Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA (54 page)

Thus, I would respectfully predict that future presidents will not only continue to be in the business of killing, but will double down on it. And that the CIA will salute the commander in chief and be in the middle of it, without hesitation or resistance.

I mean, anything is less risky than building “black sites” again.

Finally, let me offer some “big picture” observations about the CIA—the lessons I drew from my experience there and what I think the future will bring for the organization.

Foremost, I learned over time that the Agency is a remarkably resilient organization. My career was pockmarked by episodes of crisis and controversy at the CIA. Actually, it was bookmarked with them—I arrived in the mid-’70s in the wake (and because) of the Church Committee revelations, and I retired three decades later dogged by the tumult of the defunct enhanced interrogation program. Along the way, there were the Casey crusades in Central America in the ’80s, the Iran-contra scandal later that decade, the Ames spy case in the early ’90s, the “dirty asset” flap a couple of years after that, and, of course, the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq WMD fiasco shortly after the turn of the new millennium.

Each time, doomsayers in Congress and the media decried the performance, the integrity, and even the raison d’être of the institution itself. And each time, the Agency has weathered the storm and bounced back. Why? Two primary reasons, I think.

First, every one of the seven presidents I served came to turn to and depend on the CIA. Granted, for Carter and Clinton, it took a while, but like the others, they came around. Presidents learn that the Agency is a unique asset—it can move quickly, without the normal fiscal or operational constraints of other agencies, and it can do what it does in secret. It has no other client, no other master, than the occupant of the Oval Office. The CIA, in short, is a president’s personal pop stand. It does what—and only what—he (or she) tells it to do, including covert action. Especially covert action. None of them is going to give that up, and so the Agency survives, no matter what.

Second, the CIA abides because of the people who work there. Most, like I did, spend much of their professional lives there. You never get impervious to the recurring crises and controversies that buffet the place, but after a time you come to learn that each will pass. The organization will take its lumps, learn some lessons, and move on. And so will you.

Take the CIA Office of General Counsel. The majority of the lawyers there have joined the office in the post-9/11 era, like the rest of the current CIA workforce. They are young enough not to have been exposed to its run-up but old enough to be seared by memories of the horror. I
hired a bunch of them myself, and dozens more have arrived since I left. (Another lesson I have learned over the years: the CIA will always have lawyers, lots of them, and they will be woven into the fabric of everything the Agency does.) If experience is any guide, many of them will stay there for decades, like I did. They will see their share of controversies and crises, and maybe get sucked into them, like I did. But they will learn, and they will persevere, like I did. Because they love the organization and what it stands for, like I did.

And perhaps, if they are lucky—like I was—a few will someday, when they are much older, have the opportunity to put their experiences down in writing, to give their young colleagues and their fellow citizens on the outside a sense of what it was all like, what it was all about, and why it was all worth it.

Which, now that all is said and done, are the reasons I decided to write this book.