In another embarrassing epilogue to the Aldrich Ames espionage case, the CIA's director, R. James Woolsey, has removed two senior officials for giving an award to a colleague only hours after Woolsey had reprimanded the man for failing to oversee Ames.
The two officials were the CIA's associate deputy director of operations, John McGaffin, and the Near East operations chief, Frank Anderson. They retired after Woolsey reassigned them last week.Two weeks ago, they gave Milton Bearden, the agency's station chief in Bonn, an award for outstanding work during the 1980s. The day before, Bearden had been reprimanded by Woolsey for "very serious" failures in the case of Ames, Moscow's mole inside the CIA from 1985 to 1994.
After a series of court cases and public statements by senior CIA officials that have painted a picture of incompetence, backbiting, malaise and managerial failures inside the nation's most prominent intelligence service, this latest case has further damaged the agency's standing with Congress.
Senior staff members of the congressional committees that oversee the CIA noted that the punishments against the two men were more severe than any meted out in the Ames case. They also noted that the award to Bearden might signify disrespect within the CIA for Woolsey, who has worked hard to preserve and defend the agency from outside attacks in his 20 months as director.
Agency officials who described the unusual award are outside the intelligence agency's public-affairs office and provided a detailed account, which was confirmed in detail by Kent M. Harrington, the agency's top
spokesman. On Sept. 28, Woolsey announced that 11 senior officers would receive official reprimands in the Ames case, although no one was fired or demoted. He said that Ames's activities had gone undetected because of "a systemic failure of the CIA - and most significantly, of the directorate of operations - a failure in management accountability, in judgment, in
vigilance." As a result, at least 10 double agents secretly working for the United States died and dozens of covert operations directed at the Soviet Union were destroyed in the 1980s, Woolsey said.
The most severe reprimands he issued issued that day went to four CIA officials, three of whom were already retired. The fourth was Bearden, who had long been scheduled to retire at the end of September.
Outside the agency, there was widespread criticism of Woolsey for what congressional critics called his lenience in seeking no dismissals in the Ames case. But the award suggests that within the agency, members of the CIA's operations directorate - which Woolsey has criticized as a "fraternity" in which "once you're in, you're in for life" - thought his punishment of Bearden too harsh.
On Sept. 29, McGaffin, the second-ranking officer in the agency's clandestine service, sent Anderson, the agency's Near East operations chief, to Bonn with the award for Bearden. The two men, who could not be reached for comment, did not tell the head of the clandestine service, Ted Price, or Woolsey about the award.