Jack Devine, former acting director and associate director of foreign operations at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), opened the 2015 Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) “Chaos / Catalyst / Clarity” series Wednesday night. Devine discussed his career, contemporary geopolitical issues and his autobiography Good Hunting! A Spymaster’s Story, published in June.
Devine shared defining moments in his career, which spanned the Cold War. He worked predominantly in South America, including in Chile. He was there in the midst of the presidency of Marxist leader Salvador Allende and the military coup that ended it, for which the CIA has partially been attributed with causing.
According to Devine, President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger asked the CIA station chief in Santiago, Chile to organize an effort to prevent Allende’s rise to power. At the time, he had been elected but had not yet taken office.
Devine said that the chief warned the White House that conditions on the ground were not favorable and casualties were likely, but the White House insisted that they try anyway.
Devine’s book focuses on covert action, which he supports. However, it is apparently an unpopular discipline.
“I am actually in a very small minority that advocates for it,” Devine said. “Inside the CIA, 95 percent of the people that are in the operations room prefer to have absolutely nothing to do with action. They would rather be involved in espionage, and they come to [action] most reluctantly... This [was] bad covert action [in Santiago] — when the conditions are not right on the ground and the policymakers decide for whatever reason to try it. It was a botched operation.”
After the CIA’s attempt, the White House issued orders not to move forward with a coup attempt and instead to try to undermine Allende’s Marxist policies and encourage democracy.
“In most people’s minds, when they think about Chile, they believe the CIA overthrew Allende in ‘73,” Devine said. “[But] the military moved for its own reasons.”
Devine also discussed the CIA’s involvement in the infamous Iran-Contra Affair. At the time, he was a station chief at a base in Iran.
“We had hostages that were being held by terrorists, and we wanted to get them free, including a CIA [agent],” Devine said.
Devine was not in favor of the idea of sending missiles to Iran, but he now believes the missiles were not the ultimate cause of the scandal.
“I was naïve enough to think, ‘This is so dumb that it’s surely going to stop. Somebody’s going to stop.’ But when the planes [carrying the missiles] took off, I realized that wasn’t going to happen,” he said. “That was a very bad policy, but it isn’t what caused the problem. The problem was not with the missiles they were sending. The problem was the money. The Iranians gave me a million dollars. I didn’t know they sent another million to a separate account that supported the Contras of Central America.”
Devine defined the difference between espionage and covert action.
“In the intelligence business, you have two main disciplines inside of the operational part of spying. One is called espionage. [It brings to mind the] Cold War [and] meetings late at night,” Devine said. “The [other] part is action. That’s your James Bond of good and bad — overthrowing governments, never writing a report... It’s all covert action.”
Devine then described a memorable operation in Haiti in which he was involved. This mission consisted of both espionage and action, although it was not covert. In 1994, he took part in negotiations with Haitian dictators in an effort to make them relinquish their power.
“[I was] called down to the White House, and Tony Lake [the National Security Advisor under President Bill Clinton] said, ‘Look, we want the dictators to leave town, and we want you to go down and tell the dictators to leave.’ Now, most rational people, since the dictators would call the police and kill them, might think that that’s not an assignment to sign up for — I thought it was a terrific idea,” Devine said.
Devine’s negotiations proved unsuccessful, and the dictators refused to leave. Former President Jimmy Carter was brought in to continue negotiating, but Clinton quickly decided to authorize an invasion of Haiti and warned Carter that he had to leave.
However, Carter stayed for an additional half hour, during which the Haitians realized the U.S. was sending in planes and warned the dictators, who subsequently agreed to give up their power.
Devine also discussed the beginning of his CIA training as a recruit and related humorous anecdotes about training exercises that he took part in, such as performing a brush pass and jumping out of an airplane.
A brush pass is a tactical maneuver in which one agent passes a document or package into the hand of another agent without ever making the object visible. Devine’s first attempt at a brush pass ended less successfully than he’d anticipated.
“The day I did [it], I spent hours finding the perfect place, and I believe I did. And then when it came time for the instructor to pass the place, he didn’t put his hand down,” Devine said. “It happened to be a place where there were steps, and I turned around and made a very good Philadelphia gesture. Then, [I] went on to spend another three or four hours [looking] for another spot. That night when we went back to the training facility, they said, ‘We have a treat for you tonight. Today was the first day we videoed meetings on the street.’ So, of course, mine was the first one up, [and] there I am with this obscene gesture.”
Devine concluded his training by jumping out of an airplane, an optional exercise in which he was initially not keen on participating.
His wife explained to him that the exercise would probably be a good opportunity for him to bond with his fellow trainees, but he was not persuaded. Devine was next approached by a CIA official at the training base.
“He said, ‘Look, you’re going to miss out on something. Jump training’s better than sex.’ And I thought, ‘Well this is interesting.’ I looked at him and I thought, ‘No way.’”
Devine was ultimately convinced to try it after being interviewed by CIA staff members who served as internal newscasters for the agency.
“[They] said, ‘Have you jumped yet?’ I said, ‘No.’ They said, ‘It’s the greatest thing a man can do.’ And I said, ‘No, but I’m really looking forward to [jumping].’ So finally, for my career, I would jump,” Devine said.
Freshman Navya Ravoori attended Devine’s talk and found it insightful. She chose to attend the event to learn more about the Chilean coup.
“[The coup is] something that I know a lot about. And he was someone that was in the CIA, and intelligence was involved in it. So this [event] was something I was interested in,” Ranvoori said. “I got more of an intelligence perspective of it. There’s always been policy perspective, and there’s always been this notion that hindsight is 20/20... coming from the perspective of what was going on at the time,” Ravoori said.
After the talk, FAS hosted a book signing of Devine’s autobiography. According to Devine, the title, Good Hunting: An American Spymaster’s Story, was inspired by the CIA’s use of “good hunting” as a salutation in cables. The FAS gave out 50 free copies of the book before the speech.
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