Customer Reviews

Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am quite certain this author has been "black-balled" behind his back--Blair and Panetta, if they even have a clue this book exists--are being told reassuringly that the author is a disgruntled former employee, something of a "cowboy," and not at all representative of the "smoothly-running" clandestine service. Wrong. This is the real deal and I love it, for I live to speak truth to power whether power wants to hear it or not.

Perhaps the coolest thing about this book, something no one else has done, is the elegant interweaving of Office of Strategic Services (OSS) success stories from the past, with the failures of the CIA that the author sets forth for the public.

First my fly-leaf notes, then I will list ten books that complement this one. I agree with the first reviewer, if you read only one book this is the one, but I will suggest others where you can read my summaries and form a better bigger picture.

+ The author takes the time to say this is not an attack on the clandestine service but rather on the pathological dysfunctionality of the parent organization and the manner in which it is training (or not), equipping (or not) and organizing (or not) the totality of CIA's workforce.

+ I consider the heart-felt truth in this book, deeply rooted in real-world experience such as very few now have at CIA headquarters (and even less so on the DNI's staff, which the author tells us numbers close to 4,000). His bottom line is on page 7: "The failure of the CIA is structural."

+ Chapter 1 focuses on the divide between what the OSS sought to be--a small agile organization of individuals who were creative, daring, independence, self-starters, out of the box thinkers who would speak truth at all times; and what CIA has become--diametrically opposite. The author observes that CIA prizes groupthink and bureaucratic discipline as well as risk aversion (no ops no risk no problem), and that even the stars of the Afghanistan campaign are "suspect" as cowboys.

+ The author is articulate in observing the insanity of having clandestine stations anywhere near a U.S. Embassy and under any kind of control from Ambassadors whose highest priority is to give no offense and certainly not to allow any kind of operations amidst the opposition elements to our "friendly dictators" such as Saudi Arabia. I remember proposing an operation in Saudi Arabia in the 1980's and being told that we were not allowed to do anything there.

+ The author is brutal on the Office of Medical Services (OMS) which I learned myself is lacking in integrity and all too eager to help drive independent-minded individuals out with "fitness for duty" physicals. The CIA definition of "unfit" is closely tied to one's openly considering their boss to be an idiot.

+ The book excels at describing the break-down of the CIA, the leveling effect of putting unqualified people into the field, including Chiefs of Station neither trained as case officers nor fluent in the language. This will only get worse as the DNI takes over the Embassy spaces, hence I agree with the author--it is time to create something new totally outside the wire.

+ The CIA tries to recruit US citizens who can be cleared, and train them up in languages. This is exactly backwards, as the author notes. What we SHOULD be doing is recruiting third country nationals and U.S. expatriates at mid-career, and running them back on targets where they already have the needed access.

+ The author says that CIA has "crossed a critical psychological divide" and I agree. Too many people expect CIA to be a 20 year risk free comfortable job with early retirement. The REASON CIA has retirement at 55 is because we are supposed to have been "wasted" ten years earlier from the stress. I remember being obscenely proud of the fact that in my time, the DO had the highest rates of suicide, alcoholism, adultery, and divorce. I myself have 18 professional suicides in my past. Evidently everyone today is a well-behaved "pet" that can be relied upon to say "yes sir three bags full."

+ CIA's "layering" of multiple "centers" for proliferation, terrorism, etcetera has had the effect of gutting the authority and flexibility of the DO, while placing many more non-DO persons in positions where they can do a great deal of damage and little good.

+ The author believes that Non-Official Cover Officers (NOCs) are the future, and I agree, but since we know that CIA is incapable of creating functioning NOC bases from scratch, the author's plan to go completely outside the wire is a good one.

+ The author spends time on Iran-Contra, primarily to make the point that this was a rogue operation out of the White House, and to make the point that the CIA should be in the service of the Republic, not a captive agency of the White House to abuse as the political president sees fit.

