One of the Gates study groups considered politicization. Although its instructions were drawn so narrowly it could conclude there had been none, Gates gathered a large contingent of officers in The Bubble in March 1992 to ventilate the issue. Directly confronting the matter that had clouded his confirmation, Gates squared the circle by acknowledging that whether or not there had been politicization in the past, it was a danger to be guarded against. The director declared his determination to find better ways to prevent policy-driven analysis.

  Another task force focused on covert action. Among the novelties there, a delegation of senior clandestine services officers met with scholars at the Institute of Policy Studies, a leftist think tank, to solicit their views on directions the agency might take. They did not flinch when told the DCI ought to abolish the Directorate for Operations. Of course no such advice made its way into the final report, but DDO Thomas Twetten was placed on notice that the old days were gone. Twetten, one of the anointed, who thought nothing of rejecting a Freedom of Information Act request for Mongoose documents whose substance was already in the Church Committee report, was forced to retrench. The directorate consolidated operations in several African countries, closing a number of stations—a move that soon came back to haunt the agency.

  A national center to target human intelligence assets flowed from Gates’s concern for more spies. But DO officers in the field met with silence when they proposed new operations or recruitments. Iran-Contra showed that Langley would not back its officers in trouble, and now morale became difficult to sustain. One Latin American division field man told his mates, “Pay attention: this is the end of an era.” Clandestine officer Melissa Mahle pictures the atmosphere well: “We were not listening. Operations officers felt they had been made the scapegoat of a failed White House policy. . . . We did not hear the call to do . . . business in a new way, in a way that would be more attuned to the attitudes of the post–Cold War 1990s.” In a climate in which the agency’s goal seemed to have been achieved, Robert Gates could not stem the retirements and resignations that began about then. The clandestine service denigrated him as a mere analyst who did not understand operations.

  As far as covert action is concerned, Mahle makes the apt point that part of the CIA’s problem was rooted in Reagan-era practice, in which covert operations were conducted openly and made the subject of political debate and partisan accusation, all to avoid explanations when projects did not go as advertised. She writes: “The CIA entered into a new phase of ‘overt covert action,’ a marvelous oxymoron that should join the ranks of ‘jumbo shrimp’ and ‘military intelligence.’ ” The consequences of acting overtly included constant demands for specifics—from Congress, the press, the public, foreign governments—that meant secrecy headaches. Operational details could be exposed. Political tumult could terminate actions in midstream, magnifying the fear of abandonment of CIA’s proxies. And overt action amplified tensions between CIA and the Pentagon too, as the special warfare community pressed for greater control. Worse, the CIA’s role became that of bag man, hiring the proxies, whether foreign security services or local factions, as spearpoints for U.S. action. Paramilitary capabilities atrophied with cutbacks in the Special Activities Division. Operations also became less controllable as CIA steadily reduced its direct role.

  The growing importance of proxies had implications for the use of covert action to implant democracy. To the old dilemma of shady means in service of lofty goals was added the spoiler of agents who acted in America’s name with their own agendas, or those who took the CIA cash and wouldn’t stay “bought.” These problems were, and are, intractable.

  As director, Robert Gates’s vision involved gradual, planned change. He put teeth into the idea of support for military operations. One of the task forces worked on that alone. He tried to turn the agency toward the challenges of proliferation and transnational threats. Director Gates wanted more and better training for analysts, use of open source information, and techniques like competitive analysis. He ordered the revamping of CIA file systems. He opposed restructuring, including talk of a national agency for mapping and photographic interpretation, but agreed with the Pentagon on reforms at the National Reconnaissance Office. When Gates came to Langley, 60 percent of the CIA budget aimed at Russia; when he left that figure had dropped to 13 percent. But Gates never completed his mission. George H. W. Bush lost the 1992 election to William J. Clinton. A few days later, on November 7, Gates announced his retirement. He stayed only long enough for Clinton to choose his own director. During that interval, however, the lame duck President Bush took an action that brought Langley its first tragedy in the business of support for military operations (SMO).

