Why I Write
Blowback on a Risky Policy
Ambassador Arnie Raphel, the man who handpicked me to be the State Department's desk officer for Afghanistan, perished in a mysterious plane crash along with Pakistan President Zia ul-Haq in 1988. Thereafter, our policy to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan turned more coldly cynical as we turned a blind eye to our arms support being funneled to radical Islamist fighters. Today we are reaping the consequences as we fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban, heirs of our former no-questions-asked largesse to the Afghans' efforts to end the Soviet occupation.
My Forrest Gump Moment
On November 12, 1986, I was in the West Wing of the White House on official business. After a long meeting, I made a pit stop at the downstairs men's room. While standing doing my business, the door swung open and in streamed several men. At the urinal on my left was Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger. On my right was Secretary of State George Shultz. At the toilet stood CIA Director Bill Casey. They obviously had just come out of a lengthy meeting of their own. All were stonily silent. None acknowledged any of the others. They studiously avoided eye contact at the sink, the towel dispenser and as they sought to exit the room. I sensed a definite chill between them and couldn't wait myself to get out of there. In the outside foyer, a suck-up White House flunkie greeted Shultz in a fawning voice. The Secretary stopped in his tracks and, red-faced, glowered at the man, then stormed off. Next day headlines broke open the Iran-Contra scandal. The Washington Post reported on a stormy meeting between Pres. Reagan and his national security officials. For me it was truly a Forrest Gump moment.
Cuban Spies and White House Leakers
I served as the State Dept's staff representative to the Cuba Interagency Policy Group in the mid-'90's. This group, chaired by Special Advisor to the President Richard Nuccio, met monthly at the Old Executive Office Building (now the Eisenhower Bldg.) adjacent to the White House; sometimes we convened in the Situation Room in the White House. At this time, I was shuttling to/from Guantanamo Naval Base where I served as the Department's representative to monthly talks with the Cuban military on "The Line" -- i.e., the boundary. The White House group discussed U.S. policies toward Castro's Cuba and tasked the participating agencies with measures to further those policies. Trouble was, sensitive issues were being constantly leaked to the media. It got to the point where some of us became reticent, preferring to do business behind the scenes directly with counterparts in the other agencies. The group itself was sloppily managed, showing little in the way of concrete results. In late 1996, the CIA stripped Mr. Nuccio of his security clearances. He resigned shortly thereafter. Turns out Mr. Nuccio had been leaking secrets to then Sen. Robert Torricelli and reporters. The investigation also revealed Nuccio had been preparing and transmitting classified documents on his home office equipment. Oh! And Torricelli, caught up in a bribery scandal, left the Senate after one term. "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves."
It wasn't only the press and uncleared members of Congress who were unauthorized recipients of U.S. government secrets about our Cuba policy. Every month from Guantanamo, I sent classified cables to Washington via U.S. Navy encrypted communications concerning our meetings on The Line with Cuban military representatives as well as on what I'd learned from interviewing Cuban refugees.
When I traveled inside Castro's Cuba on official business, agents of the Cuban intelligence agency, the DGI, followed my every move and harrassed me, including slashing the tires of my rental car. While this is standard operating procedure for the DGI, in retrospect, I have to wonder whether Ana Belen Montes may have had something to do with it. Ana Montes was the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency's senior analyst for Cuba. She had access to virtually all of our classified intelligence and policy planning on that country. In late 2001, she was arrested for espionage and convicted shortly thereafter. Sentenced to 25 years, Ana Montes is imprisoned in Texas. For sixteen years, Montes had been passing to Castro's intelligence service a veritable torrent of official secrets. Her treason led to the killing of a Green Beret. Had Havana been reading my classified reports in virtual real-time, care of Ana Montes?
xxx Spooks or Keystone Kops?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ambassadors-at-Large for Incompetence . . .
In 1992, as the Khmer Rouge were targeting foreigners for assassination in the countryside, our ambassador in Cambodia ordered his staff to travel into the lawless interior to ascertain people's attitudes about upcoming UN-sponsored elections for that country. The staff refused such an irresponsible order, confronting the ambassador with passive resistance bordering on insubordination. The State Dept. countermanded the order.
When working on U.S. policy on Cambodia in the UN in the early '80s, my State Dept. boss asked me: "Are the Khmer Rouge the good guys or the bad guys?" As most of the world knows, the Khmer Rouge killed at least a million Cambodian citizens in the 1970s, a genocide second only to the Holocaust.
