Interview with David MacMichael

Islands in the Clickstream
© Richard Thieme, 2006.
All rights reserved.

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David MacMichael is a former CIA Analyst, US Marine and historian. He was a senior estimates officer with special responsibility for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the CIA's National Intelligence Council from 1981 to 1983. He resigned from the CIA rather than falsify reports for political reasons and testified at the World Court on the illegalities of Iran-Contra. MacMichael started The Association of National Security Alumni, an organization to expose and curtail covert actions, and is a steering committee member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

He and Richard Thieme, an author and speaker, recently met at an Intelligence Ethics Conference that gathered nearly two hundred professionals from a broad spectrum of perspectives to discuss the impact of a career in intelligence on the moral and ethical life of the intelligence professional.

MacMichael discusses his background, ethical issues in intelligence, and the relevance of Iran-Contra to current national security issues.

Thieme: David, intelligence is affected profoundly by technology, wouldn't you agree?

MacMichael: As a former history professor, I think of Diderot in the 18th century France. The Encyclopedia was really a technical manual that exposed what had previously been referred to as "the mysteries" of the craft guilds. Transforming mystery into knowledge became a basis for the industrial revolution. That kind of change is significant and impacts the issues we discussed at the conference about the ethical side of the intelligence system.

But ... what has all that got to do with "intelligence?" I think of all the crazy science they did in MKULTRA and MKSEARCH and programs like that. How did that relate to gathering intelligence in order to inform policies?

You write that transformation imposed by global multi-national corporations that transcend national boundaries make the concept of nation states in conflict highly questionable. In the 19th and 20th centuries, conflicts were between nation states. But even so, you can go back through any historical atlas and look at the post-Roman empire and its like a kaleidoscope as you turn through the maps as the borders and shapes of geographical structures change.

Thieme: Maps in our minds are more permanent than territories represented by the maps. Now neuro-science is mapping regions of the brain as well.

MacMichael: Yes, and that translates into control. Control is what programs like MK Ultra were about and that raises critical ethical issues.

I worked at Stanford with Harvey Weinstein a psychiatrist who headed student psychiatric services for the university. Harvey became a psychiatrist because his father was a victim of MKULTRA experimentation. His father deteriorated into depression and worse as a consequence of Ewen Cameron's crazy science, but the family was told his father was going through this because he was not sufficiently cooperative with his treatment. That pushed Harvey into psychiatry. In the late seventies, after the revelations of the Church and Pike Committee hearings, he became aware of the real causes.

Why are those devastating techniques lumped in with intelligence at all? That goes to the more basic question of why are intelligence and covert operations lumped together? Intelligence is about information. The rule of thumb for covert operations is that there is 75% disinformation. The ethical issues are difficult to reconcile. One is based on truth and the other on its opposite.

Thieme: Friends in an intel agency complain of the hubris that blinds their colleagues to a sense of accountability toward the citizens who pay their salaries. Disinformation coming out of the agencies directed toward enemies can not be distinguished from disinformation directed toward the population. In addition, propaganda is impossible to protect from blowback because of network of the information systems we all inhabit. How do we seek the larger truth and articulate it in order to inform responsible policy discussions. Is it possible?

MacMichael: Before the Neocons and their Machiavellian intellectual base, Walter Lippman made the same point: Matters of foreign affairs and international policy are too far beyond the ability of the populace to understand, he said, so they have to be conducted in secret and there must be no transparency.

Thieme: Tell me more about your background.

MacMichael: I was not a professional intelligence officer. I had ten years in the US Marine Corps, resigned my commission in 1959, and earned advanced degrees in history. I taught for a few years and because of my military background and because I specialized in military history with a focus on Latin America I was contacted by SRI (Stanford Research Institute) which had a lot of DOD contracts. Counter insurgency was the new thing. In the Corps, I went to Special Forces School. We always prepare for the last war and the whole focus was to repeat the OSS experience in the event of war with the Soviet Union. Special Forces was created because the military never wanted to see anything like OSS again. The plan was, teams would go into eastern Europe to create insurgencies, but in a few years it became obvious that the insurgencies in the colonies of post-war allies had to be "countered" - so counter insurgency was developed. DOD was letting contracts like crazy. SRI hired me to go to Central America and do classified work. They had gotten a big contract from ARPA (later DARPA) for a counter insurgency center in Thailand. I worked for four years in the US Embassy and made contacts with the agency and the branch office of the station and when I returned to the USA I did contract work for them, later as a consultant.

