Inside the Ring

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By Bill Gertz INSIDE THE RING

Obama warned on CIA

A former CIA deep-cover spy says President-elect Barack Obama needs to radically reshape what he terms the "dysfunctional" CIA -- or face more strategic intelligence failures.

Ishmael Jones, the pseudonym for a former Marine and recently retired CIA case officer, said in an interview that despite intelligence reform efforts in the post-Sept. 11 era, "the CIA bureaucracy has mutated into a living creature that serves its own aims."

The retired CIA officer, an Arabic speaker and 20-year veteran, stated in his recently published book, "The Human Factor," that the CIA's clandestine service should be streamlined and given clear marching orders and more focus on its mission: recruiting and handling human spies while avoiding trivial sources.

The officer wrote of his frustration as an overseas agent recruiter who couldn't make a phone call without five bureaus at CIA headquarters first approving it.

He also wrote that "most" CIA employees work in the United States but that there is an urgent need to "get the CIA spying on and in foreign countries."

The officer said in the interview that fixing the CIA will not be easy. "While the CIA is unable to run effective human source operations, it has a raptorlike efficiency when it comes to defending itself and its growth," he said. "The CIA's myriad offices and wealthy contracting companies are constituents of congressional districts, and they wield lobbying power to protect CIA funding."

Also, he thinks CIA managers will give the new president impressive "dog and pony show" briefings "to make the CIA look busy."

Money is not the problem. The former CIA nonofficial cover officer said one post-2001 CIA program got $3 billion to deploy more operations officers outside U.S. embassies overseas but "has been unable to field a single additional effective officer."

The former spy recommends putting the military in charge of foreign spying and transferring foreign intelligence liaison carried out at U.S. embassies to the State Department. The FBI should take charge of the CIA's domestic activities, he said.