Having just arrived as a young diplomat at an isolated Asian post, my bosses, the Chargé d'Affaires and his deputy, had me accompany them to the home of a wealthy Sino-Thai businessman for luxurious repasts which included delicacies such as shark fin soup, fish maw and barbecued bear paw. This man, however, led a surreptitious life. His entertainment facilities were hidden behind an office bathroom and he dodged all questions about his business and personal life. Suspicious, I sent his name to several U.S. agencies for a database check. The Drug Enforcement Agency promptly replied that our charming dinner host was on their Most Wanted List; he had earlier dropped out of sight, one step ahead of the law. The U.S. Chargé d'Affaires and his staff had been hobnobbing unawares with a notorious narcotrafficker. Who was dumber: the crook, for entertaining American officials? Or, the clueless officials themselves?
. . . and Embassies for Sale!
In the late 1980s, our ambassador to Italy was an Italian-American lumber baron from Minnesota. Having donated generously to his party, the man got the job, though he possessed no diplomatic or related experience. An otherwise gregarious sort, he was at sea in Rome. He used one of the most sensitive communications channels, normally reserved for matters of high policy, to update the Secretary of State on his project to remodel Villa Taverna, the U.S. ambassador's residence, including one lengthy cable on his selection of curtains. He was also fond of telling demeaning Italian jokes before crowds of host country officials and journalists, an act that endeared neither him nor the United States to the Italian public.
Jimmy Carter's ambassador to Singapore, a former South Dakota state legislator, walked off with the ambassadorial china upon completion of his unremarkable assignment. Upon being asked to return the expensive, eagle-embossed dinnerware, our ambassador refused, stating it was his just reward for having been an ambassador.
Faux pas by noncareer ambassadors include cocaine smuggling using diplomatic pouches, drunken imbroglios at embassy functions, embarrassing adulterous affairs, and simple ineptitude. We used to sell military flag officer ranks to political hacks until the end of the Civil War, when the extent of the slaughter revealed the tragic consequences of such practices. U.S. ambassadorships and other senior diplomatic positions, however, remain on the auction block for the highest bidders. Fully a third of ambassadorships, in fact, go to noncareer people.
Let's Kill the Messenger
When Bill Clinton paid a state visit to Vietnam in 2000, the first to a unified Vietnam by a U.S. president, the State Dept. assigned as presidential interpreter a nice young man whose only interpreting experience theretofore had been at Arlington County Court, where he translated traffic proceedings, family disputes and similar cases. The poor fellow failed miserably, mangling the President's keynote address to the Vietnamese people, and was sent packing on the next plane back to the U.S. I was directed to find a replacement immediately. I did and, lucky for me, he performed magnificently.
Fact Stranger Than Fiction
If you had any illusions that your government is manned with competent, bright, judicious officials who have your best interests at heart, you're wrong. Twenty-five years in the federal government showed me otherwise. Regularly, I faced situations which made me say, "Fiction can't rival this." Our debacle in Iraq, the Mark Foley affair, the Valerie Plame case and the Abramoff scandal only reconfirm my sentiment.
So, I cut short my diplomatic career to have more fun writing stories which encompass the chicanery and fecklessness of government. If you thought Washington was out of control, then don't read my books. They'll only confirm your worst fears about how things are done in our nation's capital. Two of my political thrillers are now out: PERMANENT INTERESTS and CHASM and are available through Amazon. My third will be published soon.
New York Times Bestselling Author Review
Tim Green, the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen highly successful suspense novels, says about PERMANENT INTERESTS:
“A frightening story that gets you thinking, what if. . .”
Why I'm Censored
"Congress shall make no law. . .abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."
"Where art thou, Faustus? Wretch, what hast thou done?
Damn'd art thou, Faustus, damn'd!"
A Pact With the Devil
When I signed up as a Foreign Service officer of the United States and again when I signed out twenty-three years later, I had to agree in writing to official censorship of anything I wrote prior to publication, and all public speaking before presentation. Thus, unlike the rest of the American population, I do not enjoy the full freedoms of expression covered in the Constitution. Alas, I made a faustian pact with Uncle Sam, who owns the creative part of my soul unto death. In return, he paid me to travel and live in exotic lands, gave me fancy titles, provided me with adventure and even romance sometimes, and made me privy to the innermost secrets of state. And he protects the latter zealously.
