Some senators are calling for your resignation or for the White House to take charge of the Ames investigation. Can you clean up this mess? Should you resign?
Yes and no. Yes, I can clean it up, and no, I shouldn’t resign.
Yes, absolutely. And quite a bit, actually. The morale is beginning to pick up… During me summer the Directorate of Operations did a lot of soul-searching with respect to its own culture and why Ames was passed along the way he was, how somebody with [so many] behavior problems never received a reprimand in a 32-year career. I think they understand that while there are many positives in the way they deal with one another–the sense of camaraderie and commitment–there is a dark side.
It would have made my life much simpler politically if I had fired them. Even one or two. There’s only one reason I didn’t–I didn’t think what they did deserved dismissal.
We’re still learning through questioning Ames … There are still some things [he] is lying about … As we work through the damage assessment, there will be dozens [perhaps even] hundreds of eases in some sense that Ames probably compromised beyond the 36.
You track through what he legitimately had access to and what he might have been able to [get] access to, by using somebody else’s computer or whatever. Ames was a smoker. [CIA headquarters] is a smoke-free building, so… Ames would stand outside with fellow smokers and try to elicit things from them … One of the things you’ve got to do is talk to the smokers. It’s a very painstaking operation.
No, I don’t think I’m being co-opted, But I do think that after 19 months I’m developing a pretty good interior network of people who talk to me frankly … I very much believe something Admiral Rick-over once told me: “Always use the chain of command to issue orders, but if you use the chain of command for information, you’re dead.”
