30. Crystal Marbles

30 CRYSTAL MARBLES

2002

One morning at HQS while we were still putting together an operational contingency, Jose Rodriguez came to see me. He had recently taken over the CTC from Cofer Black. He was an outstanding officer and leader, a man who made it clear from the outset that he believed in our mission. He was also irreverent as hell with a subversive sense of humor and no fear of unleashing it in even the most hallowed of places. While we missed Cofer tremendously, and I’d personally remained close friends with him ever since our time together at the CTC, we didn’t miss a beat with Jose. He was an operator’s operator—eager, aggressive, willing to take risks to strike at those threatening our country.

Jose told me that Director Tenet wanted to see us in his seventh-floor office. The summons excited both of us. My mind already started running through the options we had been working through.

Together, Jose and I headed upstairs, where we were in for a total surprise.

Jose and I reached the seventh floor and presented ourselves to Director Tenet’s secretary. A moment later, we were standing inside the head of the CIA’s office.

“Gentlemen,” the director said to us, “mark your calendars. In a week, you’re going to brief Vice President Cheney at the White House on the initiative.”

Jose and I exchanged glances. This was our chance at last. If we got the White House on board with the new mission, and we’d be in business.

Finally.

I don’t think my feet touched the ground once on our way back to the CTC. For the next seven days, my guys circled the wagons and built our executive brief. We went through every possible question they might throw at us. Every point we wanted to make was honed. This would be no PowerPoint presentation, no electronic trail. But I would have some key visuals to show the vice president that would drive home our capabilities.

The morning arrived, and I dressed in my best charcoal-gray suit and black Johnston & Murphy dress shoes. I grabbed my notebook and headed out the door for HQS, as excited as I’ve ever felt.

At Langley, Jose and I joined Director Tenet and three other senior Agency officers for a final run through of our brief. Director Tenet would introduce us, Jose would outline our concept, and I would explain our training and capabilities.

When finished, we were driven downtown in several black sedans. The drivers had no clearance, so Jose and I sat beside each other in silence as we watched the D.C. scenery go by through the car’s tinted windows. It was a short trip, and we soon reached the White House gate, where the guards checked our IDs and waved us through. A moment later, we were escorted inside.

There I was, the dirt-poor kid from Cuba who grew up with almost nothing, walking through the center of American power with the senior leadership from our Agency. I savored the moment. Every step I took, I thanked my adopted country for the opportunities its freedoms afforded me and my family. I was here because the American dream made it possible. But I was also keenly aware of the price of that freedom—a price we were willing to pay if necessary.

This walk through the White House was the culmination of a long journey that started on that bridge with my abuelo back when the Soviet Union presented the greatest threat to the world. My story would never have been possible in any other country.

I said a silent prayer of thanks. I only wished that I could tell my mother and father. Someday, perhaps. Just not today. I never did get to tell them, and now that I am legally cleared to tell them, they are both gone.

Our escort showed us into a situation room deep inside the White House. Nothing elaborate but comfortable and functional. A long, rectangular table dominated the room, and extra chairs lined the walls. A moment later, Vice President Dick Cheney and then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice entered the room.

The vice president wore a dark suit and appeared to be all business. He possessed an intensity I immediately liked. Condoleezza Rice wore a suit jacket, light blouse, and dark skirt. She mirrored the VP’s intensity. Introductions were made, handshakes around the room. Then everyone sat down and got to work. Cheney sat at the head of the table, Condi Rice to his left. Director Tenet took the opposite end of the table, and everyone else sat down in between. Jose was on the VP’s right, and I next to him.

“Mr. Vice President, we are here this morning to brief you on a special capability we have developed,” Director Tenet began. A moment later, he turned the floor over to Jose, who outlined our overall concept.

My turn came next. I started with our composition and the incredibly talented people who joined us. I gave a little background on them, making a point to highlight how much experience we possessed. I moved on to the training we’d undergone to develop and hone our capabilities. I added, perhaps unnecessarily, that this was a capability we needed to have in our toolbox now, before any future 9/11 events hit the country.

Both the Vice President and Condoleezza Rice asked questions as I spoke. It did not take long to realize that Condoleezza was an intellectual force. So was our vice president. After my run-in with Senator Dianne Feinstein, I was not sure what to expect that morning, but the difference between these two and the senator was dramatic. Feinstein could never hope to match the intellectual horsepower I saw in the room that day.

The meeting ended a short time later. As the vice president and I shook hands, he said to me, “It has been a pleasure to meet you, Ric, and thank you for the risks you are all willing to take. Please convey my sincere appreciation to your people. They’re doing great work.”

