On Spies, Counterspies, Would-be Spies and Just Plain Losers - Part I

“The best quality of a spy is patience.”  
Yakov Peters, Chairman of the Soviet Cheka

 I pointed out in an earlier blog entry that one signs away a part of one's soul for life when joining the confraternity of national security. I described how I am legally bound to submit to government censors for security review all of my writings prior to publication. Technically speaking, I am required to clear all public speaking materials as well. I must submit to this restriction of my freedom of expression until the day I die. I am not an oracle of secrets. I am just one of countless former officials who are under the same restrictions. It goes with the territory. It makes one wonder, however, why bother when some jerk army private can steal and release to humanity hundreds of thousands of classified documents? But that's above my pay grade.

I served in one capacity or another in four communist countries: Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Cambodia (before it changed political systems). Moreover, I had traveled throughout China. In each of these countries I was a target of constant surveillance and occasional harassment or recruitment by dint of being an American official. Sometimes it was scary; other times laughable; but usually it was merely annoying. Looking over my shoulder or in the rearview mirror, running surveillance detection runs, mincing my words over the phone, conversing with the radio turned up loud, and increased general reticence became second nature to me and continues with me to this day. There is much I cannot reveal. But that which I can divulge sheds some light on the world of spies, security and secrecy.

Laos in the early 1980s was a satrapy of Vietnam, a communist dictatorship overrun with all manner of East Bloc denizens. Our tiny American embassy there was our sole diplomatic post in Indochina. Our relations with Vientiane were tenuous at best. I was followed, threatened and cajoled by agents of Laos, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, East Germany and Hungary. Yevgeny, a young English-speaking Soviet KGB officer posing as a diplomat trolled the Australian Club, a popular watering hole for Westerners, for loose chatter and potential spy recruits. He attempted repeatedly to ingratiate himself with me in a variety of venues. I rebuffed him every time and warned other Westerners to avoid the smarmy creep. A KGB colleague of his had a different mission. As my network of Lao friends expanded, this bald fire plug of a thug followed me blatantly in his claptrap Lada in an effort to intimidate me. One night, as I left a party, he tailgated me and put his headlights on bright. Accepting the challenge, I took the guy on a nocturnal wild goose chase on dirt roads outside the city in my 200 hp V8 embassy Chevy Malibu. I'd speed, then slam on the brakes to kick up clouds of red dust. I did this repeatedly until he gave up (no doubt coughing his lungs out). Eat dirt and die commie bastard!

The most pathetic recruitment attempt, however, came from the Hungarians. Days after my arrival in Laos, two young Lao girls arrived at my villa and asked to come in. They told me they wanted to show me "a good time." Smelling a rat, I demanded to know who sent them. "Nobody," they replied. "Don't give me that," I shot back. "Now come on, tell me who sent you here." "The Hungarian Embassy," they giggled. "How much did they pay you?" I asked. They told me. It was my fluent Lao and sense of humor that loosened the girls up. Some dumbass Hungarian spook with too much time on his hands and too few brains attempted lure me in what the spy world calls a "honey trap." Loser.

When I moved into my residence in Hanoi with my young family in 1998, Vietnamese residents dropped by to introduce themselves to their new American neighbors. Some bore small gifts of welcome. They clearly were fascinated with Americans and adored our babies. Each morning as I left to walk to the embassy, our neighbors would wave and say good morning. Shortly afterward, it all turned cold. No more visits by our new friends. No more morning greetings. People avoided eye contact and went on their way. One, however, confided to me that the secret police had come into the quarter to warn everyone to stay away from us. I subsequently detected a 24-hour surveillance post set up in the building opposite our villa. They spent the next four years observing us changing diapers and listening to us discussing past episodes of Masterpiece Theatre. Hope our monitors got hardship pay.

By the way, guess who turned up in Hanoi like a bad kopek? My old friend, Yevgeny! Still trolling for "assets" among foreigners seventeen years after I first encountered the son of a bitch. Naturally, I went around to all Western diplomats blowing the whistle on the Big Bad Wolf Yevgeny.

