Douglas London - The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence

All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or any other US government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US government authentication of information or CIA endorsement of the authors views.

This nonfiction account of the changes the CIA underwent over the course of my thirty-four-plus years of service is based on actual experiences. The CIA required four months to review this manuscript during the spring and summer of 2020, over the course of which I was pressured against its publication in ways both subtle and not. In ultimately yielding, the CIA redacted significant portions, primarily where the anecdotes cast senior officials in a bad light. In the Trump age, image was everything at the CIA, and the Agency was fearful of what might provoke the presidents next outburst. At its own peril, and that of the country it is charged to protect, under both Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel, the CIAs leadership agonized over controlling and shaping that image.

In maintaining my oath to the Constitution, legal obligation to the Agency, and moral commitment to the agents I recruited, ran, and managed as a senior spymaster, I changed all the names, aliases included, and distorted descriptions and details that might facilitate their identification. I extended this same protection to colleagues, regardless of their role as forces of good, or bad, in the Agencys history. Its important from the outset to understand that the term agent refers to a recruited foreign spy operating on the CIAs behalf. The American CIA staff who recruit and clandestinely handle these agents are case officers, not agents.

I chose war stories about agents and operations that best reflect my experiences and express the themes on which I was writing. So as to avoid endangering agents or compromising classified information, I necessarily had to dance around revealing details such as locations, nationalities, physical appearance and attributes (including gender), and time. There were cases and operations too sensitive for me to discuss in any fashion, and others the Agency censored in their entirety or in bits and pieces, most often to protect its image rather than the operations. The final product sufficiently obscures while still illuminating the rather extraordinary life I and other CIA case officers had the privilege to lead.

CIA requirements did, however, detract somewhat from the narrative, regrettably creating vagaries and gaps I am not at liberty to explain. For example, because I am precluded from providing explicit references to living undercover or even the mention of specific US government facilities, or American officials residing abroad, the task of narrating a spys life was somewhat more complicated. It certainly frustrated my editors! In the end, these impediments, while challenging, do not detract from the storys fundamental message that the CIA is a critical institution to American national security, but one at a crossroads and in need of significant reform. Espionage is about people: their strengths, weaknesses, drives, eccentricities, and fears. More precisely, espionage is about the human soul, and the ability of those who can see therein. That goes for the agents we recruit to spy against their own, as well as the Agency officers who bear responsibility for discharging the mission.

While I apologize in advance for the occasional painfully vague and convoluted explanations that dance around the passages, and wording struck down by Agency censors, I ask the reader to focus on the people and their stories. See into the hearts and souls, as I did for almost four decades, of the spies, the agents, the bureaucrats, politicians, and intelligence careerists. Do that and you will find what it is that brings life to the worlds second oldest profession. Spycraft, a trade deemed by many as distasteful as the worlds second oldest profession, is charged with a noble mission and is guided by an ethical code; and it is practiced by an assortment of heroes and villains, flawed characters all, me included, on all sides.