Op-Ed Contributor
Secret Double Standard
By TED GUP
Published: January 8, 2013
Cambridge, Mass.
Alvaro Dominguez
Related
-
Ex-Officer Is First From C.I.A. to Face Prison for a Leak (January 6, 2013)
Times Topic: Central Intelligence Agency
IN the last week, the American public has been reminded of the Central
Intelligence Agency’s contradictory attitude toward secrecy. In a critique
of “Zero Dark Thirty,” published last Thursday in The Washington Post, a
former deputy director of the C.I.A., Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., defended
the use of waterboarding and said that operatives used small plastic
bottles, not buckets as depicted in the film, to carry out this
interrogation method on three notable terrorists. On Sunday, The New
York Times reported on the Justice Department’s case against a former
C.I.A. officer, John C. Kiriakou,
a critic of waterboarding who faces 30 months in prison for sharing the
name of a covert operative with a reporter, who never used the name in
print.
The contrast points to the real threat to secrecy, which comes not from
the likes of Mr. Kiriakou but from the agency itself. The C.I.A. invokes
secrecy to serve its interests but abandons it to burnish its image and
discredit critics.
Over the years, I have interviewed many active and retired C.I.A.
personnel who were not authorized to speak with me; they included heads
of the agency’s clandestine service, analysts and well over 100 case
officers, including station chiefs. Five former directors of central
intelligence have spoken to me, mostly “on background.” Not one of these
interviewees, to my knowledge, was taken to the woodshed, though our
discussions invariably touched on classified territory.
Somewhere along the way, the agency that clung to “neither confirm nor
deny” had morphed into one that selectively enforces its edicts on
secrecy, using different standards depending on rank, message, internal
politics and whim.
I am no fan of excessive secrecy, or of prosecuting whistle-blowers or
leakers whose actions cannot be shown to have damaged American security.
The C.I.A. needs secrecy, as do those who place their lives in the
agency’s hands, but the agency cannot have it both ways.
What message did it send when George J. Tenet, its former director,
refused to explain the intelligence debacle involving nonexistent
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but later got a seven-figure book
contract and became a highly paid speaker? How is it that Milton
Bearden, a former covert operative, got agency permission to write a
book (“The Main Enemy”) with a New York Times reporter? What of the many
memoirs written by ex-spooks like Robert Baer (“See No Evil,” and, with
his wife, another former C.I.A. operative, “The Company We Keep”), Tony
Mendez (“The Master of Disguise”), Lindsay Moran (“Blowing My Cover”),
Melissa Boyle Mahle (“Denial and Deception”) and Floyd L. Paseman (“A
Spy’s Journey”)?
These works help us understand the shadowy business of intelligence
gathering, but collectively they may be undermining the credo of
espionage: it is not a spectator sport. And how do we explain the
profusion of former C.I.A. operatives who are now on-air pundits?
There was a time at the C.I.A., not so long ago, when the notion of
cashing in on one’s access to secrets was considered contemptible. How,
then, does one explain how Chase Brandon, a former C.I.A. covert
operative, became the agency’s liaison with Hollywood (“Mission
Impossible III”)? And what of the International Spy Museum, a for-profit
entity in Washington headed by a former covert C.I.A. officer, Peter
Earnest? (The museum gift shop’s most popular T-shirt says “Deny
Everything.”)
The agency can be quite creative in evading its own strictures on
secrecy. When I was researching a book on covert operatives killed in
the line of duty — a book the C.I.A. tried to persuade me not to write —
a senior agency employee called me. He gave me the ISBN number and part
of the title of an obscure book, and advised me to find a copy. When I
did, I saw what he had left out of the title: the name of a deceased
covert operative. Why? So he could pass a polygraph test if asked if he
had ever given a reporter the name of an operative. All that training in
tradecraft, and it was used to evade the very secrecy it was designed
to protect.
Now consider Mr. Rodriguez. As recently as 2005, national security
reporters were told that they could not use his full name — unusual for
someone at such a senior position — though he was no longer in the field
and was overseeing covert operations from Washington. Under the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, even reporters can be
prosecuted for unmasking operatives. So journalists complied and
referred to Mr. Rodriguez simply as “Jose.” Mr. Rodriguez oversaw — and
then ordered the destruction of videotapes that documented — the use of
so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. He is
now a published author and public speaker. The agency has no apparent
problem with that; after all, he is defending not only his own handiwork
but also the agency’s.
The confidentiality of clandestine work is and must be a core value at
the C.I.A. But the agency’s arbitrary and selective application of
secrecy rules threatens its already fragile credibility. If confirmed,
John O. Brennan, whom President Obama has nominated to lead the C.I.A.,
should demand more consistent and less self-serving application of those
rules.