The worst of the lot, however, were Cuban agents of the Ministry of Interior (MININT). On a two-week official trip through the length and breadth of the island, my U.S. Interests Section colleague and I were heavily surveilled and tailed wherever we went. MININT agents are notorious for making the lives of American diplomats as difficult as possible, including stealing clothing articles, downloading our hard drives, smearing dog feces on our door handles and slashing our car tires. I made a point of carrying with me everything I valued in a canvas attache bag wherever I went, including at the beaches. In Santa Clara, our tires were slashed. My hotel room in Santiago was equipped with listening devices and hidden cameras. The worst thing one can do is to fight back or to otherwise intimidate any nation's secret police. Usually, in fact, both sides reach a modus vivendi. They're doing their job. You're on the up-and-up (usually anyway). Let them follow you. Be civil. Do not provoke. BUT, I couldn't help jotting down verse of Dr. Seuss and Lewis Carroll, putting "CONFIDENTIAL" at the heading and leaving the papers carelessly around my hotel rooms. Now, what does "Twas brillig and the slivy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe..." mean? Must be some infernal code.

I like to incorporate such experiences in my thrillers. I went through the wringer with the government censors on my last, to-be-published book, TRIBE and was compelled to make redactions and changes. But most remained intact. PERMANENT INTERESTS (PERMANENT INTERESTS at Amazon) is chock full of insights into the Russian SVR (formerly KGB) and the world of spies. It also gives a glimpse into how my old  employer, the State Department, operates. If you like thrills anchored in authenticity, give it a try! (The Kindle version costs a mere $2.99.)

Two New Political Thrillers Centering on Afghanistan and Cuba

I have two new thrillers on the way. . .

TRIBE - A Thriller About Afghanistan
Afghanistan: A battlefield of power. A graveyard of reputations.

TRIBE is about how power, love, and fathers and daughters come into play in conflict-riven Afghanistan, and about the dysfunctionality of government. A secret peace with the Taliban. Secured with a huge Central Asian oil deal. Virtually guaranteeing the re-election of a President. The backers will garner enormous wealth. CIA officer Harry Brennan's moral conscience compels him to get in the way of this plot. In doing so, he faces political enemies at home more dangerous than the terrorists who have kidnapped his daughter, Laurie. And her fate is inextricably tied to that of KGB agent Sergei Nemsky's daughter, Anya, in need of treatment for a rare disease. The two men, drawing on their respective spycraft skills and connections, form a secret and risky pact to save their daughters’ lives. Harry’s career takes off after he falls in love with a young and politically powerful Washington socialite. But the resulting tension between his career and commitment to the truth and to Laurie eventually compel Harry to balk and unilaterally take on the powerful men and women behind the pay-for-play conspiracy. The fast-paced action takes place in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Washington.

To read a sample of TRIBE, click on the following link:

TRIBE Sample Chapters


HAVANA QUEEN - The Year of Living Dangerously in a Cuban Setting

The End of Days arrives for the Castro brothers. The revolution is coming apart at the seams. As building after building collapses from sheer rot and as food is rationed further, the Cuban people have had enough and take to the streets. Convinced that it is a Yankee plot, the paranoid communist leadership steps up intelligence operations against the United States. CIA double agents are assassinated. Cuban agents, in turn, are methodically liquidated. A shadowy war of spy vs spy is carried on around the globe. Into this maelstrom is thrown Cuban American FBI agent Nick Castillo. Captured and waterboarded, and seduced by a femme fatale Cuban spymaster, Nick escapes to join the growing anti-regime rebellion. He returns home to track down Cuban moles inside the U.S. government who are feeding secrets to Havana. Trouble is, can Nick trust his own government? He seeks the truth in a wilderness of mirrors. But is vulnerable due to the dark secret he is hiding in his own soul.

To read a sample of HAVANA QUEEN, click on the following link:

HAVANA QUEEN Sample Chapters


I have seen no fiction on the market with the detailed insider knowledge of national security workings that my books possess. In a faustian pact with Uncle Sam, I am required to obtain pre-publication security clearance of all of my writings prior to publication (a la Valerie Plame). This review resulted in redactions and changes in TRIBE. It is this grounding in the real national security world that distinguishes my books from those of the competition.

If you are a publisher, please contact Peter Riva, International Transactions.

My Books Climb to Top Two Percent of Kindle Sales!

