The Human Factor by Ishmael Jones

[jmm99]

Mr. White.

I be a-wishin I been a-writin that - rather than thinking it.

from White
The real problems with national level Humint did not arise until Nixon had Schlesinger start the dismantling of the DO in 1973, the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee did their thing and James Earl Carter and Stansfield Turner completed the massacre. The Agency has never fully recovered. Efforts to ramp up DIA to cover the shortfall were probably necessary.

And,

Bull is always with us... From both sides of the political spectrum, too...
......
While affiliation with Horowitz is always suspect, the content rather than the association should be the determinant. This is an issue that should never be approached in a partisan manner. Unfortunately, too many cannot rise to the level required to do that.
.....
I'd also point out that partisanship cuts both ways; legitimate criticism can be negated by claiming partisanship and illegitimate criticism can be elevated by the same thing. What's required is to simply filter the information provided and apply logic instead of bias to the issue.

------------------------------------
Now, trying to apply Mr. White's mode of analysis in my fumbling McCarthy manner.

Since Lindsay Moran has been mentioned, here is her review of Jones' book

Ishmael Jones is the real deal, a CIA case officer who worked under deep cover – without the traditional safety net of diplomatic immunity – targeting this country’s most hostile threats and winning over critical informants. He represents an altogether uncommon breed of CIA officer, one willing to risk life and career in the pursuit of gathering better intelligence. Undeterred by the Agency’s baffling bureaucratic barriers, Jones bucked the system when he had to, and served in a series of successful overseas assignments. If the CIA as a whole shared this one officer’s relentless pursuit of WMD sources, terrorists and the rogue nations that support them, we might find ourselves in a much safer world today. With his book The Human Factor – as entertaining as it is informative – Jones relates the details of his extraordinary career. Better yet, he tells his story with a notable lack of bravado and a tremendous amount of dry wit. I laughed out loud at descriptions of CIA characters and culture that were all too familiar. Jones represents the kind of CIA officer that I – and many other neophyte spies – had always hoped to encounter as a supervisor. But he wisely sidestepped managerial positions within the Agency in order to remain exactly where he should have been: active in the field.

Lindsay Moran
Author of Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy

http://www.ishmaeljones.com/reviews/

Here is a review of Ms. Moran by a longer-serving agency gal:

She Gives Spies a Bad Name
By MARTHA SUTHERLAND, Special to the Sun December 16, 2004
....
For nearly 20 years, I was a case officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations. I ran foreign agents in China. I had many alias passports and held clandestine meetings in strange hotel rooms all over the world. I was there when Tiananmen Square erupted in 1989; I still possess spent bullets that vengeful Chinese soldiers shot through my apartment walls that day. I was also in Cairo and in a lot of other places I don't talk about, even though I've been officially ex-Agency for five years.

Lindsay Moran, valedictorian of her Harvard class, joined the CIA in 1998,and after three years of training at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., she spent only two years of service in Macedonia before leaving to get married. Thus her new book, "Blowing my Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy," (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 304 pages, $22.95) is a wonderfully bold and naive misnomer. It's akin to a first-year medical intern writing a book called, "My Life as a Surgeon."

http://www.nysun.com/arts/she-gives-...bad-name/6360/

Which does not necessarily mean that everything Ms. Moran says is bull. The part of Ms. Sutherland's article that bears more attention is the apparent liberality of the Publications Review Board to allow disclosure of training methods.

Another of the three reviewers in Jones' webpage (cited above) is Michael Ross (the other is Max Boot), who says:

Ishmael Jones takes on many sacred cows in this blistering, yet often humorous divulgence of how the CIA has summarily opted-out of the spy game replacing the real work of human source intelligence collection with a humorless and anemic bureaucracy scared of its own shadow. This page-turner chronicles the journey of a gifted and patriotic CIA officer of the elite Clandestine Service and his Herculean attempts to get the job done while fending off the risk-averse mandarins back at Langley determined to thwart his every effort. Sometimes he succeeds and to the CIA’s great shame, sometimes he doesn’t.