+ The fragmentation of effort overseas is covered, where everyone and their sister has some claim to both local "liaison" and in the case of the military, "human operations" both overt and clandestine. It is a mess, plain and simple.

The book ends with a 14-step proposal for a new OSS that I heartily endorse. Delegation down, and decentralization of authorities, are needed, and we need real men (and a few tough women) to do the dirty.

The ten books below merely scratch the surface. Another 1,400+ can be found at my Public Intelligence Blog, Phi Beta Iota, all with reviews and all with links back to Amazon. I will answer comments here or there.

I do not list my own books, all of which are both on sale at Amazon and free online at PIB/PBI.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
Charlie Wilson's War
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
Of Spies and Lies: A CIA Lie Detector Remembers Vietnam
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
Blond Ghost
Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC

This book is extremely interesting for a number of reasons. It not only describes the effective destruction of the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine service (Directorate of Operations (DO)), but offers a novel solution to restore the ability of the U.S. to collect human intelligence and to conduct covert actions. Perhaps more interestingly it offers a window into the thinking of a recently retired and undoubtedly successful CIA Operations Officer. Finally it provides a much needed and friendly view of some the accomplishments of the WWII Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
The account that Faddis provides of the demise of DO mirrors the conclusions made by other former CIA officers such as Robert Bear and the pseudonymous Ishmael Jones. His solution to restoring DO however is unique. He proposes doing away with CIA as an institution and replacing it by a 21st Century version of OSS. His proposals actually make a good deal of sense including the concepts of keeping the reborn OSS small, diverse, and agile. He would introduce an actual "flat management" system that would push decision making and responsibility down to the lowest levels. And of course the new OSS operatives would operate far from the debilitating official cover offered by the U.S. embassies. All this seems worth considering.
Yet Faddis is perhaps too DO centric. In his introductory pages he describes DO as "core of CIA" and generally ignores the role of the Directorate of Intelligence (DI). Yet when CIA was charted it was precisely to be a clearing house and analytic center, "to connect the dots" in the current intelligence cliché. Because of the culture established by the many OSS officers who moved into the newly created CIA and the desires of most presidential administrations to have their own operational arm, DO gradually subsumed the DI. In a like manner in the OSS although because of the daring do of their dangerous and often important overseas missions it is forgotten that OSS also had a very effective intelligence analysis arm that included such icon analysts as Sherman Kent.. (See "Creating the Secret State", 2000 University of Kansas).
Faddis's criticism of the scandalous state of CIA and especially its DO certainly appears justified. Yet it is only one part of the story. The collection of HUMINT is just as dependent on analytic support as is SIGINT collection. Further no matter how good the collection service, somebody still has to transform raw information into something that can actually be used by decision makers. Analysis and collection are two sides of a single coin. Both need major reformation if they are to support U.S. National Security.

This is probably the most important book to come out this year. The author synthesizes all of the books about the CIA and its problems into one little book that everyone can understand. Not only that, he PRESENTS A SOLUTION. Unfortunately, I doubt if Obama or anyone in Washington has the moxie to implement author Faddis's solution.

The author argues with a great deal of archane information that the CIA is a broken agency, needs to be closed and another Agency built from the ground up. If his litany of horror stories seem unbelievable, consider this -- there are probably a thousand ex-case officers (ones who really ran operations (including me)) that can each tell a minimum of ten horror stories like the author, each one more unbelievable than the last. The bloated, time-serving, risk-adverse bureaucracy that the CIA has become must be extirpated and replaced by a mission-oriented, flatly-organized, and relatively small and nimble organization devoted to obtaining human intelligence quickly and have the ability to interpret it even more rapidly for policy makers. The author's case is simply overwhelming to anyone other than the federal bureaucracy.

