Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ishmael Jones, a former member of the Central Intelligence Agency. He joined the agency in the 1980s, where he served as a deep cover officer focusing on human sources with access to intelligence on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. His assignments included more than fifteen years of continuous overseas service in numerous exotic countries and several rogue nations. He resigned from the CIA in good standing. Ishmael Jones is a pseudonym, in accordance with laws that make it a felony to reveal the true names of deep cover officers. He is the author of the new book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture. It is the first book written by a deep cover CIA officer.

FP: Ishmael Jones, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Jones: Thank you.

FP: I’d like to talk to you today and about the WMD threat coming from terrorist organizations and rogue nations. How serious is it? And I take it that the nuclear threat is obviously the most important of the weapons of mass destruction, right?

Jones: That’s right. When we speak of WMD , we mean nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. But biological and chemical weapons have proven difficult to deploy and are less of a threat. The ability of chemical and biological weapons to kill on a mass scale appears to be limited due to the logistical difficulty of delivery of chemical weapons and the high levels of technology required to produce and deliver biological weapons. Many biological weapons become ineffective soon after exposure to an open environment, for example. Death from biological and chemical weapons is horrible, but these weapons can kill only in the low thousands of people.

Nuclear weapons have the ability to obliterate a city. They are based on 1930’s technology and are increasingly available. Like a lonely and unpopular schoolboy who brings a semiautomatic rifle to school one day to show everyone that he is a person of consequence, some nations and their people are actually proud of having become a nuclear power. I often met Indians and Pakistanis who expressed great pride in their nations’ having joined the “nuclear club”. Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir Khan, the inventor (or assembler of collected parts) of the Pakistani nuclear bomb was and still is regarded as a Pakistani George Washington. But it’s not hard for any nation to assemble a nuclear weapon if they decide to do so.

Nations will tend to develop nuclear weapons as deterrents and threats, for bargaining, and for boasting. Terrorists, on the other hand, seek nuclear weapons in order to use them.

FP: So the main purpose and mission of the U.S. intelligence services should be to prevent nuclear attack.

Jones: Yes. The United States is invulnerable to conventional military invasion. Even Israel , which is in a historically indefensible geographic position, will be able to resist conventional military invasion for the foreseeable future. But the United States can lose cities to nuclear attack, and a smaller nation like Israel can be destroyed. The great risk to free people today comes from the apocalyptic destructive power of nuclear weapons.

FP: Are you saying that the US must be the world’s policeman?

Jones: It is in the national interest of the United States to prevent nuclear attacks from occurring anywhere in the world. We can debate whether it was in the US national interest to become involved in the Korean, Vietnam, or Iraq wars, but we can be certain that we are acting in the best interests of America if we seek to prevent nuclear weapons attacks anywhere in the world. The mass destruction of human life, free institutions, and trade and commerce will affect Americans no matter how distant the attack. For nuclear weapons proliferation, it is in our interest to be the world’s policeman.

The US is in the best position to counter nuclear weapons proliferation because of the resources and energy it can devote to the task.

FP: So what are effective counter-proliferation programs?

Jones: American intelligence services have the best potential in countering nuclear weapons proliferation because of the enormous money and resources available to them. Unfortunately, the primary player, the CIA ’s clandestine service, is broken and has few if any good human sources of intelligence. I worked in these areas during more than 15 years of consecutive overseas assignments, on a wide variety of countries and issues, and I was disheartened to see how weak each list of human sources was for each hostile country or terrorist organization.

“All politics is local” and elected politicians respond to short-term needs. Nuclear attack is highly unlikely this week, or in upcoming months, so a politician’s focus may be on bringing federal funds to their district to build a new bridge, instead of taking steps to counter nuclear proliferation.

I never encountered a wholly false or fictitious human source in the CIA, but saw that most were of little value. Many of the CIA’s human sources are friendly American citizens or people so far removed from access to intelligence as to be worthless. Activities by some individual CIA officers were often energetic, but seemed designed only to generate activity. I didn’t see many deals being closed. The bureaucratic resistance to the operations conducted by my colleagues and me was intense.

