CIA Veteran Hulnick Slams Agency’s Critics
CAS prof calls popular image of spy agency nonsense
Arthur Hulnick, a CAS international relations associate professor, says the CIA cannot defend itself, because “the secret of our success is the secret of our success.” Photo by Kalman Zabarsky
In the weeks since the CIA suffered several high-profile setbacks — one of them the tragic deaths of seven operatives — the agency has come under fire from the press, from Congress, even from a top military intelligence official. No CIA or government official can deny that the December 30 suicide bombing by a Jordanian operative that claimed the agents’ lives was a failure of both intelligence-gathering and field procedure. But according to Arthur S. Hulnick, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of international relations, with a long career in the CIA and military intelligence, the ensuing criticism of the agency is unfair, misinformed, and politically motivated. BU Today spoke with Hulnick about the CIA’s image and the challenge of gathering intelligence in a war against a far-reaching, fanatical, and often elusive enemy.
BU Today: It seems the CIA’s competence is being questioned like never before. The Afghanistan tragedy and the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner by a known terrorist suspect have badly tarnished the image of an agency people already loved to hate. Are these attacks on the CIA valid?
Hulnick: None of it’s true. It’s all designed to denigrate the system by people who don’t know much about it. The CIA can’t very well defend itself. Our motto is “the secret of our success is the secret of our success,” so it’s only when something like the Afghanistan bombing comes out in public that you see what’s going on. Most of it is well below the surface. Think about it this way: we pay millions of dollars for the Red Sox and they only get a hit three or four times a game. We don’t hold them accountable for that; we expect some failures. But now we’re saying someone dropped the ball at the CIA.
Do you agree with Major General Michael Flynn’s scathing report in early January, accusing U.S. military intelligence of being ignorant of Afghan village culture and poorly equipped to fight the Taliban insurgency?
That’s absolutely wrong. And in my experience CIA people are even better than other intelligence officers at language skills and cultural insights.
What went wrong that allowed the Afghanistan bombing to happen?
The suicide bombing wasn’t bad luck. It was bad practice. Normally when you meet an informant or recruited agent, you do it in a safe house. You set up security to make sure he is clean. I’m sure lots of questions have been asked to make sure it never happens again. A big mistake is trusting people. During the Cold War, when we recruited Russians as spies, they wanted to get back at the system. They weren’t suicide bombers. But now we’re dealing with fanatical jihadi terrorists, and we’re trying very hard to figure out how to deal with this kind of thing. It’s relatively new, so it’s not surprising that it’s taking lots of time and effort. We’re working on the psychology. Intelligence is a tricky business; it means recruiting people to essentially commit treason on behalf of us, betraying those they’re supposed to be loyal to. Some lie, some cheat; it’s dangerous and tricky. Usually they flip for money, but sometimes they have a vendetta, and sometimes they just want the excitement. But double agents — that’s a relatively small part of what we do, involving a small number of people. Most of the CIA’s work is intercepting of communications, poring through open sources, and looking at reconnaissance from drone aircraft.
What would you count among the CIA’s successes since 9/11?
Most of our successes since 9/11 have been under the radar. We don’t know how many terrorist plots have been uncovered and foiled, and it’s the FBI that does the actual foiling. Very little of it has become public. It’s called the protection of sources and methods, so it’s not surprising that the CIA doesn’t want to discuss how we do this stuff. Right after 9/11, when the CIA went to Afghanistan ahead of the military and did a great job, it was called Operation Jawbreaker. The CIA bribed Afghan warlords to fight for us instead of the Taliban. The warlords are loyal to only one thing: money. Was it a mistake? No. These people are evil people. You want to find the evil ones, and use them.
Have we infiltrated the Taliban?
Well, I don’t know. I’d like to think that’s possible.
How much of what ordinary Americans know about the CIA is true? What are the biggest misconceptions?
During the Reagan administration we gathered some polling data, and people said the CIA overthrows governments and kills people. People read spy novels and watch movies; none of them are accurate, even though CIA people sometimes sign on as technical advisors. If they made a movie about the CIA that was accurate, it would be very boring. But that’s how most people form their impression, plus the negative press. One thing I hate is this term “connect the dots.” It is not connect the dots; it’s putting a jigsaw puzzle together. I tell my students, suppose someone gave you a jigsaw puzzle, and some pieces are missing, some don’t belong, and you don’t have the box with the picture. You have to put the puzzle together, and it’s not so easy.
What changes would you like to see at the CIA?
There are things about intelligence that obviously could be better. I think that there needs to be some look at counterterrorism. We’re not establishing the kind of institutional memory that would track down someone like the Jordanian bomber. There needs to be one unit that absorbs all this information and puts the pieces together. But the best way to stop radical Islam and the jihadi movement is to enlist the help of mainstream Islam, and so far mainstream Islam has done very little about what is really a small part of the Muslim world.
The bombing story has given people a rare look inside CIA operations and agents’ varied backgrounds. What proportion of CIA agents are in the field and what kinds of covers do field agents use?
