Some excerpts then, and some comments of mine, from A New
Clandestine Service: The Case for Creative Destruction by Reuel Marc Gerecht [PDF]:

Page quotes are to the PDF as of 27 May 06.

First, an item that actually is useful for anyone reflecting on US and UK challenges in Iraq, Afghanistan and generally in the war on what Gerecht nicely names, Bin Ladenism:

As a former case officer, I can say that such
praise [from Sr. Public Officials] was very dispiriting to officers.... What such officers wanted was outsiders to reprove the organization for its incompetence.

(p 9)
Ripping this quote from its context, my main observation here is that Gerecht is apparently making the point that honest critiques are the best way to build excellence and effective programs, not supposedly Patriotic Praise.

It is a point I have made again and again with respect to Iraq and the US failures there - had the American Right spent less time with its absurdly stupid Right Bolshy campaign of self deception (Good News from Iraq, blah blah, Evil MSM is Tearing Us Down, etc.), and more time engaged in honest critiques and holding feet to the fire, the CPA-Iraq might not have been quite such a complete cock up and much idiocy might have been avoided.

It is, in short, a general lesson. Pseudo Patriotic Praise and Puffery (hereafter PPPP Puffery), in short, is a great way to blind oneself and cripple oneself. Unlearning such seems to be hard, I point readers to the Belgravia Dispatch where an intelligent warning post about US cock ups and bad image management is met by a general chorus of denial, idiot finger pointing, bizarre "effete anti Semite Euro" just-so-stories and the usual Lefty US is Evil, just to add some spice. Thoughtful acceptance of the US as a good actor with flaws, and consideration that perhaps rather than blaming supposed inherent EU effeteness and anti-Semitism (heard it from some trusted mates you know), that a secular decline globally in US PR ratiings indicated systematic problems in one's own efforts (perhaps policies underlying as well, but certainly own PR efforts).

The value of critically evaluating and tuning up own efforts, rather than blind praise and PPPP Puffery, escaped all.

Moving along to Gerecht again,

Traditional stations and bases lightly camouflaged inside official U.S. facilities are responsible for most of the “street” work—that is, case officers posing as fake diplomats are the overwhelming bulk of the organization’s frontline force. Needless to say, this “cover” is nearly useless in
working the Islamic militant target. Diplomats and case officers are monitored in many Arab countries, and in serious countries with active Islamic militant organizations and competent internal security services—for example, Egypt or Jordan—any attempt to associate with Muslim activists would be noted almost immediately and viewed hostilely by the host government.

I have noted many times before my observation that US diplos generally seem to be getting walled up behind ever greater walls in region, such that I have asked US officials why the fuck they bother even being in country, it's such a goddamned pain to get in to see them (or for them to get out).

I can not imagine then how the bloody fuck the US Agency agents get anything done at all, really, in MENA.

An item, though that caught my eye:

This issue has greatly retarded the State Department from making contact with Islamic activists. Ditto for undeclared American case officers, who most likely are “blown”—
known—to the host government in serious counterintelligence countries like Egypt, Jordan, or France. It is extremely difficult for agency officers, even with real, substantive, full-time State work to long maintain their cover against local employees—State calls them “foreign service nationals”—who dominate the administration in all embassies and consulates in the Middle East and Europe.

(page 10)

Emphasis added.

I found this truly interesting on a number of levels.

First, as an outsider with contact with US diplos for business for various reasons (US firm, US client firms, etc.), I have long remarked that the American rotation system, which seems to effectively cycle in MENA virtually on a 2 yr basis although I believe the normal rotation is 3 yrs seems to be designed for maximum ineffectiveness on the part of the US diplos. Most Euros are around longer, and seem to cycle back through their region. US diplos seem to get sucked off hither and thither, willy nilly.

As such, first, one is just starting to get a working relationship going when they have to fuck off. It takes at least a year to be cogniscent of a country's working environment. Second, of course, in the long term if they are depending on the long term "foreign service nationals" - and certainly I have seen that they do to an amazing extent, as in MENA the US diplos rarely have the language skills to be effective in my experience, never mind they are there for such a short time as to make your head spin, and they never seem to come back - then much of the supposed purpose (avoiding corruption, making sure the information they generate is independent, etc) is completely defeated, as they are deaf and dumb....

It amases me that the American foreign presence is so .... badly designed and executed.

The next page's discussion of the challenge of, even if situ changed such that one could concieve of one of the official cover agents getting close to an Islamist activist, of discerning Social Reformer from Bin Ladenist merely underlines in my mind the general weakness of the American approach (although I know theoretically relationships can be handed off - but like I noted re a post recently about me own firm and the difference between "Knowledge Management" approach and real relationships, it's the flesh and blood that counts).

But hitting on the first "ah" moment text

The chances of the above scenario [contact via consular - visa officer] happening are small, though sufficient
enough to ensure that all consulates in the Middle East and in other countries with large Muslim, especially Arab, populations have CIA officers inside the consular cadre—not just waiting in the wings and depending on State Department personnel to do the initial spotting and assessing of possible targets. .....

(p 12)
Emphasis added

Well, nothing to say about this other than I suddenly gained a new perspective on a "friend" in a certain US post.

I was also entertained by this, although not an "ah"

The remark of a senior Africa Division officer who questioned whether a junior officer needed to recruit twenty agents in his first year in a small, poverty-stricken west African state, when “five or six would have
been quite sufficient,” captures well the glutton of agency work in easy hunting grounds where case officers could announce their CIA identities and watch a queue develop. In the macho, conspiratorial lands of Latin America, working for the CIA could be a rite of passage. In the Middle East, this same macho-mercenary-join-the-ruling-
cabal attitude could also, depending on the country, play to your advantage.

(p.14)

On the last re MENA, indeed. His following note that Baer CIAness was like a "multicolored strobe light: He could occasionally pick up worthwhile intelligence from Middle Easterners who wanted to have their own private channels to Washington." That does not surprise me. After all, I am not even a MENA native (although perhaps I have gone native as I was once accused), but I like talking to the US diplos and pretend US diplos. They sometimes give you a juicy bit of info on such and such American company in town prospecting the market.

Quid pro quo. And of course caveat emptor.

I found the following, however, interesting to give a context to convos

expanding the pool of
possible targets rarely much increased the odds of a recruitment of a serious first- or second-world official. Frustrated case officers were advised to troll any nonofficial locale imaginable to compensate
for the lack of workable official access. “Just sit in the cafe´s and bars nearest to the foreign and defense ministries and try to meet people” was the serious advice given by a performance-award winning senior operative to a hapless, quintessentially American junior case officer tasked to recruit European officials. Ambitious case officers with “integrated” State Department cover would often just abandon their diplomatic portfolios and hunt
anywhere they could hope to find someone “recruitable.”

(page 16)

I have to say, by the way that true or not inevitably made agency reporting read like State Department telegrams, except not usually as soundly sourced or as well written. is funny.

Finally with respect to the advice, it strikes me as well-conceived. I have only listened to diplos and spies talk, but the mention, as Gerecht does of the personnel system and of such incentivises on way of approach (as well as his emphasis on the non-official cover) strikes me as exactely the right thinking. Within an organisation one has to look at what the actual performance incentives are - incentive structure and how it actually will operate when it comes into contact with reality are the keys to understanding how to make an organisation work.