The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From Al Qa'ida to ISIS (48 page)

Brandon Leach, on his visit to CIA, preparing to conduct a mock raid against terrorists.
(CIA photo)

A sign outside the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center reminding everyone of the need to be vigilant.
(CIA photo)

One of the stars etched on the Memorial Wall in the lobby of CIA’s headquarters. I kept this photo above my desk for the last eight years of my career to remind me of the sacrifices made by Agency officers.
(CIA photo)

Acknowledgments

Perhaps the most difficult part of writing this book is crafting this passage, which will attempt to thank the many people who played important roles in helping me accomplish whatever successes I have enjoyed in my career, who helped me survive when I experienced failures, and who helped me write this book. The process of thanking people is fraught with peril because I don’t want to leave anyone out but I know that I inevitably will.

While it is impossible to know where to stop in thanking people, it is easy to know where to start: with my parents—Joseph and Irene Morell. Neither went to college—my father was a blue-collar worker at Chrysler and my mother a homemaker—but they gave me two great gifts that I am absolutely certain were largely responsible for whatever success I’ve enjoyed at CIA and in life.

My mother gave me the gift of hard work. She taught me to work hard at whatever I was doing. She would not rest until all her work was completed. She modeled this behavior, for example, by not sitting down to eat dinner with the family, instead getting a head start on cleaning the kitchen as soon as the meal had been served. Odd? Perhaps. A powerful lesson in how hard work is done? Absolutely.

My father gave me the gift of pursuing excellence at whatever I do. He insisted—sometimes bringing me to the point of tears as I was growing up—that I always do my best. I remember, as a young
boy, building a birdhouse in my father’s elaborate carpentry shop in our basement. He repeatedly looked at my effort and said, “Not good enough. Try again.” When I protested, he took a hammer and smashed what I had done. I started over, and when I was finally done, I had a near-perfect birdhouse. Was he tough on me? You bet. Did he teach me to pursue perfection in whatever I did? Absolutely.

Put these two lessons together and you have a very powerful combination—hard work and the pursuit of excellence. Nothing has been more responsible for my success.

Once I began my professional career there were countless people whom I worked for who took the time to mentor me, to demonstrate the joy of hard work and to take the hammer to any of my efforts that were inadequate—much as my mom and dad had done. Some of those mentors have previously been mentioned in this book but many more have not. I owe enormous debts of gratitude to Jim Clapper, George Tenet, Mike Hayden, Leon Panetta, Dave Petraeus, John Brennan, Scott Redd, John McLaughlin, Steve Kappes, Hugh Turner, Jami Miscik, Winston Wiley, Dave Cohen, Mike Barry, Marty Petersen, Tom Elmore, Mary Meyer, Kent Harrington, Jim Harris, Len Litke, Gary Coene, and Deane Hoffman. All of them taught me a great deal.

There were innumerable coworkers as well. They were not bosses, but people I worked alongside who called
me
boss. I will never be able to cite all or even most of them, but a few cannot go unthanked because they gave me the great gift of telling me when I was wrong. (I will use only first names and last initials, even for the one or two who have been mentioned elsewhere in the book.) These are my special assistants when I was acting director and deputy director, Lisa O. and Brenda O.; my chief of staff, Greg T.; and my immediate subordinates Meroe P., Sue B., Fran M., Glen G., Mike S., John B., Frank A., John P., and Sue G. These are some of the strongest leaders that CIA ever produced.

I also want to specifically thank the following groups of people, without whom I could not have done my job: my daily intelligence briefers, who kept me up-to-date on the latest intelligence and who routinely provided me with my most enjoyable meeting of the day; my executive assistants, who put up with my endless requests and my varying moods; and the many members of my security detail, who were always at my side. Over my three and a half years as acting and deputy director, these dedicated and talented security officers became members of my family and role models for my children. I owe them a great deal. Likewise, the officers of the Agency’s protocol staff, led by Sheila S., and the officers of the Agency’s dining room staff did their job of supporting me with the utmost skill and professionalism.

I cannot write this chapter without thanking the men and women who served or still serve in CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. No one works harder at keeping the country safe. No group worked more directly with me during my three years as deputy. They were and are an inspiration to me. Two of those officers deserve special recognition—the longtime chief of the center, Roger, and the longtime chief of one of the Center’s key units, Emma. The country owes them a huge debt of gratitude—because no two individuals have done more to protect the country from another attack than they have.

In my thirty-three years at CIA I worked for six presidents. I was privileged to get to know two of them very well. I will be forever indebted to President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, who gave me incredible opportunities to serve them and our country in ways I would never have dreamed of. I am grateful for their confidence and leadership. Both men have their critics—but for the most part, those critics have no understanding of the complexity of the issues that come before presidents of the United States. I can say with absolute certainty that both George W. Bush
and Barack Obama always had the interests of the United States at the very top of their priority list.

