Direct Action

DIRECT
ACTION
A Covert War Thriller
JOHN WEISMAN

For Mimi Crocker
and
For Lieutenant Colonel Richard Campbell, USMC (Ret.)

C
AREER
G
UIDANCE
101:

Big ops, big risks
Small ops, small risks
No ops, no risks.
—Hand-lettered sign posted outside a cubicle in the CTC (Counterterrorist Center) at CIA headquarters, spring 2003

CONTENTS
I
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
1

ON 21 SEPTEMBER 1995, AT 11:47
A
.
M
., five senior officers from the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations—the CIA’s clandestine service—quietly gathered in room 4D-627A, one of the sensitive compartmentalized information facilities colloquially known as bubble rooms, on the fourth floor of the headquarters building at Langley, Virginia. The Agency was still reeling from the February 1994 arrest of Aldrich Hazen Ames. Ames, an alcoholic, money-hungry wreck of a career case officer, had betrayed dozens of America’s most valuable Russian agents to the KGB, resulting in their arrests and executions. He had also handed over many of CIA’s technical tradecraft secrets and the identities of American undercover operatives.

Two of the clandestine officers at the meeting had been tasked with writing a Top Secret/Codeword damage assessment of the Ames debacle, a preliminary draft of which, at their peril, they were now sharing with three of their most trusted colleagues.

The assessment was grim. One had, it said, to assume that CIA had been completely penetrated because of Ames’s treason. The Agency, therefore, was now transparent. Not only to the opposition, which still included Moscow, but to all of Moscow’s current clients, including Libya, Syria, Sudan, Iraq, and—equally if not more critical—to the transnational terrorist organizations supported by those states. Transparency meant that the entire structure of the Directorate of Operations had to be considered as compromised; that every operation, every agent, every case officer was known to the opposition and its allies.

The only way to ensure that the clandestine service could survive in the coming years, the seniormost of the report writers suggested to his colleagues, would be to build a whole new and totally sterile spy organization inside CIA—a covert clandestine service within the overt clandestine service. But such a utopian solution, all five knew, would be impossible to achieve. The current director of central intelligence, John M. Deutch, would never allow it. Deutch, a tall, bumbling, angular, bookish MIT professor of chemistry who had served as undersecretary of defense, had been sent over from the Pentagon the previous May to clean CIA’s post-Ames house. Instead of selecting savvy advisers to help ease his way into Langley’s unique culture, the new director—himself a neophyte in matters of spycraft—brought with him as his closest aides two individuals neither of whom had any operational intelligence experience.

Deutch’s executive director was Nora Slatkin, a presidentialappointee assistant secretary of the Navy. His deputy and right arm was George John Tenet, an NSC staffer who’d toiled on Capitol Hill for Senator David Boren among others. It didn’t take more than a few weeks for the great majority of seasoned intelligence professionals of CIA’s clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations or DO, to detest all three. The situation was made even worse when Deutch appointed David Cohen, a DI (Directorate of Intelligence) reports officer, to head the DO. Cohen, the corridor gossip went, absolutely detested spying and those who did it.

So no one was surprised that it took only a few months for Deutch and his associates to promulgate a series of orders that, in effect, prevented CIA’s clandestine service from... spying. Under the new rules of engagement, every agent who had a criminal record, or was suspected of human rights violations, or who might be involved in any kind of criminal or terrorist activity, was to be jettisoned. Dumped. Ditched. Discarded. Their agent networks were to be disassembled.

By the 21 September meeting, more than half of CIA’s foreign agents had been struck from the rolls and their names erased from BigPond, CIA’s computer database run by Nora Slatkin’s administrative division. More than fifty productive agent networks in Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Asia were summarily disbanded. Unable to recruit the sorts of unsavory but productive individuals it had targeted in the past, American intelligence quickly found itself going deaf, dumb, and blind. After the BigPond debacle, the old hands started referring to Slatkin as “ToraTora” Nora.

And voting with their feet. By summer’s end of 1995, more than 240 experienced case officers—40 percent of those with more than fifteen years of field experience—had resigned or taken early retirement. The Agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) had been eviscerated, with many of its physical and technical assets either eliminated altogether or handed over to other agencies, including CIA’s detested rival, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. CTC operations at Rhine-Main airport, Frankfurt, where its European crisis-management “crash team” was forward-deployed, was shut down completely.

