Anonymous asked about overhauling the CIA!

Q. Thanks for the posts --all incredibly informative. One former CIA officer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, has written at length about the shortcomings of the agency and has given his thoughts on how the agency must first shrink and re-focus it's recruitment. He sees most of the current intelligence gathering as ineffective at best. One area he suggests the agency focuses on is recruitment. He believes "salaries for such operatives (basically NOCs focused on jihadists) should be in the six figures—a beginning salary of $250,000 would be appropriate given the high risks involved and the difficulty the CIA will have attracting and keeping Americans with the right qualifications. The agency is an “exempted service” precisely because national security is not an area where civil service regulations should apply. Egalitarianism—the public service sentiment that says case officers should not make more than diplomats, soldiers, or U.S. senators—has no place in an organization trying to penetrate groups that want to nuke the United States." Some of Marc's thoughts can be found here: http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/5852141.html I think it would be very interesting to hear your opinion of Marc's thoughts specific to 1) agency overhaul and 2) compensation. Thank you in advance.

A. Very Interesting! The Company reinvents the wheel every few years and has done so since its birth! The reasons for doing so are varied, some coming from within and some coming from Congress or the political administration in the White House at the time. Each reinvention is supposed to correct problems that exist of perceived to exist. Each has added or revised administrative processes and oversight of the Company. In my opinion, most of these reinventions have added little to truly improve the capabilities of the Company in the area of intelligence collection in the Humint field. Look back over the past sixty years. Humint and the CIA element that is responsible for Humint, Directorate of Operations (as well as the other names by which it has been known) has continually been criticized for intelligence failures. If there were a single real answer for the problem you would think that after sixty years we would have found it.

That said, however, some of R. M. Gerecht’s comments in the above link may offer a new dimension to the Company re the new era real hard targets – terrorism. Increasing the cadre of NOC Case Officers would be an important element of a new dimension. Shortly after 9-11 Congress drove the agenda to increase funding to the NOC program to field more NOC’s. Historically, Official Cover Officers have outnumbered NOCs on the order of 20 to one. It takes circa four times the support manpower to field a NOC than it does for Official Cover officers. NOC’s also cost four to five times more in terms of financial support than do Official Cover officers. NOC covers, however, are harder to develop these days than they were 15-20 years ago. US companies are more reluctant to take a risk that could damage their overseas business activities should a NOC within the company ranks be exposed.

Throwing money at these issues and expecting genuine results, as Congress often does, does a disservice not only to the Company but also to the American taxpayer. I disagree that NOC compensation should be so much higher than that of Official Cover officers as suggested by Mr. Gerecht. They already get a 20% NOC incentive pay adjustment to their base salary that Official Cover officers do not receive. There is an additional adjustment for officers assigned to certain Stations or hostile zones. What will attract the caliber of NOC officer the Company needs will remain the same throughout time – the opportunity to serve and make a true and significant difference. This is by no means a naïve motivation either. Those in military service or the police services are so motivated. The Company actively recruits former military and police officers which is how I came into service.

I do not like the term overhaul for the Company. Overhauls of any organization are usually disruptive and have an adverse influence on employee morale. The Company underwent several “overhauls” during my tenure and on each occasion it took some length of time to overcome the resulting paranoia and return to some level of normalcy. Both the Company, internally, and Congress through the House and Senate oversight committees should remain cognizant of the continuing need to respond to make improvements through an continuous evolutionary process without the input of disruptive programs that are often the result of overblown partisan politics. Remember the Church committee?

It is true that the nature of the terrorist target requires a different approach than the Company has heretofore applied. Here we might take a lesson from Israeli Intelligence that uses a team concept deploying one or two action officers supported by a team of specialists, finance officer, technical officer, communications officer, etc. One of the public successes of this approach was the hunt down of the terrorists who killed the Israeli athletic team in Germany several decades ago. As a former Paramilitary Case Officer turned NOC, I envision a role for a Paramilitary NOC contingent formed into a small team working in priority zones often used by terrorists for training, support and finance. Such teams would probably have to be declared to local liaison services and work in liaison with friendly intelligence services as well as with US military contingents in the area. The team would be active in both Humint collection as well as an action element to assist local friendly services and/or local US military contingents to take down terrorist cells and their support cadre.

The singleton NOC under deep commercial cover, however, should remain the stalwart of Humint collection operating in areas where an Official Cover officer under US government cover would be unable to work. While all CIA employees are required to have US citizenship, the Company might consider a special limited status like independent contractor for the many non-US citizens of Middle Eastern heritage who have offered their services. Because of their native emersion in the language and culture of the target area, such officers will have an understanding of the target far greater than regular American officers. We once did this with Mainland Chinese assets who offered their services. They came on board as independent contractors and after many years of service many obtained US citizenship and brought on board as staff employees. I had the pleasure of working with several of these officers during my years of service.

Bottom line is there is no one answer to eliminate deficiencies in Humint collection and it may be naïve for us to believe that there is any real resolution. Because of the nature of the beast, we probably will always have problems in the system that cannot be resolved. Reinventing the wheel every few years is certainly getting us nowhere. Let’s just adjust the direction the wheel we have goes.