The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture [Hardcover]

Ishmael Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2008

After spending decades as a deep cover officer in the CIA, Ishmael Jones conveys a true feel for the facts of real clandestine work. He tells his story straight and with dry wit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What's wrong with the CIA? A number of authors have tackled this question lately, and the pseudonymous Jones brings what could be a unique vantage point: a career operative, Jones claims he was "America's number one producer of intelligence reports on terrorism." Unfortunately, the book is more memoir than expose, privileging personal complaints (Jones is frequently underutilized and underappreciated) over actual accounts of the intelligence community's accomplishments and setbacks. Even as he hops the globe, Jones revels in woefully familiar aggravations: the Agency fails to reimburse his expenses in a timely fashion, wastes his time in team-building exercises, etc. He convincingly labels headquarters a haven for burnt-out, risk-averse pension-seekers, but he spends just as much time getting in digs at difficult landlords, surly cab drivers and airplane travel. Though Jones levels many serious charges against those running the CIA, he doesn't follow through and offers just a few pages of suggestions; his self-concern and attention to mundane details make this more suitable for those considering a career at the Agency than those wishing to understand it.
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Review

Company Chaos: The Central Intelligence Agency is a bloated, unresponsive bureaucracy that exists to serve itself and cannot fulfill its important intelligence-gathering role, which was the reason for its creation by President Harry Truman. This scathing indictment is made, not by the enraged "liberal media," but by a patriotic and devoted member of the CIA since the 1980s.

Ishmael Jones, the false name for a deep cover agent, offers a chilling insider's account that shows repeatedly that the agency is driven by incompetence and greed. Its false intelligence not only led President Bush to declare war in Iraq, but the Agency's blunders were responsible for the Iranian hostage crisis that bedeviled the Carter administration, and the Cuban Missile Crises, which nearly precipitated a world-ending nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Kennedy administration.

Jones was not thrown out of the CIA but was a highly regarded agent who resigned to write this book because he could no longer serve in this organization that had lost its sense of purpose and the capability to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. This controversial, eye-opening account will be popular in public libraries and debated by its readers. --Karl Helicher, ForeWord Magazine

Company Chaos: The Central Intelligence Agency is a bloated, unresponsive bureaucracy that exists to serve itself and cannot fulfill its important intelligence-gathering role, which was the reason for its creation by President Harry Truman. This scathing indictment is made, not by the enraged "liberal media," but by a patriotic and devoted member of the CIA since the 1980s.

Jones was not thrown out of the CIA but was a highly regarded agent who resigned to write this book because he could no longer serve in this organization that had lost its sense of purpose and the capability to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. This controversial, eye-opening account will be popular in public libraries and debated by its readers.

Ishmael Jones, the false name for a deep cover agent, offers a chilling insider's account that shows repeatedly that the agency is driven by incompetence and greed. Its false intelligence not only led President Bush to declare war in Iraq, but the Agency's blunders were responsible for the Iranian hostage crisis that bedeviled the Carter administration, and the Cuban Missile Crises, which nearly precipitated a world-ending nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Kennedy administration. --Karl Helicher, ForeWord Magazine

Company Chaos: The Central Intelligence Agency is a bloated, unresponsive bureaucracy that exists to serve itself and cannot fulfill its important intelligence-gathering role, which was the reason for its creation by President Harry Truman. This scathing indictment is made, not by the enraged "liberal media," but by a patriotic and devoted member of the CIA since the 1980s.

Ishmael Jones, the false name for a deep cover agent, offers a chilling insider's account that shows repeatedly that the agency is driven by incompetence and greed. Its false intelligence not only led President Bush to declare war in Iraq, but the Agency's blunders were responsible for the Iranian hostage crisis that bedeviled the Carter administration, and the Cuban Missile Crises, which nearly precipitated a world-ending nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Kennedy administration.

Jones was not thrown out of the CIA but was a highly regarded agent who resigned to write this book because he could no longer serve in this organization that had lost its sense of purpose and the capability to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. This controversial, eye-opening account will be popular in public libraries and debated by its readers.

-- Karl Helicher, ForeWord Magazine

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; 1St Edition edition (July 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594032238
• ISBN-13: 978-1594032233
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 100 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A few false notes, but on balance, final nail in CIA's coffin, August 12, 2008

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture (Hardcover)

This is a clean-sheet final review. I considered dropping it to a four because of false notes. However, after adding up all the substantial "bombs" in this book, bombs I will itemize below, I believe the book not only merits five stars, but should--if Congress were honest, which it is not--warrant a full Congressional investigation, and a wholesale purging of the light-weight risk-averse clowns now managing CIA's directorates.

The author was a Non-Official Cover (NOC) Officer, something he is not allowed to say, but he no doubt has infuriated the pretentious at CIA by making it clear that virtually all of CIA's case officers are under Department of State cover.

