A few years ago, as a CIA operations officer given the task of recruiting penetrations of terrorist organizations abroad, I often longed for the days when my recruitment targets could be approached and developed in such civilized settings as  cocktail parties, diplomatic picnics, tennis tournaments and the like.  While these venues are appropriate for spotting most intelligence targets, not so with terrorists.

   The profile of today’s international bomb-planting terrorist is that of an Arab male between the ages of 17 and 24, raised in the strict Muslim faith in a small town (somewhere like the remote Bekaa Valley of Lebanon), and harboring a deep hatred of the United States and a fanatical willingness to martyr himself in the name of Allah.  He is not to be found on the diplomatic circuit, nor at any of the other usual spots where CIA case officers would normally troll for prospective agents.  The terrorist doesn’t hang out in bars, is highly suspicious of foreigners, has few if any foreign language skills, and shuns anyone who is not of his faith, clan and heritage.

   The recruitment of new agent sources is the main task of the CIA case officer, and one of the most important courses taught to new operations officers at The Farm—the CIA’s training facility—is “The Recruitment Cycle.”  It’s a basic “how-to” course describing the steps and techniques required to induce the in-place defection of new sources of intelligence. 

   The recruitment cycle involves four distinct phases: spotting, assessing, developing, and delivering the final recruitment pitch.  In short, the course teaches new officers how to spot new agent talent (i.e. find people with access to the information desired), how to assess their susceptibility to recruitment, how to use their perceived susceptibilities, vulnerabilities and desires to massage and develop them to the point of recruitment, and then to design and deliver a recruitment pitch based on the personal information obtained.  Inducements of money, recognition and revenge are examples of major motivators; most spies accept recruitment to gain one or more of these things.

   The problem is the above doctrine is not entirely germane when dealing with the terrorist target.  The terrorist can’t be recruited if the case officer is not in a position to spot, assess and develop him first, and the case officer and terrorist simply don’t travel in the same circles.  So the CIA case officer must step back and work through intermediaries, or access agents, as they are called in the trade. 

   An access agent is one who bridges the gap between the target and the case officer.  He is directed by the case officer to spot, assess and develop potential recruits in the terrorist milieu.  But finding such an intermediary is a momentous task in itself.  The gap between the urbane American case officer and the Arab militant is still too great to bridge in one step.  So additional links in the chain, additional access agents, must be added, further distancing the CIA case officer from his target and compounding the difficulty of the operation.  The chain might look like this: Case officer to wealthy Arab businessman, to small Arab shopkeeper in Lebanon, to the shopkeeper’s relative in the Bekaa Valley, to the relative’s friend on the fringes of the terrorist organization, to the terrorist.

  Then, assuming the CIA case officer is able to assemble such a daisy-chain, there is the problem of getting accurate and timely information up the chain to the case officer, and requirements down to the terrorist recruit.

  But that’s not all.  Let’s assume that the case officer is successful in recruiting and running a penetration of a terrorist organization.  He or she must now struggle with handling such an unsavory character, a person who is prepared to kill innocent civilians and may have killed before.  The legal and ethical questions that arise from this are mind boggling.  And to take this one step further, what if the operation produces intelligence that warns us of an impending act of terrorism?  Clearly we could not permit the act to take place, so the authorities would have to be called in to thwart the act and to arrest the perpetrators.  That would blow the entire operation, including our penetration, and we would be left back at square one, having to spot, assess, develop and recruit another source who would, in turn, last only as long as the first bit of critical intelligence he provides.

  This not to say that we should stop trying to penetrate terrorist organizations, or that the CIA has not had some (mostly unheralded) successes in the past against the terrorist target.  It is only to say that the task is indeed a gigantic one, and the CIA will require new thinking and unique approaches to be successful.  At the very least, an understanding of the difficulties the CIA faces in this area should encourage those who are constantly attacking it to rally behind it and support the efforts of its case officers.  For without a strong intelligence community and solid intelligence on the terrorist target, we will always be on the defensive, responding to individual acts of terrorist violence.  It has become abundantly clear that we are no longer safe from terrorism, even on our own shores.  Now, more than ever, we need to take the offensive to win.