I DECIDED TO WRITE THIS MEMOIR IN SEPTEMBER 1997, WHEN THE Central Intelligence Agency publicly celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. During three of the Agency’s five decades, which spanned the Cold War years, I served as a professional intelligence officer, creating and deploying many of the most innovative techniques of the espionage trade.
My purpose in writing this book, however, is not to bring credit to myself. I have already received ample recognition in the intelligence community. Vanity is not at stake in this project. Rather, I want this book to describe as accurately as memory permits a few of the operations my colleagues and I conducted. The reader can judge for himself the quality of our service in the cause of freedom.
Some of those we worked with are no longer alive. Others prefer to celebrate their achievements privately. Others are still actively engaged and must remain in the shadows. I have changed certain details of their identities so that they can remain anonymous. But, willing to err on the side of openness, I chose the potential risks of telling our story. I trust that doing so will also serve the cause of freedom.
Almost since its inception, the American intelligence effort has been either vilified by the world’s news media—sometimes as part of Soviet disinformation operations—or romanticized by spy novelists with only vague notions of the nature of espionage operations. Yet for more than fifty years, Americans have been asked to support—both morally and financially—a large and active intelligence effort of which they have had little concrete knowledge. Several Directors of Central Intelligence and many of my colleagues have concluded that it is time to share more details of the earnest endeavor we made in the name of the American people. I agree.
I realize that my decision alarms certain intelligence professionals who see no need to breach the principles of silent service that I and others instilled in them during their training. But those who know me best will realize that I would never knowingly betray a trust or reveal a secret that would jeopardize a comrade, a source, or my country’s interests.
Secrecy, of course, is the lifeblood of espionage. I am not a reckless renegade intent on exploiting clandestine operational methods to promote a book, nor do I feel it necessary to apologize for the U.S. government or the CIA’s past errors or excesses. In telling my story, I intend to help redefine the CIA’s traditionally stringent disclosure position. Although I will reveal much of what I know to be the Agency’s ongoing contribution to preserving the world’s peace and democracy, I intend to be consistent with sound security practices.
I must also adhere to the spirit of the law. Anything I write or say for public consumption is subject to scrutiny by the CIA’s Publications Review Board. Further, I must consider the needs of intelligence professionals who continue to uphold the integrity of the service.
Publication review does not mean censorship. I have the same First Amendment right as any American citizen to express my opinion, positive or negative, about declassified details of our business. The review process is designed to determine whether any present or former Agency officers have violated the trust placed in them. We must all protect the appropriately classified aspects of the procedures and individuals used to collect intelligence vital to our country’s security. The secrecy agreement we signed represents this contract of trust. We all signed it willingly, fully realizing that we would never be able to divulge certain details of our profession.
But attendant to this lofty obligation is a more practical concern, first expressed by veteran American intelligence officer Sherman Kent in 1955. He was proud of his leadership position but ambivalent as a scholar. Writing in the first issue of Studies in Intelligence, then a classified Agency in-house publication, Kent noted:
Our profession, like older ones, has its own rigid entrance requirements and, like others, offers areas of general competence and areas of intense specialization. People work at it until they are numb because they love it, and because the rewards are the rewards of professional accomplishment.
Intelligence today is not merely a profession, but like most professions it has taken on the aspects of a discipline: It has a recognized methodology; it has developed a vocabulary; it has developed a body of theory and doctrine; it has elaborate and refined techniques. It now has a large professional following. What it lacks is a literature. From my point of view this is a matter of greatest importance.
And where is that literature? In 1998, forty years later, CIA director George J. Tenet announced that because of “current budgetary limitations,” plans to declassify records on significant Cold War covert actions conducted from the 1940s through the 1960s would have to be shelved indefinitely. His announcement caused both academics and the CIA’s history staff to express their deep disappointment. Tenet, however, conceded that the CIA still has “responsibility to the American people, and to history, to account for our actions and the quality of our work.” He added that the public needs the Agency’s histories “to judge for itself the contribution made by the Intelligence Community to the successful conduct of the Cold War.”
This sentiment is central to my decision to write a memoir.
Many intelligence officers did not live to see the end of the Cold War. The efforts of those who fought in the shadow world of the espionage wars, from the torrid backwaters of the Congo to the spy capitals of Vienna, Moscow, and Berlin, were never acknowledged in a parade or public memorial.
There are a few dozen stars carved in the white marble wall in the lobby of the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters that serve as mute tribute to staff officers who died in the line of duty. But like the countless documents awaiting declassification, this stone memorial gives the American public no opportunity to celebrate the sacrifice these men and women made for freedom.
Perhaps this book will help honor the memory of their service.