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New
Delhi, 20 October 2005
American
Intelligence is kicking itself and that is bad. We came across a
very interesting article by Thomas Friedman the author of ‘The
Earth Is Flat’. He is a regular visitor to India as an invitee of
a multi-national or Indian Company or by a newspaper and writes very
incisive columns in the New York Times. This article he wrote was
about Karl Rove in President Bush's office his brilliant and senior
most Adviser, and Lewis Libby Chief of Staff in Vice President
Cheney's office –– who are accused of giving out the name of
Valerie Plame as a CIA Agent, technically called NOC (Non Official
Cover Agent). She is married to one Wilson a diplomat. The beauty of
the article lies in that it explains to the layman how Intelligence
works whether it be CIA, MI 6, KGB, FSB, IB or even RAW. It will
interest Intelligence operatives for the lucid explanation that
Friedman gives and the praise he showers on Agents and calls them
invaluable and the interested reader will learn some tricks and be
educated.
India's
RAW may find some good NOCs. The part on, ‘How Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) Works’, is appended and the words CIA
can be substituted for any other Agency that one knows about. He has
not mentioned but hinted that funds are not a problem and that the
challenge/ ideology/national spirit attracts men and women to become
spies, or NOCs. He has also not mentioned another technicality. A
Spy i.e. NOC can be an active NOC or a sleeping NOC who is paid
regularly but activated when needed. The British and Israeli systems
are the best in this. Read on.
HOW
INTELLIGENCE WORKS
(Excerpted
from The Importance of The Plame Affair by Thomas Friedman)
The
CIA is divided between the Directorate of Intelligence, which houses
the analysts, and the Directorate of Operations, which houses the
spies and the paramilitary forces. The spies are, in general,
divided into two groups. There are those with official cover and
those with non-official cover. Official cover means that the agent
is working at the U.S. embassy in some country, acting as a
cultural, agricultural or some other type of attaché, and is
protected by diplomatic immunity. They carry out a variety of
espionage functions, limited by the fact that most foreign
intelligence services know who the CIA agents at the embassy are
and, frankly, assume that everyone at the embassy is an agent. They
are therefore followed, their home phones are tapped, and their
maids deliver scraps of paper to the host government. This obviously
limits the utility of these agents. Being seen with one of them
automatically blows the cover of any potential recruits.
Then
there are those with non-official cover, the NOCs. These agents are
the backbone of the American espionage system. A NOC does not have
diplomatic cover. If captured, he has no protection. Indeed, as the
saying goes, if something goes wrong, the CIA will deny it has ever
heard of him. A NOC is under constant pressure when he is needed by
the government and is on his own when things go wrong. That is
understood going in by all NOCs.
NOCs
come into the program in different ways. Typically, they are
recruited at an early age and shaped for the role they are going to
play. Some may be tracked to follow China, and trained to be bankers
based in Hong Kong. Others might work for an American engineering
firm doing work in the Andes. Sometimes companies work with the CIA,
knowingly permitting an agent to become an employee. In other
circumstances, agents apply for and get jobs in foreign companies
and work their way up the ladder, switching jobs as they go, moving
closer and closer to a position of knowing the people who know what
there is to know. Sometimes they receive financing to open a
business in some foreign country, where over the course of their
lives, they come to know and be trusted by more and more people.
Ideally, the connection of these people to the U.S. intelligence
apparatus is invisible. Or, if they can't be invisible due to
something in their past and they still have to be used as NOCs, they
develop an explanation for what they are doing that is so plausible
that the idea that they are working for the CIA is dismissed or
regarded as completely unlikely because it is so obvious. The
complexity of the game is endless.
These
are the true covert operatives of the intelligence world. Embassy
personnel might recruit a foreign agent through bribes or blackmail.
But at some point, they must sit across from the recruit and show
their cards: "I'm from the CIA and…." At that point,
they are in the hands of the recruit. A NOC may never once need to
do this. He may take decades building up trusting relationships with
intelligence sources in which the source never once suspects that he
is speaking to the CIA, and the NOC never once gives a hint as to
who he actually is.
It
is an extraordinary life. On the one hand, NOCs may live well. The
Number Two at a Latin American bank cannot be effective living on a
U.S. government salary. NOCs get to live the role and frequently, as
they climb higher in the target society, they live the good life. On
the other hand, their real lives are a mystery to everyone.
Frequently, their parents don't know what they really do, nor do
their own children -- for their safety and the safety of the
mission. The NOC may marry someone who cannot know who they really
are. Sometimes they themselves forget who they are: It is an
occupational disease and a form of madness. Being the best friend of
a man whom you despise, and doing it for 20 years, is not easy. Some
NOCs are recruited in mid-life and in mid-career. They spend less
time in the madness, but they are less prepared for it as well. NOCs
enter and leave the program in different ways –– sometimes under
their real names, sometimes under completely fabricated ones. They
share one thing: They live a lie on behalf of their country.
The
NOCs are the backbone of American intelligence and the ones who
operate the best sources –– sources who don't know they are
sources. When the CIA says that it needs five to 10 years to rebuild
its network, what it is really saying is that it needs five to 10
years to recruit, deploy and begin to exploit its NOCs. The problem
is not recruiting them –– the life sounds cool for many recent
college graduates. The crisis of the NOC occurs when he approaches
the most valuable years of service, in his late 30s or so. What
sounded neat at 22 rapidly becomes a mind-shattering nightmare when
their two lives collide at 40.