The meeting left a deep impression on me. Condi Rice in particular was poised and polished with genuine grace. At the same time, she possessed an authoritative air that commanded respect. One minute in a room with Condoleezza Rice and anyone could see she was a truly remarkable person.

Dick Cheney was the same way, but more physically intense as he entered and commanded the room. Not even President Bush, whom I had earlier met and admired tremendously, commanded similar presence. He made eye contact with me whenever he asked me a question.

I was confident that when the time was right, we would have the support of the White House.

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While we waited for approval, we studied al-Qaeda’s many tentacles across the globe. The reality was that we Americans often fight our enemies under tremendous restrictions that limit our ability to save lives. Our enemies operate with no such constraints.

That was a source of deep frustration for us. We knew these guys were despicable, murderous human beings bent on supporting attacks against innocents around the world. Al-Qaeda, though thrown into disarray in Afghanistan, still had active networks carrying out attacks. In April, al-Qaeda operatives carried out a suicide bombing against the El Ghriba synagogue, the oldest one in Tunisia. The attack killed fourteen German tourists, three French nationals, and two local Tunisians. Thirty others were wounded.

On October 6, 2002, a two-year-old, thousand-foot-long oil tanker called the MV Limburg was hit by a suicide boat, much like the USS Cole had been in 2000. The blast ripped a hole in the side of the ship, spilling ninety thousand barrels of Iranian crude oil into the Gulf of Aden. The burning ship was towed to Dubai. One crew member died in the blast, and thirteen others were wounded. This proved to be an al-Qaeda operation as well.

Two days later, two jihadists attacked a marine unit conducting a training exercise on an island off Kuwait. The terrorists were veterans of the fall fighting in Afghanistan and had returned to their country of origin to conduct other operations against Americans there. The marines were using blanks in their rifles for this exercise, but some carried loaded pistols, and they were able to kill both attackers, but not before one marine was killed and another wounded.

So the threats were there. Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership cadre may have been disrupted and dislocated from Afghanistan, but the tentacles still carried out operations.

We needed to be going after those tentacles, as well as those of other terrorist organizations.

Finally, several months after the White House briefing, I was summoned to Director Tenet’s office for a briefing on our latest developments.

When I sat down in Director Tenet’s conference room on the day we were scheduled to brief XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I don’t think I’d ever been more thoroughly prepared. XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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The DCI’s conference room was well apportioned with beautiful luxury furniture, while the walls were adorned with photos of the director with presidents and other key officials. Signed books, oil portraits, and paintings completed the décor.

I found a place at the long, dark wood table with Director Tenet at one end, a few feet from its edge, leaning back while chewing on a Cuban cigar. Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt sat down to my right, ACDCI “John”—who had come up through the analyst ranks—sat down at the table as well. The only other operator in the room was “Robert,” the Division Chief XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Jose did not attend the meeting. He trusted me to give the brief and didn’t want to appear to be looking over my shoulder. When we’d talked about it earlier, he said to me, “You’ve got this, Ric.”

I had never felt more confident.

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Robert made the introductory statement. When he finished, he turned the floor over to me. I began. As I did, I glanced over at Tenet. He was still leaning back in his chair, cigar in his right hand now. His eyes were fixed like lasers on mine.

They began to ask questions. Thanks to good preparation by my innovative and diligent crew, we had anticipated and prepared for everything we figured they would throw at us.

Before this briefing, I faced a panel led by a senior officer from our seventh floor, “Buzzy.”

I was able to answer every question based on our rehearsals. My crew had anticipated every question posed to me around that table. As I fielded them, I could see Buzzy’s wicked smile come to life as we engaged and destroyed question after question. We were well prepared and had anticipated all of them. Given the sensitivity of our program, there were no PowerPoint slides, just a black notebook with sketches and briefing notes.

Just then, DDO Pavitt spoke up. He looked like an Ivy League professor, with his frost-colored hair, white dress shirt and striped tie, and a huge signet ring.

“Mr. Director, as you can see, there is no doubt in our minds that Prado’s team cannot only accomplish this mission but that they can actually get away with it.”

But then he dropped the bomb: “However, Mr. Director, we will seriously need to look at the political considerations of this mission, even if it succeeds without a trace.”

Tenet plucked the cigar from his mouth, leaned forward, and nodded at once. “Agreed.” He responded a little too fast. I realized he and Pavitt had planned this response all along.

I looked across the table at Robert. The Division Chief was a meat eater, aggressive, willing to take risks, an excellent leader XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX We made eye contact. In that instant, I knew he realized it, too.