Where's G. Gordon Liddy When We Need Him?
Uncle Sam hates leaks. But like the enchanted broom in Disney's Fantasia, he scrambles from pillar to post trying to stem a veritable torrent of secrets, exposés, scandals and slips. And, like the sorcerer's apprentice, he finds it to be overwhelming and largely futile. The worst offenders, ironically, are rarely the career lifers like myself, but rather those who direct the beast from within its belly: the political appointees who spin, smear and self-promote as a matter of course; those for whom the rules don't really apply, even when they're caught. And when they are, a sacrificial lamb is thrown to the wolves to protect the higher-ups: viz., Oliver North, Lewis Libby. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney outed CIA undercover officer Valerie Plame, yet never spent a minute in court to answer for their crimes.
In my time in the State Department, this kind of thing happened all the time at various levels. As I noted earlier with Cuba, the head White House honcho for Latin America had been spewing secrets to the media and to an uncleared senator. When I worked on Afghanistan, a political appointee at the NSC regularly leaked sensitive policy decisions before the SECRET stamp ink was dry. The Washington Post sometimes reported these revelations before the government rank and file was informed. And when working on a White House program that was so secret that we who worked in it had to agree to have our phone conversations monitored and to travel under aliases, leaks from inside the White House made us scramble to cover the potential damage.
Valerie Plame & Me
My book manuscripts must undergo government security review before I can even show them to a book agent or a publisher. Those I published before 2000 were cleared quickly and with little interference from the censors. The Bush-2 administration, however, tightened the process up greatly. It took almost six months to get clearance for my latest novel, Tribe. Upon completion of the manuscript, I phoned State to ask to whom I should send it. In return, they faxed me a letter stating, "Everything you write will be considered classified until cleared by this office."
Four agencies of the Federal government needed to have a crack at it. A large intelligence agency had "problems" with it. Worse, so did a major law enforcement agency. The intel agency objected to my description of a well-known training facility. I emailed them links to a Wikipedia article on it as well as commercially produced overhead satellite photography of it; I added transcripts of books which have pages of detailed information on it. The intel agency held its ground and posed additional objections to other elements in my book. Then the law enforcement agency declared they had problems as well. But they refused to reveal what they were, opting instead to stonewall and leave me hanging. Eventually, I managed to negotiate mutually acceptable changes with everybody, but a valuable half-year had passed, leaving several literary agents wanting to see the manuscript cooling their heels.
To Uncle Sam, With Love
Here's a message from yours truly to Uncle Sam: I'm no danger to our national security. I play by the rules. I'm proud to have served my country loyally. I promise I'll take the real secrets I know to my grave -- and you can monitor my mortal remains for preternatural communications with unauthorized celestial beings, if you wish. Just let me write my books and get them published before the time comes for me to buy long-term care insurance. Please.
Life on the Run
In two-and-a-half decades of service to Uncle Sam, I moved a dozen times, an average of about once every two years. This does not include a bunch of smaller moves within the major moves. I always had a bag half-packed, passports at hand, ready to hop a plane on short notice to Peshawar, Guantanamo, Bangkok, you name it. A Seiko chronograph wristwatch which tracks the time in two dozen world cities has helped me keep my head on straight. Fluency in seven languages and partial fluency in at least seven more has helped grease the skids across multiple national borders and cultures.
Life on the run impacts one's personal life in ways unknown to the regular citizen. One's life literally spans the breadth of the globe. My wife is Dutch. We met in Cambodia. We got married in the Netherlands. Our kids were born in South Africa. They spent their early years in Vietnam. Their first nursery rhymes were in the Vietnamese and Afrikaans languages. Their first words were a mélange of the Germanic guttural and the Asian tonal. Collectively, our four-member family possessed a total of ten passports at one time. By the time she was three, Lara, our eldest, had visited five continents. We vacationed in Rome, Bali, Christchurch, Cape Town, Darwin and Phuket, among other exotic locales. The frequent flyer miles piled on - except for the time I hitched a freighter across the Pacific, losing thirty feet of ship railing in the rough Aleutian seas.
Trains, Planes and Automobiles. . .