It wasn’t long before it was proudly announced during a closed-door session of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) that the new CIA leadership was saving more than $3.6 billion annually by closing nine CIA stations in sub-Saharan Africa and CIA’s bases
¹
in half a dozen Western European cities. The rationale was that with the Cold War over, America didn’t need to keep tabs on Soviet agents anymore and the Agency outposts in such places as Düsseldorf, Barcelona, Marseille, and Milan were superfluous.

Alan Martin, CIA’s assistant deputy director for collection, couldn’t get an appointment with Deutch or his deputy, George Tenet. So he finally corralled one of Tenet’s growing army of special assistants in the cafeteria. He explained that the bases could be used to keep an eye on the growing number of Islamist radicals living in Germany, Spain, France, and Italy.

¹
A CIA base is a small intelligence operation that functions as a satellite to the main intelligencegathering unit, the CIA station, which is normally quartered in an embassy or in some cases a consulate general. The CIA station in Germany, for example, is physically located within the U.S. embassy in Berlin. There were, at one point, CIA bases in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, and Munich. All were closed between 1995 and 2000.

Martin was greeted with a blank stare. Islamist radicals? Who the hell cared about Islamist radicals living in Düsseldorf? We are into saving money here. Get with the program, Al, he was told, or get lost.

But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the tectonic shift taking place in the quality of the DO’s people. The situation wasn’t new: under previous directors William Webster and Robert M. Gates, DO had been forced to accept within its ranks analysts, reports officers, and secretaries, few of whom had either the inclination or the ability to spot, assess, and recruit agents to spy for America. The prissy Gates even had a politically correct term for it: cross-fertilization.

Now, under Deutch, Slatkin, Tenet, and Cohen, the vacuum left by the loss of experienced case officers was being filled by a growing torrent of unskilled, naive, risk-averse individuals who had no field experience. None whatsoever. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Analysts had already been appointed as chiefs of station in Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Nairobi, and Lisbon. A reports officer was running Warsaw. A former secretary with only six months of training had been made station chief in Kiev. Kiev, with Ukraine’s vast store of Soviet-era nuclear weapons. Jeezus, it was like appointing a hospital’s chief file clerk to head its neurosurgical team.

12:26
P
.
M
. The five men in 4D-627A had more than a hundred years of combined intelligence work under their belts. Among them, there wasn’t a region anywhere on the globe that they weren’t familiar with.

Until Deutch had replaced him with a reports officer, Bronco—for Bronislaw—Panitz had been CIA’s assistant deputy director for operations. Panitz had served in Eastern Europe. He’d been chief in Budapest and Singapore, come back to run Agency operations in Western Europe, then gone out again, this time to Madrid. At fifty-five, Bronco still had the imposing build of an NFL fullback. He worked out in Langley’s gym four days a week, pumping iron and playing the same kind of full-contact, half-court basketball he’d first learned on the streets of Manhattan’s Yorkville neighborhood as a teenager.

Antony Wyman currently ran CIA’s much-reduced Counterterrorism Center. But the corridor gossip said he was about to be eased out, replaced by someone who’d be more compliant to the new director’s wishes. Wyman was known as “tony Tony” because he was a complete and devoted Anglophile. His MA (history, honors) was from Cambridge. He wore bespoke chalk-striped London-tailored suits, loud Turnbull & Asser shirts, even louder T&A ties, and bench-made brown suede shoes from John Lobb. A gold-rimmed monocle customarily hung on a black silk ribbon around his neck, and a silk foulard square perpetually drooped from his breast pocket.

But Tony Wyman was no more a foppish dandy than the Scarlet Pimpernel. He’d served as chief in London, where he’d helped MI5 and MI6 put a dent in IRA terrorism, and in Rome, where he’d pressed SISMI, the Italian military intelligence service, to dismember the Red Brigades piece by piece. After Rome, tony Tony had been assigned by DCI William Casey to destroy the Abu Nidal Organization. The ANO had just killed five Americans during simultaneous December 27, 1985, attacks on TWA and El Al passengers at international airports in Rome and Vienna, and Casey wanted to put them out of business.

“You do what you have to, Tony,” Casey had bellowed, spewing tuna salad as he spoke. He dropped the half-eaten sandwich onto its plate and slapped his cluttered desk for emphasis. “I want that rotten son of a bitch’s head on a pike right next to our front gate. So don’t you let me down.”

