Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon
256
Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon
256eBook
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Overview
After 9/11, billions of dollars were spent to overhaul America’s dysfunctional intelligence services, which were mired in bureaucracy, turf wars, and dated technology. But in this astonishing new book, A. J. Rossmiller, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst honored for his efforts here and in Iraq, reveals firsthand evidence that the intelligence system remains in disrepair. Still Broken is a blistering account of the ideology and incompetence that cripple our efforts to confront our enemies and fight our wars.
Like many Americans, Rossmiller was moved to action by the attacks on 9/11. Freshly graduated from Middlebury College, he went to work for the U.S. government in 2004. But his enthusiasm slowly turned to disillusion as he began to fulfill his duties for DIA, the spy arm of the Department of Defense. There he found the Cold War and 9/11 generations at odds, the cause of fighting terrorism superseded by the need to contain a dismally managed war in Iraq, the Bush administration widely mocked and distrusted, and the intelligence process crippled from top to bottom.
Rather than give up, Rossmiller instead went further, volunteering to go to Iraq to aid the troops on the ground, contribute to tactical intelligence, and, he hoped, help bring about an end to a fatally mismanaged war. For six months in that besieged country, he worked for the Direct Action Cell, the “track ’em and whack ’em” unit devoted to unmasking and targeting insurgents. He learned that, to put it mildly, the intelligence process bears no resemblance to the streamlined, well-resourced, and timely operation in a James Bond or Jason Bourne movie. He also experienced the disastrous counterterrorism and detainee strategies for which mass imprisonment–with little interest in guilt or innocence–is standard operating procedure.
Back at the Pentagon as a strategic issues expert in the Office of Iraq Analysis, Rossmiller saw the administration’s heavy hand in determining how information is processed. In a dysfunctional office filled with outsize personalities and the constant drone of Fox News, he filed reports on the ever-worsening situation in Iraq. These assessments, ultimately proven accurate, were consistently rejected as “too pessimistic” and “off message” and repeatedly changed to be more in line with delusional White House projections.
Written with passion, intensity, and self-deprecating humor, Still Broken is a riveting and sobering portrait of Bush-era intelligence failures and manipulations, laid out by someone who witnessed them up close and personal. It also offers a sincere, thoughtful prescription for healing the system so that a new and motivated generation won’t disengage completely from its government.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780345513502 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Random House Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 08/05/2008 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
ajrossmiller@stillbroken.com
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
I’m the kind of person the United States intelligence community claimed to want: young, committed, and passionate about our security, with an educational background in the Middle East. Willing—eager, even—to pass up the investment banking and consulting jobs my peers flocked to in favor of civil service, and ready to make a career of protecting the nation.
“Alex?”
“That’s me. You’re Josh, I take it?”
“Yup. Let me show you where our office is.”
On my first day at the Defense Intelligence Agency, essentially the spy arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, I didn’t have a desk. Or a computer. Or an assignment, really. I was relieved when Josh, a young, socially functional coworker, met me at the security desk, but when he took me upstairs to the office, much of my new team seemed surprised to see me. I had talked to Josh on the phone a few times in the months leading up to my arrival, and he was tremendously helpful regarding matters both large (What Washington, DC, neighborhoods are good to live in? What’s the office environment like?) and small (Is there a dress code? Should I bring or buy lunch?). That first day, he helped me get a temporary security badge and process mountains of initial paperwork, and eventually we went to meet the rest of my team. It was a motley crew, but one that seemed dedicated to the work and ready to integrate their new charge.
I was barely a month out of college, having just graduated from Middlebury College in bucolic Middlebury, Vermont, and my lifelong interest in law enforcement and intelligence had led me, through a circuitous route, to DIA.
I initially worked at the Air Force base where DIA is headquartered. The atmosphere of the office was mildly depressing: The building itself was run-down and dreary, and most of the employees had the rounded shoulders and shuffling gait that I hoped to avoid as my career progressed. The general reputation of intelligence analysts is that they’re quirky introverts, and I didn’t find that to be untrue. My favorite joke from those initial weeks: How do you spot an extroverted intelligence analyst? He looks at your shoes when he talks to you. But much of that reputation was due to the presence of so many intellectuals, especially those who were brilliant in one very specific area of military or political minutiae.
The culture and mood were clear from the beginning. As in many bureaucracies, the individuals were capable and helpful, but the system somehow managed to impede progress and common sense. Although my team ostensibly knew my start date months in advance, when I arrived it took weeks to get the requisite passwords and computer access, there was no established training program, and, perhaps most frustrating, I didn’t have a set position for months. What I assumed was an aberration, however, turned out to be fairly typical as I swapped notes with other young employees.