When I worked the Cuba account in the '90s, my wife saw little of me. For a year, I commuted from Washington to Guantanamo Naval Base, where I served as liaison, along with the GTMO base commander, to the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, the Cuban armed forces. The two sides meet on The Line monthly to discuss issues of mutual concern - the only official face-to-face interaction the United States has with Castro's military. Think A Few Good Men without the melodrama. My travel options were milair from the U.S. Naval Base at Norfolk, Va. or a Brazilian-made charter puddle-hopper from Ft. Lauderdale. Either way, the pilots had to avoid flying into Cuban airspace, instead circumnavigating the coastline of eastern Cuba all the way around to the southeast coast. Flying in hurricane season was never fun. And one time the puddle hopper had to divert its usual approach to the GTMO runway, almost straying into Cuban airspace. The reason? A brushfire had set off minefields on the Cuban side, creating huge billows of black smoke not to mention unpredictable explosions along the base boundary. I returned to D.C. to attend Cuba policy meetings at the White House. Then, bags packed as always, onto Havana, via Mexico in order to travel the island to monitor the human rights conditions of Cubans sent back to their country after failing to make it, illegally, to Florida. Cuba's major highways are surprisingly good; the food is usually lousy to non-existent; accommodations range from virtually deluxe to bad Bulgarian Bauhaus, circa 1969. Milair and puddle hoppers earn you no frequent flyer miles. Neither do rickety Cuban Tupolevs, Soviet-era passenger jets as notorious for failing engines as for its stiff threadbare seats.
TDY's (temporary duty) to Pakistan to do liaison with our officials as well as the Afghan mujahidin in their fight against the Soviet occupation in the '80s also kept me away from home for long stretches. Milair, again, from Andrews Air Force Base (home of Air Force One) to Islamabad, via sandbox stopovers in the Arabian peninsula. Being strapped into the cargo hold of a C-130, its four turboprop engines rattling one's bones and brains for umpteen hours, with cold MRE's to sustain oneself makes commercial air economy class seem like heaven in comparison. The return trip sometimes got us an overnight stopover in Frankfurt so that we could check fellow passengers into a German hospital. These were wounded Afghan freedom fighters we picked up in Pakistan. Never know who your seatmate might be when you fly.
And Third World roads are not to be missed. From smooth Cuban autopistas, to cratered landmine-strewn, mud pathways of Indochina; from South Africa's multilane Garden Route to death wish mountainside pinturns of southern China, the peripatetic diplomat has no lack of means to test his wits and sanity, not to mention his physical well-being. Too many of us, unfortunately, have lost our lives in the service of our country traveling these challenging land-routes. While I logged plenty of hours in sleek limos sporting Old Glory on the fender, I spent much more time in Landrovers, Jeeps, Soviet-made military vehicles and clap-trap Third World buses on rough roads and in dicey situations.
. . . And Choppers, Too
And what do you do when being shot at while flying in a helicopter? This question isn't covered in the State Department regs. Nor was it covered in our training. You pray. You swear. You cover your private parts as best you can. Seeing a bullet hole in a chopper's tail section after a safe (thank God!) landing brings it all home. As a diplomat, you might find yourself sipping aperitifs on the Champs Elysee, or, just as likely, dodging fire over the junglescape of war-torn Cambodia. In the early '90s, rural roads were either unsafe or non-existent in that ravaged country. The handiest way of getting around it was by helicopter, mostly Russian, occasionally American.
The sleek U.S. Blackhawk is the Cadillac of military choppers. It devours the sky as it zips along at 200 mph. I preferred this over the stalwart Chinook or the utilitarian Huey UH-1 on missions to recover the remains of U.S. service members lost during the Vietnam War. On diplomatic business, however, it was rickety UN-chartered Soviet-made choppers with crews who spoke only Russian and who had a penchant for imbibing alcohol and joyriding while at the controls. If the Blackhawk is the Cadillac of choppers, the Russian 24-passenger Mi-8 "Hip" is the Lada of the skies. I flew these all over Cambodia. The Russian pilot of one of these once gave several colleagues and me a private aerial tour of the Angkor Wat temple complex, flying low and in circles. Another time, I flew into the just captured Khmer Rouge festung of Pailin in an Mi-8, a Cambodian gunner alert at his station, ready to counterfire any active enemy positions. The helicopter is a great invention. So is the family station wagon.
