A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA.

WHETHER YOU LOVE OR HATE the CIA, Duane R. "Dewey" Clarridge's memoir, A Spy for All Seasons, subtitled "My Life in the CIA," is worth reading. Its freshness, openness, and plain arrogance make it by far a better starting point for discussing where the trouble-laden clandestine side of U.S. intelligence has been and should go than the myriad presidential, congressional and think-tank studies churned out in the post-Aldrich Ames era.

You wouldn't expect that from Clarridge, whose career is rooted in the now disparaged and deconstructed "old boy network" days, which he looks back on with fondness and describes from his particular point of view with authoritative detail. (Among other escapades, as one of the agency's more celebrated "cowboy" field operatives, Clarridge guided CIA development of the Nicaraguan contras, became involved in the Iran-contra scandal, and was indicted for lying to Congress, only to be pardoned by President Bush before his case came to trial.)

The arrogance is all Clarridge's; the freshness is probably equally traceable to his writing colleague, Digby Diehl. But the openness must be attributed to the CIA's Publications Review Board, which permitted description of past covert operations, use of the names of agency stations abroad, and even revelation of the identities of retired operatives. Just a half-dozen years ago, that type of information could not be cleared for public mention, even in Iran-contra criminal trials and congressional hearings.

Unlike first-generation CIA clandestine operatives, such as Frank Wisner, Desmond Fitzgerald, and Richard Helms, Clarridge did not serve in World War II. Along with the others who joined in the 1950s, his career was shaped from the beginning by the Cold War. As he puts it, "I was in the CIA ... to advance the interests of the U.S. government and the American people abroad. In real terms, this meant taking on the Soviet empire, communist China, and their satellites, and preventing their domination of the world with their grotesque, inhuman, and corrupt ideology." For Clarridge, this was a black-and-white battle between good and evil, which meant "an abhorrence of ... moral relativism" that included "America's liberal left "

At the time he retired in 1988, Clarridge believed a change had taken place in the quality of agency personnel, and that this was having an effect on operations. He traced it first to the drop-off in Ivy League recruitment in the 1960s, later to the fast expansion fostered by one of his heroes, the late CIA Director William J. Casey, and finally "to gender and ethnic quotas or diversity [that] are no substitutes for talent" By the late 1980s, Clarridge claimed, the ranks of younger and mid-career operatives included "an overabundance of yuppie spies who cared more about their retirement plan and health insurance benefits than about protecting democracy. For them, the CIA was just a job"

Clarridge's analysis of the agency's personnel problem is straightforward: The egalitarian sentiment of American democracy clashed with the elite reputation of the CIA's clandestine service in the 1970s. Ignoring the agency failures that led up to this point, Clarridge notes that a decision was reached "that anyone should be able to become a case officer in the CIA. And anyone is whom we started to get."

On one level, this led to a breakdown of the profile he assigns his generation of operatives - a few with "serious money," a majority middle class, but all "with quality education" That, he said, established "a kinship ... [ofl shared values and experiences, and an unspoken ethic of loyalty up and loyalty down" According to Clarridge, the new, non-elite, 1980s case officers lacked the intellectual background to recruit, particularly among Europeans, because they could not discuss literature, art, or economic theory. On top of this "roots" problem, he saw a more direct effect on operational realities: Because most secret intelligence is in the hands of men, their recruitment by female CIA case officers "has inherent difficulties," the most obvious being the target's initial reaction that a woman "is coming on to him for sex ... something the clandestine services will not countenance as a recruitment ploy." Similarly, ethnic case officers "encounter prejudices that inhibit their ability to recruit and often even handle agents not of their ethnic background" Clarridge's conclusion: Women make better handlers of already recruited agents. Ethnic officers should be used where their backgrounds are advantageous, not in an effort to control or influence the world's prejudices.

But people are only one part of the CIA's problems. More vexing, to some extent, is the question: What do they do? What is the CIA's clandestine role in the post-cold War world? It's here that Clarridge's often revealing descriptions of his past activities can provide ammunition for CIA critics who want to all but shut the operation down.

Start with Clarridge's description of his first success as a 27-year-old "power broker" in Nepal, where he used secret campaign funds to woo a socialist politician who was fighting a small communist party to become that kingdom's first democratically elected prime minister. Clarridge relates that it was not too long after the agency's "legendary" director, Allen Dulles, approved his request to help finance the man's campaign that Washington instructed Clarridge also to give money to Nepal's king. This hunk of money was to oppose Clarridge's candidate and others the king did not like. Clarridge's man won anyway, but soon came to the young CIA operative saying he feared for his life because the king was preparing to dissolve parliament and arrest him. CIA headquarters told Clarridge to stay out of the internal fight. When his man was jailed, Clarridge says he was "incensed," but adds stoically, "Curiously the king's coup elicited very little overt displeasure from Washington." It's the first of many episodes Clarridge relates where CIA operatives manipulated other governments and their officials, without concern for possible long-term harm, in order to ensure the communist bad guys didn't win.

