OPINION — Evolving technology, shifting organizational behaviors, and information overload increasingly tested my decades-old operational instincts and as I looked at retirement options, the progress of technology was complicating my decision making.
The real world I was surveying suffered from much of the same complexity as the intelligence business I was leaving. The relic’s clear form and simple substance, I concluded, applied equally to that brand-new CIA Chief of Station I once was and to just about anyone endeavoring to see clearly the old forest for the new trees.
It was buried in the ark containing 35 years’ worth of artifacts. Dusty records forwarded from personnel archives, shards dislodged from nooks and crannies of long-gone desk officers’ cubicles, and parched manila envelopes pouched from distant outposts magically caught up with me earlier this year. My end-of-career excavation offered glimpses of days gone by, some wistful bemusement, and potsherds for the burn bag. Except the relic.
Memorabilia I couldn’t carbon date. Milestone anniversary pins I’d never seen. Yellowing faxes of forms filled out when I entered on duty. Hard-copy fitness reports predating the digital age. Kudos cables written in Optical Character Recognition and spit out of dot matrix printers. Quaint, handwritten notes, some illegible. A handful of photographs of erstwhile bosses shaking my hand for some promotion or achievement. And, then, the relic.
Its ink-pad date stamp made quick work of absolute dating: 27 March 1998. Watermarked CIA letterhead. SECRET classification. Typed in Courier New. Wet, blue ink signature of the Director of Central Intelligence. In pristine form, the light, two-page relic was heavy on substance.
Prefacing the communication was a simple, “Congratulations on your new Chief of Station appointment.” A pithy, “wish…of every success in your new assignment” concluded the correspondence. That was it for obligatory niceties. In the dense, 38 lines of text between these greetings and salutations, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) wasted few words in outlining expectations: I would serve at his direction and execute on his behalf certain responsibilities vested in DCI by law, Executive Order, and National Security Council directive.
In five bulleted, single sentences, DCI expected me to coordinate U.S. Government espionage and counterintelligence activities; support approved operations by other departments and agencies; advise Chief of Mission of activities; inform appropriately the regional Commander in Chief; and uphold and foster the highest standards of integrity with my staff and our colleagues. Each bulleted expectation – except integrity – cited a relevant policy directive number.
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DCI foot-stomped, in two concluding paragraphs, his vision for COS as more than a senior intelligence advisor and his personal representative at post. He exhorted me to build a relationship of mutual trust and confidence with the Chief of Mission and to actively promote other U.S. Intelligence Community programs and equities. DCI stated that he would hold me responsible for fulfilling his expectations in my area of operation.
The relic bore no cuneiform to decipher in its plain speak: chain of command, rule of law, mission, accountability, and integrity. No Rosetta Stone needed to translate modern hieroglyphs, jargon, newspeak, or buzzwords. One small mystery was the absence of legalese or qualifying descriptors of integrity. DCI assumed I knew the definition of integrity: be a good officer, colleague, boss, and person.
Now, admittedly, I’d not seen the DCI epistle before I arrived at my assignment, as I was laterally transferring post-to-post. And I’m pretty sure the letter was probably the robo-message of its day, and maybe even signed by staff, not DCI.
Upon discovery of the relic, I shared it with a few bosses, some peers, and a handful of more junior officers. Reactions varied from comments about the absurdity of the archaic “off-boarding” process to awe about the profundity of the prose. All however, insisted that the relic itself and its message required preservation. “Don’t put it down the burn bag chute! We could use that for today’s leaders!”
Before finding the relic a good home at the Center for the Study of Intelligence, I self-assessed that I’d fulfilled the DCI’s expectations on that first COS assignment. After all, I’d not been recalled, wasn’t rendered persona non grata, and lasted another couple of decades.
Bidding adieu to the relic, I contemplated whether its message transcended its bygone era. Modern communications, digitally preserved and available around-the-clock, had superseded paper holdings in locked safes. The Director of National Intelligence had displaced the DCI atop the burgeoning Intelligence Community. Five Directorates, Mission Centers, independent offices, and matrixed interagency and interdisciplinary teams now stood between the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and his/her representative abroad. Insatiable bosses and mission-focused staff, ever larger in the post-9/11 hiring boom, all demanded answers now. Open-source information, media, the internet, and big data had begun conspiring to change the question: “What does COS think” to “What does ChatGPT say?” Progress?
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The clearness etched on the relic should be more relevant today than when it came off of the IBM Selectric typewriter exactly because of this progress. I went on to hold six more field leadership jobs and to supervise scores of COS’, and I can attest that the position has gotten appreciably more complicated. The timeless message, though, was crystallizing as it codified whom I worked for, highlighted that I am answerable to the Constitution and the taxpayer, encouraged me to execute CIA’s mission to the best of my abilities, held me liable for my actions, and reminded me to model honorableness.
So, to those women and men serving as COS’ in today’s complex world and workplace, let me echo DCI George J. Tenet’s congratulations, double-down on his wish for every success and offer the relic’s intelligible message–perhaps as a digital screen-saver–to remind you of what to expect of yourselves, if not your bosses, peers, and subordinates; Chain of Command, Rule of Law, Mission, Accountability and Integrity.
And to the rest of my compatriots, recall that Sir Isaac Newton sat under that apple tree some 300 years ago. His message, like the relic’s, was clear: Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
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