Somestimes you're wrong sometimes you're right!

Case 9:

“A young NOC officer who once worked with me had a developmental contact who loved western porn movies. We thought at first that this would be a vulnerability we could exploit. We set up a purchase mechanism to procure porn movies in the US, ship them to the Case Officer and then “sell” them to the contact. We hoped to discover that he was doing something elicit with these movies and then take advantage of some opportunity to have his Case Officer ostensibly collude with him, then use a second Case Officer to threaten to expose “them” if “they” did not cooperate.

“The first Case Officer would take the initiative to favorably resolve the matter for himself and the contact. We wanted to put the first Case Officer in the same position with the contact in the hope that the contact may then be obliged to the first Case Officer for getting him out of a potentially serious situation. Our plan, however, fell flat on its face when we learned that the contact was giving the porn movies to a general who was a Senior Defense Attache at his Embassy. The general, in turn, was showing them to the Ambassador and other senior diplomats. Looking at the situation comically the CIA was a porn provider to the staff of a foreign embassy”.

Case 10:

“While stationed in Vietnam as a Special Operations counterinsurgency officer, a Montagnard courier I had servicing a dead drop failed to make contact with me for a period of several weeks. Worried, I decided to go to his hamlet to check with his mother as to his whereabouts. My Montagnard interpreter knew the courier and his family, so I had him accompany me. I loaded a truck with rice and blankets and we struck out for the hamlet that was in no-man’s land, an area right on the verge of Viet Cong controlled territory. Unfortunately, we learned the courier had been killed by the communist.

So we soon started our drive back. A few hundred yards outside the hamlet we were suddenly stopped by an old Montagnard man with an SKS carbine, the type used by the communist. I felt terror in the pit of my stomach!

“My interpreter started to reach for his weapon to shoot the man but I stopped him, told him not to act suspiciously, just to ask the man what he wanted. Meanwhile I slid my 45 caliber pistol into position to shot the man if he exhibited any hostility. Here you have to understand the Montagnard people, especially the older ones. They lack any formal education. They are a simple people caught in the middle of the political struggle and had no love for either the Vietnamese government or the communist. They do what is necessary to survive.

The old man just simply responded to our questions that he was the road guard for the revolutionary (communist) soldiers who were in a valley not far away having a meeting. He was supposed to keep watch for government soldiers and fire his weapon in the air if he saw any. He asked us if we had seen any government soldiers to which we responded that we had not but that as we drove on down the road we would blow our horn to warn him if government soldiers were in the area. He was thankful for our offer to help. We drove on around the bend in the road, sounded the horn and hit the accelerator to get out of there. Shortly, we heard his warning shots”.

Case 7 and 8 - Agents have feelings, too

Case 7

“Please remember first and foremost that your agents have feelings, often very deep feelings. You will often find, however, that the bureaucracy does not care about how your agents feel about directions, requirements and instructions issued by headquarters. It will be up to you to act as a buffer between the bureaucracy and your agents to make sure your operations run smoothly.

“On one instance a witting agent at a foreign government financial institution was up for promotion but his new position and ultimate transfer would have caused him to lose access to a vital area of information prized by headquarters. Headquarters wanted him to try to pass up the promotion and stay in his current position. However, everything I knew about the agent’s personality told me he would not consider headquarters’ request, even with the bountiful financial incentive. They wanted me to make a hard sell even at the risk of alienating the agent. The idea was ridiculous!

“But being a good foot soldier I followed orders and made the offer to the agent. He was insulted but understood that I was just doing my job. I advised headquarters in my ops cables that the agent refused the offer. Headquarters would not take no for an answer and fired back several more cables with other ideas and even lightly veiled threats to reduce the agent’s salary or sever his services if he refused. I knew the threats were not serious and I knew we had reached a dead-end. This was a no sale! So what did I do? I did not raise the matter again with the agent and just once again told the bureaucrats he refused their offer and invited them to go ahead with their threats! Needless to say the subject was dropped”.

Case 8

“I once had an asset who had more than 20 years of service as an agent. He was a senior foreign diplomat with almost 35 years of service for his ministry at his retirement. He had worked for his ministry for 15 years when he began his secret work for the CIA. It seems this man had been around forever. He was paid well by the CIA for his services but he never took any of his payment in cash. Instead, being a trusting soul, he asked the CIA to keep his money in escrow for which he received interest. He never asked about his account and when he was given his quarterly statements to study, he just gave them a quick glance as if he really did not care. I became his Case Officer for the last two years of his tenure with the CIA.

“Finally, it came time for his retirement from his ministry and he assumed his services with the CIA would also come to an end and that the CIA would resettle him in the US with a green card as had been promised years earlier. But with the loss of access at his retirement as a diplomat, the CIA offered to keep him on at a reduced salary for a few years. He refused saying he wanted to quit altogether and wanted the money in his escrow account paid in cash into a US based bank account. By now the escrow account had grown to a staggering amount. He also wanted the CIA to make good on the green card promised to him under Public Law 110, which allows the Director of Central Intelligence to grant immigrant visa status to assets of interest to the CIA.

“The bureaucrats at headquarters balked and tried to force the agent to remain on board. The agent only became more and more suspicious as the bureaucracy turned up the heat to keep him in place. The agent was no fool! He called the bureaucracy’s bluff saying he was going to the US one way or the other. He quit coming to meetings and after his retirement from the ministry showed up at the US Embassy to apply for a tourist visa. The bureaucrats finally got the
message and made good on the promise to resettle him and his family in the US and turn his escrow account over to him for resettlement”.

Anonymous asked about verification of intelligence reports.

Q. During a NOC's field assignment, after he/she has extracted information from an agent and passed it back to the Company's internal case officers for verification, how can the internal case officers verify/analyze whether the information is truthful (as they may not have third party verification) before they write up the report back to Langley ?

A. After any Case Officer (CO), whether a NOC or inside officer, obtains information through debriefing an agent that responds to collection requirements, the CO prepares a Field Information Report (FIR), which is a raw (unverified) information report. The Station Reports Officer, an officer specifically trained to handle the process of preparation and dissemination of intelligence reports, then reviews the draft FIR to determine whether it is worthy of dissemination. It is the Reports Officer who makes this determination based on his/her knowledge of previous reporting on the subject of the FIR and on how this raw information may fit into the knowledge pool of information used by CIA analysts at headquarters who prepare final products for policy makers. Basically, once the CO prepares the draft FIR and turns it over to the Station Reports Officer, it is out of his/her hands. The CO has no further input unless asked for clarification or further input by the Reports Officer. Once the report is disseminated to analysts at CIA headquarters, it is given a “score” by analysts relating to how they viewed the information. This score lets the Station and, thereby the CO, know if the information was useful or not. This gets back to the agent through the CO to let the agent know if he/she is on the right track in responding to collection requirements. It comes full cycle, so to speak.

That said, however, the CO in the field still has a duty to make sure that the source of the information, the agent, is an authenticated asset. This is covered in the portion of the blog under Facts on Agent Authentication. Information obtained from an “authenticated agent” is given more credence than information from an untested, non-authenticated agent. The authentication process seeks to determine that the agent is who he claims to be, that he has access to the information claimed, that he accurately reports the information and that he is not under hostile control of another intelligence service. This is an on-going process throughout the lifetime of the operation.