There has been a spike in Kindle sales of PERMANENT INTERESTS and CHASM since the price was lowered to $2.99. According to the latest stats, sales of my books through Kindle have reached the top two percentile range. I owe a special debt of gratitude to those who enjoy my thrillers, including political thriller fans in the UK, who have purchased my books steadily. My books also will be available soon via Google e-ditions. The ebook format is a boon to readers and authors alike. They make books much more affordable and convenient to purchase and read.

This spike in sales also goes hand-in-hand with my recent blog entries, the viewings of which have also risen. I feel it is important to share my insider comments on the Wikileaks affair to those interested in delving beyond the headline media stories. Please check in periodically for more insights on things ranging from statecraft to espionage.

As I mentioned previously, my latest thriller, TRIBE, currently is being promoted to publishers by my agent, Peter Riva (who also represents Stieg Larsson --'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,' etc.) I am eager to get this tale of domestic political treachery and foreign espionage out on bookshelves, but the publishing industry remains in the economic dumps. I am forging ahead on my latest, HAVANA QUEEN -- a tale of turmoil, betrayal and love set in Cuba -- and aim to have a completed manuscript early in 2011. In the meantime, I plan to post excerpts of both books. Stay tuned.

WIKILEAKS FALLOUT: Observations on a Banana Republic

According to Executive Order 13526 signed by the President on December 29, 2009:

"'Secret' shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security."
"'Confidential' shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security."

The first day I reported to work as Afghanistan desk officer in the State Dept., I found a pink slip on my desk citing me for a security violation. The foul-tempered misanthropic woman who had preceded me in that job had left me a desk stuffed with her junk, including a Canadian cable marked CONFIDENTIAL that she had carelessly left behind. The evening before my first day on the job, Marines had gone on one of their periodic random searches of offices to catch things like this. I ended up taking the rap. No excuses. I was left holding the bag by virtue of desk ownership. That violation stayed on my record for three years. Had I gotten two more such violations, they would have yanked my security clearances and I'd be assigned to the mailroom. Three strikes and you're out. Period.

The government expends tremendous resources on protecting classified materials. What most people don't realize is that the primary mission of the thousand U.S. Marines deployed at 148 diplomatic missions worldwide is to safeguard classified information. The safety of the personnel who generate and consume that information comes third (after protection of the facilities that contain the secrets).

Security is a very, very serious thing in the national security agencies. Classified information is locked in safes inside locked rooms inside locked buildings with guards. In many embassies, classified work, such as drafting cables, must be done in so-called secure conferencing facilities, known to laymen as "bubbles." Working in these overly air conditioned metal cocoons is akin to sitting in a cold crypt equipped with specially security enhanced PC's.

We also spend enormous resources on diplomtic couriers, men and women whose job it is to carry and accompany classified materials to, from and between diplomatic posts.

There are a lot of misperceptions and outright false claims in the media now about government secrets in the wake of the Wikileaks fiasco. Blanket assertions are made that "the government classifies too much." Oh, really? How would these pundits know that? It's a facile and false claim based on bias and ignorance.

When I entered government as a lowly analyst at the Pentagon in the '70's, indeed almost everything was stamped at least CONFIDENTIAL. The result was the need for too much secure storage space for all this paper (digital storage hadn't come to the fore yet). With so many safes containing so many documents, the USG needed more rooms. More rooms meant more buildings. Not only that, but more man hours were required to cull and maintain the files. It was crazy as well as needlessly expensive. The Carter administration reformed the system, requiring us public servants to classify many fewer documents and to rely on an unclassified restrictive label for any unclassified materials that nonetheless did not warrant unlimited distribution. Further reforms were enacted under President Clinton.

Statistics thrown out about the enormous growth in the absolute number of classified documents are misleading. This growth can be tied to the growth in the federal national security bureaucracy post 9/11 rather than classification-mad functionaries on security steroids wildly stamping everything SECRET.

