| Mr.
James Olson, current CIA Officer-in-Residence at Texas A&M
University and former Chief of Counterintelligence for the
CIA as well as a covert case officer in Moscow, Vienna and
Mexico City has written a provocative book in Fair Play.
It is not your
typical literary style, rather it is a series of 50 scenarios,
fictitious, yet based on real or plausible situations that
either he studied, observed, experienced or can foresee. In
each scenario, he gives the reader sufficient information
to make a personal judgment as to the moral justification
for carrying out that scenario. Then he shares commentaries
from a wide array of people including former CIA covert operations
officers, ministers, graduate students, professors, writers,
journalists, military officers, and others. Olson then wraps
up each scenario with his own commentary that reveals to the
reader a wealth of information regarding how the CIA operates
and the excruciating details that must be considered before
setting an operation in motion or not.
It is fascinating
to see how professionals can agree or disagree on the morality
of said operations, and it points out the difficulty that
covert operatives contend with in order to decide if an action
is morally acceptable or not. Because of the ever-present
reality that a wrong choice can lead to embarrassment of our
nation or worse yet, can lead to the loss of innocent lives,
accountability is a must, yet the "visibility" of
their operational atmosphere is one of many shades of gray.
Therein lies the dilemma that our nation's covert operational
case workers contend with every day of their lives.
Fair Play
is an eye-opener to the average American citizen like me who
just assumed that the rules were pretty much set in concrete.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. I predict that Mr.
Olson's book will lead to discussions in our nation that will
lead to better defined "rules of engagement" for
our CIA case officers. The essence of the larger question
at hand is this: how far are we willing to go to obtain the
best intelligence possible in order to protect the security
of the American people, plain and simple? As a former career
military officer, we played with very clear rules of engagement.
CIA operatives, whose mission is every bit as critical as
the military mission, do not. Yet, their decisions may very
well cost them or others their lives. It is dangerous work.
They deserve to have clear boundaries that make accountability
possible, and expectations clearer. In this time of a clear
and present danger from world terrorism, decisiveness on the
part of operational intelligence officers is critical. Fair
Play is a call for a national moral clarity.
Michael Caudle is from Bryan, Texas
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