STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Turn Out the Lights Night Watchmen!

The Intelligence Community No Longer Needs You Anymore.
So they think….

I have just recently returned from a reunion of intelligence officers who have served this country for the past forty years. Since I was trained by CIA/DARPA/Military components of our country at both Harvard Medical College and more importantly at M.I.T [DARPA/CIA funding], I wanted to show my gratitude for a career  in and out of several different administrations working in policy/intel matters. For the most part, I would have to say that the reunion was well organized and quite moving as the major speakers, including DCI John Brennan, were personable, hospitable, and informative.

For most of my professional life, people thought I was a CIA operative. This was not true yet I was quite proud to have worked with many outstanding CIA Station Chiefs, DCIs and Operatives. The names are legendary: Stanfield Turner, William Casey, Don Gregg, Jim Little, Paul Redmond, Fritz Ermath and many others. 

At this particular meeting, Brennan revealed the outline of his new reorganization chart which included the creation of new “Directors” for functional bureaus like digital media and cyber warfare. Next, a man who will remain unidentified gave a brief but excellent analysis as to why the Iran Treaty to limit nuclear weapons was sanctioned by the CIA and other members of the intelligence community. I did not have time to query him further, his basic point is that the IC had thoroughly vetted the nuclear issues from a strictly scientific perspective and found it quite realistic because of the half-life of radioactive elements lasting so long that no one could really escape or avoid detection.

Another CIA professional stood out. His name [it’s safe to reveal] is David Robarge, CIA Chief Historian. Throughout two days of meetings, he presented a very accurate and often critical historical perspective of the rise of our first civilian intelligence operations, the OSS which spawned the CIA through several presidencies. Many of his key points and insights can be read on the CIA website.

I particularly found the elan vital of these old operatives [including myself] to be convivial and often jovial and reflective. No one was really puffed-up about what he/she had done in the past. It was simply a group of us sharing different insights and faux pas that we had made at different times in our careers. Contrary to the image of Jack Ryan or Jason Bourne, most of the operatives were modest, earnest and proud of their service over thirty years. There was no discussion of kinetic wars or Hollywood-type escapades. The sobriety present among my colleagues was appreciated yet it was constantly punctuated with a sharp, incisive wit that I have often associated with CIA operatives in particular. Most of them, some married to their partners in the service, found quite meaningful lives after the CIA.

For a brief moment on the second day,  I realized why I felt I had to come to this reunion of intelligence officers, most of whom I did not know or would not know. I understood that my hegira to Langley Va, to a building which I had visited twice in my life as DAS, was a final moment of gratitude to a DCI whom I did not know—John McCone. McCone created the Center for International Studies at MIT where I had learned my psychological political tradecraft. If it had not been for visionaries like Walter Lacquer [psychoanalyst], Ruth Benedict [anthropologist], Harold Laswel [Psychopathology and Politics] and Prof. Lucian Pye, I would never have had my unique, exciting career serving five Presidents as well as DOD and others.

However, my stay did not end on a happy note, in part due to my own moment of discontent. A British journalist who claimed to be not a spy decided to lecture us on the end of HUMINT in the IC. That was a premise that was at best faulty if not completely erroneous. Making matters worse, this person started his talk by stating that one of his British ancestors had developed the “Grey Massacre” of 1777 where Colonel Grey of the British Cavaliers thought it moral and expedient to silence their flintlocks so that they would make no noise when they bayoneted and massacred American Revolutionaries in their beds. 

I found this quite offensive. In my usual brusque and intolerant way, I dismissed his handler [a former CIA operative who made a living protecting ‘action jockey’ wannabe journalists] while I reprimanded the British speaker for his inane comments. I stated that he and his countrymen were “Forlorn Hope” for recent American Intelligence/Diplomatic achievements including the regime changes in the Soviet Union and the recent economic warfare in Russia. After scolding the Brit and absorbing what I thought was enough, I left to go back to my home in the South. My home, where Americans fight every day to make an honest buck and no one cares about the CIA or what would become of its future.
I wrote this blog as a tribute to my fellow operatives who had served valiantly and quietly during the worst of times in the Cold War and the present eruptions of worldwide terrorist attacks. Yet there is one more point that I have to emphasize. Whatever happened in the attack in 9/11, which many of you know was a homegrown fiasco by Bush Jr/Cheney/Rumsfeld, the CIA really inadvertently dug it’s own grave. 

What I had finally realized when I looked back on 9/11, is that the CIA [whether collusive or incompetent] had given birth to the Director of National Intelligence who would one day relegate the CIA to the one job that they were so well qualified to do: HUMINT!  Yet for some bureaucratic misconceptions, they refused to continue their basic utility of HUMINT which came from the CIA’s very foundations after WWII. This is what they did: the collection and development of HUMAN ASSETS all over the world using psychological/ cultural determinants. However, under John Brennan, the CIA became Operational using drones to create ersatz wars all over South Asia and the Middle East. They had failed to develop the very core expertise that set them aside at MIT and other learned institutions—HUMINT!
I bid the ‘Night-Watchmen’ [CIA operatives] a fond farewell and wish them the best of luck. For they have become just another bureaucracy buried beneath the greater funded, increasingly more important, MILITARY INTELLIGENCE SERVICES, implemented by 15 other agencies. Binary numbers have replaced the basic concepts of psychological determinism. For that, Americans will pay a very heavy price. I am certain that Russia, China, Vietnam, Korea, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia,  Japan and the EU are still using personality profiles and psyop programs to eventually co-opt our manifest destiny.

We will need new leadership to think-out-of-the-box. Perhaps, one day in the future, a “Wild Bill Donovan”, the founder of the OSS/CIA, will arise at the least likely of all places and times.