They wanted outside people to head the Analytic Group at the National Intelligence Council to be responsible for writing national intelligence estimates. I was responsible for western hemisphere estimates the focus came to be the Contra war.

I was diligent. No matter who I talked to, who I pumped, I was unable to come up with anything in support of the main rationale for the Contra operation. I had serious problems with the characterization of the Sandinista government.

This tells you how the system actually works. This is relevant to what's happening now. I was asked to do an estimate on the Sandinista government and I did an assessment and a projection which all came true but did not fit the policy makers' desires. That's why it resonates with the WMD controversy. My superiors backed me but William Casey (Director of the CIA) said no, this can not go out as a special estimate. It was published as an intelligence research memorandum and went into the file and that was that.

After two years with the analytic group, I could not continue. I did not want anything else in the agency. I traveled at my own expense in Central America and the more I learned the more clear it became that the operation was whacko. If I was going to speak out I had better do it because I knew of well developed US plans for an invasion of Nicaragua. I was well aware of what we had done elsewhere and if I was going to speak out it should be before the fact instead of after.

At the 1985 elections in Nicaragua, I was an observer; it was going to be verified as a fair and open election but right before the election this is how disinformation is fed to the press news was broken that Nicaragua was going to receive a big shipment of MIG aircraft.

Thieme: Was the relationship between the CIA and the media as subtle then as it is now?

MacMichael: It was very subtle over that entire long period. The operational role of opinion control came directly out of the Second World War. It applies to any war time situation; war requires you to enlist the media to push in the best sense of the word war propaganda. This is what you want out, and you're part of the war effort, you're supporting your country, and in the Cold War, the same rationale was invoked. You have to understand that many people were involved who had been intellectually attracted to an alternative of what was seen as destructive and failed capitalism and were working with the Communist Party and were then disillusioned by events in eastern Europe. They believed they were supporting our country and you had to conceal their activity - now his is very powerful, this idea of being on the inside of that effort, it is so attractive, so powerful. A big threat to any who wanted to speak up was that you would lose access, and you want so much to be on the inside. This keeps many people in the intelligence system, besides the usual reasons like salary, pension, and the like. They're afraid that if they speak up, they will lose their access.

You see this in hearings on whistle blowers. I know many of these people and what fractures a lot of them and makes them so upset is that when they raise concerns, not so much about policy but about the way it is carried out, they lose their security clearance. You have to understand how critical this is. It means everything to a person. Everything.

I know prominent whistle blowers who still deal with this after many years. "These were my colleagues," they say. "These were my friends. But suddenly I am not a colleague or a friend." It's like the clubbiness of the Foreign Service; when you're no longer welcome at certain parties or in certain houses, it's a serious blow.

After I spoke out, I hired a good lawyer. I did not want to be prosecuted and go to jail. I reviewed the form I had signed with the agency. The story was going to go out and I gave my lawyer a magazine article I wanted to publish. I said everything I had to say plus things I was certain they would block. I said, take this to the publications review board at the agency - and it worked out exactly as I anticipated. They passed through what I believed was necessary for me to say, who I was, the critical evidence, and blocked out the other stuff which I was certain they would not let me say. Now I had a guideline for the rest of the eighties, for speaking and helping to organize the Association of National Security Alumni. I used that action as my guideline. Occasionally we checked - there was a lot of surveillance on me - and the word was, that son of a bitch keeps going right up to the line but he never goes over.

I was not heroic or seeking martyrdom and it seemed to work. I testified at the World Court which was an important event and had an impact on foreign policy. We evolved a growing community even then of former intelligence officers. We published our magazine Unclassified bimonthly for 5-6 years. It was a good magazine and attacked a lot of these issues and had a reasonable circulation. Lots of media people used it.

Thieme: Can you evaluate your impact?

MacMichael: In terms of impact, timing is important. We broadened the conversation on the use of intelligence. The slogan I devised was: we are not opposed to intelligence but we are opposed to covert paramilitary operations which by definition are violations of international law. The timing was important because of the Iran-Contra hearings - but in fact, in terms of impact, it was discouraging to see how Congress dealt with it. It was the most significant constitutional scandal we had had and they pushed it under the rug. The facts cried out for impeachment. The emotional quality of words is important when you get involved at this level and impeachment is one of those words. The use of those words climaxed or I should say anti-climaxed with eleventh hour pardons from George Bush the First. It left a bad feeling, to say the least.

What was the use? What did it matter, everything we did?

