Carved into the wall at the entryway to the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., are these words: "The truth shall make you free."
The words, attributed to Jesus Christ in the New Testament's Gospel of St. John, are an odd choice for an agency that historically has lied not only to its enemies but to its sponsors, the president, Congress and the American people.When the CIA troops to Capitol Hill to "tell all" behind closed doors, few if any lawmakers with oversight authority are convinced they are being told the whole truth.
That's the legacy of an ends-justify-the-means philosophy that has encouraged otherwise-moral CIA officials to lie without a second thought. And it demonstrates the capacity of ethical people to completely disregard a moral code when they're in the service of a cause or of a government. How else to explain the CIA's reprehensible cozying up to folks like Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega and other despots in the past?
Most CIA employees heard the "basic speech" after being recruited. Instructors, describing espionage as a worthy calling, proclaimed that to be patriots they must work in silence, without acclaim, and without second-guessing directives from superiors. The speech calls spying the world's second-oldest profession (and just as honorable as the first), adding that God himself founded the calling when Moses sent leaders of the 12 tribes to "spy out the land of Canaan."
Interviews with hundreds of CIA employees over the past two decades by our associate, Dale Van Atta, indicate that the vast majority of spies are religious believers of one sort or another. Precise figures on religious affiliations are not available because CIA personnel folders do not contain such data.
Leading CIA critic Victor Marchetti, who left the CIA years ago, once deplored "the clandestine mentality (that causes) a separation of personal morality and conduct from actions, no matter how debased, which are taken in the name of the United States government and, more specifically, the Central Intelligence Agency."
It is the sometimes-unsanctioned operations of those covert operators, which continued throughout the Ronald Reagan era under Director William Casey, that provide the best case study of religious morality compromises in the name of patriotic espionage.
Most CIA employees, especially those not involved in covert actions, have remained faithful to their religious principles. This is easier to do for the majority, who analyze data received from the field and aren't directly involved in agency dirty tricks.
A notable example of a covert action dissenter was Justin O'Donnell, a CIA official whom Allen Dulles once named as the only man who "felt some scruples about the activities he was asked to carry on" during Dulles' 8-year tenure as CIA director.
O'Donnell once refused to participate in a CIA plot to assassinate pro-Soviet Congo leader Patrice Lumumba. The CIA did successfully unseat Lumumba by backing a man named Mobutu, whom they supported for decades despite an egregious record of human rights violations. Mobutu, Zaire's "leader for life," was finally ousted by revolution last month.
Several CIA sources whom we spoke to estimated that fewer than 100 CIA employees over its history have questioned covert activities in which the CIA has been involved. Many others, according to one former high-level CIA official in the clandestine section, simply carried out orders that "were contrary to their moral precepts."
CIA sources tell us this has been less true in the years since the Berlin Wall fell. In the past, CIA employees could assuage their guilt by reasoning that their actions were for the good of a God-fearing country locked in seemingly eternal combat with the godless Communists.
While that justification is no longer there, it has been replaced with a kind of bunker-mentality, say our sources, where CIA employees are merely trying to justify their jobs. It may be necessary to shave the truth a little in congressional testimony, one longtime CIA veteran confirmed to us, in the name of keeping the CIA well-funded and the pensions paid.
This can include, our source confided, hyping specific intelligence threats to justify the agency's bloated post-Cold War budgets.