Robert abruptly stood up, closed his notebook, adjusted his Brioni suit, and walked out without a word.

I stared at the men remaining around the table, but this time, they refused to make eye contact with me. The shock of it left me numb.

What could I do? There were no options. I couldn’t argue this. They’d clearly made the decision long before I’d ever entered the room. I could go full Scheuer on them, screaming and yelling XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX But what good would that do? The decision would not be altered. There would be no credit to take, no success for the seventh floor to trumpet if we succeeded. And if we failed or were compromised, their careers would be on the line. In the mind of a politician, that was a lose-lose scenario. It offered them nothing.

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I stood up and left, the deep sense of shock making everything seem surreal and in slow motion. As I left Tenet’s office, I knew this would be the last time I’d be invited to the seventh floor. Robert lingered near the elevator. He looked at his notebook, then to me. With barely controlled fury, he said, “Well. We’ll just shitcan this.”

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When I went to tell Jose what had just happened, he seemed resigned. “I’m not totally surprised.”

What did this all mean? It meant our team was out of business. XXXXXXXXXXXXX

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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I had to consider their careers as well. I wasn’t sure where my career would go from here, but my people were all extremely talented, driven risk-takers who believed in the necessity of countering terrorists.

They had bright futures ahead. I couldn’t force them to stay in a team that would not be utilized.

“Jose,” I said, “we need to review the validity of this. We can’t keep some of the Agency’s finest officers just doing nothing.”

They deserved an opportunity to excel in their careers. Excel they would in the years ahead. Despite what had just happened, I could not be prouder of them.

Ben’s words three years before came back to me over and over in the days ahead. “Look, Ric, I know where your heart is, and I could not be prouder to call you my friend. Just understand that whether you fail or even if you’re successful, this mission will be the end of your thus far spectacular career.”

I applied internally for a number of positions. The one I wanted the most was a spot-on position in Lieutenant General John Campbell’s staff, where I would function as his Deputy Director for Military Affairs. He was the Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Military Support, an incredible officer, gentleman, and leader. It would have been a tremendous honor to work with him.

I didn’t get the position. Years later, we ran into each other and talked about that position. He was astonished that I’d applied for it. “Ric, your name was never even brought in front of me. I would have loved to have had you.”

That there had been some behind-the-scenes manipulation of candidates for the slot infuriated him, and it twisted the knife already stuck in my liver.

For six weeks, I applied for positions and heard nothing back. It became very clear that I was not welcome in the Agency anymore. At first, I had a hard time accepting that. Why? We’d been successful. I’d been a good soldier. I’d taken orders, I’d created capabilities. I’d led successful missions and operations all over the world.

Heartbroken, I put in my retirement papers.

In the weeks that followed, I was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal (the highest medal presented to a retiring officer), the George Bush Excellence in CT Medal, and even a medal from the Directorate of Intelligence, presented by my dear friend Ben Bonk. Old friends came to see me, job offers from contractors flowed in. I sleepwalked through this final lap at headquarters as if in a dream. It didn’t seem possible after all the fun I’d had. All the incredible adventures, the places I’d seen and the impact we’d had; these were things that I would cherish.

I never thought I’d go out this way. They say that the CIA is an ungrateful mistress. The careers of those with hearts like Bill Casey’s too often came to crushing halts. Meat eaters do not politick well. Even though the Agency’s origins in World War II grew out of the OSS’s legacy action, risk-taking and aggressive operations in defense of our country, that spirit all too often does not burn bright at the top anymore.

Somebody once said that Tenet was an excellent peacetime DCI. But he wasn’t a wartime one like Cofer Black would have been. Cofer was driven out as well shortly before I was. But he would have been an incredible leader as director in the war on terror, a man wholly consumed with a sense of purpose. And that sense of purpose was the destruction of al-Qaeda through any and all possible means. Men like Cofer bring victory. Fortunately, we eventually had Jose as DDO. But he, too, paid an excruciating price for his forward-leaning efforts to protect our country and his subordinates.

Cofer or Jose never weighed the risk to their own careers against those sacred tenets of our job: to protect our homeland and our people.

In two months, it was all over. The final farewells, the retirement parties and medal ceremonies. I turned in my security badge—the same color, same style as the one I’d started with back when I was a GS-nothing. There is no pretention of rank or status in the Agency, and those security badges reflected that.

My office cleared out. My personal things gone. I walked through the building a final time. As I left the lobby, I looked over at the wall of stars. When I first arrived here in 1980, I was young, in awe of my surroundings. A hard charger ready to make my own mark. Those stars seemed larger than life to me. The message was clear: we were a clandestine force willing to give all for our nation. Not a job. Not a career. A calling. The best of us embodied that.

