The Human Factor" (review): dysfunctional CIA

[Ed Jewett]

Summer Series 2010: The Human Factor by “Ishmael Jones”

September 9th, 2010 Summer Series 2010: Reviewing the Books! has begun. This review was originally posted in June, 2010 and is being re-posted as part of Summer Series:

The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture by Ishmael Jones
A former clandestine officer of the CIA who operated overseas without benefit of diplomatic cover, “Ishmael Jones” has painted one of the most damning insider accounts of a puportedly self-serving and risk-averse CIA’s management culture that has ever been written. Jones’ description of a mendacious and incompetent CIA headquarters bureaucracy has less in common with critical documents like the 9/11 Commission Report or the legendary Church Committee hearings than it does with the literature produced by Soviet dissidents and defectors during the Cold War.
Jones, who quotes from the iconic 1990’s film Glengarry Glen Ross, yearned to be in an aggressive covert intelligence service whose case officers would “Always Be Closing” . Instead, he finds a Central Intelligence Agency topheavy with career managers averse to approving operational approaches to potential sources, eager to recall effective and productive officers permanently home on the slightest pretexts, comfortable with padding their incomes through familial nepotism and not above lying to Congress or political superiors in the Executive Branch. Jones navigates successfully through three consecutive overseas assignments via a strategy of keeping HQ in the dark about his activities, never becoming known as an “administrative problem” to HQ paper-shufflers and advancing operational costs from his own pocket, with the CIA eventually in arrears to Jones to the tune of $ 200,000.
CIA management in The Human Factor resembles nothing so much as the Soviet nomenklatura crossbred with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Even if we were to allow for exaggeration for humorous effect, or frankly discount 50 % of Jones’ examples outright, the remainder is still a horrifying picture of Langley as an insular bureaucracy that excels far more at Beltway intrigue than at foreign espionage or covert operations. Jones also discusses the tenure of CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss, the Valerie Plame story and the post-9/11 intelligence “reforms” that aggravated the CIA management culture’s worst tendencies. Jones concludes by stating flatly that the CIA cannot be fixed and should be abolished, with its useful operational personnel transferred to the Departments of State and Defense.
ADDENDUM:
An excellent - and more detailed - review of The Human Factor by by fellow Chicago Boyz blogger, James McCormick:
Mini-Book Review - Jones - The Human Factor

….Other reviews of this book have proclaimed Human Factor a rather boring recollection of examples of institutional ineptitude and better as a guidebook for potential employees than a useful description of the CIA but I feel this is in fact the most useful book on the CIA’s clandestine service since:
Orrin Deforest and David Chanoff, Slow Burn: The Rise and Bitter Fall of American Intelligence in Vietnam, Simon & Schuster, 1990, 294 pp.
David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service, Atheneum, 1977, 309 pp.
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

Posted in CIA, IC, Summer Series, authors, book, intelligence | 1 Comment »



Mark Safranski holds an MA in diplomatic history and is a teacher, educational consultant and was an adviser to a privately held internet platform company, Conversationbase, LLC. He was the editor of The John Boyd Roundtable: Debating Science, Strategy, and War, and a contributing author to Threats in the Age of Obama , published by Nimble Books. Mark can also be found at several well-regarded group blogs including, Chicago Boyz, Progressive Historians and at a U.K. academic site, The Complex Terrain Laboratory and is a free-lance contributor to Pajamas Media.

http://www.acus.org/users/mark-safranski

[Jan Klimkowski]

I was reading the review thinking this is typical right-wing bleating about CIA guys not being able to maim, murder and massacre without filling in the relevant paperwork, so I decided to go to the Chicago Boyz website.

Here is that website, in its own words:

Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago boys including those pictured above (we claim no affiliation), and others who helped to liberalize Latin American economies.

"Liberalize Latin American economies" indeed. :thefinger:

I hope they choke in their own ordure....

[Ed Jewett]

That's why I posted the bio of the author; they seem to thrive on war and stuff. I wonder if they have "finger trophies".

[Jan Klimkowski]

That's why I posted the bio of the author; they seem to thrive on war and stuff. I wonder if they have "finger trophies".

Yup.

I wonder if we can arrange for the Chicago Boyz to be hooked up to ECT machines, and then turn the juice up to 11.

[Magda Hassan]

11? All the way to 11? Wow! I'd love to see that.I'd pay to see that.

[Christer Forslund]

CIA sues ex-agent for book's breach of 'secrecy'

October 19, 2010 by legitgov

CIA sues ex-agent for book's breach of 'secrecy' 18 Oct 2010 The CIA has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against a former deep-cover agent who published a book critical of the agency without allowing CIA censors to remove large portions of the manuscript before publication. Ishmael Jones, pen name for the 20-year CIA veteran and Arabic speaker who said he sought to expose corruption in the agency, is facing a civil lawsuit over his 2008 book, "The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture." The book is a detailed account of his career inside the CIA's clandestine service and his work as a "nonofficial cover" operative in the Middle East and Europe. "The book contains no classified information and I do not profit from it," Mr. Jones told The Washington Times. "CIA censors attack this book because it exposes the CIA as a place to get rich, with billions of taxpayer dollars wasted or stolen in espionage programs that produce nothing."