-Michael Ross

Author of The Volunteer: My Secret Life in the Mossad

A review of Mr. Ross' book by Hayden Peake is in the Spring 2008 Intelligencer, which is not online; see

http://www.afio.com/22_intelligencer.htm

The bottom line of Peake's review (p.127) is

from Peake
Both editions [US and Canadian] lack documentation. We are left with a well written story book that asks the reader to "trust me", but provides little reason to do so.

Which does not necessarily mean that everything Mr. Ross says is bull.

The next piece of "evidence".

LINKS

Encounterbooks.com
Encounter is the publisher of THE HUMAN FACTOR

BLOWING MY COVER
Lindsay Moran, auther of BLOWING MY COVER, is the most talented writer to have written about the CIA.

WAR MADE NEW
by Max Boot, Senior Fellow, The Council on Foreign Relations

THE VOLUNTEER
by Michael Ross. This is the best book written about the Israeli Mossad.

Amazon
Buy the book at Amazon.com

http://www.ishmaeljones.com/links/

From which, I infer that a publisher and four folks got together to sell their books.

Conspiracy ? - anything is possible and can be conceived - see quote below signature.

So, back to Mr. White: "What's required is to simply filter the information provided and apply logic instead of bias to the issue."

PS1 (Ken) Do you happen to live near US 41 ?

PS2 Now some other folks can launch into a discussion of "deep cover, mesne cover, and thin cover officers" - to say nothing of "agents" and "spies".

[Ken White]

...
PS1 (Ken) Do you happen to live near US 41 ?

on the Redneck Riviera...

About five hours out of the way...

[jmm99]

right on it.

On the Redneck Snowbelt....

Thought great minds might run along the same highway. Now, I'll have to come up with a more "complicated and implausible" explanation.

PS: The url for Ms. Sutherland's article is now giving me problems - Sun website down ? Worked fine this afternoon. Maybe my wife's computer - since she hates "I spy stuff", maybe it too. Have to go before she throws me out of her wigwam.

[Ken White]

On the Redneck Snowbelt....

Snowbelt or ice cube belt? Benton Harbor is as far north as I've been in a Michigan winter and that was quite enough, thank you...

Thought great minds might run along the same highway. Now, I'll have to come up with a more "complicated and implausible" explanation.

They do, check the map. You and I are on a direct N-S Axis as modified by a 3.175 deviation of magnetic north from this end to which the curvature of the earth and the transient effects of this years flood water have added a slight westward cant.

My Mother told my wife before we married that what I said would be "generally believable..." My own mother!... No idea what she meant by that.

[jmm99]

from White
Snowbelt or ice cube belt?

Snowbelt; Lake Superior adds a Med effect, even when it freezes over (which it does). Snow fall (as opposed to snow cover) in inches runs to mid-200's usually. High is just shy of 400" (78-79, when my dad cashed in his chips). See here for totals (Keweenaw runs a little higher than here - maybe a coiuple of feet).

http://www.johndee.com/history.htm

Ideal winter temp is about 20-25F. Anything at 32F or higher is a problem because snow melts, creates a mess and then freezes - leading to an ice cube belt in driveway. Plus, it makes igloo living wet; and bear can more easily breach the walls. See Pierre of the North comic strip.

I expect this site will tell you more about this region than you want to know.

The City's proximity to majestic Lake Superior gives it beautiful mild summers and wonderful snowy winters.

http://www.cityofhancock.com/

from White
You and I are on a direct N-S Axis as modified by a 3.175 deviation of magnetic north from this end to which the curvature of the earth and the transient effects of this years flood water have added a slight westward cant.

...as further modified by a almost 0.00 deviation of magnetic north from this end (making bearings and departures easy); plus the effect of snow load - and the glacier that is coming over the hill (no, no, Mike, that was the 70's Global Cooling Model).

from White
My Mother told my wife before we married ...