  December 9, 1992. If Americans remember anything about the United States in Somalia—other than the tragic battle popularized in the book and movie Black Hawk Down—it is the midnight invasion of this East African country where Marines landed in the glare of the lights of TV crews. The Somali operation was typical of U.S. military actions during the 1990s—“humanitarian interventions,” in the lexicon. President Bush made the decision around Thanksgiving. Somalia had become a failed state, its government giving way to a coterie of warlords who overthrew Mohammed Siad Barré, Somali strongman for two decades. The warlords divided up the country, and Somalia plunged into chaos. The Bush administration had actually evacuated its embassy at Mogadishu, until then the Somali capital. Several thousand American citizens left at the same time the Gulf War military campaign began. By Bush’s final days Somalia had declined further, with swaggering gunmen walking the streets and feared “technicals”—pickup trucks or four-wheel drive vehicles equipped with machine guns—doing whatever they wanted. International aid groups were unable to distribute food. The UN created a mission in the spring of 1992, but by fall the warlords were overawed no more. Somalis starved. Bush had lost his election but decided that a quick intervention could clear away the obstacles to relief aid. He could get the American troops out by Inauguration Day and leave the White House on the crest of a humanitarian triumph. Operation Restore Hope began there.

  One reason the TV crews could set up on the beach was that the CIA cleared the way. Michael L. Shanklin, former deputy chief of station at Mogadishu, returned to help make this intervention possible. Langley had included Mogadishu among those African missions it closed, but now that would not wash. Shanklin arrived at an airfield north of the city with a CIA team to reactivate his old networks. Among his assets had been a top aide to Mohammed Farah Aideed, one of the most powerful warlords, who controlled much of Mogadishu. The man had been Shanklin’s agent. Most likely using this channel, the CIA apprised Aideed of the impending U.S. intervention. The warlord agreed not to interfere. On December 3 the UN Security Council unanimously approved this expansion of its operation. Some 28,000 troops were slated for the operation, most of them American. The night of the landing, Shanklin’s people watched the beaches confident there would be no shooting.

  American troops quickly dispersed through Mogadishu, creating a main base at the international airport, by the sea. Heavy transports began arriving with army soldiers to bolster the Marines, and then foreign contingents. Troop convoys spread out into the interior, and detachments moved by sea to points on the Somali coast. The CIA facilitated these moves in the same way it had connected with Aideed. For example, a few days after the initial disembarkation, agency operatives teamed with U.S. diplomats and international peacekeepers to convince the Somalis guarding a large inland base not to contest its takeover, soon the center for helicopter missions to other towns. Similarly the chopper raid to Marka in January was carried off in exactly the same way. The first American death of the Somali operation was in fact a CIA assignee, Sgt. Larry Freedman of Delta Force, detached to work with the agency.

  Conditions were never easy for the spooks. Unlike the military, who traveled in armed convoys or large helicopter lifts with lots of backup, CIA officers moved one or a few at a time, and never had the same priority for reinforcement. Shanklin confronted the chaos soon after the invasion, as he drove CIA’s new station chief to meet an agent. Gunmen stopped them. One grabbed the fancy assault weapon Shanklin had in their vehicle. They did get away with their lives, and Shanklin’s asset was so well connected he could actually recover the rifle. Still, as security deteriorated the CIA people were forced to surround themselves with protective details, which made clandestine movement virtually impossible. Mike Shanklin had one major advantage—as an African American he could at least blend in with the Somalis, preserving his freedom of action much longer than the others.

  There would be no American withdrawal before Bill Clinton’s inauguration. Instead the commitment endured for several more months. In March 1993 the UN set up a multinational force to replace the Americans, who continued to supply a large contingent, though most U.S. troops had left by May. Clinton exercised no personal supervision. His NSC Deputies Committee considered Somalia nine times before the climax of the action, but the president never pulled together his principals. By July, of about 21,000 troops the United States had nearly 4,000. Pakistan sent the largest contingent, almost 5,000 soldiers, followed by Italy (the former colonial power in Somalia) with 2,500, plus detachments from nineteen other nations. A Turkish general held the top command. Maj. Gen. Thomas M. Montgomery was the senior U.S. troop commander.

