Will the Real Former Intelligence Officer Please Stand Up?

I read with interest and amusement how a Fox News Guest Terrorism Analyst was arrested on charges of lying about having ever been in the CIA. 

This man, Wayne Simmons, co-authored a spy novel and on his Amazon profile describes an illustrious career in the Intelligence and Defense industries. But, according to these charges, none of it was true.

It's not for me to judge, he is innocent until proven guilty, right? 

But this makes me wonder what I must be doing wrong that I have never been asked by Fox News or another major news outlet to be a "Guest Terrorism Analyst." 

You see, I really am a former Arabic Linguist at the National Security Agency. Here are some things I'll openly state I did and I'm not at all worried about what would happen if someone fact checked me and consulted the institutions in question.

* I have a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My major was Biblical Hebrew and Semitic Studies. My minor was Arabic studies within the department of African Languages and Literature there.

* I worked as a Arabic Linguist at the National Security Agency from June, 2002 until July, 2006. While there I held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance.

* I served in Iraq in 2004 and I was awarded the Global War on Terrorism Civilian Service Medal for my service there.

* After my return from Iraq, I worked in the Counter Terrorism Office at the NSA until I resigned from that agency in 2006 to become a Latin teacher at a public high school.

If what I just claimed is not true, I deserve to be charged as well. But if it's true (which it is), then I should be the talking head when they need someone to discuss Terrorism or Surveillance or Snowden or whatnot! 

And so, all you news outlets, my contact info is on my websites. I'm not asking for payment to be interviewed. I just want the chance to plug my books at the end of the interview the same way that most interviewees plug their books and Simmons also plugged his.

That's right! I also have espionage-themed books I've written. We're all trying to make a living. There are a few of us legitimate former Intelligence Officers out there promoting various books. And the last thing we need is Stolen Honor competition from fake wannabees!

Yes, I'm a former Spy and I have a glorious beard.

If you're so inclined, please
Facebook Like, Tweet, Google+, Pin, Tumblr, whatever, this message to help this former Intelligence Officer turned public school teacher get noticed by the media and receive the "Interviews on Major News Outlets with the Opportunity to Plug his Books" that a legitimate former agent who risked his life for his country deserves. 

I thank you for your consideration. God bless. -Keith

Lessons for Success from the World of Espionage: HUMINT

The image to the left is the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. The particular type of Intelligence gathering they conduct is known as HUMAN INTELLIGENCE (HUMINT). A knowledge of how it is done and the special considerations that go into interpreting what they produce there can help people in other fields maximize their success and productivity as well.

Definition of HUMINT

 Human Intelligence is intelligence gathered by people interacting with other people. Now, that interaction is not always a mutual sharing. For instance, if a spy somewhere manages to be sitting at a restaurant in the booth next to an intelligence target, and she overhears the target say something important, that is intelligence gathered by a person from a person. It’s Human Intelligence. But, generally speaking, HUMINT involves someone sharing information directly with another person. And the person sharing the secret is generally doing so with a motive. Frequently the motive is money.

 Who Conducts HUMINT?

 Most HUMINT in the United States Intelligence Community is conducted by the CIA. The fact that they have clandestine agents all over the world is hardly a secret, since you can apply to be a clandestine agent right on their website![1] And the job of such clandestine agents is to obtain information of intelligence value from other people. Theoretically it does not matter who the people are from which they glean their information. The only thing that matters is whether it has intelligence value. In other words, a diplomat from country A stationed in country B obviously knows things policy makers in the United States would like to learn. But if that diplomat talks too openly about state secrets when he’s had a few too many to drink, his butler might be the source of valuable intelligence as well!

 While Human Intelligence is conducted primarily and formally by the CIA, there are other government agencies that do Human Intelligence in an unofficial capacity all the time. If a US diplomat, an employee of the State Department, is at a dinner in the country of his or her posting, and they learn something that may be of intelligence value, they are obligated to report such information.

 What are the most important issues in HUMINT?

 By definition, HUMINT is information one person wants another person to have. The problem is, there are multiple motivations one could have for sharing information. One of them may indeed be a desire to mislead! In fact, there have been cases in the history of espionage in which a spy has told another spy true information merely to establish credibility for a long term plan to do substantial damage at a later date with misinformation.[2]
 
 The point is, whenever a spy learns information from an asset, all we really know is that the asset wants the spy to have that info. We technically know nothing about the credibility of the information itself.