I will list the false notes first. While I have not been active in clandestine operations since 1988, the following troubled me:

1) Ability to work on own funds with pay and expense gaps of up to $200,000 at a time.

2) Excessive travel to HQS and entry into HQS. In my day NOCs did not come inside at all.

3) Implied knowledge of inside operations and actual sighting of final cables--in my day, NOCs were handled as prize agents, and never saw any official traffic.

4) Agents (the ones committing treason) complaining to HQS to get their NOC fired? This is way over the edge.

5) Uninformed view on JAWBREAKER and First In with respect to public story--however, it is now it is coming out that Bin Laden was believed killed by multiple air bursts over Tora Bora, and the "flight" to Jalabad might have been a CIA deception ordered by the White House, and the only good explanation for why General Franks refused to drop a Ranger battalion, knowing it was merely in support of a CIA fabrication.

6) Inconsistency between one claim that Plame had four years of training followed by a short tour followed by five more years of training, and footnote 46, which is much more credible.

I hope other case officers, and NOCs, will read and review this book and contribute reviews that extend my own notes in the public interest. The time has come to shut CIA down and start over (the same is true of the rest of the secret world, but this book focuses on CIA).

Management crimes itemized in this book:

1) Waste of billions of dollars in post 9-11 money, to include paying rent for domestic assignments and creating hundreds of new CIA offices all over the USA, while failing to create new NOC capabilities overseas. [Note: open sources tell us that rather than fielding hundreds of NOCs, CIA created extremely expensive cover companies, all but one of which has since had to shut down--just as the Joint Fusion Centers across the USA are shutting down: CIA management is disconnected from reality in a big big way).

2) Risk aversion, multiple layers of inept and egotistical management, most of whom have made a career out of being in HQS rather than serving in the field (I myself did three back to back tours overseas and quit CIA when I was told to go down the hall and lie to another case officer--which was coincident with Ted Price deciding I was unfit for duty because I consider the DO a joke).

3) US academic access agents being sent to destroy NOC access and existing cases, management seeking to triple-up coverage on cases best handled by singleton NOCs. Combined with the risk aversion, with HQS officers being clueless on how easy a commercial approach can be, anywhere including in "rogue" or "threat" states, this book for all of its flaws, is a death blow to the Potemkin village called the National Clandestine Service.

4) HQS, and Agency personnel, have blown virtually every clandestine identity in history--very very few have been brought down by hostile counterintelligence. I was one of five case officers NOT blown by Phil Agee's Cuban-sponsored list as published in Mexico, this resonates with me. CIA lives "immunity from accountability," NOT "cover."

5) Many credible examples of CIA waste of new money on NOC "trainees" that are stationed in USA and "counted" in testimony to Congress. Riveting story on how CIA fabricated NOC overseas presence by sending NOCs on non-operational sight-seeing tours, called "Axis of Evil Tourism" by the NOCs.

6) Lends additional support to the long-known unwillingness and inability of CIA to operate in Syria or any other Middle Eastern country, in anything other than a declared liaison capability.

7) Destroys CIA claims on Europe, pointing out that more often than not CIA is "shut down" across Europe and refuses to do operational actions not being done jointly by liaison. Points out that Europe is important as a transit point, not as a target, but this nuance is evidently lost on risk-averse "managers."

8) Recurring theme is the micro-management, the multiple layers of approval and editing (including the morphing of Reports Officers into "Collection Management Officers" who no longer add value)

9) Exposes the ease with which an ally, perhaps Germany, has dangled double-agents and consistently embarrassed CIA case officers. This probably applies to Russia and France, and more subtly, to China and Cuba, but then CIA is not admitting any of this.

10) Page 118: in the Middle East, the author's primary area of operations, 15% of the NOCs working as they should; 70% quiet failures; 15% spectacular failures. The real question is: what number. My guess is 30, of whom only 4 are real, and half are light-weight contractors.

I am coming up on my 1000 word limit, so here are some teasers: NOC laptops used to fire one out of ten NOCs for access to pornography; polygraph given for "disgruntlement"; CIA stationary accidentally sent to all NOCs overseas; contract firms taking the money and destroying clandestine service....

The appendix, specific recommendations for reform, merits serious consideration. On balance, this book is now on my short list of essential references on the deception and death of our spy service.

See also:

On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Lost Promise

None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam

Decent Interval: An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the Cia's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam

The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA

Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion

See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism

Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon

Blond Ghost

117 of 125 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Written Description of an Incompetent Agency from the Trenches, August 31, 2008

By 

David M. Dougherty (Arkansas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture (Hardcover)

First of all, I have purchased & read this book, and I recommend that everyone who is concerned about US security read it. Having been a former case officer myself doing exactly what Ishmael was doing, his story and analysis rings true with only a few insignificant exceptions. My time was twenty-five years before Ishmael's and the bureaucratic growth and risk-aversion trends were apparent then, but obviously they have become much worse.

