Michael Vickers’ Life of Secrets
BOOK REVIEW: By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy
By Michael G. Vickers / Knopf
Reviewed by Jason U. Manosevitz
The Reviewer – Jason U. Manosevitz is an officer in the Intelligence Community with 19 years of experience covering military and political issues in Asia and the Middle East, managing global coverage issues, teaching analytic tradecraft, and supporting Agency engagement with Congress. All statements expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. Government.
REVIEW – It is an understatement to say that Michael G Vickers’s work, By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations, and Strategy, is riveting or masterful. He has a great story to tell that covers some forty years of key national security issues, spanning his role in ousting the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s, to taking the fight to Al Qaeda and other terrorists in the 2000s.
Vickers told The Cipher Brief’s State Secrets Podcast that he wrote his memoirs for three main reasons.
First, to offer a detailed, first-hand account of the US strategy to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, something he thinks is missing in the historical record.
Second, to help the American people understand how intelligence fits within a democracy, despite the necessity of secrecy.
And lastly, to help develop future national security strategists and intelligence professionals. He believes his book will offer useful insights as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine roils Europe and the US enters a new Cold War with China.
In reading his work, one cannot help but think he is also highlighting the value of covert action, underscoring that it needs to be aligned with foreign policy objectives, well thought out, and carefully planned. In the background of his narrative, he also acknowledges the historical ripple effects of strategy and policy. In the first few pages of his book, he alludes to his greatest success in building up Afghan fighters to oust the Russians in the 1980s, only to have to devise ways to destroy them 20 years later, in the wake of 9/11 and the hunt for al Qaeda operatives.
The writing is smooth and parts read almost like an action story, moving quickly from one adventure to another, making the work a fun read, even as it deals with serious subjects.
For his early career, Vickers covers learning about multiple weapons systems and foreign languages. One of the first lessons he passes on to readers, is that failure can be a better teacher than success. And reflecting on one his first operations, dealing with a hostage crisis in Honduras, he highlights the importance of “forcing some rest during a crisis” because adrenaline only gets you so far.
As many who have been in national security and intelligence in the last 45 years can attest, Vickers has had a distinguished career. He also had tremendous impact on how the defense intelligence evolved and how the US prosecuted the war on terrorism.
He rose to become President Barack Obama’s Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence an under Obama and President George W. Bush, Vickers served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for special operations, low- intensity conflict, and interdependent capabilities (ASD SO/LIC&IC).
The former Green Beret has quite a lot to say about the US’s covert action in the 1980s to train and arm the Mujahideen to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. And many will remember him being portrayed as a cheeky, geeky, but aggressive CIA officer in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War.
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Vickers also offers reasons as to why he wanted to join CIA in the book.
First, he says he liked the individual autonomy and responsibility that CIA gave its operations officers. Second, he saw CIA as the US’s primary instrument against the Soviets during the Cold War. And lastly, he thought that CIA would give him greater responsibilities at an earlier age than if he stayed in the Special Forces.
As a CIA career trainee, Vickers covers some of his initial experiences, including learning how difficult it was to recruit and handle assets in a denied area. He also describes his role in Grenada operations in 1983, which he views as the first roll back of Soviet and Cuban power by the US in the Third World as well as an operation during which CIA improvised much of its operations as it went along.
Vickers describes reporting to CIA’s Ground Branch and meeting Gust Avrakotos in the fall of 1984, almost with glee. In becoming the Afghanistan Covert Action program manager, under Avrakotos, Vickers writes that he “felt as though I had been handed a Great Commission to wage a secret war against the Red Army in Afghanistan and to directly confront Soviet power.” Vickers provides a great account of himself getting up to speed on his new assignment by reading detailed histories of the area, people, culture, and CIA case files. He matter-of-factly relates how CIA analysis got the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan wrong and emphasizes how he sought to learn his enemy as well as the people he hoped would become a resistance force. He concluded that after nearly five years of conflict the war was at a stalemate and that the Soviets “suffered from poor strategy and tactics, insufficient forces, and a lack of intelligence.” Studying a problem to find a solution is something Vickers practiced throughout his career.
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Readers will enjoy learning how Vickers devised a strategy that fit with evolving foreign and domestic actors’ interests and gain what he calls “escalation dominance.” Readers will also be treated to a detailed, first-hand account of the challenges he faced, how he methodically dealt with them, and the successes he saw. Vickers points out the skepticism in CIA analysis in 1987 of the mujahadin in gaining advantage over the Soviets despite growing skill with punishing anti-aircraft weaponry. He does not begrudge the differences in how operators and analysts saw things, and his point highlights the perennial value and pitfalls of keeping some distance between analysis and operations to avoid biased judgements.
Vickers explains that his own success early in his CIA career became a challenge for how he saw himself progressing within the Agency before reluctantly, choosing to leave it. Consistent with his emphasis on building intellectual capital, he covers his graduate studies at Wharton and Johns Hopkins’s School of Advanced International Studies as well as key networking that eventually brought him back into government service after working with a small think tank.
Emphasizing his attention to learning his enemy and studying the operational problems, Vickers describes how he approached being ASD SO/LIC&IC and shaping a strategy to help defeat Al Qaeda. He mentions briefly that he was eager to get back into the fight and how he spent most of his time on a broad portfolio of operations that included the war with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, counter nuclear proliferation with Iran, counterinsurgency on Colombia, and counternarcotics in Mexico. As ASD SO/LIC&IC he greatly accelerated the use of drones for intelligence collection and lethal operations, pointing out that from 2008 to 2015, more than 50 Al Qaeda senior leaders and other high value targets were taking off the battlefield. In sum, Vickers guided how drone use evolved and how the US wages war. Vickers memoir includes his account of the preparation and operation to take out Osama bin Laden, which brings us closer to fuller picture of that operation.
As President Obama’s Undersecretary for Defense Intelligence in 2010, Vickers was charged with outlining proposals for taking defense intelligence to the “next level.” Vickers writes that this meant orienting defense intelligence to meet the challenges of Russia and China. He also discusses dealing with the Snowden leaks and the removal of Lieutenant General Mike Flynn as the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Vickers mentions congressional oversight of intelligence only periodically. Given the issues he worked, some of which were controversial, a fuller treatment of congressional oversight would have rounded out his narrative and enhanced the insight he offers.
Nonetheless, his work will have wide appeal. Vickers’ memoir paints a picture of a career strategist that combined the tactile feel and detailed weapons and tactics training of an operator with an intellectual approach to knotty problems. As a warrior scholar, Vickers ends his story with ten core principles. Among these are taking jobs you really like, investing time to gain expertise, recognizing when you need to modify long held views, and prioritizing the things that matter.
By All Means Available earns a prestigious four out of four trench coats
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