 We all go through our day under what is known as the “Truth Bias.” In other words, virtually everything people say to you all day long is true. And, for that reason, we receive information and incorporate it into our daily plans assuming it is true unless we learn otherwise.

 I mean, imagine if you tried to function under the complete opposite of the truth bias. If everything you heard from everyone in your life was assumed to be a lie unless you learned otherwise, you would lose your mind in the exhaustion of chasing down confirmation of the information around you.

 The problem for HUMINT is that we sometimes take in this information without subjecting it to appropriate scrutiny. In the category of HUMINT, we should be much more discriminating about the potential for misinformation than in our day-to-day lives. And yet, in the history of espionage, credence has sometimes been given to information despite obvious red flags.

 Perhaps the most famous recent example of an Intelligence failure connected to the “Truth Bias” is the misplaced credence that was given to the Intelligence source known as “Curveball.” This man, Rafid Ahmed Alwan, had made claims to German Intelligence regarding the Chemical Weapons capabilities of the Saddam Hussein regime in order to gain asylum and permanent residency there.[3] Information he supplied eventually was reported by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN in the lead up to the Iraq War.
 CIA reports contain an automatic caveat at the end, to the effect that whatever information this report contains may have been provided with the intention to “deceive or mislead.” Hopefully the presence of this caveat leads policy makers to take the information provided for exactly what it might be worth—which could be, in some cases, a grain of salt.

 One final anecdotal comment. As of the time I left the NSA, CIA reports that I saw WERE BEING RELEASED IN ALL CAPS! Now, maybe they were only in all caps in the systems I had access to. Maybe, like NSA reports, they were actually released to policy makers in a nice professional office style.
 But if all readers of these reports were seeing them in all caps like I was, that is a potential problem. Anything written in all caps seems to scream at you. I hope that the effect of all caps did not result in a bias wherein the font itself seemed to imply urgency.

 Circular Reporting

 A final point analysts have to remember when weighing the veracity of HUMINT, and in fact this applies to other disciplines within the Intelligence Community as well, is the possibility of what is known as circular reporting. This is also known as False Confirmation. Multiple sources all stating the same information are not necessarily independent voices.
 For instance, if you told all your friends a story, and they all went and told the story to their spouses, the fact that the story was related by a number of different people does not make it more reliable. It came from a single source.
 Circular Reporting is precisely what makes false rumors seem credible. Once the rumor really takes off, you are hearing it from multiple, seemingly unconnected, sources. You think to yourself, that’s the third person I’ve heard that news from today. It must be true. But that false rumor could have started with one source, who intentionally fed misinformation to someone, knowing it would take off like wildfire.

 Lessons Learned

 We all go through our lives keeping our sanity with the Truth Bias. But in both our personal and professional lives, the lessons learned from the practice and failures of HUMINT in the world of espionage should give us pause to consider the veracity of the information around us.
 Rather than react to all the information we receive as if it is necessarily true, we should receive it through the following filter:

 “Someone has just told me something because they wanted me to hear it.”

 And before we make decisions based on that information, we should consider all of the possible motives for that information exchange.

 It remains probable that people who tell you things are telling you what they think is the truth. But the lesson of HUMINT is that we should be open to other possibilities. We should break out of the Truth Bias, reacting to all information we hear as if it is, by the hearing, therefore true.
 For instance, I’ve learned in life to just smile and nod whenever anyone tells me about their marriage. Whether they are telling me it’s perfect or horrible, all they are telling me is what they want me to hear. It does not necessarily have anything to do with reality.

 It is equally important to keep in mind that someone may tell you something, legitimately believing the information to be true, when it’s not. The take away from HUMINT is that information we receive from another person is just that—information. The best way to make decisions for our personal and professional lives is to collect as much information as possible, even and especially information that contradicts other sources, so that we can weigh all the facts.
 And when collecting and weighing information for important decisions in your life, always consider the possibility that an abundance of evidence for one position may have actually come from a single source.