As a side point, the author's remarks concerning military intelligence agencies (and DIA) may be true now, but it was not always that way. Once (during the 40s, 50s, and until Kennedy gutted those units in favor of putting their personnel back into uniforms) military intelligence was streamlined and capable, producing thousands of intelligence reports without layers of staff bureaucracies and tons of paperwork. Even the Soviets found that the GRU and the KGB were both necessary, and in many cases the GRU (Army Intelligence) actually produced better intelligence. But I will concede the author his point at this time. Likewise, the FBI is simply too bound by bureaucratic procedures to be effective in gathering intelligence, so yes, an OSS-type agency is sorely needed if the U.S. is to survive the NEXT TWENTY YEARS. The author makes a superlative case for this, although it may already be too late and beyond our political capabilities to implement.

The author's assertion that good case officers do not necessarily make good managers is absolutely correct and there needs to be a career path for case officers "in the Cold" to remain there and still have a rewarding career. Case officers need to be imaginative, mission-oriented, aggressive, maybe a little crazy to take the necessary risks (of being tortured and killed), able to work extremely long hours, have excellent linguistic skills, and be flexible and able to make snap decisions. Those attributes do not describe a manager or bureaucrat (usually.)

The author makes the point that foreign language capability is necessary to make a good case officer. I would like to second that and go farther. If an individual does not fluently speak, read and passable write in the language of the host country and/or the target country, then he cannot be an effective case officer, and indeed, should never be considered as a case officer. For example, if Valarie Plame was not fluent in the language spoken in her host African country while she supposedly was a case officer in non-official cover, then simply put, she was a square peg in a round hole and should have been given the title of case officer.

Inter-agency coordination requirements need to be minimized in order to be effective. As in the art of computer programming; if one programmer can do the job in one day, two programmers will take a week, and three programmers will never be able to get the job done. So it is in intelligence. The case officer and his agents/sources generally get the job done by themselves, and as far as the rest is concerned, the CO only needs his back protected and support for his accomplishing the mission ALL THE WAY UP THE LINE TO CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT. After all, he's the one risking his life to safeguard the rest of us.

I simply cannot recommend this book too highly. Purchase it, read it, and write your Congressman and Senator to make them read it. Otherwise, we can easily disappear in a mushroom cloud in the coming decades, be unable to drink our poisoned water, or die from breathing the deadly spores in our air.

Other books you might read include (all with my reviews on Amazon):

Chief Of Station, by Larry Devlin. An excellent book by an operative under offical cover.
Why Spy? Espionage in an Age of Uncertainty, by Frederick Hitz. This book clearly shows the problem, unfortunately it is the author and others with his lawyer-first, maximum control approach.
The Great Game: The Myths and Reality of Espionage, by Frederick Hitz. Like above, this adds valuable insight to espionage from a bureaucrat's viewpoint of view -- clearly the bureaucrat can't do or manage espionage.
The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, by Ishmael Jones. Read and believe -- probably the best book out there on the nitty-gritty.
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, and Political, by Robert Steele. A very valuable book for all citizens covering more than just the CIA.
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World, by Robert Steele. Extremely valuable work outlining American intelligence failures, how and why they occurred, and what is needed as reform.

This review will get quickly to the point, much like Charles Faddis' book, Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

In the book, Faddis does an outstanding job of detailing why and how the Central Intelligence Agency is broken, as well as, the measures necessary to repair it. As a no-nonsense, in-the-trenches operator, Faddis understands that criticism without recommendations to solve problems is useless and a waste of time. With this in mind, Beyond Repair is not meant to be a disparaging diatribe, but a 'how-to' manual that provides pragmatic solutions to complex issues.

As only an individual who has 'been there, done that' can do, Faddis provides insightful analysis and real world examples of CIA failures caused in large part by its increasingly bureaucratic and political nature. He also gives examples of the successes the agency is capable of when led by leaders who care more about the mission and their subordinates than themselves or progressing their careers. Simply put, Beyond Repair is a lesson in leadership, from which all leaders can learn. In addition to the leaders in the CIA, all those in the nation's Capitol should read and heed the author's lessons as well.

