Revised: June 1, 2015

Word count: about 1124

Pete Willows willows@aucegypt.edu

The Finest People You Will Never Know

The Great War of Our Time: the CIAs fight against terrorism.
By Michael Morell. 2015. 384 pps. Twelve Books. ISBN: 9781455585663. $28.00.
Michael Morell has written a gripping book that gives
insight into the machinations of the Central Intelligence
Agencys (CIA) management team and analysis process.
Morells thirty-three year career at the CIA included positions
such as deputy director, in which he was responsible for
giving the president his daily intelligence briefing, and acting
director, in which he was responsible for everything from
covert operations, to congressional oversight review, to
Family Day at the agencys headquarters. Because Morell is
tenured in explaining complex and confounding intelligence
reports, and with thoughtful pragmatic analysis, his book is
easy to understand.

Morell gave the daily intelligence briefing to George W.

Bush before, during and after 9/11. Before 9/11, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney
were dismissive of the CIAs repetitive warnings about bin
Ladens looming al-Qaeda attack on US soil. Both Rumsfeld
and Cheney had thought the intelligence community was
being intentionally misled by al-Qaeda, as a way of diverting
resources away from other more urgent threats against
American interests.
After 9/11, attitudes in the Bush cabinet changed
dramatically. Morell talks of the vice presidents office
bringing binders of evidence to the CIA, documenting
Saddam Husseins Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
program, evidence which, Morells top CIA analysts could not
verify. Although the CIA and other world intelligence
agencies were also lead to believe Saddam had the
weapons, the weapons were never found after the invasion.
How did that happen? Morell devotes much time to
explaining the hows-and-whys of failed intelligence

analysis. Saddam, when captured, later said he thought the

US would never invade Iraq and that he was certain the CIA
had had access to the inner circle of his regime and knew
that there was no active WMD program. Saddam had overestimated the CIAs reach.
Through this and other failures, we learn that
intelligence analysis is far from perfect, and that there is
always an element of gamble. For example, Morell informed
President Obama that the information the CIA had on bin
Ladens Abbottabad hide-out in 2011 was certain to only a
40%-60% level of confidence. This was the same level of
confidence the CIA had had on Saddams WMD, and which
was ultimately proven wrong. Obama never blinked. Morell
describes watching the bin Laden raid from CIA headquarters
in real time his heart was in his throat as the helicopter
crashed.
Why wasnt the Pakistani government informed of the
bin Laden raid ahead of time? Morells personal feelings are
that bin Laden had been tipped off in 1998, when the

Pakistanis would have been informed that President Clinton

was sending cruise missiles into Afghanistan, which were
going to fly through Pakistani airspace. Morell was hardly
prepared to make the same mistake twice.
On the Arab Spring, Morell tells us, Forecasting
revolutions is an inexact science. Although the CIA had
been aware of, and writing intelligence briefs about, rising
pressures in the Arab nations that would inevitably become
uncontainable, there was little that could have been done
about it; once in motion, the US was unable to steer the
spontaneous uprisings away from the interests of militant
Islamist opportunists.
Morell had long known and respected Omar Suleiman,
the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, and
he was in regular contact with Suleiman through an
intermediary during Egypts eighteen day uprising. Two years
later, when the Egyptian military stepped in to stop the
reckless and insular Mohammed Morsi from damaging the
country beyond repair, Morell breathed a sigh of relief. He

stated his view to an unnamed Arab ambassador friend a

view which, was not in line with the White Houses position
and made it perfectly clear that he thought the Egyptian
military did the right thing by removing Morsi, democracy
is more than free and fair elections.
Author Michael Morell grew up in Akron, Ohio. His father
was a blue-collar auto worker his mother, a homemaker.
Neither was university educated. Morell never expected to
work for the CIA, as his studies at the University of Akron
were in economics, and he only half-heartedly applied to the
agency after a professor friend made the suggestion. But
Morells dedication, patriotism and determination come to
the forefront in this book. He developed a deep respect for
the intelligence community, describing his colleagues as,
the finest people you will never know.
The only critical remarks he makes about the two
presidents he briefed, George W. Bush and Barak Obama,
were that Bush sometimes made decisions too quickly, and
that Obama sometimes took too long to make a decision.

These remarks do not appear as criticisms, rather, they are

the type of objective observations a career senior
intelligence analyst would be expected to make.
Edward Snowden is often portrayed as a whistle-blower,
who exposed the over-reach of US governments meta-data
collection program, and all in the name of protecting the civil
liberties of American citizens. Morell sees Snowden quite
differently. While Snowden was working as a trusted
government contractor, he downloaded a million classified
documents most of which he could not have read, and
many of which he would never have understood and then
went to the Chinese and the Russians with his cache. Hardly
an act of patriotism.
The meta-data mining programs Snowden exposed,
were legal and approved by two presidents, from two
different political parties, and are also under the review and
authorization of the Legislative Branch, with the Judicial
Branchs oversight. No, Snowden was not interested in
anything other than narcissistic and self-aggrandizing

attention. Morell compares Snowden to other American

intelligence officers whom sold secrets to the Russians
Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. Snowden has the same
personality type: the disgruntled employee who feels he is
smarter than, and underappreciated by, his supervisors. The
amount of damage Snowden has done to US interests, is
incomprehensible and will certainly not make his fellow
citizens any safer.
But the author never talks about the elephant in the
room: Morell says nothing about the Valerie Plame incident.
She was the CIA operative whose identity was leaked to the
press through the office of then vice president Dick Cheney.
That leak was a significant security breach, and at least one
member of Cheneys staff was jailed for it. We dont hear
Morells thoughts on the incident. Unless of course, Morell
did write about it, and the CIA later redacted that chapter
from his book.

Pete Willows is a contributing writer to The Egyptian

Gazette, and its weekly magazine version, The Egyptian
Mail. He can be reached at willows@aucegypt.edu
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