My time in government was certainly an adventure and so too has been my new life in the private sector. My transition has been made infinitely easier by Mike Hayden, who gave me invaluable advice and who introduced me to many in the private sector; George Tenet, Peter Corsell, John Scarlett, John Cushman, Mel Immergut, and Glenn Gerstel, who offered wisdom, guidance, and friendship; Tom Donohue Sr., the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce; his son Tom Donohue Jr., the CEO of Adelphi Capital; Rich Kramer, the chairman and CEO of Goodyear Tire and Rubber; Jeff Fager and David Rhodes, the chairman and president, respectively, of CBS News; Steve Feinberg, the managing partner of Cerberus Capital Management; Josh Mayne, the CEO of Orbis Operations; Mark French, the CEO of Leading Authorities; and Mark Testoni, the CEO of SAP/NS2—all of whom gave me early opportunities in the private sector.

My Agency afterlife includes hanging my hat at Beacon Global Strategies, a Washington, D.C., firm specializing in helping US companies navigate the never ending geopolitical complexities of our world. Beacon is managed by four former US government officials, Michael Allen, Jeremy Bash, Philippe Reines, and Andrew Shapiro, who each dedicated more than a decade of their professional lives to national service both as individuals and in support of their bosses: Michael for President George W. Bush on his NSC staff and for Mike Rogers as his staff director on the House Intelligence Committee, Jeremy as Leon Panetta’s chief of staff at both the CIA and the Pentagon, and Philippe and Andrew at the State Department for Secretary Hillary Clinton. Like me, public service is part of their DNA, and I simply love the work and team at Beacon, and the values they uphold in everything they do. A special thanks to Meredith Steen, an associate at Beacon without whom I could
not function. When I contemplated returning to the administration at the end of 2014, Beacon was understanding and supportive—so long as I didn’t take Meredith with me!

Graham Allison, the director of the Belfer Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, deserves special mention, as his invitation to be a senior fellow at the Belfer Center provided me with the opportunity to test many of the ideas in this book with some of our country’s leading minds on national security and foreign policy. Graham was a frequent visitor to my office in Langley, where he always provided insight on key national security issues, and I am thrilled that our professional relationship continues at Harvard.

Graham also provided me with a graduate assistant to help me with the research required to produce the manuscript. Josh Stiefel, an analyst at the Department of Defense, is a brilliant student at the Kennedy School, with a very bright future in national security. Josh did extensive research for the book, as well as multiple fact checks of the document. Josh turned around my questions with a speed and a level of insight that are hard to overstate. I am indebted to him.

In addition, late in the process, as the questions were coming fast and furious, my daughter, Sarah, and her friends Jackson Akselrad and Shayan Karbassi spent hours on the Internet answering what seemed to them to be never-ending questions, and hours doing additional fact-checking. My deepest thanks to the three of them.

Many people read the manuscript and provided thoughtful critiques. At the top of the list are my family—Mary Beth, Sarah, Luke, and Peter. They read the manuscript and provided hours of valuable feedback. Luke helped in particular with the chapter titles; they are much stronger because of his assistance. My thanks to them and to the other readers of the manuscript, all of whom provided useful critiques—George Tenet, Steve Hadley, John McLaughlin, Mike Vickers, John Moseman, John Rizzo, Peter Corsell, Nick
Shapiro, Ira Rosen, Glenn Gerstell, and Sam Vinograd. Glenn and Sam in particular approached their critique with a thoroughness and thoughtfulness that are hard to overstate.

The Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism (CPOST) at the University of Chicago produced the map for the book. My thanks go to the CPOST director, Robert Pape, who is not only a fine scholar but also a fine friend, and to the two primary researchers who created the map, Keven Ruby and Vincent Bauer. They did a great job.

Writing this book has been an eye-opening experience for me. It has forced me to reflect on some of the most critical and trying periods of my time at CIA. I am indebted to Andrew Wylie of the Wylie Agency, who facilitated my introduction to the world of publishing and who, to my great pleasure, connected me with Sean Desmond and the fine professionals at Twelve Publishing, who have helped me conceptualize, craft, and deliver
The Great War of Our Time
.

With Sean’s guidance I have endeavored to make this book informative, accessible, and entertaining while sharing with the public critical information about the threats the United States and our allies face from international terrorists in the years ahead. His editing made the book much more informative and readable. Throughout, Sean asked many questions to which he believed readers would be interested in knowing the answers—a process I believe has added significantly to the book. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Sean, and now consider him a friend as well as a colleague. Sean’s assistant, Libby Burton, made the book better in more ways than I can count.

What can I say about my friend and coauthor Bill Harlow? It was his phone call late one morning asking if I was going to write a book that got me thinking about it. And he was with me every step of the way. He knew what questions to ask to pull thoughts from deep within my memory. He crafted prose that flowed easily
from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. And his judgment about how to handle delicate issues was always right on the mark. We had only a handful of differences of opinion over the many months of writing the book together, and Bill’s view was the right one in every case. I could not have written this book without him. He is a fine writer and even finer friend.

There was no doubt about how to start these acknowledgments and there is also no doubt about how to end them—with deep thanks to family and friends. My sister, Karen, has always been there for me, and she did a wonderful job taking care of our aging parents while I was working so hard. My in-laws, Peter and Susan Manion, have not only been supportive but they have been role models to me in more ways than they will ever know. And Mary Beth’s and my very good friends Shannon and Joe Hynds provided not only a supportive friendship but became a second set of parents to our children.