[1] The CIA conducts HUMINT with its “Directorate of Operations (Formerly known as the Clandestine Service).”
https://www.cia.gov/careers/opportunities/clandestine/index.html
 
[2] A notorious example of this is the so-called “Double Cross System” run by British Intelligence during WWII. Captured German agents who agreed to collaborate were fed legitimate information to report back so that eventual misinformation would be more readily believed. This plan is credited with the success of the D-Day Landing. See, Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, by Ben Macintyre (New York: 2012).

[3] “Iraq war source’s name revealed.” BBC News, November 2, 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7075501.stm
 




This post is an excerpt from my latest book, Top Secrets: Lessons for Success from the World of Espionage. It is available on Kindle and paperback.

Made in Wisconsin: Aldrich Ames

So many wonderful people hail from Wisconsin. But, in the interest of full disclosure, like all places, we've got our bad apples too. 

And this includes one of the worst traitors in US espionage history, Aldrich Ames.

Yes, lamentabile dictu, Aldrich Ames was born in 1941 in River Falls, Wisconsin. The family relocated to Virginia in 1952 when Ames' father went to work for the CIA. As a result of his father's connections, Ames got low level employment there while still in high school and began to work his way up the ranks.

Now, I worked for four years myself at the National Security Agency as a Top Secret cleared Arabic linguist. And the security background checks and ongoing monitoring to which I was subject were virtually created by the lessons learned of the Aldrich Ames case.

Here was a man who had an ongoing serious alcohol problem while in service, which was noted in numerous performance reviews and yet he kept right on working. He had extra-marital affairs with foreign nationals, a nasty divorce, and ends up deep in debt. When he began selling the Soviets the names of CIA assets, he suddenly had enough money to buy things his CIA salary could never have afforded. And by the time the Agency finally figured out that he was the mole responsible for the deaths of dozens of CIA assets, it was all obvious only in retrospect.

When asked how he was able to continually pass polygraph tests, he reported, "There's no special magic. Confidence is what does it. Confidence and a friendly relationship with the examiner. Rapport, where you smile and you make him think that you like him."

Despite the fact that both Ames and Robert Hanssen (an even more damaging traitor, and born in Chicago, thank God) passed numerous lie detector tests, the US Intelligence Community still requires their use routinely for obtaining and retaining Top Secret clearances. 

The Intelligence Community does, however, maintain a constant watch on the credit status of people under Top Secret clearance, and deep debt or sudden influxes of money are red flags of potential issues. If they had skipped the polygraphs and been checking on those things routinely back in the 80's and 90's, they would have caught both Ames and Hanseen more quickly. 

At any rate, a Wisconsinite who failed upward at the CIA as he betrayed his country.

Keith Massey was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. He has his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Biblical Hebrew, with a minor in Arabic. After 9/11, he served as an Arabic linguist at the NSA. He is currently a Latin teacher at a public high school in New Jersey.

Keith is the author of Intermediate Arabic for Dummies. His fiction novels follow the adventures of Andrew Valquist, roughly patterned after himself--a man born and raised in Wisconsin who gets pulled into the world of international intrigue. 



Keith's novels are A Place of Brightness, Amor Vincit Omnia: An Andrew Valquist Adventure, Next Stop: Spanish, and In Saecula Saeculorum.

Three Moons: How I Got My Gun

That’s right, me, a language scholar from Wisconsin, stand in Baghdad a little concerned that I’m not wearing a gun yet. If that sentence sounds strange, it’s nothing compared to what I was feeling. Fact is, you don’t get sent to Iraq without first being certified on the weapon you’re required to then wear.

The NSA has its own weapons certification center, as you’d expect. But I totally lucked out and managed to get a slot at something infinitely sexier. I got to spend a week being certified on the Glock 9mm Handgun and the M-4 Assault Rifle at a secret CIA training facility somewhere in [Location Deleted]. In fact, when my boss got me that slot, she asked me to not talk about it openly because the other NSA’ers would be jealous of the opportunity I got.

What made it so envious? Well, at the NSA facility, you just got basic certification. You were taught how to fire the gun and after you complete a test of firing a full clip on a target, you get your certification and you’re good to go into the field.

Not so at the CIA. We didn’t just fire the guns to achieve quick certification. It was an entire week, all day long.

The very first day, the trainers announced to the group that one of us was, gasp, an NSA’er. I laughed along with the rest as they declared that we would all know who he was when we first fired the guns and someone hit the ground trying to hide.