Identity Crisis
We've had surgeries in Bangkok and Cape Town. Our cat has been to more countries than ninety-nine percent of the American people. I can as easily drive on the left as on the right. Our house décor ranges from African carpets to Hmong wall-hangings. We cook Yemeni saltahs, Thai curries, Cuban boliche, Portuguese linguica and Dutch stompot. And we wash it all down with mango juice, bubble tea, ginger beer, sake and mojitos. Our vocabulary is riddled with idioms, slogans, circumlocutions and curses in a multiplicity of languages. We acquired all of these exotic traits and more from a life on the run.
The State of Publishing
Getting your books published is akin to trying to jump through hoops of fire while wearing shoes of lead. The default switch for agents and publishers alike is Reject. Unless your name is Grisham, Oates or Patterson, publishers don't want to know you in this depressed economy. Go with the safies, the ones assured to feed the all-important bottom line. And the very few newbies who do get picked up by a publisher are very, very lucky. Sort of like the proverbial nobody actor who is "discovered" while sitting on a stool nursing a coke in a soda fountain. Talent has less to do with getting published than sheer luck. Witness the plethora of published writers who offer pedestrian plots in mangled English. It's mind boggling.
My first agent switched careers in mid-stream, leaving me high and dry. My second died in mid-stream, leaving me high and dry. My latest is one of the industry's best: Peter Riva, who represents the runaway bestselling Stieg Larsson "Millenium" mystery series ("The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," etc.). I am honored to have Peter as my agent.
My third political thriller, "Tribe," takes places in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Washington. It's about a CIA case officer who gets in the way of a major oil deal centering on Afghanistan, and how Big Money and Big Government go after him. Drawing on my professional experiences, I give realistic insights into everything from how the White House works to how drone aircraft work. The thrills are as big as the ambitious plot. As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I had to obtain official clearance from my former employer, the U.S. government. The CIA and FBI made redactions and demanded changes. The State Dept. and NSA, however, were lighter-handed. It took six months for the clearance to be completed, a bane few other writers must bear. This is a terrific book. Four top agents competed to represent me. So, why, after a whole year, hasn't it been published? It boils down to a gun-shy publishing industry in flux and down-sizing. I'd love for you to read "Tribe." Stay tuned.
Meantime, I'm halfway through my fourth novel, "Havana Queen," about an FBI agent who gets caught up in a Cuba in turmoil. I draw on my past service inside Cuba as well as at Guantanamo Naval Base. But I also did extensive additional research for nine months before putting fingers to keyboard. I have not seen any fiction in the English language that approaches the detail and authenticity of "Havana Queen." I aim to have a completed draft for my agent early in 2011. But, of course, the green eyeshaders in the bowels of myriad federal agencies have to have had it first. I'm convinced this latest thriller will do well. Again, stay tuned.
Meanwhile, "Permanent Interests" and "CHASM" continue to sell and are available online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders and many other sites. I advise you to save money and purchase the Kindle version for only $2.99, the price of a low-end designer coffee at Starbucks. I earn mere pennies from the paperbook versions; voracious and clever middlemen account for 98 percent of the cost of a book. Authors earn a pittance on sales. It's the fat-cat plutocrats who control the industry and dictate prices under a 19th century business model. Go Kindle!
Fortunate Son
Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
ooh, they're red, white and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail To The Chief",
oh, they point the cannon at you, Lord.
A year ago, the Department of State called. Guess what Jim? We have placed you on the active list for call-up for service in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Congratulations on your service to the country! Fill out these reems of forms.
Uh, say what? Lest I forgot, I am an officer in the Department's Diplomatic Readiness Reserve as well as something called the Standby Response Corps. Think military reserves sans a uniform. The Obama administration's planned civilian surge in both countries anticipates the deployment of active-duty and retired diplomats to the front lines to nation-build. My five years of Afghanistan service in my previous tours must have caught their attention.
Well, you can imagine how this flew over with my family. My wife was tearing her hair out while spewing all sorts of gutteral oaths in her native Dutch. Meanwhile, my kids were pleading, "We don't want daddy to die!" Friends kindly offered to help out in various ways once I was deployed. BUT -- the Department has been silent ever since. Is it incompetence, oversight, or policy failure? Yet again, stay tuned.
Yeah, some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
ooh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, how much should we give,
oh, they only answer, more, more, more, oh.