  The UN also changed the mission. Where the peacekeepers had simply been directed to ensure that aid reached the people, now the UN wanted to help Somalia regain its footing as a nation. To accomplish this, the UN appointed a new special representative, an American, retired Adm. Jonathan T. Howe. Previously in the White House as deputy security adviser—Bob Gates’s replacement—Admiral Howe had long had a predilection for force, an attitude that did not serve him well in Mogadishu—“The Dish,” as the Somali city quickly became known to Americans.

  Spooks and soldiers labored amid intense heat and blasting sun. The services did what they could to ease the passage. One American recalls the sexy voice of the woman disc jockey who entertained them in the mornings, serving up Top Forty hits on Armed Forces Radio: “99.9 FM Mogadishu, rockin’ the Dish. Keep your head down and the volume up. And you thought the desert was hot!” Mike Shanklin, like others, performed brilliantly in an assignment he had hardly wanted. Code name Condor, Shanklin had had his share of heat and sun as a Marine major in Vietnam, only to put in more with the agency. As one of the DO’s tiny cadre of black case officers, he had been certain of years in the sun and he had gotten them: Sudan, Algeria, Jordan, Chad, then Somalia the first time. Shanklin had had less than a week at Langley before being pressed into service for the Gulf War, then an abbreviated tour as station chief in Liberia. Shanklin’s request was for a place where the water runs and the lights work. He thought he had gotten that—a plush slot in London with CIA’s mission to the Brits. Then Shanklin had been pulled for this emergency mission to The Dish.

  As the UN built up, Shanklin’s relationships became complicated. The UN had an intelligence unit camouflaged as an information center. The U.S. Central Command built up its own Intelligence Support Element with eighty people. Then came the CIA station. At first it had been a couple of rooms in a ramshackle building in The Dish. Then it moved out near the base at the airport. Soon the station became ramified, with dozens of communications and technical specialists but never more than six case officers like Shanklin, all of whom were worked to the edge.

  Langley’s cadre for The Dish is interesting. The DO clearly chose security specialists over covert operators. Africa Division chief William R. Piekney, veteran of the mid-years of the Afghan War and now sitting among the barons, reached out to Garrett Jones, then completing a year’s sabbatical at the Army War College. Jones had served in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, but more to the point his thesis concerned intelligence support for UN peacekeeping, and he had been a Miami police officer. Jones was chief of station. His deputy, John Spinelli, code name Leopard, had also been a police officer, a New York City detective, before CIA. Plucked out of the Rome station, Spinelli knew nothing whatever about Africa but spoke native Italian, having been born and raised in Rome until he was twelve years old. That language was useful in The Dish, a former Italian colony. Jones went out in August 1993 aboard an agency shuttle, a nondescript C-47 the CIA had reconditioned with brand-new engines and state-of-the-art avionics. Spinelli met the plane. Condor would be their star operative.

  By the time Garrett Jones arrived, the fat was already in the fire. Warlord Aideed, uncomfortable with the U.S. presence, became more and more hostile. UN officials tried to preserve a fair relationship. Their advice to Admiral Howe: do the same. One source told reporters of the outgoing U.S. military commander’s comment to Howe: “Look, do not take on Aideed. You have to understand who the guy is in this country. You do not need to make him the enemy.” But The Dish became tenser by the day. Aideed worried that other warlords were gaining on him by being less compliant. A CIA report on June 21 pictured Aideed as a canny opportunist and a disruptive force in Somali politics. In early June two dozen Pakistani soldiers had been killed from ambush by Aideed gunmen. The UN swiftly demanded the arrest and trial of the perpetrators.