The author makes an interesting case regarding the creation of a new intelligence service. Unfortunately his mantra for a leaner structure - and one more willing to take risk / more diversified in membership profile - becomes repetitive very quickly. Every few pages goes back to relating how the OSS got it right, the current CIA is off track, and how the latter needs to become more like the former.

This book could easily be shaved down to 10 pages. It seems like the rest is just re-hash. Check it out from your library...not sure it's worth a purchase.

Occasionally a book comes along that opens doors to the inner workings of our secret agencies. It is rare that the inner workings are openly described by those who actually lived the life of a spy.

In this critique of the current CIA by one of its own, we find that the dysfunction of the U.S.'s intelligence gathering agency is beyond repair. The CIA needs to be trashed and replaced. And the other government agencies that are creating their own intelligence functions need to be stopped.

The world is not a nice place - unfortunately our own politicians have created the very situation that prevents the CIA from doing its job; supporting the promotion of paper pushers and yes men instead of capable operators and leaders.

If you want to see what is leading to the decline and fall of the United States of America - this book tells it like it is in at least one component. Like a cancer, once it takes hold, it metastasizes throughout the body, in this case the government, leading to the ultimate death of the host. If we don't excise the problem now, and begin healing the other problems of our government (and its agencies), we will ultimately succumb to the insidious spread of mediocrity and irresponsibility.

As a former member of the intelligence community, I could not agree more with the author more. I am surprised that his book got through the CIA review committee, because he certainly speaks the truth. We all know that the present administration would not know the truth if they were staring it in the face. They have consistently be our men and woman at significant personal risk.

This book is a scathing review of the decline of the intelligence community.
It is frightening, horrifying, to think our once-great intelligence has succumbed to
inertia, political correctness [...]
If we believe this writer (and why shouldn't we, unless he is not telling the truth about his
credentials?) he is a spy. He should know.
He could also be a guy with an attitude because he doesn't fit in with the current crop of spies
and the recent college grads who have begun to run things without experience.
So either way, it is a frightening picture of the wars ahead.

BEYOND REPAIR: THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE CIA offers a powerful survey by a former CIA operations officer who gives his insider's account of why the CIA is not prepared to do its job. From underlying weaknesses in the system due to bureaucracy to how the CIA has eroded rather than strengthened, this is a 'must' for any who would understand the CIA's pros and cons.

Charles Faddis had an exemplary career with the CIA and has provided us with a concise analysis of the successes and failures of the agency since its days as the OSS and on through today; providing a most interesting, provocative and important historical record. It is as well balanced as anything I have read on the agency, and he argues most persuasively for the need to accept that the present organization is mired in a bloated and dysfunctional bureaucracy that is simply "Beyond Repair." Upper management has become so risk averse that the agency has become as ineffective as most bureaucracies do over time. Mr. Faddis argues very persuasively for scrapping the present agency and starting over by re-instituting the OSS as it was originally conceived.

An interesting and informative read. One hopes that congress reads and heeds the advice provided by Mr. Faddis, as the recommended changes are a vitally important formula for success in dealing with the intelligence gathering challenges and operational imperatives our nation requires for survival in today's world. Students of history, current affairs or intelligence operations/agencies will find "Beyond Repair" an important addition to their libraries and their understanding of the shadow world in which agency personnel live and operate.

The cold war may well be over, but today we are facing state sponsored but stateless terrorist groups and individuals who present daily threats to the peace and stability of the world, and the concern over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) finding their way into the hands of these groups or individuals is very real. The consequences of this threat are not something any of us wish to see come to fruition, as a successful attack with such weapons anywhere in the world would make the losses of 9/11 pale by comparison. The terrorists only have to be successful once, whereas the government agencies tasked with thwarting their agendas must be right 100% of the time!