Tony Tony had brushed the director’s food from his strié velvet vest and gone to work. By the middle of 1987, a series of Wyman-devised covert-action programs had turned Abu Nidal into a paranoid psychotic. That November, he machine-gunned a hundred and sixty of his own people. Two weeks later, the terrorist chief ordered a hundred and seventy of ANO’s Libyan-based operatives killed. By the end of the year, he’d tortured and murdered more than four hundred of his closest associates because Wyman’s covert-action program had convinced Abu Nidal they might be leaking information to CIA. By 1988, the ANO ceased to be a serious threat.

Charles Hoskinson, the oldest officer at the meeting, was a lifelong Arabist. Short and round-faced, with longish, wispy white hair and neutral gray eyes set off by old-fashioned tortoiseshell, round-framed spectacles, Hoskinson presented a lot more of Bob Cratchit than he did James Bond. But his string of achievements was nothing short of remarkable.

In 1972, as Damascus chief of station—Hoskinson’s first COS posting—he managed to recruit the brother of the Syrian ]]]]]]]

compromising poses . Henry
Kissinger during the 1973 October War. Then he
.
As chief in Beirut during the bloody Lebanese Civil War, Hoskinson
maintained a clandestine backchannel relationship with the PLO that had
included chaperoning Ali Hassan Salameh, Black September’s chief of operations, the architect of the Munich Olympics massacre, and a CIA developmental, on a 1977 honeymoon vacation to Hawaii with his new
Lebanese wife, the former Miss Universe Georgina Rizak. Hoskinson even
tried to teach Salameh how to scuba dive, but discovered that the man
who’d cold-bloodedly ordered the deaths of so many hundreds got claustrophobic and panicked underwater.
In Cairo, where he’d served from 1978 through 1981, Hoskinson was
not only responsible for helping to guide Egyptian president Anwar elSadat through the negotiations that had resulted in the Camp David peace
treaty, but he also convinced Sadat that it was in Egypt’s long-term interests to throw the Soviets out—something Sadat did mere weeks before his
October 13, 1981, assassination.
Hoskinson, however, had been sidelined. It happened after the thirtyplus-year veteran refused to terminate MJPLUMBER, a Palestinian agent
who’d been involved in the 1987 attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to Spain. Sure, PLUMBER had murdered Israelis in the past, and
he’d probably do so again if given the chance. But these days he was one
of the PA’s highest-ranking West Bank security officials. PLUMBER, however, had always had a weakness, a predilection for little boys. It was a vulnerability that had made him an ideal (and successful) candidate for recruitment by Giles T. PRENDERGAST, one of Hoskinson’s case officers, in the mid-1980s.
Hoskinson was convinced Arafat was going to cheat on Oslo. And PLUMBER, who didn’t like the way Arafat was skimming millions without sharing the loot, would divulge how the chairman planned to do it, since he was now a trusted member of Arafat’s inner circle.
But Deutch’s troika wanted no part of MJPLUMBER. “I get everything I need from the Israelis,” Deutch had reportedly growled. “I don’t want some senator complaining that we hire buggering pedophile assassins as agents.”
Hoskinson wasn’t about to tell the DCI that you don’t hire an agent, you recruit him, because the distinction would have been lost. Despite his entreaties, PLUMBER was cut loose, and CIA was denied its only unilateral access to Arafat’s clique. When Charlie went to CIA’s inspector general and filed a formal protest, Deutch’s people went ballistic. The DCI summoned Hoskinson to his office and flat-out ordered him to retire. When Hoskinson refused, Deutch loosed his attack dogs to hasten the decision. Ten days ago, Hoskinson had been forced to become a hall walker after Tora-Tora Nora’s deputy had him evicted from his office. Undeterred, he’d set up shop in the cafeteria and used the extension of a friendly Near East division desk officer to receive messages. But one of the troika’s spies had ratted him out.
This very morning, Tenet’s toad of an assistant had appeared in the cafeteria with a note instructing Hoskinson to appear forthwith for a psychological exam. Obviously, since Hoskinson hadn’t obeyed Deutch’s every command, he was mentally unstable. An old friend who had access to Deutch’s office suite warned Charlie the DCI was going to terminate him with cause.