  The Pakistani soldiers had been attacked just after inspecting Aideed’s headquarters and radio station. In Washington the NSC Deputies Committee adopted a four-phase operation aimed at Aideed. A week later the U.S. Tenth Mountain Division raided the radio station and command post. No Aideed. UN troops manned security cordons or raided weapons caches. The UN captured thirty “technicals” but no warlords, and a Moroccan battalion fell into an ambush. Howe then issued a warrant for Aideed’s arrest, with a $25,000 cash reward. The raids and the warrant made the UN and the warlord adversaries, ensuring enmity. When Howe ordered another special operations mission, an air attack by heavily armed AC-130 gunships, the gloves came off.

  Admiral Howe demanded U.S. reinforcements and a parallel effort to take down the warlord. American commanders also asked for heavy tanks. A July 19 CIA report placed responsibility for Somalia’s predicament on Aideed’s shoulders. Defense Secretary Les Aspin rejected the tanks but not a special mission force. Bill Clinton writes that Pentagon estimates were that the effort had only a fifty-fifty chance of success, and half that probability of taking Aideed alive, but he agreed anyway. In late August Task Force Ranger, a contingent of four hundred special ops troops with sixteen helicopters—a Delta Force element plus a company of Rangers—deployed to The Dish. Mortars shelled the airport as they landed.

  Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison, Delta’s commander, led the unit. Garrett Jones came to see him, telling Garrison that the CIA worked for him. Case officer “Buffalo” came with Task Force Ranger, as the intelligence support team under the SMO concept, and worked at their headquarters. Garrison sent one of his own people to the CIA station as liaison.

  Years later Garrett Jones wrote an article he describes as the briefing he wishes he had given Task Force Ranger. Jones would have begun by noting the types of CIA people a soldier might meet, then the functions of a National Intelligence Support Team versus a station. The Dish, of course, had an improvised and very basic station. Protecting sources restricts the data CIA can give, while the likelihood of unforeseen necessities (like a rescue mission) requires that possibilities be reviewed at the outset, not in the heat of the moment. Everyone should expect spies to become compromised, ending key intelligence when needed most. And spooks and soldiers should at least use the same maps and be able to understand each other. All these things played out in the operation at Mogadishu called “Gothic Serpent.” Jones might have added that CIA officers should avoid extravagant promises of cooperation, since ultimately they answered to Langley, not military commanders.

  About the time Task Force Ranger reached The Dish, the CIA lost its prize agent. Playing Russian roulette with aides, the wrong chamber of his revolver came up when the man pointed the gun at his own head. Mike Shanklin tried to reconstitute the network under one of the aides, but deteriorating security now forced Condor to use a protective detail, fifteen men including four navy SEALs, restricting his mobility. The safe house Shanklin used in northern Mogadishu sprouted so many antennae that locals dubbed it the “CNN House.” After a few weeks Condor heard that Aideed knew about him. Shanklin had to get out. Choppers picked up his team one night at a nearby soccer field.

  General Garrison began new raids, blindingly demonstrating the poor intelligence while making his unit a laughingstock. The first went against a house Aideed supposedly frequented. Troopers roped down from the helicopters and captured the occupants—a bunch of UN relief workers and their Somali assistants. Then came an operation targeting the compound used by the Russians during the days of Siad Barré. The Rangers got into a firefight, but there were no warlords. The same happened on the next mission.

  The CIA tried for better intelligence by radio monitoring. That didn’t work either. Some recount that The Dish had regressed to the pre-electronic age, so no emissions were left to track. Others record that Aideed had switched to low-power handheld radios difficult to track. The warlord certainly minimized his use of radios anyway. Garrison went ahead with a raid on Aideed’s radio broadcast facility. No kingpins there. On at least one occasion CIA informants were trapped in an artillery bombardment of Somali positions retaliating for attacks on the UN. Another time the CIA and military got into a fight over a “cross-border” mission, which the soldiers interpreted as an attack across a border while the spook was simply talking about putting a spy on a bus into the warlord-dominated zone.