The Human Factor. Ishmael Jones

every obstacle oppose patience, perseverance, and soothing language

       Thomas Jefferson

      I spoke to Max on a secure line between our domestic posts.

      “I now hold the record,” Max said.

      “What record?”

      “The record for the earliest recorded ‘Christmas holidays’ excuse. It’s June, and a man from HQs just told me he might not be able to get my overseas assignment approved, what with the holiday season coming up.”

      “June! Not bad, Max. June will be tough to beat.”

      Max and Jonah had been assigned to domestic OJTs in a part of the country where there weren’t many good targets. Still, they were such hard workers that they managed to call just about every target country foreigner in their region and made some decent recruitments.

      Max put Jonah on the phone.

      “Acute attacks of diarrhea stand between me and service to my country in an overseas assignment,” Jonah said. The man responsible for processing Jonah’s overseas paperwork suffered from intestinal problems. “A bad attack will keep this guy out of the office for three weeks at a time. I’m trying to figure out ways to get the process moving. Maybe I need to create a crisis. Government employees never act until a crisis forces them to act.”

      We were eager to get to our overseas assignments. Members of our training class had begun to quit the Agency. All of us sensed that the oft-repeat delay “two more weeks” could go on for years. Most of us were in our late twenties or early thirties, eager to achieve. As we looked over the sad sacks at HQs, we asked: “Is this what I want to be?” To them, time meant nothing; each day was just another one closer to retirement.

      Max and I were just as frustrated by this Kafkaesque process of promise and delay, but we also saw the enormous potential for achievement—for America’s security—once we finally did get overseas. We’d been through plenty of “only the strong survive” courses in the military and figured that this was just another obstacle we’d endure. Not many trainees felt this way, however, and there were numerous resignations.

      An OJT trainee came into our office one day to resign. He brought his spy gear to turn in and Sylvia pointed him to our office, where he dumped it off. After the man left, my colleagues and I looked at each other quizzically for a few moments and then blurted out, “Everything in this office is spy gear.” So many employees had quit that our office had become a dumping ground for equipment.

      A new trainee, Martin, arrived. Soon thereafter, he did a commendable job of recruiting a valuable human source, a visiting government official considered important by HQs. The foreign official was a member of a powerful and wealthy family. Such connections were important in the source’s country, and he loved to talk about his ancient and influential line—descended from royalty, naturally. As far as we knew, all that he said was true. Yet the man rolled over for the customary $1,000 per month. I would see this again and again, a source who claimed to be connected to great wealth and influence, yet was willing to sell his country for a song. Martin had built his relationship with the target through scuba diving, bungee jumping, deep sea fishing, and duck hunting.

      IʹD HELD OUT A LONG TIME against the temptation of resignation. When the cycle continued, I thought about what Jonah had said: Government employees never act until a crisis forces them to act. The next written message I sent to HQs said, “I have completed the training course and compiled a good recruitment record in my domestic post. There are no obstacles to my overseas deployment. Please get organized and do your duty. Do the job you have been assigned to do and approve my overseas assignment.”

      They fired back, “You should watch the tone of your messages. They’re vituperative. Be patient. Your overseas assignment should be all set in about two weeks.”

      That about did it. I telephoned Roger. “Bullshit,” I said. “You people are lying. You’ll say ‘two more weeks’ until the end of time. I’m moving back there to Washington, D.C. right now to sit on top of you until this gets done.”

      Roger lost his mind over that. “You can’t come back here without orders! You have no authorization to come back here! We won’t pay for your travel!”

      A calmer “good cop” voice got on the line: “Look, Ishmael, we’re doing what we can do to get your assignment arranged. There are a multitude of managers who need to sign off on your assignment first. If you come back here, you’ll upset a bunch of people, and that won’t help you.”

      “I understand that I’m going to offend people at HQs. I don’t care. I won’t allow myself to wind up like all the sad sacks waiting around for you to act. You’ve already caused the resignations of some of the members of my training class, all of them good people. We have missions in this Agency and I want to get them done.”

      I made good on my threat to HQs.

      I MOVED MY FAMILY BACK to the HQs area. Like an Okie headed for California, I drove a car crammed full of household goods. My wife and children went by plane, and we moved back into a hotel room.

      As soon as I reached HQs, I confronted the management about my assignment.

      The files they’d supposedly kept on me were empty. They hadn’t done a thing during the year I’d been away. Each time they’d told me they were working on it, they’d lied.

      The Worst Spy in the World came by the office to see me. “I know you’re frustrated about the slow pace. Perhaps we should pause a moment and pray.” He leaned over and took my hands in his.

      “I don’t want to pray,” I said. “I want to solve the problem.”

      “You need to learn to be patient,” he said, and then he left.

      Roger approached.

      “You haven’t gone to language school. You need to go to language school.”

      “I’ve already got the languages. I learned them on my own during training. I have the test scores to prove it.”

      “Well, maybe so, but you need to put in the hours.”

      HQs had created language schools for case officers. The schools taught difficult languages like Chinese and Japanese by way of a single teacher who met the class daily in an apartment. Unfortunately, the schools had been around long enough for everyone to realize that even after a two-year course confined in an apartment, the students weren’t learning

      A linguist colleague suggested the best way to learn a language was to go to the country where it was spoken and actively use it. He had traveled to Japan after graduating from high school. “After I’d been in Japan for a month,” he said, “I was speaking Japanese on a functional level, and I traveled around the country with a group of Japanese friends who spoke no English.”

      He visited our Japanese school and spoke to the students. “They’re not learning the language,” he said. “When they do speak, they sound like women. Japanese men and women speak in different tones. Since the teacher is a woman, the students naturally sound like her.”

      In the Chinese school, the students decided that their instructor wasn’t good enough and tried unsuccessfully to get themselves assigned another. Tensions mounted, students weren’t getting along with one another, and before long they were at each other’s throats. The frustration led to at least one fistfight.

      HQs loved to assign people to language school. It was an easy and risk-free way to keep them looking busy.

      “What’s Smith doing,” a senior bureaucrat might ask.

      “Smith is in Chinese language school,” came the reply, and everyone would be pleased that Smith was productively occupied learning such an important language. Chances were that Smith would never put this skill to work.

      Jonah was back in the HQs area for some meetings and was hanging around a safe-house apartment with one colleague who spoke Japanese and another