Well, the numbers are classified, so if I knew I wouldn’t tell you. But it’s a relatively small number. It means serving overseas without your family, so you can’t ask people to stay out there for a long time, and that means they don’t get the language skills and expertise that are necessary. This is part of the problem.
Most of the covers are government positions: State Department, Defense, or nonofficial people undercover as businessmen and -women working for large corporations. But cover is not the problem. The problem is getting access to the people who might know what we want to know. For example, we have no presence in Iran, no unofficial presence, no embassy, no people on the ground. You’d have to be insane to go in there. In most normal circumstances CIA people have diplomatic cover, but these days our government likes to string people up by their thumbs if something goes wrong, hold them accountable. That’s what would happen if there were a screwup, so why would people take risks?
Have some of your former students joined the CIA? What qualities make a good CIA agent?
Quite a number of my former students have joined the agency; they have BU reunions from time to time. I can’t tell you how many, but it’s somewhere between 25 and 50. They can’t talk about it, so I don’t hear back from them about what they’re doing.
Someone with good language skills and area knowledge would make a good agent. If I have to fault the CIA it’s because they can’t recruit enough promising young people because of the polygraphs, the screening by the independent gatekeepers. The horror stories are legion of good competent people who don’t get through the system because their parents are in the old country or some other reason. I had a former student who couldn’t get through the polygraph because she had a heart condition, so she showed deception on every question, even her own name. The security people are dangerous, in my opinion. They think the Taliban are everywhere, that everyone is potentially dangerous. The old Cold Warriors think the Taliban have penetrated the system. They never have; it’s all nonsense.
What do you think of Tim Weiner’s popular new book about the CIA, Legacy of Ashes?
That book is the worst, most distorted history, but what sells is to make the CIA look stupid. He was invited to BU, but didn’t come, so we had our discussion without him. He distorted so much of the information. His agenda was to sell books, and you can’t sell a book that says the CIA is terrific. I worked at CIA public affairs, and reporters would tell me that you have to have scandal or failure to get above the fold — success doesn’t sell.
Susan Seligson can be reached at sueselig@bu.edu.
The CIA has been actively involved in overthrowing governments in the past (for example 1953 in Iran) so this Professor’s comments are misleading at best.
Unreal
I can’t believe we allow this guy to have any contact with the student body. His perspective is a case study of what is wrong with the CIA, our intelligence community, and our military in general.
A lot of good questions with solid, honest responses. Unfortunately some may think the answers are a smoke-screen of some sort. No one wants to believe the CIA isn’t in our attics listening to our every word. As the interview states, everyone loves to hate the CIA.
Mr. Hulnick also brings up a very good point in that not every aspect of the agency is a homerun. I dare anyone to produce the name of an organization (private, state, or federal) who has produced 100% effective results, 100% of the time. Humans run the show, humans are fallible. Unfortunately the stakes are a little higher in regards to the CIA. As opposed to loss in profit, there is loss of career, freedom, and even life. I would hope anyone who thinks they could do better to apply, although it seems the CIA is a little difficult to break into. Perhaps not even the CIA, but to ANY facet into federal employment dealing with intelligence (DoD, DHS, etc, etc).
Lastly, every intelligence agency (DoS, DoD, etc) can be pretty mundane work. Months of gathering followed by 15 minutes of excitement, wash, rinse, repeat. Just because one does not hear about those 15 minutes in the newspaper, does not mean they did not happen at all. It happens everyday.
Can Professor Hulnick suggest a good book or two about the CIA?
Is this guy saying that the CIA *does not* overthrow governments?
What a joke. And a transparent apologist.
Arthur Hulnick
Wow, this was a great story! It really shed some light on the misconceptions many of us have about the CIA. Keep up the great work.
Vocabulary
Will someone please tell me when the word “slam” officially replaced criticize in the English vocabulary? It has been driving me crazy how such an immature sounding and less than eloquent way to describe criticism has made it’s way into popular media. Well, perhaps it is just a way of pandering to our nations dwindling literary skills.
this is a corporative defense of CIA
The least I can say about this interview is that it is very biased and incomplete.
This sounds to me as a corporative defense of CIA (prof. Hulnick refers to CIA’s motto as “our motto”).
The answers to the first two questions are ridiculous.
In the first answer prof. Hulnick doesn’t give any concrete element to support his thesis. The only thing he says is “None of it is true” and he draws an analogy with Red Sox (?).
The answer to the second question is even more hilarious. “That’s absolutely wrong”. Once again no element to support his thesis and no a single reason to explain why Major General Michael Flynn wrote an “absolutely wrong” report.
Even more annoying is that prof. Hulnick claims that all the critics to CIA comes from “people who don’t know much about it.”
The only point which prof. Hulnick makes is that we don’t know about all the success of CIA and the media report only the failures. That is probably true but we are discussing about CIA’s failures and saying that there are many CIA’s success doesn’t make the failures less dangerous.
Prof. Hulnick, why dont’ you answer to the questions with concrete elements? Someone could think there are none.
