City author spies missteps by CIA

By David Maurer

Published: June 10, 2008

When Frederick P. Hitz reported for his new job as inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1990, he knew exactly where to go.

The Washington-born lawyer had worked for the nation’s premiere spy service from the late 1960s until 1982, when he left to practice law. When he returned eight years later and walked across the glistening waxed floor of the headquarters’ building in Langley, his first impression was that it could have been the Department of Agriculture.

A large souvenir shop on the main floor was selling everything from golf balls to sweatshirts bearing the CIA logo. Bands were serenading workers during lunch hour, and senior officers would periodically man the grill during company cookouts and dish out burgers to subordinates.

Hitz wasn’t troubled by the attempts to “humanize” the CIA. What concerned him was the pervasive attitude that it wasn’t much different from any other government agency.

He knew that sort of mindset was both wrong and dangerous. This was made dramatically apparent in 1994 when it was learned that Aldrich Ames, a long-time employee of the CIA, had done immeasurable damage by selling the Soviet Union some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets.

“When I first arrived at the CIA in the late ’60s, some of the first generation of officers were still on duty,” Hitz said as he relaxed on the front porch of his Charlottesville home. “These were people who understood why the place was founded.

“There was a feeling that it was a family, and you were your brother’s keeper. But I think over time things got more established, a little flabbier, a little more bureaucratic, and there was a little less of a feeling of it being a family.

“That was the problem with Ames. He was an alcohol abuser from the beginning, and nobody reported he was going out for these long, boozy luncheons. Here was a guy who had one-on-one contact with Soviet intelligence people, and he had a drinking problem. That’s not very wise. We got to get with it more.”

In Hitz’s latest book, “Why Spy?: Espionage in an Age of Uncertainty,” he outlines how we all need to get with it in the post 9/11 world. The author provides the layperson with a primer on how the CIA goes about its job.

Cleared for publication by the CIA, the book is filled with fascinating information. For example, it lists the seven classic motivations for committing espionage — ideology, money, revenge, blackmail, friendship, ethnic or religious solidarity and love of espionage for its own sake.

As Hitz points out, espionage is the world’s second-oldest profession. In his book he attempts to illustrate how the age-old game needs to adjust to new challenges presented by global terrorism.

“Frankly, what motivated me to write the book was that I got quite exasperated at the notion of trying to deal with this so-called intelligence failure,” said Hitz, who retired from the CIA in 1998 and now teaches at the University of Virginia. “The failure to stop 9/11 before it happened. And the failure to understand there were no weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein had hidden.

“When the Congress and the American people came to grips with how to fix it, it was the good old American way — just throw money at it. Hire more case officers, more this, more that.

‘Quality over quantity’

“It’s not going to be that way, and it won’t work that way. I’m a great believer in quality over quantity.”

Hitz said that after 9/11 the common cry was that the U.S. needed more human-source intelligence. He agreed, but because of his experience in the murky world of espionage he knew how difficult that would be.

“I think we have to understand that a lot of what’s going on here with terrorism are activities at a grass-root level,” Hitz said. “Where the terrorists are extraordinarily effective is not letting anybody close to them unless they believe they can trust them 100 percent.

“And where they’re terribly smart is never letting central direction get in the way of effectiveness. They’re willing to take a certain amount of responsibility on their own in order not to be caught in a pattern that can be broken.

“So how do you get them to betray their friends, country and family to work for us? The answer is it’s pretty difficult, and you got to have your thinking cap on, and recognize vulnerabilities when you see them and try to exploit them.”

A question Hitz heard time and again during the aftershocks from 9/11 was, “How are we going to get a blond-haired, blue-eyed American into an al-Qaida cell?” The answer he gave was that we weren’t going to try.

“What you’re going to try to do is have somebody over there who does have the capability of getting into al-Qaida,” Hitz said. “And you’re going to have one of our agents run that person.

“You’re not going to be the eyes and ears, he or she is. That requires you having access. You have to be in a position where you would meet this kind of person and have the opportunity to cultivate them in whatever way you can.

“That obviously means language, and a pretty good understanding of what makes them tick. It will be indirect, but it doesn’t have to be any less effective for that reason.”

Trusted traitors

American traitors from Benedict Arnold to Robert P. Hanssen, the FBI agent who spied for the Soviets, serve as proof that even the most trusted people are capable of selling out their country. Their reasoning is often complex, but that doesn’t lessen the damage they can wreak.

“What I did was try to figure out what are the principal motivations to cause a person to betray family, friends and country, and how this has transpired over time,” said Hitz, who teaches a course at UVa on anti-terrorism and the role of intelligence, as well as a class that compares spy novels with real life.

“The way it has worked in our own country so often, and certainly during the Cold War, was people get angry. They feel they’ve been badly dealt with. They haven’t been promoted when they should have been promoted.

“They will often spy for purposes of revenge, to get back at the outfit that hurt them. That was certainly the case with Ames and Hanssen.”

Hitz said it’s a serious mistake to think everyone in the Middle East hates the United States and wants it destroyed. Even a dedicated member of al-Qaida can become disenchanted.

“This kind of terrorism we’re dealing with is a weapon of the weak,” Hitz said. “At the end of the day it hasn’t anything positive to say.

“What are they selling? Do you want to go back to the 14th century and put your wife back in chains? It’s a pretty bleak doctrine, the leading tenet being you get the right to martyr yourself.

“There might well be somebody trapped in one of these al-Qaida cells who says, ‘We’re not going back to a 14th-century caliphate. What sense does that make? What is that going to do for my children and for our prosperity?’”

One of Hitz’s duties as inspector general was investigating allegations of wrongdoing. This responsibility is particularly important given the often distasteful aspects of espionage. Paul J. Redmond, former head of CIA counterintelligence, put it bluntly in a blurb for Hitz’s book.

“Nice Americans do not like human espionage,” Redmond writes. “In this book Frederick P. Hitz has done a great job of rationally explaining the not nice, morally ambiguous, ‘dirty’ business of espionage.

“This is a service to the country at a time when there has never been a greater need for secret, human-source intelligence, which can only be obtained with the full understanding and support of the American people.”

Hollywood misconceptions

Hitz said perhaps the biggest misconception people have of the CIA is that it’s like the agency Hollywood presents. He hopes his book will inform readers about the real work the men and women of the CIA do.

“As I say in the book, if you were walking around the main floor of CIA, aside from the pictures of the former directors on the wall, you would think you were in any main-line federal bureaucracy in Washington,” said Hitz, who has also written “The Great Game: The Myths and Reality of Espionage,” and “Unleashing the Rogue Elephant: September 11 and Letting the CIA be the CIA.”

“That’s not what the CIA is. It should be a tightly disciplined organization, at least on the clandestine side of it, and that part shouldn’t be lost sight of. You got to have that esprit de corps, that feeling of uniqueness, or you’re not going to get the job done.

“This is not an everyday kind of thing, and it’s sure not a James Bond kind of thing. It’s a job where people have to ask themselves if they have the stomach for it, and the wisdom to figure out the right way to do it.”

Hitz will read from his latest book and sign copies at Barnes & Noble at 6 p.m. Friday.