My greatest disappointment was in 1988 when I was asked by the Dukakis campaign and the Democratic National Committee to make presentations on how to use this issue. I said, if you take on this issue in 1988 and say, if I'm elected, the Contra program is over, there are groups all over the country that will respond, but my God, the waffling! Oh well, they said, yes, but you know, and all that. The inability of people to grasp these particular nettles is one reason their campaigns deflate. Talk about impact, you can generate ten thousand letters to the editor but it does not have political impact. In those dreadful hearings, the expose went on and on - but for what?

Thieme: Was it worth it?

MacMichael: You find yourself in this situation maybe once in a lifetime. You only come to the plate once and had better take your swings. I took my swings. That was my one ethical plus in a lifetime of unethical behavior.

Thieme: What drove all this, David? What compelled intelligent people to get so wild?

MacMichael: Like so much in the intelligence system, it looked sexy to some people and above all, THE MONEY WAS THERE. That drives all of this. People will do what they can fund. The lines between organizations and proprietaries and contractors and agencies are very blurred and the money is more like a transmission belt than a revolving door. When I did contract work, I did some projects I was not all that proud of, some of the work was questionable like various interrogation technologies that have been worked on for thirty years, measuring changes in the size of the pupil of the eye to see if someone's lying - I tend to be dismissive of those efforts but when you're looking for "capabilities and intentions," there is a whole lot of road to look at and not a lot of rubber. The faintest skid marks are supposed to tell you significant things but interpreting the marks is not easy. Intelligence is divided into two parts: one is Tactical Intelligence and Related Activity (TIARA). TIARA is usually pretty good and you have the ability to know through surveillance or interceptions where various enemy units are, that's what I used and looked at in the Marine Corps. That's hard enough in the well-known fog of war. But when you take it to this other level where you're fumbling with intentions, industrial capabilities, etc. it's useful for discussion but is it really useful for immediate action and decision making? It's questionable. The intelligence is several steps removed the real. So how useful is it? You have to understand that once the analytic side, not the operational side, is wedded to using these techniques, you're like a tenured professor working in your area of specialty, you get enormous satisfaction from doing so, and you get funded. But how useful is it?

The only time I ever heard ethical issues raised in relationship to our work came when someone stood back and looked at what they were doing and said: what am I doing? what am I really doing?

The penetration in hard targets, the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, and after 1949, China - that did not happen. In the fifties and sixties, at the height of the post-colonial period, the CIA turned its attention to Latin America and that's where they had success because those targets are so soft, the societies are so corrupt, and the guys in the security agencies lined up - believe me - and said, sign me up! It's a good payday. That's where so many careers were made. I saw many of these operations going on in Africa, Latin America, and in Bangkok where I worked - this in itself is an "ethical issue." You are persuading people to do this.

Thieme: In and of itself, you are saying, the nature of the work breaks ethical norms as we understand them in other contexts. It's about control by nearly any means.

MacMichael: Yes. My late colleague, a woman, served in the station in Lima Peru. A junior officer at the Chinese embassy requested a particular prostitute. So they got the cameras in there and filmed, that was always fun, but what ticked her off is that all the other officers at the station watched the films on a weekly basis but they wouldn't let her watch.

After they had enough stuff on the guy, they arranged for an agency officer to storm in and see this guy, shrieking that this woman is his daughter and bad things will happen and they have these films and then they make the pitch. This guy did what any sensible person would do. He went to his superiors and told them what happened, this is what they asked, and he was on the next plane back to Beijing and went on with his career.

The point is, they're always looking for things like that to trap people, and you rationalize it, you justify it, you say, this is my job and we're obtaining information that we need, and if your skin isn't thick enough to do it - then get a different job.

Richard Thieme (rthieme@thiemeworks.com) is an author and speaker focused on the deeper implications of technology, religion, and science. Clients range from Microsoft Israel to AusCERT and Wireless and ID Management conferences in Australia. He has spoken for the FBI, the Pentagon, the US Department of the Treasury, and the US Secret Service. He has also spoken for Def Con and the Black Hat Briefings for ten years and numerous other infosec cons (ShmooCon, ToorCon, InterZoneWest, HiverCon in Dublin, Notacon, etc.). A collection of his essays, Islands in the Clickstream, was published in 2004 by Syngress Publishing and a short story published in the Timber Creek Review last year, “Gibby the Sit-down King,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Islands in the Clickstream is an intermittent column written by Richard Thieme exploring social and cultural dimensions of technology and the ultimate concerns of our lives. Comments welcome.

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