During the 1990’s, several of my colleagues worked in a CIA counterproliferation unit run by a man who is today one of the CIA’s top managers, a man who impresses upon Congress the strength of CIA capabilities. “You know,” said one of my colleagues, “I worked in that unit for three years, and we never did a single operation.”

President Bush’s political opponents may perceive the CIA as an ally and be reluctant to confront it. The CIA and its former employees have provided ammunition to the president’s political opposition: the Plame incident, allegations that Bush ignored intelligence on Iraq, allegations that his administration sought to fraudulently create evidence of Iraqi WMD. The greatest threats faced by his presidency, the closest he has come to impeachment, have all featured the hand of the CIA . The president’s political opponents should realize, though, that the CIA is loyal only to itself, and its inability to serve America will be an obstacle to all future presidents.

FP: This is a terrible situation. Can you expand on why the CIA does not perform?

Jones: From the Bay of Pigs to the Iran hostage crises, from 9/11 to Iraq WMD, as America faces each foreign policy decision, the human source intelligence provided by the CIA has proven to be false or nonexistent.

The CIA’s failure to perform stems from a bureaucratic energy which drives it to expand within the United States but not in foreign countries, to erect geographical turf barriers with many layers of management, and to engage in risk-averse operations designed to look busy. All of this is compounded by the agency’s complete lack of accountability and transparency. The CIA should use secrecy to protect people and operations, but instead uses secrecy to hide fraud and mismanagement.

The CIA’s risk aversion should not be defined as simply a fear of taking action. Risk aversion is a more complex condition that includes the creation of sometimes risky activities designed to make the organization appear to be a risk-taker. In the Abu Omar case, for example, which involved the abduction of a terrorist suspect in Italy in 2003, the operation was noted for its sloppiness and remarkable number of tradecraft violations: inexperienced CIA officers used the same cell phones for calls to CIA Headquarters in alias and calls to family members in true name, and stayed in expensive hotels in Italy for days after the operation’s conclusion. A large number of CIA people were involved, at great expense. This was risk aversion in its more complex form, as if the passive-aggressive CIA were saying: we can certainly do risky operations, but here’s what happens when you push us to do them.

FP: So how can we fix our WMD intelligence capabilities?

Jones: Incremental change has already been rejected by the CIA . The CIA’s founding charter prohibits its activities within the United States, yet the vast majority of CIA people live and work within the US . Federal regulations already prevent nepotism and favoritism and fraud in the assignment of contracts, yet these activities are common. The CIA has already been told repeatedly to become more active outside of its embassies, and given an additional $3 billion to do so, but it has been unable and unwilling to do so. Changes that would dramatically improve CIA performance have already been ordered and ignored. No CIA manager has ever been held accountable for failure to deliver the needed intelligence. The congressional committees that oversee the CIA may not have any real power - the CIA simply disobeys congressional directives, and nothing happens.

The solution will be to break up the CIA’s clandestine service and assign its pieces to organizations that function and have accountability mechanisms: assign the CIA ’s activities within the United States to the FBI; assign its diplomatic, liaison, and embassy functions to the State Department; and assign its foreign intelligence collection to the US military. Change must be radical.

It is not hard for intelligence officers to meet and develop human sources of intelligence on enemy nuclear programs. These human sources are people who are vulnerable to approach because they seek to improve their lot and to care for their families. They do not see themselves as evil mass murderers. Enemy scientists must necessarily be in touch with the scientific community in order to keep abreast of the latest scientific developments and they are available by email and telephone. Nuclear proliferators must roam the globe looking for components. Most proliferators are in business to make money, which makes them willing to consider what an intelligence officer has to offer. In many cases, a direct approach to a nuclear proliferator is simplest and best.

If intelligence officers understood that to achieve advancement within the intelligence service they would need to obtain quality foreign intelligence on WMD, they’d eagerly do so. Intelligence officers, most of whom are currently located within the US, would quickly move to foreign lands.

By making the clandestine intelligence service accountable, American intelligence can be focused to counter nuclear weapons for the safety of free people everywhere.

FP: Ishmael Jones, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Jones: Thanks very much. Your work at Frontpage gives us the debate and criticism that leads to a safer world.

By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com

Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.