Secure Freedom Radio Highlight – Jack Devine

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On today’s Secure Freedom Radio, we highlight retired CIA spymaster Jack Devine and his thoughts on the Agency’s restructuring, the vital role of drones in the War on Terror, and the ever-present spy game of counterintelligence.

Jack Devine is currently the founding partner and president of The Arkin Group LLC, an international risk consulting and intelligence firm based in New York City. His thirty-two years of experience in the CIA saw him rise to Acting Director and Associate Director of CIA operations outside the U.S. With those impressive credentials, he wrote Good Hunting: An American Spymaster’s Story, an unprecedented chronicle offering an insiders perspective of the CIA.

I’m certain that the Agency is being taxed in every corner to provide not only intelligence, but to act on it. So the question of how effective? If we just take the terrorism piece, we were all here in New York at 9/11, and since then 3/4ths of the leadership [al-Qaeda] have been liquidated. From a tactical point of view, I think we are collecting information that is still critical to fighting the terrorists.

I disagreed with the Enhanced Interrogation as you know, but I am a strong advocate of the drones. While there is no public recognition, the agencies involved, lets say the military, whoever is running the drone program, we need to keep the terrorists in their foxholes and that is a good way to do it.

You need to make sure that you have independent area expertise that is not in the center. In other words, you need to have experts on Peru, Poland, Russia, that are not part of the main mission, not part of the mission to carry out a program because then they buy into it and they lose their objectivity.

There is a price, when you change cultures and when you make a big reorganization, it is disruptive. They are going to have to be very careful and I am assuming they’re cognizant of that.

The Russians are an age old intelligence business, they’ve never stopped. It is part of the Russian makeup I would have to say, and they run good operations. But one of the things we’ve always had on our side is people want to be part of the American Dream. The Russians have a really hard sell.

God bless Putin. I want to say that that is facetious in that he’s snapping everyone back to attention. If you don’t pay careful attention to the Russians, they’re quite capable of rocking the boat. And right now, their efforts in Ukraine have to be taken very very seriously as it applies to stability in Europe.

Be sure to listen to Frank Gaffney’s full interview with Jack Devine at Secure Freedom Radio.