There are standard procedures for declassifying documents. One is the declassification schedule requiring that all classified documents have an expiration date attached to them. A close examination of the Wikileaks documents reveals these, e.g., "DECL: 09/01/20." The other procedure entails the Freedom of Information Act whereby any citizen may request past classified documents on a given subject. These historical documents are reviewed by legions of federal retirees sitting in the far recesses of the bureaucracies. Sources and methods may be redacted, but usually, the documents are eventually released in some coherent form. A great repository of declassified documents is George Washington University's The National Security Archive (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/).

Private Bradley Manning, sitting at a U.S. Army base in Iraq, managed to download a quarter of a million diplomatic messages onto a Lady Gaga CD and walk out the door with it. This single act of an unbalanced narcissist with self-esteem issues has blown a tremendous hole in the national security of the United States. The outcome won't be fatal, but the United States certainly will suffer in terms of trust and efficacy in carrying out its foreign policy. And do not rule out people's lives being on the line, including indirectly -- for example, from the exposure of the SECRET "Critical Infrastructure List," a windfall for al-Qaida.

But the U.S. government deserves as much, if not more, opprobrium for its unbelievably lax digital security. One would expect this kind of flub-up from a banana republic, not the world's sole superpower. Yes, the need for more information-sharing was underscored in the wake of 9/11. And this need not be sacrificed. What's direly needed is a totally revamped system to prevent acts like Pvt. Manning's. Technologically, this is not in the same league as putting a man on the moon. It's doable now.

The alternative is going back to a system of lots of papers stuffed into too many safes, a grossly inefficient means which puts too many new desk officers at risk for taking some other schmuck's rap.

WIKILEAKS FALLOUT: DIPLOMATS ARE NOT SPIES -- Putting a Diplomat's Work in Perspective

The mega data dump of State Department cables that Wikileaks has unloaded into the cybersphere constitutes a great voyeuristic view into the rarefied work of diplomats. While many observers justifiably heap kudos on our Foreign Service officers for their fine reporting and analysis, most readers are viewing the cables both out of context and with no foundation for comprehending how diplomats go about their business.

Let's take one of the most inflammatory messages: REPORTING AND COLLECTION NEEDS: THE UNITED NATIONS. This cable has drawn sharp criticism from the UN community, who see it as an instruction for U.S. diplomats to spy on UN personnel. This is not the case. Every year, the intelligence community puts together a wish list of information they would like to obtain for a host of reasons. It's their own data dump shopping list. They throw the kitchen sink, and more, into these annual bureaucratic exercises. It's a classic case of work by committee.

Our Foreign Service personnel in the field review the list to get an idea of what Washington wants to know. Generally, Foreign Service officers (FSOs) focus on the major regional and security policy issues, e.g., "Afghanistan," "Iraq," "Arms Control," "Terrorism," etc. to know their reporting priorities. Such requests as obtaining "biometric" information is not normally something an FSO will go after. It's not his or her job as an overt official. The key thing here is the cable's statement: "coordinating with other Country Team members to encourage relevant reporting through their own or State Department channels." I, for one, never sought out biometric or other such instrusive information. Nor can I recall any fellow FSOs who did so. We all knew that that was left to the spies, which we were not. I would have refused an order from a superior to go out and intrusively spy on foreign officials. But I never got such orders either.

The general public needs to understand three essential elements about a diplomat's mission: 1) to keep Washington and other American embassies informed about their country or issue(s); 2)to meet and talk with a wide range of people in order to know what's going on, but also to promote U.S. interests, be they political, commercial, humanitarian, what have you; and 3) this must all be done in confidentiality and trust.

I found myself as a 28-year old junior diplomat at a small embassy serving as Charge d'Affaires in place of the ambassador, who left for consultations in Washington. As soon as he departed, border clashes broke out between our host country and its larger neighbor. The host country foreign ministry called me in to ask that we help try to resolve the tensions. What made it interesting was that host country was normally hostile to us. This required delicate diplomacy, starting with reporting the approach to Washington and seeking instructions. My reporting included a candid assessment of the host government's interests and intentions. Had this reporting been blown wide open for the whole world to see, our delicate efforts to help defuse what threatened to become outright war would have met with utter failure. The result might have been escalating conflict with resultant regional instability and loss of lives on both sides. But, our good offices did help defuse the conflict and won us some welcome trust within what was normally an unfriendly host government.