But now the wall was personal, for some of those stars represented people I’d come to love as brothers and sisters.

I headed home, for the first time in decades my path ahead uncertain. I knew I was burned out. I turned down job offers because of that. I just wanted to process and be with the people I loved.

In truth, I needed to heal.

That first night home, no longer an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, no longer of a rank equivalent to a major general in the U.S. military protocol, I selected a bottle of Italian Barolo from our cabinet, found the best Arturo Fuentes cigars I owned. Maduros. Dark and rich, very hard to acquire. Although Dominican, they were the product of Cuba via the tobacco growers who sought refuge there and brought with them their Cuban seeds. The smell of these gems always brought me back home to those days of my childhood and my grandfather’s tobacco-rolling business across the street in Manicaragua. I’ve had a lifelong love of Maduros because of that connection to my roots.

My roots. I thought of the silver spurs my father wore in his wild youth. Gone. All the artifacts of my heritage wiped clear thanks to the thievery of Castro’s revolutionaries. For the people, my ass. I spent half my adult life beating back Marxism and its cultish adherents. The zealots who drank the ideological Kool-Aid all acted the same, from what I saw in my family’s hometown to the jungles of Central America, the Philippines, and elsewhere. They were just predators, everywhere they existed. And when they took over regions or nations, the people always suffered. And like my family, their own heritage was stolen.

These cigars remained like tokens of a lost way of life.

I took a Maduro from the humidor, the bottle of wine, and a glass, and I went out to the little gazebo we built in our backyard. Carmen and my sons knew that I needed some space. They watched from the house, periodically checking on me while I sat alone under a darkening Virginia sky and sipped my Italian wine.

I hurt. I couldn’t lie to myself about it. I’d put up a good façade in the final months. I’d never shown my pain to the family, but I know they sensed it. How I dealt with it would determine a lot about my future and how I looked back at the past.

Scheuer had imploded, left the Agency, and had grown increasingly embittered and vitriolic after his experiences. I couldn’t be that way. It would mean flushing all the good from twenty-five years of my CIA life. Half of it. The best half spent in service of my country doing things I could only dream of doing as a kid huddled in that simple bed in a Colorado orphanage. I jumped out of airplanes. I led raids into hostile territory. I helped crush the ideology that took everything from my family.

I inhaled the cigar’s rich smoke, letting it linger for a moment as the memories flashed through my mind. The river bridge crossed. My father’s patient guidance, always setting the example with his own behavior. I learned to be who I was because of him. The action side, the steady side. The gentleman. With his meticulously arranged tools, he taught me everything had a place. With organization came order.

I smiled at that. Because of him, whenever I traveled, I arrayed my kit with the same exact care. Razor beside shaving cream. Toothbrush. Hairbrush, all arrayed with precision. Every time I went through that ritual in a new hotel, I thought of his van full of tools, not a screwdriver out of place.

It all began with my father and his love for me. I knew I had made him and my mother proud with what I’d done with my life.

Another sip of wine, memories spilling out in a jumble. For a moment, I saw myself as a young man, lying on the floor of a Huey helicopter and peering down at the wreckage of Eastern Airlines Flight 401, an L-1011 wide-body jet that had crashed into the Everglades twenty miles off the runway at Miami International Airport. Our PJ and air rescue detachment at Homestead Air Reserve Base was the first to respond to the crash. I was young, shocked by the sight of this aircraft torn apart on impact. The fuselage lay broken and scattered across the saw grass, the plane’s wings mostly ribbons of aluminum debris.

I didn’t realize my mic was open, and as I lay on my stomach looking down at the scene of destruction, I said aloud, “What can we do here? There can’t be any survivors.”

But I was wrong. When we landed, we encountered stunned and traumatized passengers limping from the wreckage, their clothes in tatters. Among them were the remains of the dead. Heads without bodies. Bodies without heads. A beautiful woman, not much older than my twentysomething self, had no visual signs of injury to her body, yet her eyes were unseeing and glassy in death. The rescue work began, and my air force brothers saved many people that night. I helped some of the walking wounded to waiting transports, the magnitude of the disaster imprinted forever on my young mind. Seventy-five of 163 people survived.

I turned away from that memory.

The bottle in my hand again, the thick red fluid flowing into my glass. I took a long drink and gazed up at the night sky.

