The Director

7

Marie knocked on Graham Weber’s door again a little before four and said they were ready for him downstairs in the bubble. He had scheduled the first of a series of “town hall meetings” with the CIA workforce. He’d held similar sessions for years at his company, open and relaxed, and it had always been part of his management style. The deputy director, Peter Pingray, had offered to introduce him onstage, as a way to help Weber get settled, but Weber had declined. Pingray was an emblem of a past that Weber wanted to eradicate. Sandra Bock, his chief of staff, escorted him to the private elevator and rode down with him to the terrace just to the left of the main lobby. As they descended, Weber thought about the confluence of events that day: the note in his drawer; the visitor in Hamburg. He had modeled what he wanted to do at the CIA, but he couldn’t control what his economist friends liked to call the “exogenous” variables.

“What are you going to say?” asked Bock.

“Nothing they’ll like very much,” Weber answered with a wink. “But at least I’ll scare them a little.”

Weber heard a smattering of applause when he stepped into the lobby; it got louder at first, and then quieter, and then stopped altogether. People really didn’t know what to expect. They were curious, nervous, pissed off, but mostly they wanted to get a glimpse of the man.

The new director walked across the marble floor, past where the Donovan statue used to be. The crowd parted to allow him to exit the front door. People were standing on the statue of Nathan Hale, just to the left outside, to get a better view. Weber continued past the statue to the door of the round-domed auditorium. He hadn’t fully realized how needy the place was until he saw all those wary, expectant looks.

It was hot inside the bubble, with so many people. Weber was already tieless, but he took off his jacket when he got to the podium and laid it over a chair. He had the easy, boyish smile he adopted in public. A soft face had always been a useful mask for him.

Weber looked around the room. They were so young, the people in the audience. What was he going to tell them? Not the same old shibboleths about intelligence that they’d been hearing for decades. He wasn’t one of the old boys; they weren’t his lies to tell and he had no reason not to be honest.

Weber put up his hands for people to stop clapping, but they didn’t, so he just started speaking. “Stop, please, and sit down, or I’ll think you’re all just trying to suck up and will lose respect for everyone in this room.”

He meant it as a joke, sort of. It got people to take their seats. Nobody in the CIA wanted to look like an ass-kisser, though the place was as filled with them as any bureaucracy, maybe more so.

“I asked to meet with you at the end of my first week as director, before I forgot why I took the job. This is the real version of what I think, before it gets rubbed down. So take notes, if you like. Tell your retiree friends to call the Washington Post. And I know who you leakers are, by the way, especially you, Jim.”

He pointed to Jim Duncan, the Africa Division chief in the Clandestine Service, who was a notorious gossip, according to his chief of staff, Bock. That drew laughter from people who knew Duncan, and even those who didn’t, it was so unexpected to call him out that way. Agency employees were terrible gossips, especially when they didn’t like a new director. They would eviscerate their bosses, leak by leak, and they had already started on Weber.

“Let me begin by stating frankly what everyone in this room knows. There is something seriously wrong at the CIA. Our former director is under criminal investigation. Many agency employees have testified before the grand jury. Even our lawyers are hiring lawyers. Morale is awful. I’m told that operations in some parts of the world have essentially stopped. The only thing that’s keeping us alive, people tell me, is our Information Operations, but that’s not much help to the rest of the building.

“And the president has asked me to fix it. I want to start by telling you what I told the president. I’m not sure I can.”

There were a few groans in the audience. People looked puzzled. They were accustomed to upbeat rhetoric from new directors, wrapped with a lame joke or two, but not to getting hit with a two-by-four.

“You all know that I got the job by saying no to the intelligence community. That’s a strange credential, I realize, and a lot of you probably are suspicious about it. But the president decided he liked what I said, and when I told him that I thought the CIA was stuck in the past, he liked that, too. So as uncomfortable as many of you may be with an outsider as director, I have to say: Get over it, please. I got the job, and I have orders from the president to make changes. If you think you can work with me, great. If not, there are a lot of wonderful places to work outside the CIA and you may want to look around.”

That brought a general murmuring. These were government workers. The very idea they might lose their jobs was heresy. Weber raised his hand for silence.

“A lot of you will say it’s not your fault. And yes, it’s true that the agency gets mistreated in Washington. The only thing liberals and conservatives agree on these days is that they don’t like the CIA. But that’s part of the agency’s job, isn’t it, to take shots from politicians? If people just had nice things to say, they could say them to the State Department or the Pentagon. Am I right? I think so.”

Where was he going with this? From the nervous silence, it was obvious that people didn’t know.