Please allow me to make a few comments that might contribute to Robert Steele's excellent review.

Although the term "spy" is bandied about to sell books, for example, Valerie Plame's book, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy...", case officers are not spies -- they handle, administer, and manage spies. As such Plame was not a spy, yet her career is typical: four years of training in the US, two years in an embassy overseas under diplomatic cover gathering tidbits at cocktail parties, four more years of training in the US, possibly a couple of months as a NOC (Non-Official Cover) case officer where she was not involved in any positive intelligence operations, (it takes years to become truly productive, if at all), and then ten more years in the US doing bureaucratic functions. I leave it to the reader to decide whether the taxpayer got his money's worth.

I do not mean to pick on Plame, but her story is typical. Very, very few case officers are effective, and when they are, it is in violation of policies and procedures from headquarters and only after taking extreme risks, both with regard to their physical safety and their career. Ishmael was willing to do this, and over time had to be eliminated in spite of his production because he; 1) made others look bad, 2) forced lazy bureaucrats to do even a modicum of work, and 3) was viewed as a loose cannon that someday would cause an intelligence flap. Another norm was "Suspenders", always looking good and making others feel good, but in reality contributing nothing.

The reader should be shaken to the core over the activities and bloated bureaucracy of the Agency within the US. The brief of the Agency is to provide intelligence ONLY on Foreign countries and agencies. The FBI is charged with providing domestic intelligence. So why are 90% of Agency personnel living it up in the US? Because it's comfortable, and that's what bureaucracies do.

The author's presentation of the approval process is not only accurate, but incomprehensible to a case officer. In my day operations could and were mounted within weeks (& that was without computers). If anyone watching a Hollywood movie where things happen with the velocity of light, please consider that approximately 80% of a case officer's time is taken up with paperwork (now computerized), 15% in support activities (travel, etc.) and maybe 5% in operations (if he is active, willing to by-pass procedures, and is willing to take risks.) Gathering human intelligence is not an easy job, and literally everyone above the case officer is against him, one way or the other.

In short we have "paralysis by analysis," and in the Agency this is furthered by bureaucratic "paralysis by approvals."

The author's accurate depiction of the problems in husband/wife teams in the bureaucracy should be taken to heart. They are essentially ALWAYS dysfunctional. The veteran reader should consider the situation where a husband and wife are officers together in the same infantry company and the problem is readily visible. But not to the Agency.

Another startling statistic is that the Agency is now 1/2 female. I wonder how many, if any, are successful case officers. I can't imagine any of my agents allowing themselves to report to a female. (Sorry, folks, but there is a lot of agent/case office bonding required.)

I was also startled to discover that case officers are paid $100,000 or more per year, plus all sorts of allowances and expenses. Ishmael's estimate that a case officer cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year was incredible, particularly considering that most produce nothing. So what does run-of-the-mill human intelligence cost? $100,000 per page? And that doesn't count the bloated bureaucracy. This is truly a broken organization.

BUY AND READ THIS BOOK!

p.s. I can't believe Ishmael fronted the Agency up to $300,000 out of his own pocket. In my day such debts never went over a thousand dollars or two.

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Deal, July 14, 2008

By 

Vince Reilly "Reilly's review" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture (Hardcover)

This is the ultimate adventure story of a deep-cover spy, operating throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, tracking weapons scientists and terrorists. It is full of dry humor, and never slows down. But the real purpose appears to be to draw the reader's attention to the weakness in American national security caused by poor or false human intelligence. By not pontificating, the book is exciting and gets its point across. It's a book about intelligence reform disguised as a spy story.

Deep cover spy Ishmael recounts details about inept CIA training and torture courses, dodging co-workers trying to sabotage his work, falling prey to a dead-baby con scheme in Bombay, and the hilarious saga of his friend, the world's worst spy. I read an advance copy that should be the same as the final - and believe some of its revelations are explosive: the inability to place spies in foreign countries, the CIA's growth within the USA, disappearing money, work avoidance schemes, and great gaps in intelligence. A few paragraphs on the Plame incident are enlightening.

The Twins, a pair of CIA professors, pop up to intrude upon intelligence operations; a hunt for CIA pornography users decimates deep-cover spies overseas. CIA employees hire their spouses as managers in a confusion of nepotism. And bloody Iraq, a place of such absurd violence that ordinary CIA risk aversion is temporarily on hold.

The CIA's just a big couch potato, a failure at providing intelligence but an expert at feeding itself and growing ever larger. The consequences of this nonpartisan book could be far-reaching and CIA reform should be on the top of the Obama, (Hillary) or McCain agendas. CIA reform may well be the most important thing Americans can do as a nation to protect themselves. The author's decision to donate his book profits gives his case even greater strength.