Spies Create Far Better World

November 01, 2007

A visit to CIA is oddly calming. Entering from the outside world, you leave the incessant cacophony of the voracious media that can't bear dead air, requiring every nanosecond to be laden with doom about the state of the world. Yet, things are perhaps as good as they have ever been in human existence, as reported in The Wall Street Journal recently by columnist Stephen Moore, recounting the results of the State of the Future report released by the United Nations. It turns out things are better by every measure: Worldwide illiteracy is down from one-half to 18 percent. The human life-span is 50 percent longer than 30 years ago and more people today live in free countries than ever before. Capitalism and free trade are the engines for this progress – and the results will continue to improve with world poverty estimated to be cut in half between 2000 and 2015. And my favorite: the delusional Paul Ehrlich and his seminal and totally inaccurate 1968 book, The Population Bomb – that predicted the US would be out of food, water and fossil fuels by the year 2000 due to overpopulation – is again refuted entirely. The UN report predicts that births worldwide will stabilize in mid-century and then fall.

The CIA should receive the credit for this global good news. By staring down the repressive Soviet regime – and its efforts to spread its doctrine around the world – the irrefutable reality is that the US and the CIA won the Cold War, creating the happy results that the State of the Future looks rosier than ever before in human history.

But, typically, in our stoked-up political and media environment, reality is ignored. The CIA remains the villain in the political passion play, vilified by the New Left in the 1960s with little respite since. Legacy of Ashes, the recent book by Tim Weiner of The New York Times, typifies the unrelenting effort of the faux intellectual class in this country to keep the train of history running their way. Weiner's message – that the CIA has done nothing meaningful since its inception in 1947 – and has actually harmed America and its image abroad, is simultaneously ridiculous and scurrilous. Of course the Agency has committed some colossal mistakes, but certainly it has achieved many worthy goals, and in the end scored perhaps the greatest victory of modern times.

The problem with Weiner and his ilk is their reliance on broad brushstrokes of doctrinal definitions of history. Intelligence agencies perform thousands of small tasks to fulfill their mandates. While critics of spy agencies point to large scandals and defeats, they miss the essential point: spy agencies can't divulge what they do or they compromise their mission. CIA officers are rarely recognized for achievements when they are alive, and posthumous recognition is either decades in coming – or not at all. They go about their business knowing only a very few will ever know what they do.

Inside the “old” building at CIA, quite ordinary people scurry about, actually thousands of them, willing to work for their country under a giant politically negative cloud that can spit lightning at any moment. As you walk in the foyer over the Agency seal, on the left and right are memorial tablets with stars representing those who died for their country while performing heroic service that not even their families are allowed to know. Some of the stars have names alongside; most do not. Once through the security turnstiles and up a wide slowly rising staircase, the marble-white corridors take visitors to the room set aside for private CIA ceremonies.

This particular day, the Agency bestowed the Distinguished Service Intelligence Medal to Brian Kelley for his success in the 1990s in tracking down an important Soviet “illegal” in Europe who had eluded the CIA for over 20 years. Of course, no names or details were offered.

But the extra drama at this particular ceremony was the apology to Kelley from the CIA – including the deputy director, the chief of counterintelligence and the former head of the National Counterintelligence Executive – for the horrendous ordeal he suffered at the hands of the FBI. The Bureau became convinced in 1999 that Kelley was the “mole” they knew was working inside CIA for the Soviets.

Somewhat in league with CIA administrators, FBI agents entered CIA's Langley headquarters and informed Kelley he was suspected of being a Soviet spy. They confiscated his credentials and badges and escorted him out of the building in disgrace. Kelley spent the next three years in a nightmarish limbo. He was placed under 24-hour surveillance while FBI operatives sought evidence to prove their theory that Kelley was their mole. FBI agents threatened Kelley's colleagues and family, even interrogating his aging and ailing mother in a rest home, berating her that her son was a traitor.

It's impossible to know Kelley's anguish. Stripped of his career, his dignity and his reputation, he wandered in a maze of resentment and fear, even afraid he could not seek legal representation. He was sworn to secrecy in his job, so how could he divulge his situation to an attorney? One day in frustration, knowing it was a fruitless task, he turned to the Yellow Pages and noticed the name of a lawyer he recognized – James Woolsey, a former director of CIA. Kelley called Woolsey, an attorney was retained but not until the FBI arrested Robert Hanssen did the ordeal end.

Kelley was asked why he didn't sue the FBI and CIA for their mistake. His answer was simple. He did not want to harm the Agency because he believed in its mission. And we should all be thankful that heroes like Kelley ignore the attacks on the CIA – and keep on working to keep us free.