My mother in law told me (before my wife and I married) that I shouldn't believe everything my wife would tell me. My wife claims that my father misrepresented to her everything about me - thus, she (my wife) should be able to sue me (why me; sue the old man) for fraud. So, married life goes on.

[Ken White]

the snow load...

[jmm99]

and back to the topic.

For those interested in the possible legal issues here - and, keep in mind, that no one has brought any kind of legal action for or against Mr. Jones - some background on the Frank Snepp case.

Very brief Wiki bio of Mr. Snepp is here (updated 14 Jul 2008):

Frank Warren Snepp (born 3 May 1943, Kinston, North Carolina) is a journalist and former chief analyst of North Vietnamese strategy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Five out of eight years in the CIA, he worked as interrogator, agent debriefer, and chief CIA strategy analyst in the Saigon embassy. He is currently a producer for KNBC-TV.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Snepp

Webpage and links by Mr. Snepp (updated ?; last copyright 2006):

Inside the Site
Biography
Services
Irreparable Harm
Decent Interval
Supreme Court
CIA on Snepp
Contact Frank

http://www.franksnepp.com/

Of the links, "Supreme Court" and "CIA on Snepp" are worth reading - simply to understand Mr. Snepp's perspective.

The SCOTUS decision was mercifully brief (in comparison to most) - and unanimous. The holding was

Held:

A former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, who had agreed not to divulge classified information without authorization and not to publish any information relating to the Agency without prepublication clearance, breached a fiduciary obligation when he published a book about certain Agency activities without submitting his manuscript for prepublication review. The proceeds of his breach are impressed with a constructive trust for the benefit of the Government.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...=444&invol=507

Note 1 (re: Jones): Mr. Jones has stated that "My book is also the first CIA book for which all author profits will be given away." (see FrontPage cited above) While that would not technically affect the Government's case if one were brought (under Snepp case logic of a constructive trust, the Government could still go after the funds in the hands of the charitable recipients), it would certainly affect the PR aspect - and perhaps, affect the decision to pursue civil litigation or not.

Note 2 (re: Jones): Mr. Jones has also stated that "There is no classified information in my book." (FrontPage). That remains the sole evidence on that unless and until contrary evidence is presented and accepted under relevant proof standards.

The agency's Publications Review Board's decisions can be appealed internally within the agency and externally in the Federal court system. See, for legal references, current through dates stated:

SOURCE: Studies in Intelligence (Spring 1998)
Reviewing the Work of CIA Authors
Secrets, Free Speech, and Fig Leaves
John Hollister Hedley
CIA's Publications Review Board (PRB) and its small staff perform a balancing act more than 300 times a year, navigating a process sanctioned by the US Supreme Court to clear the writings of Agency authors for nonofficial publication. The challenge: to balance CIA's secrecy agreement with the Bill of Rights. Business is brisk, as a growing number of former CIA employees seek to become published authors--especially former operations officers reflecting on their clandestine careers abroad.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/hedley.html

The second cite is to an internal memo, agency approved for external release 2003/11/06, which has one particularly relevant recommendation (p.19):

We recommend that:

V.A. The General Counsel examine the merits of DO argumentation for disallowing certain manuscripts in toto whose text largely concerns DO methodology and operations.

http://fas.org/sgp//eprint/prb1981.pdf

Note 3 (re: Jones): Mr. Jones has also stated (FrontPage) that

"My book has also been disapproved in its entirety by CIA censors. I actively sought the approval of the censors, and repeatedly asked them during the course of a year what parts of the book they would like removed or rewritten. But they simply replied: all of it. In the end, CIA censors returned the manuscript to me as a stack of blank pages."

The obvious legal issue here is whether Mr. Jones waived a number of legal rights by not going through with internal and external review of the "blank pages" return - or, whether the courts can address the "in toto" rejection despite lack of that review - an issue not to be answered here by me.

Googling - "publications review board" cia - will get you about 500 hits on PRB reviews.