Perhaps the most interesting example of this involves the Nicaraguan contras, the CIA-financed rebels who militarily opposed the Sandinista regime in Managua during the 1980s. Clarridge's description of this enterprise must be read by anyone ever drawn to that complicated and controversial enterprise. One point worth exploring here (in conjunction with thinking about the CIA's future in such activities) is Clarridge's perhaps inadvertent disclosure that various parties involved in this frequently bloody enterprise had totally different goals, even among groups within the Reagan-Bush administrations.

At the start, the Reagan administration told Congress that support for the contras was designed to prevent aid from flowing from Nicaragua to rebels in El Salvador. Clarridge explains that Thomas Enders, then assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, favored some covertly supported guerrilla action against the Managua government as a means to push the Sandinistas into serious negotiations. Others, particularly in the White House - and including even Casey - worried that Enders would too quickly "agree to some half-assed deal with the Sandinistas," and soon had him replaced.

The contra leadership, Col. Enrique Bermudez in the north operating out of Honduras and Eden Pastora down south in Costa Rica, agreed on almost nothing, save the common goal of wanting to use U.S. support to overthrow the Managua regime. In the middle, armed by the CIA, were the Miskito Indians, who had agreed to fight the Sandinistas only because they were caught between the two Nicaraguan factions. Clarridge chronicles the political battles with and among the contra leaders and between the White House and Congress as U.S.-paid arms poured in and the fighting increased. Eventually, the blowing up of bridges brought on martial law in Nicaragua - the "desired effect." According to Clarridge, Intelligence said it would have happened even without the CIA, intervention. What really would have happened anyway is hard to figure, but the losses of life, property, and stability are still being recorded.

Clarridge's versions of how it all ended and his view of the Iran-contra affair add details to the massive literature that already exists, but his main contribution is in making people inside and outside the CIA, before undertaking such covert actions, consider the goals, organization, and impact - both short and long term

For example, we are treated to an extensive case study of Clarridge's recruitment of a Polish trade representative whose brother-in-law held an important position on the general staff of that country's then communist-run army. For more than five years, Clarridge took this fellow out to dinners and even arranged for his wife's abortion. We never learn of even one piece of important intelligence that emerged from this furtive and probably costly relationship. Despite Clarridge's emphasis on the need for quality operatives to carry out recruitment, he baldly proclaims at one point that the CIA "wasted a lot of emotional energy trying to recruit Soviets during the Cold War," adding: "I know of no significant Soviet recruitment that was spotted, developed, and recruited from scratch by a CIA case officer." He points out that American traitors like Aldrich Ames, and Soviets who really wanted to cooperate, walked in of their own volition - normally for money.

Clarridge's final major assignment emerged from then-President Reagan's demand to Casey in the wake of the TWA hijacking and the Achille Lauro incident that more be done to halt terrorism. After a three-week study, Clarridge modestly reports that he completed in January 1986 "probably the most brilliant paper (or at least the most cogent) that I had ever put together or ever will" Out of it came the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, which merged clandestine operatives with analysts and technicians, as well as with outside specialists. Its best achievement - that can be discussed - was the tracking and eventual capture of Fawaz Yunis, who in 1985 was indicted for hijacking a Royal Jordanian Airlines plane, which he and his colleagues blew up on the tarmac of the Beirut airport. Although by Clarridge?s own standards, "from one to ten on the scale of terrorism, Fawaz Yunis was at best a three," capturing him and putting him on trial was supposed to "make our intentions clear throughout the terrorist community." This successful worldwide effort, involving the Pentagon,, the FBI, Navy ships, speedboats, a yacht, and a helicopter, resulted in Yunis being sentenced to 30 years in a U.S. prison. Terrorists, however, did not seem to take note.

Clarridge's conclusion, after surveying four years of the CIA under President Clinton and current director John Deutch, is, not surprisingly, that the organization "is finished as a really effective intelligence service" This view reflects the assessment of many of his contemporaries, retired and active. And like many of his other estimates, it is overstated but has some truth to it. Clarridge's own experiences recor-d the current limits of the CIA in areas of terrorism, counternarcotics, and economic spying. And now, he says, with morale "at rock bottom" the agency's clandestine Directorate of Operations has declined "into something resembling the style, work ethic, and morale of the post office."

What better time to begin reconstruction - without the "appalling catastrophe" that Clarridge predicts must occur before the President and Congress realize that strong steps need to be taken? It will not be easy to slice the CIA's still inflated size, upgrade and challenge personnel, revise the overall structure, and focus narrowly on clandestine missions. Steps like these will take the kind of intelligent gambling that the CIA's shifting leadership cannot, without more experience, seriously contemplate.

What are the targets, not today or tomorrow, but in five or 10 years? Where are we willing to plant several dozen people for use in the out years after they have established themselves inside communities or governments in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, or West Africa? Who will convince, cajole, pay off, frighten, or force really bad elements within terrorist or mafia-type organizations to become long-term informants?

It took more than five years with the best experts around and sophisticated leaders like Defense Secretary William Perry to reduce the multi-billion-dollar decisions for future intelligence satellites. There is no such team in place for making the same decisions in the human intelligence field. And remember: You can always reprogram satellites to cover any part of the world. You can't do the same with people.

The CIA is the president's personal intelligence organization, not some rogue club. It needs his attention now, or Clarridge may turn out to be right about its future.