Very funny guys. Let’s really see if you can spot me.

And the very able trainers began to explain that they would be meticulously teaching every aspect of these guns and how to fire them. And you would only be certified after you completed not only the firing range course, but other tests as well. This would include simulated combat situations.

And I began to suspect that I had a secret advantage. You see, I had never before fired a handgun. I’d shot birds with a BB gun at my grandparents’ farm in Wisconsin. But I’d never so much as shot a 22 rifle. And I was becoming aware that that meant I had no bad habit to unlearn.

I was Tabula Rasa, which, snickering CIA fools, is Latin for “Blank Slate.” And you can draw anything on a Blank Slate, such as a good shot on that gun.
 

This all became apparent late that first day when we finally went out on to the range with our handguns. We had learned all morning how to take them apart and reassemble them. Now, this was a fine skill to learn, but the fact is that for three months in Iraq I never once did more to my gun than remove the clip nightly (more on that later).

Later that morning, we were finally out on the range. And our trainers told us to do EXACTLY as we were told.

Got it, trainers. I’ll do exactly as I’m told.

We don’t have any bullets in our guns yet, by the way.

“Take your gun out of your holster and aim it down range.”

I do as I’m told. I take my gun from its holster and I aim it down range.

We all hear several clicks up and down the range.

The lead trainer walks slowly to the front of the group.

“WHO TOLD YOU TO PULL THAT TRIGGER?!” he screamed.

I had not pulled my trigger. After all, I had only been told to take the gun from the holster and point it down range. I’m no Cowboy. I’m a Latin student from Wisconsin getting certified on this gun so I can go to Iraq.

He screamed at us for several more minutes and told us that we were all now to put our guns back in the holster and we were going to repeat this exercise. And further he told us that anyone who ever again pulled their trigger without permission would be sent home without the certification.

We again, on orders, pulled our guns from the holster and pointed them down range. Now no one pulled the trigger.

We repeated that exercise several more times. Then came the order to pull the guns from the holster and pull the trigger.

We comply. And we do that several more times. Remember, we don’t have bullets in our guns yet. We’re just practicing the moves. The trainers keep telling us that we are doing these moves and repeating these moves so laboriously because we are building muscle memory. We will never fire that gun without first pulling it from the holster because, in the field, that’s exactly what would happen.

It was late in that first morning. My stomach was growling. We knew a box lunch was waiting for us back at the shed.

“Release your clips!” the lead trainer shouted.

He then walked the length of the line and handed each of us a single bullet.

“Load that into your clip and insert it.”

I did as I was told.

“Pull back on the gun to chamber that shot.”

I did as I was told.

“Put your guns back in  their holsters.”

“When I give the order, you will draw your guns from their holsters and then line up the target with the sight at the end of the barrel. Remember. This is not a race. When you have the sight on the target, take a breath and then release it and pull the trigger.”

We stood looking down range at the paper targets set up roughly twenty yards away.

“Fire!”

I pulled my gun from the holster.

I aimed it down range and put that sight on the target. My nervous hand was flying all over the place. I took several deep breaths as I heard others taking their shots. But this was no race.

I placed the sight carefully over the target and then slowly squeezed the trigger.

The blast and recoil of the gun shocked me. But I squinted down range to see what had happened. A tiny black dot had appeared just to the left of the center of the target.

And I knew in that moment how to correct for that left-ward drift.

A few more agents took their shots.

“Time for lunch, people!” the trainer shouted.

Over the next several days we would fill those clips and fire out all the bullets countless times. But I never departed from the basics I was being taught. Put that front sight on the target.

When it was all over, I was ranked for accuracy just below a guy who had been an air marshal before joining the CIA. He still had to recertify here to go to Iraq. I had told the others I was the NSA’er on Day 3. They were very surprised.

On Day 4, we practiced with perfect simulations of our Glocks that fired paint bullets. This was primarily to remove from us any psychological block from pulling our guns and then firing them on an actual human target.

And those human targets were each other. And those paint bullets hurt! But your chance of survival is dramatically increased if we can get off a shot even after taking in a shot. So being able to pull off a shot after getting the wind knocked out of you by a paint bullet was an important exercise.

We practiced scenarios where we were in a car and ambushed. We practiced shooting from behind cover. And I was totally understanding why the other NSA’ers would be jealous that I got in on this training!

