Successful Case Officers: Chameleon Meets the Confessional

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Notes

1 He reveals that “Agents provide us documents, military manuals, and readouts from high-level meetings and policy discussions in which they or their associates participated … and can speak to plans, intentions, and capabilities. They offer context and reason behind actions and events that inform our understanding and decision-making.”

2 London further maintains that an effective case officer “re-recruits the agent every meeting, and likewise identifies any changed behaviors or inconsistencies that might reveal a problem.”

3 The author further stresses that “CIA officers should be proud of who they work for and what they do, and they should be entitled to a sense of elitism and esprit de corps,” while also understanding that “the CIA must also be allowed to fail. Even the best planned operations do sometimes. It’s the human nature of HUMINT and the confluence of circumstances and conditions that create risks we can’t always control.”

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Joseph W. Wippl

Joseph W. Wippl is Professor of the Practice at Boston University. Previously, he had a 30-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service. (NCS). He occupied the Richard Helms Chair for Intelligence Collection in the NCS training program. In October 2017, Mr. Wippl received the Hugh Montgomery Award for outstanding retired intelligence operations officers from the OSS Society, Washington, DC. The author can be contacted at [email protected].