Kappes Expected to Boost CIA Morale, Work to Reestablish Spy Network

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Kappes Is Expected to Boost CIA Morale
As Deputy Director, Famed Operative Will Work to Reestablish Spy Network
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 19, 2006; Page A04

Stephen R. Kappes, a legendary CIA clandestine operative, will become as soon as today the No. 2 at the agency in a move that CIA Director Michael V. Hayden hopes will lift morale there. Kappes's top priority will be to help rebuild the agency's human intelligence capabilities when the United States needs spies within the jihadist community and elsewhere.

Battered for past failures and downgraded as leader of the intelligence community, the CIA nonetheless has been given new authority as home of the National Clandestine Service, which under Hayden and Kappes will coordinate all overseas human intelligence carried out by U.S. agencies, including the Pentagon and FBI.

Kappes, who speaks Russian and Farsi, is a former Marine whose almost 25 years at the CIA included being station chief in Moscow and Kuwait and running operations against Iran. He returns to an agency whose clandestine service has been shaken by retirements and the resignations of senior-level case officers with years of experience in recruiting agents overseas.

It was Kappes's own departure in November 2004 that began the exodus of seasoned case officers. At the time, he was head of the clandestine service as deputy director of operations, appointed just months before by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet. Kappes got into a confrontation with Patrick Murray, chief of staff to Director Porter J. Goss, who succeeded Tenet. Kappes and his top deputy, Michael Sulick, resigned and were followed by others who were unhappy with the new Goss team.

Now Hayden and Kappes will try to stem the outflow of trained clandestine officers. "I know of a 50-year-old woman, one of the few who made station chief, who is thinking of leaving, and they are trying to keep her on board," a retired former senior agency official said Friday. "She has got several attractive offers, but she is the type of person they would want to keep."...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/18/AR2006061800779.html

[chill_wind]

1. Kick

for strange twists and turns of Bush KGB politics.

It was Kappes's own departure in November 2004 that began the exodus of seasoned case officers. At the time, he was head of the clandestine service as deputy director of operations, appointed just months before by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet. Kappes got into a confrontation with Patrick Murray, chief of staff to Director Porter J. Goss, who succeeded Tenet. Kappes and his top deputy, Michael Sulick, resigned and were followed by others who were unhappy with the new Goss team.

[Mandate My Ass]

2. Good luck with recruiting. You're gonna need it.

You're only as clandestine as Dick Cheney and Karl Rove want you to be. :hi:

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. Interesting that one is going back

I would assume that is unusual.

[UpInArms]

4. I'm reading "The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Heart of the BCCI"

and this passage is pretty interesting (even in light of the fact that this piece of info is regarding the Carter administration):

The CIA that director George Bush had turned over to Carter's appointee, Admiral Stansfield Turner, had been the subject of congressional inquiry and a source of scandal since Vietnam and Watergate. The investigations shed light on rogue agents, profiteering, plots to assassinate foreign leaders, and allegations of condoning drug trafficking, and of spying on Americans who opposed the Vietnam War.

and then there was this regarding William Casey (RayGun's CIA Director):

He had little patience with politicians. He headed an agency with the fastest growing budget among all the executive branches of the U.S. government. In 1987 the CIA received funds totaling $30 billion, a 200 percent increase over 1980. With Reagan backing clandestine operations in Nicaragua and Angola as well as Afghanistan, Casey was on the crest of a wave. He was contemptuous of Congress's right to know what was happening in covert operations. He fought ferociously with the Senate Intelligence Committee, withholding information if he possibly could and reporting only sporadically. His ridicule of rules and regulations worked to our (Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence) Once, when one of his staff tried to explain the delay in our (ISI) obtaining sniper rifles was due to some obscure edict classifying them as terrorist sabotage weapons, Casey yelled, "To hell with politicians, we're fighting a war!" It was good to have him on our (ISI) side.