There
is an explicit and implicit contract between the United States and
its NOCs. It has many parts, but there is one fundamental part: A
NOC will never reveal that he is or was a NOC without special
permission. When he does reveal it, he never gives specifics. The
government also makes a guarantee –– it will never reveal the
identity of a NOC under any circumstances and, in fact, will do
everything to protect it. If you have lied to your closest friends
for 30 years about who you are and why you talk to them, no
government bureaucrat has the right to reveal your identity for you.
Imagine if you had never told your children -- and never planned to
tell your children –– that you worked for the CIA, and they
suddenly read in the New York Times that you were someone other than
they thought you were.
There
is more to this. When it is revealed that you were a NOC, foreign
intelligence services begin combing back over your life, examining
every relationship you had. Anyone you came into contact with
becomes suspect. Sometimes, in some countries, becoming suspect can
cost you your life. Revealing the identity of a NOC can be a matter
of life and death –– frequently, of people no one has ever heard
of or will ever hear of again.
In
short, a NOC owes things to his country, and his country owes things
to the NOC. We have no idea what Valerie Plame told her family or
friends about her work. It may be that she herself broke the rules,
revealing that she once worked as a NOC. We can't know that, because
we don't know whether she received authorization from the CIA to say
things, after her own identity was blown by others. She might have
been irresponsible, or she might have engaged in damage control. We
just don't know.
What
we do know is this. In the course of events, reporters contacted two
senior officials in the White House –– Rove and Libby. Under the
least-damaging scenario we have heard, the reporters already knew
that Plame had worked as a NOC. Rove and Libby, at this point, were
obligated to say, at the very least, that they could neither confirm
nor deny the report. In fact, their duty would have been quite a bit
more: Their job was to lie like crazy to mislead the reporters. Rove
and Libby had top security clearances and were senior White House
officials. It was their sworn duty, undertaken when they accepted
their security clearance, to build a "bodyguard of lies"
–– in Churchill's phrase –– around the truth concerning U.S.
intelligence capabilities.
Some
would argue that if the reporters already knew her identity, the cat
was out of the bag and Rove and Libby did nothing wrong. Others
would argue that if Plame or her husband had publicly stated that
she was a NOC, Rove and Libby were freed from their obligation. But
the fact is that legally and ethically, nothing relieves them of the
obligation to say nothing and attempt to deflect the inquiry. This
is not about Valerie Plame, her husband or Time Magazine. The
obligation exists for the uncounted number of NOCs still out in the
field.
Americans
stay safe because of NOCs. They are the first line of defence. If
the system works, they will be friends with Saudi citizens who are
financing al Qaeda. The NOC system, was said to have been badly
handled under the Clinton administration –– this is the lack of
humint that has been discussed since the 9/11 attacks. The United
States paid for that. And that is what makes the Rove–Libby leak
so stunning. The obligation they had was not only to Plame but to
every other NOC leading a double life who is in potentially grave
danger.
Imagine,
if you will, working in Damascus as a NOC and reading that the
president's chief adviser had confirmed the identity of a NOC. As
you push into middle age, wondering what happened to your life, the
sudden realization that your own government threatens your safety
might convince you to resign and go home. That would cost the United
States an agent it had spent decades developing. You don't just pop
a new agent in his place. That NOC's resignation could leave the
United States blind at a critical moment in a key place. Should it
turn out that Rove and Libby not only failed to protect Plame's
identity but deliberately leaked it, it would be a blow to the heart
of U.S. intelligence. If just one critical NOC pulled out and the
United States went blind in one location, the damage could be
substantial. At the very least, it is a risk the United States
should not have to incur.
Ultimately,
the Plame affair points to a fundamental problem in intelligence. As
those who have been in the field have told us, the biggest fear is
that someone back in the home office will bring the operation down.
Sometimes it will be a matter of state: sacrificing a knight for
advantage on the chessboard. Sometimes it is a parochial political
battle back home. Sometimes it is carelessness, stupidity or
cruelty. This is when people die and lives are destroyed. But the
real damage, if it happens often enough or no one seems to care,
will be to the intelligence system. If the agent determines that his
well-being is not a centerpiece of government policy, he won't
remain an agent long.
On
a personal note, let me say this: one of the criticisms
conservatives have of liberals is that they do not understand that
we live in a dangerous world and, therefore, that they underestimate
the effort needed to ensure national security. Liberals have
questioned the utility and morality of espionage. Conservatives have
been champions of national security and of the United States' overt
and covert capabilities. Conservatives have condemned the atrophy of
American intelligence capabilities. Whether the special prosecutor
indicts or exonerates Rove and Libby legally doesn't matter. Valerie
Plame was a soldier in service to the United States, unprotected by
uniform or diplomatic immunity. I have no idea whether she served
well or poorly, or violated regulations later. But she did serve.
And thus, she and all the other NOCs were owed far more --
especially by a conservative administration -- than they got.
Even
if that debt wasn't owed to Plame, it remains in place for all the
other spooks standing guard in dangerous places.
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