Sorry but the CIA wasn’t batting 1.000 in the 60′s, the 70′s and completely got things wrong about the USSR in the 80′s. The current
Supporting dictators who pursue the interests of the U.S. is un-American and appears to have been the CIA’s m.o. in South America for a long time. Our principles are for all peoples to enjoy freedom – even when they don’t adopt our form of government.
I believe the CIA still kills people and overthrows governments
You have to be real careful how you read what this man says “During the Reagan administration we gathered some polling data, and people said the CIA overthrows governments and kills people.”
followed by: ” People read spy novels and watch movies; none of them are accurate”
One might be tempted to believe that “none of them are accurate” refers to overthrowing governments and killing people. One might be tempted to believe the innacuracies in movies and spy novel relate to the point of overthrowing governments and killing people, but he doesn’t say that.
so read with caution… He gives the impression of denying the CIA overthrows governments and kills people… He does a good job implying that… But he didn’t say it… Which is probably good. I believe the CIA DOES overthrow governments and kill people. It might not be what MOST of them do MOST of the time, but history shows that the CIA promotes wars, smuggles drugs, and kills people. They prefer to pay “evil people” to do the dirty work, but part of the CIA’s work is indeed to overthrow governments and kill people. This may be the small, movie and novel glamorized part of what they do, but it is part of what they do.
polygraph
Granted that wrong decisions are made in hiring, as they are for any other job, but the statement about polygraph is absurd:
“I had a former student who couldn’t get through the polygraph because she had a heart condition, so she showed deception on every question, even her own name.” If somebody reacted the same to every question, including her name, there would be no basis for reaching any kind of conclusion. I doubt that the CIA would say somebody was lying about her name when other resources could confirm that. People who do poorly on polygraph exams often give false reports of why they did poorly — and in this particular case I’m guessing she was the only source.
If you’re looking for more information on the CIA read Richardson’s Intelligence Community. It’s painful but provides the most accurate view of the intelligence system and how it works by someone who’s never actually worked in the system.
Of course some of you will insist on maintaining your conspiracy theories.
Great comments
Interesting article. Also very interesting are the reactionaries who have commented. Yes, it is quite well known that the CIA had or have been involved in some ugly business, but guess what? The world is MUCH uglier that you can imagine! How many of you pseudo-intellectuals who THINK you know so much of what really goes on have ever come close to putting your ass on the line for our country, our beliefs. Or is this all an abstract intellectual game – where you can pretend to be soooo smart? Unfortunately much of the world actually has social mores that are much more conservative than your average conservative American – who would be castigated by the liberal elite – and yet how many of our quite LIBERAL values – nudity – drugs – music – dancing – off-color-humor – pornography – using vast amounts of middle-east-petroleum – oh sure, you can likely point out that various conservative elements out there are hypocritical – but you would be missing the point. These are the elements that the muslim world HATE us for. And that your average American also despises. Rather ironic. Our CIA and other intelligence agencies are doing the BEST job in the world trying to protecting our interests. But we back them up conditionally – and we are ready to turn on them in a minute. I do question the value of the Black-Waters our govt. employs, as they have ruined a number carefully made alliances as they have more faith in weapons than in intelligence.
But we do not honor and value intelligence in this country. We like action! We like drama. We like watching the drama where the experts get found out as less informed than the average Joe. Go back to your comic books.
Thank you Arthur Hulnick, and thanks to your truly unsung hero colleagues. We will never know many tremendous sacrifices that have been made.
dangers of manicheanism
“he warlords are loyal to only one thing: money. Was it a mistake? No. These people are evil people. You want to find the evil ones, and use them.”
“these people” doesn’t show a very good appreciation of the diversity of tribal leaders with whom the CIA slept. one that they sold up the river, abdul haq, was, by most accounts, a very decent man who shared our interest in a stable and religiously moderate afghanistan. yes, his family, like most who succeed there, had questionable business dealings but the CIA left him to die in a failed operation when saving him would have risked little.
the agency’s counter-terror strategy that treats allies as expendable and accept collateral damage has made the more noble goals of counter insurgency much more difficult to achieve.
This is the one of the most biased and bullshit interviews about the CIA I’ve ever read. “Most of our successes since 9/11 have been under the radar.” What a convenient answer, when you don’t have to provide any evidence.
The fact that most of you rant with uninformed opinions about what actually goes on in this organization shows how uninformed you are about what actually goes on in the world. It’s one thing to be an idealist, its another to have actually gone out in the world and formed your own experiences.
What this agency does is necessary, in a perfect world it wouldn’t be. But we don’t live in a perfect world. Grow up, get out in the world and form your own opinions. Go see how the rest of the world lives, then come back and thank Professor Hulnick. If the CIA didn’t do the job it does, our country would not have done as well as it has over the last 50 years. Who knows, maybe Mommy and Daddy might not have been able to afford to send you to BU, where you can rant in forums about things you know nothing about.
Get educated before you seethe
For those who disagree take a class with Professor Hulnick and pull apart these issues in a logical manner and with the big picture in mind. See if your opinions are the same at the end of the semester. You need to understand the drivers and constraints the government works in and around before you can make any sort of informed comment. The real world isn’t hollywood or endowed with hindsight.