[In my novel A Place of Brightness, I use my expertise on the Glock to accurately describe a scene in which a Romanian intelligence officer recertifies on her Glock, little knowing that she was days away from actually needing this training in the field.]

Day 5 saw us practicing firing various guns we may accidentally find in the field. I fired an AK-47. Imagine firing a gun and then as a bonus someone hits you full force in the shoulder with a sledge hammer. That’s an AK. Damned accurate, though. We fired massive shotguns. We fired rifles that could kill an elephant.

And thus I got certified. And so, here I was in Iraq, fully certified to be wearing a gun and I didn’t have one. Shortly after my arrival, we were all summoned to a central hall and told that in the event of a security incident there would be an alarm and we were all to report to this spot to be counted. I had arrived just in time to eat dinner in the main cafeteria. It was good food. Not that I needed it. I was about thirty pounds overweight and was hoping to both lose weight and get in shape during my three months in Iraq. Even so, one’s first night in Iraq was no time to start a draconian program. So I ate everything in sight, which included burgers, french fries, and ice cream for dessert.

I was tired enough at nine o’clock that I went and laid down in my bunk. Sleep followed quickly.

I’m hearing a loud blaring noise! The fog of sleep is still blurring my brain as I see guys getting out of their bunks and starting down the hall toward…the central area. Oh my God! This is a security call.

Even just a week with that Glock had conditioned me in this crisis to put my hand toward a holster that wasn’t there yet. My heart was racing as I thought through the potential that we were in an attack scenario and I was defenseless.

And in that moment, I felt utterly defeated to think that I was less than twenty-four hours into an experience slated to last for three months. As I quickly made my way down the hall, toward the assembled group, I repeated to myself “Three months, Three months.”

We were told that an Army jeep had been found on the premises of BIAP with no soldiers in it but blood all over the seats. We were therefore to stand in an alert mode until the military in charge of BIAP issued an all clear.

The all clear came about an hour later. I never did find out exactly what had happened in this incident.

I was surprised that I fell asleep quickly after this scare.

One can’t really sleep in when you’re in a room with thirty other guys. There came a point where the sound of one, then three, then seven other men getting up made it impossible to keep trying to catch more sleep.

The cafeteria meant the coffee I have lived for since I was fifteen. I had a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, and even a bowl of Lucky Charms to boot. One’s second day in Iraq is also no time to start a diet.

It was Eight O’clock! This meant that the armory was open and I could finally get my side arm.

There were already two guys in line when I arrived.  Unfortunately, the one just before me faced a sadly typical problem within the government system. He had managed to get to Iraq. He was certainly supposed to be here. And I didn’t really doubt that he had completed the necessary certifications to be issued the gun we were all required to wear here. But the CIA agent who issued guns at the armory simply had no record of him in his computer. And without a computer record, he had no authority to give him so much as a pea shooter. They attempted multiple searches for a record on various identifications. But no deal. The man finally left, understandably upset, with the plan to call his boss back in the States to see who screwed up and how to fix this crisis.

My turn. And after watching that whole scene, I was now very nervous about whether I was on that computer. A strike against me was that I was with the NSA. A strike for me was that I had done my weapons training with the CIA. I was cringing as I told the man my Social Security Number. I heard him slapping keys on his computer. Just as I was about to despair this could work, he smiles.

“Gotcha,” he said.

Just then there’s a low thud somewhere. I had both heard it and felt it.

“What was that?” I asked.

He looked up. “That was a mortar landing somewhere. Not very close though. Don’t worry.”

He hands me a plastic holster to slip on my belt. Next followed an empty magazine.

“Fill it up from the bowl behind you,” he says.

I turn around and start fishing out cartridges and I’m filling my clip.

“And here’s your Glock,” he says. “Your site will have replacement bullets if you need them.”

“Thank you,” I said. “When do I get my M-4?”

“Only your boss at your site is authorized to issue you one of those. Good luck. How long are you in country?”

“Three months,” I said.

He raises an eyebrow. “I won’t be here when you’re back here to hand this thing in.”

“Thanks for your help.”

He smiles and nods.

You’re probably wondering at this point how all this related to my claim that Three Months is a proven time slot in which to accomplish great things. Bear with me. It pulls together pretty quickly for here.