Listen Here: Ask a Spy, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh Assassination

We go to our own resident SPY and Executive Director, Peter Earnest, to get an operative’s point of view on the breaking news over the spycraft and disguise tactics used in the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. SPY’s Adult Education Director, Amanda Ohlke, talks with Peter as he draws on his more than 35 years of experience in the CIA.

Resources:

Time Magazine’s Top 10 Assassination List

Test your SPY skills in our immersive mission, Operation SPY

Q.  What’s the story on this retired State Department officer and his wife who were arrested for spying in June, Walter and Gwendolyn Myers?  According the New York Times 19 June 2009 http://bit.ly/VdlpA, the FBI warned the State Department about a suspected mole there in 2006.  And yet the Myers weren’t arrested until three years later.  It seems there’s always a long delay before the FBI makes an arrest in so many of these spy cases.

Reply:  First, we don’t know the basis for the FBI’s suspicion if indeed it did warn State about a suspected mole.  It might have been a leak from the Cuban Intelligence Service (CuIS), information from a Cuban defector, or even information derived from intercepts of the CuIS transmissions to the Myers.  And we certainly don’t know if the FBI had identified the Myers in 2006.  Even if the bureau had reason to suspect the Myers, it has to develop solid evidence to back up its suspicion to enable the Justice Department to bring a case to trial.

Q.  Don’t you agree that the CuIS didn’t place much value on the Myers as agents since they used such low tech methods to communicate with them, short wave radio transmissions and exchanging shopping carts in the Safeway with their CuIS handlers?

Reply:  I wouldn’t disparage their use of low tech communications; it worked for almost 20 years.  The CuIS has routinely used similar low tech methods for communicating with some of its most valued agents in the United States including Anna Montes, the senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst.  Motivated by her strong feelings for Cuba, she spied for the CuIS for some time before she was arrested in 2001.  She also received direction from the CuIS by shortwave radio.  Many intelligence services including our own still use low tech means for covert communication when it is considered appropriate.   Intelligence services work hard to match the right communications method to a particular agent.

Q.  Was passing information from 200 reports to Cuban Intelligence the only damage they did?

Reply:  Remember that was in just 2007-08.  Having an agent in the State Department’s Intelligence office, INR, would be solid gold to the CuIS.   The public has a pretty shaky grip on what real spies do – and how much damage they can do.  Pop culture in books, TV, and especially Hollywood perpetuate the James Bond myth:  spying is all squealing tires and shots in the night.  No wonder we are shocked – shocked! – when we read about yet another spy in the government.  Walter Myers had the access to provide their CuIS handlers with information about sensitive and classified U.S. foreign policy issues; information and gossip about colleagues: their political leanings and personal weaknesses: and a whole range of information gleaned from his being an insider.  The CuIS regards intelligence about the U.S. as a commodity worth selling and bartering with other intelligence services.  Walter Myers was in an ideal position to deliver valuable product.

SpyGuy’s Q & A

Q. You were an Intelligence operative for over 30 years; don’t you think Obama is throwing in the towel on the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)?  In March this year, the Pentagon even stopped using the words, “the GWOT” but instead began referring to an “Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO).”   We hear the same from DHS Secretary Napolitano, State Secretary Clinton, and other Administration mouthpieces. 

Reply:  Words make a difference.  Look at the wrangling over our goal in Afghanistan.  Are we trying to “win” or “succeed?”  They’re not the same.  Using one instead of the other is critical to rallying the government and the country around a common goal.  Too, the “GWOT” raised Osama’s band of murderous fanatics to world stature instead of labeling them more precisely as a small gang of extremists operating on the fringe of one of the world’s great religions.  

Q.  Will ratcheting down our goals then enable Obama to change course away from the previous vigorous campaign against al-Qaeda?

 Reply:  It sure doesn’t sound like it. His advisor on terrorism John Brennan spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on 6 August, saying that the President wants to focus on the real adversaries, al-Qaeda and its allies, and not just on “terror” which is simply a term describing a tactic, not an adversary. 

Q.  Okay, but do you really think this Administration is going to go after Al Qaeda as vigorously as Bush did?   Obama seems to be just running around talking to everyone with no action.

Reply:  Brennan was emphatic:  “Obama will not tolerate Afghanistan or any other country being a base for terrorists determined to kill Americans.”  Al Qaeda, Brennan said, is the most serious threat we face as a nation and Obama has….a clear policy – “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its allies.”  He said Obama has approved operations against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and encouraged his counterterrorism forces to be more aggressive, more proactive and more innovative….to seek out new ways and new opportunities to take down the terrorists.   Now, that’s more than just running around.  Those words would leave no doubt in my mind as an Intelligence professional about the President’s mandate. 

Q.  Why are you people in Intelligence so hung up on wordsmithing and definitions?  Can’t you just go out and do your jobs?

Reply:  Because knowing what the Chief Executive wants is our job.  We’ve learned the hard way that Intelligence gathering and covert action are nearly worthless unless they’re in response to policymakers’ needs and in sync with the country’s foreign policy.