Dear Editor: The following "Is The CIA 'Street Smart'?" is herewith submitted as either an opinion piece or Letter-to-the-editor. IS THE CIA "STREET SMART"? by Michael Levine 25 year, veteran, DEA Agent A barrage of news articles was unleashed on us recently telling us how�just prior to the African Embassy bombing last year�the CIA had warned our State Department and embassies that some evil terrorist plot was underway (as if that isn't always true) and that their dire warnings had gone unheeded, hence, 212 people were killed in the terrorist bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Typical of this type of reporting was the massive NY Times article of 1/9/99, "Before Bombings Omens and Fears." Unless you read this closely, and with the eyes of an expert in intelligence gathering, your impression has to be that the all-seeing, all-knowing spooks had done their job, but the suits had failed to take heed, or that, at best, everyone involved had an equal share in the screw-up. Not so fast, this is not all the news that's fit to print in this case. With all the spin doctoring going on, particularly by CIA, you've got to read the small print. Even this article, which is a master piece of spin in its emphasis at finger pointing at everyone but CIA, points out that a state department report, signed by Admiral William J. Crowe, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated that "intelligence provided no immediate tactical warning of the attacks." How important is an immediate, tactical and specific warning? Speaking as a court qualified expert, it means the difference between the embassies taking real action instead of wringing their hands at yet another vague terrorist warning added to the thousands they receive every year. Such specific and "tactical" information may have saved 212 lives. The key question is: Was there such specific information available? Apparently there was. A Time Magazine article, "Inside the Hunt for Osama" (12/21/98-3 weeks before the Times article) pointed out that in November, 1997, an "informant walked into the Nairobi embassy" and "warned that unnamed terrorists planned to car bomb the compound." According to the article, the informant "had details about the planned attack�details that would end up being eerily similar to what happened in the bombing nine months later." So why didn't the CIA issue a specific "tactical warning of the attacks" as Admiral Crowe so correctly pointed out? Well, as the Time article points out, "CIA officers grilled [the informant] for days but finally concluded he was making up a tale." I've served 25 years as a federal agent for four federal agencies during which I have handled and supervised the handling of many thousands of informants of every type, during every kind of investigation imaginable, on every corner of this globe. To this day I am still a court qualified expert and lecture to many police agencies on the subjects of Informant Handling and Undercover tactics. As such, I am the first to recognize that knowing when an informant is telling the truth is one of the most difficult arts in intelligence gathering, but easily, when it comes to anti-terrorist intelligence, the most critical. Every expert I've ever spoken with agrees that whether the informant be criminal or political, (with the explosion of drug trafficking both areas commonly overlap, i.e.manuel Noriega) there is a commonality of handling methods and techniques at which few field agents really excel. During my 17 years with DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), there were a small percentage of street agents who were truly superior at this crucial art. And in a game where the universally accepted truth is "You are only as good as your informants," the best "stool handlers" are prized players. And if the best of these had any single trait in common it was they were possessed of what we used to call "street smarts." They were as streetwise as gutter rats and as moral, ethical and highly motivated as clergymen. I have known many CIA officers during my career, highly cultured men and women from Ivy League schools with advanced academic degrees who could quote from the classics, were master debaters, knew how to order the appropriate dinner wine at a fine French restaurant, but, I've met very few whom, when I was on the hiring panels for the Drug Enforcement Administration, would have been hired. They simply did not have the necessary street smarts to outwit and/or handle people who are forced to live by their wits. People like the informant who walked into the embassy in Nairobi to tell of a bombing that would happen nine months in the future. One of the few CIA officers I've ever met whom I would consider street smart, is 25 year veteran Ralph McGehee, who furnished me with excerpts from a CIA document, obtained via an FOIA request, wherein the Agency's PAO (public affairs office) bragged that its relationships with "reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly and TV network... has helped turn some "intelligence failure" stories into "intelligence success" stories..." As testament to the PAO's success at media maniuplation, the CIA's decades long record of horrific failure and screw-ups has been well documented but not well publicized. In May 1998, for example, CIA failed to discern that India was preparing to explode nuclear devices. As a result DCI George Tenet appointed a team to investigate headed by retired Vice Admiral David E. Jeremiah. The report damned CIA's performance and recommended across the board changes and improvements. Specifically, Admiral Jeremiah said that the CIA"needs to be scrubbed from the top down, from its spies to its analysts to its bureaucratic barons." The [Indian] debacle revealed chronic failures of imagination and personnel, flaws in information-gathering and analysis, and faulty leadership and training." This finding, so critical to the security of the American people, was virtually absent from mainstream media. As is usual in the sad history of CIA, the problem was answered by the US taxpayer throwing even more money at it�CIA's budget was raised to close to $30 billion a year. Not a thing was changed in the Agency's systems, training and management, proving that you can have the richest team in baseball, but if you can't play ball, you ain't gonna win a single game. But in the coming millennium game playing is all over. Kill crazy terrorists have nuclear and biological weapons within their reach. The time has come, once and for all, for our congress to have enough street smarts to not allow CIA to get away with turning its latest failure into yet another "success" and follow Admiral Jeremiah's recommendations. If they don't, our nation as we know it may not survive their next screw-up. Sincerely Michael Levine 212-209-2970 THE EXPERT WITNESS RADIO SHOW WBAI 99.5 FM, New York City (Tuesdays 7-8pm) KPFK 90.7 FM, Los Angeles replayed (Wednesdays, midnight, on "Something's Happening show) Host: Michael Levine, author of New York Times bestseller "Deep cover"-"The Big White Lie" and "Triangle of Death." http://www.radio4all.org/expert http://www.shineon.org/levine/index.html