“No, the CIA’s problem isn’t the undeserved blame. It’s the deserved blame. From what I have seen and heard, too much of the work product is mediocre. Too little real intelligence work gets done, because people are so busy trying to protect the past and avoid getting hit by the congressional investigation. It’s like working at a company that’s losing money. It’s no fun. Under previous management, it appears that people were so contemptuous of the organization they were actually ripping it off. That’s how bad it’s gotten. People have been looting their own workplace.”

A few people began to applaud, not sure what else to do, and then they stopped. He waited and let the silence build until it was embarrassing and people were fidgeting in their seats, which was exactly what he wanted.

“The president told me that we have a morale problem, and that I should fix it. But with all due respect to anyone in the audience from the White House, that is inaccurate. The CIA has a performance problem. The bad morale is a symptom. The disease is something else. And from what people tell me, it has been going on for a long time.

“Now the question is, why does the CIA have a performance problem? Why is it that so many of the things the agency does turn out badly? Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria. How can you do better for policy makers — but forget about them, for the moment — do better for yourselves?”

“Kill more bad guys,” said a voice in the back.

“Oh, very good,” answered Weber, without missing a beat. “Let’s turn the agency into a force of paramilitary killers, full-time. Give up on spying and just shoot people, twenty-four/seven. Sorry, friends, but that’s part of the problem. This is an intelligence agency, not Murder, Incorporated. We’re supposed to gather the secret information that can protect the country; we’re not operating a shooting gallery.”

“What’s your answer, Mr. Director?” asked Pingray in the front row. “How do you propose to get the agency back on track? That’s what everyone would like to hear.”

Pingray was a tidy man; short, bald, round-faced. He asked the question sincerely, with the voice of someone who knew how many obstacles Weber would encounter, even if the new director didn’t. But Weber didn’t really hear him. He jumped on the question.

“The answer is the same as in any failing organization. Find out what’s wrong. Then promote the good people who can fix it and fire the bad ones who can’t. What’s the point of taking the job, otherwise? Not just me as director, but all of you: Why work for this unpopular, low-pay organization — except to do great work, and be respected for it?

“At the risk of sounding immodest, let me tell you all something: I know how to fix organizations that are broken. I’ve been doing it all my life. But it’s like a twelve-step process. You have to want to get better. You have to admit to yourself that if you don’t change, you’re going to end up dead. For the CIA, the past is an addiction. You’re going to have to quit.

“So that’s the end of my little pep talk. But you’ll be hearing more from me, I promise. And please, no applause or I’ll know you didn’t hear anything I just said. Now, any questions?”

The air had been sucked out of the room. Nobody spoke, or even moved for a moment.

“Nobody?” He looked around the auditorium. “When you kick an old dog, at least you get a few growls. Come on, people.”

There were a few hands. Employees asked predictable questions about pay freezes and furloughs and benefits changes, all of which Weber said could be better answered by HR. Someone asked him his views on “targeted killing,” which was a euphemism for drones. He said it was too early for him to know what he thought; ask in another month. One person praised him for speaking so frankly, to tepid applause. Nobody was ready to call him on the heart of what he’d said about performance, because most of them knew it was true. They were working for a failing enterprise; he said he was going to turn it around. They had to hope he pulled it off, even the ones who resented him.

As Weber made his way out of the bubble, there was stone-cold silence like the quiet after a funeral, and then a low hum when he was out the door and everyone was murmuring, asking whether he meant it, if this was for real, if the agency was actually going to have a director who would kick ass in a way that no current employee could remember.

Weber walked back across the marble floor of the lobby. The CIA had been built in the brutalist modern style of the 1960s that eschewed ornamentation. There were no murals or paintings; only the stars in the wall to mark the agency officers who had died on duty, and the empty space where the Donovan statue had stood.

As Weber walked past the security gate where employees badged in each morning, his eyes focused on a sign beside the guard desk. It listed all the incongruous things that were forbidden inside the building: EXPLOSIVES AND INCENDIARY DEVICES, ANIMALS OTHER THAN GUIDE DOGS, SOLICITING AND DISTRIBUTING HANDBILLS, DISTURBANCES, GAMBLING. He’d seen this warning sign every day that week as he moved about the building. He turned to the bulky, assuring form of Bock, who was walking next to him.

“That sign is ridiculous,” said Weber.

“Say what, sir?”

“‘Gambling’ and ‘creating disturbances’? I thought that was what intelligence officers did for a living. And ‘distributing handbills’? Is that really a problem here? When was the last time someone gave you a handbill, Sandra? It makes us look asinine, to have a moronic sign like that where visitors can see it.”

“You’re in a pissy mood, sir.” It was the first time Bock had been even modestly disrespectful.

Weber laughed.

“Maybe, but I’m right about that sign. It’s silly. Get rid of it.”

And the sign was gone the next day.