With how this all ended, what can I do here?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX They were all still out there, plotting, conniving, slipping through the cracks in our defenses and security to find ways to deliver another body blow to America or her allies.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The people these terrorists killed from here on out? That would be on us, the very Agency sworn to protect the country from such catastrophes. The result of decisions made that valued career more than the lives of our fellow Americans. In that moment, I felt like I was hovering above it all, looking down at the wreckage of what I thought my life would always be, looking for any sign of hope.

I cannot let bitterness destroy all that I gave. All that I love. There is no path forward from that destruction of my past.

I knew right then that I needed to always shield my family from this pain. I couldn’t let their view of the Agency be poisoned by their protectiveness toward me. If that happened, we’d all sulk in bitterness in the years ahead. It would redefine us from an Agency family to something much darker and rootless.

My father did not raise me to become a malcontent.

The stars shone brightly now against the crystal black backdrop of a perfect Virginia spring night. Crickets sang. Carmen peered out the window from time to time, giving me space but checking on me quietly.

I closed my eyes. The memories came like a flood again without order or context. The opposite of my father’s van. The mad-dash rush to a scene of an accident with Miami-Dade Fire & Rescue. The night I plunged into that Utah lake in the dead of winter to finally become a PJ. Lying in a doctor’s care, as sick and febrile as I’ve ever been after the Agency evacuated me from my beloved Contra camps.

I thought of Dewey Clarridge and Bill Casey. The moment I was recruited into the first CT group from Ground Branch. We developed an attack technique for going after terrorists’ camps with something more effective than distant TLAM shots. Two helicopters. A low bird with the assault element aboard. High bird tasked with providing support, using the door guns to hammer watch towers and gun positions as our team of former Green Berets wrought havoc on the ground. That VHS tape still exists somewhere in Ground Branch’s archives.

Those were incredible experiences, riding through training exercises as we developed this technique.

Then I remembered the 1991 investigation XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX There in the gazebo in my own backyard, I winced at that memory.

I had to make some sense of all this. Find order to defeat the chaos.

I closed my eyes and took a long, deep breath. My head cleared. I needed to purge the pain and protect the good parts of all that had happened. Order from chaos would start with dumping the baggage.

I imagined a jar made of simple glass, sitting in my mind’s eye, empty. I set it down to my left. Then, very methodically, I laid out my entire career, one memory at a time. It stretched across my memory with soldierly precision, each waypoint on this journey neatly aligned to the next awaiting inspection.

Here in front of me were the tools of my own healing. I started at the beginning, picking each memory up to examine it for the lessons, the people, the operations, the successes and failures, the good I tried to do. And achieved.

For each I wanted to remember, I placed an imaginary crystal marble in my jar. For those moments and people who brought the pain, I visualized a dark, misshapen marble and tossed it away into the void of my imagination. One at a time, I picked through the memories of my career, saving the best and jettisoning the worst.

Oh yeah, that guy was a shitbag. No sense wasting any memory space on him.

A dark marble flew into the void.

Dewey Clarridge, peering around a bookshelf in his immaculate suit, a colorful handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket. “Heard you were back.”

He always was there for me, a mentor in the shadows, looking out for his young acolyte with steadfast loyalty. It was hard not to love a guy like that. I placed his crystal marble reverently into my jar.

The more I thought through my career, the more that jar filled up. I had to reimagine it, enlarge it as I moved on through the ’80s and into my time in the Philippines. Far fewer marbles ended up in the void than in my jar.

As I went through this process, I realized I’d been blessed. The Agency gave me a life surrounded by people whose loyalty and devotion were exemplary models for me. They were of my dad’s character, cut from similar cloth. The path our Maker opened for me afforded me the honor to walk parts of it with them. That was an enormous life gift. How many people can say they’ve gone into harm’s way with some of the finest humans our country produces?

Not many. I was among the lucky few.

Long into that warm night, I stayed at this process. When I finished, I’d purged the pain and the people not worth remembering. My jar was filled to the brim, each marble a testament to the value and good fortune I found in my journey through the CIA, and pararescue, which got me a shot at the Agency.

Carefully, I packed up every waypoint in my journey worth remembering. I tucked them away with the same order and precision I’d laid them out for inspection. Order from chaos. Organization. The keystones of discipline. My father’s gifts to me.

In the morning, I would order a jar, or perhaps a beer stein. I would fill it with real crystal marbles as tangible reminders of the life the Agency gave to me. I would find a place of honor somewhere in my house so I never would forget this night and the meaning I’d found in the memories.

Bottle empty, cigar now a stub, I stood up, turned, and walked into the house to face my new life filled with gratitude for my old one.