My generation of analysts reflected a new direction for the agency, and for the intelligence community (IC) as a whole. In the late 1990s, and especially after 9/11, the IC increasingly hired generalists rather than people with narrow expertise, and many of my contemporaries had outlooks and goals similar to mine. I went into the business of intelligence because I passionately believe that those with the ability to contribute to their country also have a responsibility to do so. Idealistic, perhaps, but a belief I was willing to act on. Events in Afghanistan and Iraq, and, above all, the attacks against America on September 11, hugely amplified that feel ing, and I believed that with my background I could make a positive contribution to my country. The attacks, which occurred during my time at Middlebury, were a tremendous motivation for me to pursue my interest and studies in international politics, especially in the Middle East. That day also felt like a personal affront: I grew up just outside New York City, and my father worked downtown. His building was so damaged on 9/11 that it was eventually condemned, and on that day he walked uptown through the shrapnel and soot that rained down on Lower Manhattan. I was always a highly motivated student, but during the fall after 9/11, I took it to another level.
I spent an absurd amount of time on schoolwork, reading, and keeping up with the news. When I did go out, I partied harder than I had before, hoping for fast relief from the self-imposed intensity. It was the best academic semester of my entire college career, and I studied through the night with regularity. During one all-nighter, a good friend, who lived across the hall, wandered in.
“AJ,” she said, “your sleeping and eating habits need to change. Now.”
I looked up at her, eyebrows raised.
“Look at you!” she insisted. “You have in front of you two empty water bottles, a bagel and cream cheese, and pills”—my migraine medicine. “That’s always good. Why don’t you put some Tabasco sauce in the water for sustenance? That’d be fantastic.” Before I could respond, she rolled her eyes and ambled out.
When I wasn’t working, I sometimes wondered if I should leave school and join the military; it felt wrong not to contribute in such a time of national need. The attack infuriated me, both for the loss of life and for what it represented: a rejection of American security and authority. September 11 was an assault on the moral ideals of America and an accusation of weakness. Power that is rejected in such a way cannot be maintained, and without an appropriate response, contempt replaces respect. I understood the importance of responding appropriately, in a way that reinforced both our virtues and our power, thereby reasserting justice and decency in the face of defiance.
I eventually decided that I could do the most good by continuing my education and staying focused on the future, though I knew my decision was a rationalization. There is some combination of courage and conviction that causes a person to act on his or her beliefs, some threshold that must be met with a combined amount of those two elements before an individual will put him- or herself on the line. Better and braver individuals with my feelings would have left immediately to join the fight, and I did not. I don’t think there is too much shame in my decision to remain in school, but I certainly did not feel great about it.
Despite this decision—or perhaps partly motivated by it— I wanted even more to be part of the process after college. When I was lucky enough to get a job offer from DIA, I jumped at the chance, and many of my peers at the agency had similar motivations for joining: a combination of general patriotism, an interest in international relations, and the knowledge that the business of intelligence was once again a top priority for the security of the country.
I found in my initial months at DIA that most analysts were relatively segregated; we had little contact with colleagues outside our immediate teams, and at my first post I regularly interacted with fewer than a dozen people, basically my cubicle neighbors and institutional chain of command. Eventually, though, I met and talked to other entry-level employees. There was a noticeable generation gap, which I was told resulted from a hiring freeze (or significant reduction) from the late 1980s into the ’90s. As the Cold War limped to its conclusion, intelligence, especially military intelligence, was devalued. After 9/11, however, intel was important again, and the intelligence community went on massive hiring binges. The old paradigm for hiring was to acquire specialists: people with advanced degrees in the specific area they’d be working on, whether Russian submarines, Chinese ICBMs, Colombian narcotics command-and-control structures, or a wide variety of other topics. The new plan was to hire generalists: smart people who knew how to think and analyze, and who could develop expertise in any issue. Graduate degrees in public policy, economics, and law became desirable, and even a few undergraduate political science majors—like me—slipped in.
The result is something of a disjointed workforce. The older generation was educated with a state-based, Cold War–focused approach and mind-set. For many of them, the phrase nonstate actors was a virtual non sequitur, and the agency was structured to focus on countries rather than elements that operated transnationally. The younger set, conversely, grew up with the reality of globalization and international interdependence. Many of the important things in our lives were not unique to a particular country, and we didn’t remember a time before the Internet and cell phones and multinationals. To us, the concept of terrorist groups was the same general idea as the Internet, or even—and I draw a general analogy of global reach only, of course—companies like Nike, Microsoft, and Starbucks. We couldn’t possibly imagine how analysts had done their job before computers and the Net, whereas our bosses had never heard of Wikipedia or decentralized social network theory. While many supervisors are making a valiant effort to catch up, it hasn’t been an easy transition.