Hoskinson had spent thirty-four years and three months at CIA. He loved the place and what it stood for, and he was damned if he was going to let Deutch and his people destroy it. Stan Turner, Bobby Gates, and Bill Webster had been bad enough. But Deutch, Jeezus H. Keerist. Hoskinson looked at Tony Wyman. “Goddamnit, Tony—it’s time to get off our asses.” P]]]]]]], the case officer who’d been tasked to write the majority of the Ames report, blinked. “I agree, Charlie. But what course do we take? I think we should sleep on it. Reconvene tomorrow with some ideas.”
“Some of us already know what we have to do, STIGGINS,” Hoskinson growled. Even in the bubble room he used the undercover officer’s Agency pseudonym, Edward C. STIGGINS. “Ed, you made the perfect suggestion yourself an hour and a half ago. Sleeping on it won’t change anything. There’s only one element that has to be changed.”
“Which is,” Wyman continued, “that instead of building a new DO on the inside, we do it on the outside—and we make a lot of money in the process.”
Alan Martin’s knuckles rapped the table. “Take the DO private. Brilliant.”
“A two-level organization.” Wyman polished his monocle. “Level one: overt. A privately held corporation. Commercial and industrial risk and threat assessment, crisis management, and security counseling. Big market. Believe me, I’ve been approached.” He looked at Panitz. “We’re talking revenue in the mid-seven figures our first year.”
Bronco Panitz caught the look between Hoskinson and tony Tony. They’d been plotting this for some time now.
Wyman shot his French cuffs to display antique five-dollar gold-piece cuff links. “Level two: covert. We target the areas where the DO is blind— Middle East, Southwest Asia, Africa, et cetera, and then we sell our product—twenty-four-karat stuff—back to Langley. For a stiff fee, of course.”
“And Langley will pay,” Hoskinson said. “Because it’s a Potemkin Village these days.”
“He’s right,” Alan Martin grumbled. “There’s virtually no human product coming in. It’s all liaison and technical.”
“Recruiting won’t be a problem, believe me,” Tony Wyman said. “Deutch is pushing the best people out. I’ve got commitments from more than a dozen of our colleagues.”
Alan Martin had to admit it was brilliant. In order to save the Directorate of Operations from self-destructing, Hoskinson and Tony were suggesting they run the same sort of covert action they’d used successfully in the past against the Soviet Union, China, Iran, and dozens of other nations, political parties, and terrorist groups. But instead of providing information that would destabilize, they’d pass on the intelligence CIA was currently incapable of gathering for itself.
STIGGINS frowned. “Deutch won’t like it.”
“Deutch won’t ever know.” When STIGGINS started to object, Bronco Panitz said, “Christ, David Cohen’s always contracting annuitants for odd jobs. As well as farming out work to half a dozen consultants.” It was true. Retirees currently ran one-man CIA stations in five subSaharan African nations on a contract basis. In the NE bureau, there were two acting branch chiefs who were actually employees of private riskassessment firms. One had resigned from CIA in 1994, the other in 1995. But because they had current clearances and polygraphs, they’d been hired back—in their old slots no less—because CIA had so few experienced case officers available with real street experience in the region. The two, who’d retired at the GS-14 level and earned roughly $86,000 a year, were now costing the American taxpayer $1,250 per day each, plus benefits: $325,000 a year.
“You’ll need a network at headquarters, Tony.” Alan Martin’s expression grew intense. “Access agents, penetration agents, agents of influence, and most important, moles. You know how it is on the seventh floor. It’s all about job security. If you don’t have a handle on what the seventh floor is thinking, sooner or later they’ll scapegoat you.”
Tony Wyman fixed the monocle into his right eye and stared first at STIGGINS, then swiveled oh...so... slowly toward Martin, then panned back again to STIGGINS. He released his facial muscles. The monocle fell. “And your point is...”
Alan Martin got the message. “STIGGINS and Martin. It sounds like a vaudeville act.”
Tony Wyman grinned. “It sounds more like the 4D-627 Network to me.” By 2:30
P
.
M
. they’d reached a consensus. An hour and a half later, Antony Wyman, Bronco Panitz, and Charles Hoskinson had started the paperwork for their retirements. When Tony’s secretary asked what he planned to do, he said he and a couple of friends were going to open a private security firm. “What are you going to call it? Wyman and Associates?” “Wyman and Associates. Has a nice ring to it, m’dear, but perish the thought. Far too... égoïste pour moi. We are calling ourselves...the 4627 Company.”