Rights is not to be trifled with. Our freedoms are supposed to be the very thing the U.S. government must protect, even if it means protecting those rights from rogue CIA agents or their rightwing dupes.
Not to go too far with the hyperbole here, but my first thought was that the Nazi torturers probably had bad morale too at the end of WWII too. Torture is illegal. It was illegal when the Nazis did it, and is illegal when we do it.
Torture scares the hell out of me - see Europe during the time of the withcrazeInquisition, life under the Khmer Rouge or Nazis, etc. It's hard to have a good society when torture is acceptable.
There has to be consequences for the torturer and the architects of torture. The torturers did not make me safer - they made it that much more likely that me or people like me will be tortured. And, it looks like they used the resulting false confessions they elicited to start an illegal war that is bankrupting this nation morally and financially.
I should hope that morale is low and that they think twice before breaking the law again or keep breaking the law. We're not talking petty crime here - we are talking crime that is threatening to destroy the American way of life and our credibility.
Amen.
When an argument is "hey, if you investigate us we won't use torture to manufacture evidence for the next Iraq war and we won't disappear children and torture guys with similar names to the bad guys" then you have to wonder which side of the argument they are trying to win.
The CIA agents should not feel they are being criticized...............The POLICY MAKERS involved in the past 8 years are being criticized.
If people are stupid not to understand the above fact..........the INTELLIGENT AGENTS should not .
I am one who believe secrecy is necessary for the success of some plans..................so do not pay attention to those who complain about secrecy.
WHAT IS BAD IS STUPID POLCIES which RUIN AMERICA' s PRESTIGE...........
so Dear CIA agents keep up the good work .....do not feel depressed.............the criticism is NOT AIMED AT YOU..........but the policy makers
Mr POSNER is absolutely wrong and is fanning the flames.
listen to me not to him
Yes, people who have worked overseas understand this all very well, probably more than John Q. Public. In my experience, many people working overseas are not particularly fond of Republican policies, either domestically or internationally. they know that Obama is smarter are more subtle and nuanced, and it is already benefitting US foreign policy greatly.
I don't mean with Iran or North Korea, since they are nuts and always have been. I mean with friendly and neutral countries, whose cooperation we need today more than we ever have before, given our economic collpase after 30 years of Republican errors and stupidity.
While we sit here and neuter our intelligence apparatus, our enemies celebrate and continue to worm their way even further inside this country. That's alright though because they always seek out the weak to attack...which may do us all a favor. I'd call it something like; Natural-Selection.
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