As, again, Charge d'Affaires years later in Cambodia during the UN-sponsored peace negotiations and national reconciliation efforts in the early '90s, a violent coup d'etat was launched by disgruntled military units led by an ambitious member of the royal family. We discovered quickly that a U.S. ally was double dealing and fanning the coup. It was through our quiet but assertive diplomacy with the UN and other countries that we managed to defuse the crisis and put the wayward ally back in their place. Had our reporting and the State Department's instructions been "open to the light of day," all of this discreet and sensitive diplomacy would have gotten nowhere. The violence would have grown and the peace negotiations might have gone down the tubes.

I was privileged to have been among a handful of officials to have read the transcripts of President George H.W. Bush's conversations with Gorbachev, Kohl, Mitterand and Thatcher very soon after he consulted them on fast-moving German unification as East Germany was folding. The conversations were detailed and frank. What might have been the course of events had Wikileaks been around to publish the transcripts for the world to see?

Diplomats must be pragmatists who are constantly seeking constructive approaches to resolve thorny issues. To do this, they must earn the trust of the people they deal with. One does not earn trust either by carrying out espionage or by divulging to everyone under the sun the contents of his or her discussions or analyses. A reading of the Wikileaks cables underscores this. The FSOs are shown to be both discreet and pragmatically constructive. They are also damn good writers!

Why Wikileaks and Its Founder Must Be Hounded to the Ends of the Universe and Utterly Destroyed

This is why Wikileaks is destructive to the point of threatening people's lives. When I was serving in a communist country, the idiot who was our deputy chief of mission sent as an attachment in a regular email to a friend an official report of his conversation with a senior official who was critical of his own regime. We knew the host government monitored our commercial emails and were being constantly reminded by our security office to exercise caution in what we put into such emails. But our fool of a DCM ignored this warning. Almost immediately, the host government let on that they had intercepted the incriminating email and proceeded to put heat on the concerned senior official. He feared imminent arrest and imprisonment. Instead, his name was mud in his own government and the man was sidelined and held under indefinite suspicion. But he came within a millimeter's breadth of being thrown into prison due to a "leak."

Here's another example. When I worked on a top secret White House program involving the safety of the president and his senior staff, someone leaked parts of the program to the Washington Post, which dutifully published it. Few, if any, outside of government knew the turmoil this threw us into. An inexplicable "leak" by some irresponsible self-serving dolt had the potential of endangering the president of the United States. We worked in overdrive to re-adjust elements of the program.

One more example. At one of my postings early in my career, the turncoat CIA officer Philip Agee published the names of dozens of CIA undercover personnel. One of the CIA officers at my post was on Agee’s list. He was a young man with a wonderful wife and young daughter. We had been under regular anti-American threats in the country in which I was serving as a junior diplomat, including weekly phoned-in bomb threats and vandalism done to the homes of some of our diplomatic personnel. The worry of physical threat against our young colleague was real.

Diplomacy has as much need to be conducted totally in the open as does your business, law office, doctor's practice or your own personal affairs. Diplomacy requires confidentiality and trust in order to be effective. The media pundits who argue in favor of all official government communications being held in the open "in the light of day" are either terminally ignorant, galactically stupid or merely disingenuous. Having known and worked professionally with many of them, I prefer to believe it's the latter attribute at play. They're simply too smart to believe what they say in public.

Julian Assange is not a journalist nor a whistleblower. He is a hacker and self-described anarchist whose mission in life is to bring down government as an institution, and particularly the U.S government, which he detests. Wikileaks' unloading of over a million classified military documents and now a quarter of a million diplomatic cables is nothing less than a mega-document dump -- indiscriminate and malicious in intent. Not a leak, but a flood.

It's common sense. If governments can't exchange views with each other confidentially, or diplomats can't report frankly, we might as well close down our foreign policy establishment, which is exactly what a fringe actor like Assange would like to see happen.

The media find reading and publishing these messages titillating, much like reading someone's secret love letters. The voracious media maw craves this kind of information. But the effect is incredibly damaging, to U.S. foreign policy and probably to some people's lives. There is an established and responsible way for public access to official secrets and that is through the Freedom of Information Act. I would like to see more responsible comportment and less disingenuousness among our mainstream media. After all, it's their country too.