Milt Bearden retired from the Central Intelligence Agency in 1994, after thirty years in the CIA's clandestine services Bearden rose through the ranks to become one of CIA's most senior officers. His early career was split between German speaking Europe and Hong Kong where he conducted classic Cold War intelligence operations. During the early 1980's he moved to Africa to serve as CIA Chief in Nigeria and later in Khartoum, where he covered Sudan's civil war and the ultimate overthrow of the regime of Jaafar Nimeiri. It was in the Sudan in 1985, that Bearden organized a secret airlift from the Sudanese desert to Israel of the stranded remnants of the Ethiopian Falasha Jews. For his work in Sudan Milt Bearden was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit, the Agency's second highest decoration.
In the spring of 1986, Bearden was selected by Bill Casey to take charge of the CIA Covert Action supporting a flagging Afghan Resistance. The end of the war was symbolically marked by the final march of Soviet troops across Friendship Bridge over the Oxus River on February 15, 1989, thus ending almost ten years of struggle. For his service in Afghanistan Bearden was awarded the agency's highest decoration, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal.
From 1989-92, Bearden directed the CIA's clandestine operations against a decaying Soviet Empire. During this period Bearden was awarded the CIA's unique Donovan Award, named after its founder. Bearden wound up his CIA career as the CIA Chief in Bonn where he worked with a newly reunified Germany in dealing with its Cold War legacy. For his service in Germany, Milt Bearden was honored by the German President with the Federal Cross of Merit, the only such decoration ever given to a CIA Chief in the Federal Republic.
Bearden is the author of The Black Tulip, a novel of war in Afghanistan (Random House 1998, 2002). He is a frequent contributor to the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and has contributed to Foreign Affairs and to the book on September 11, 2001, How Did This Happen?, published by Public Affairs. He is a consultant for CBS News, and is co-author, with James Risen, of the award-winning The Main Enemy, a non-fiction account of the end of the Cold War published by Random House in May 2003. He worked with Robert DeNiro on Meet the Parents and The Good Shepherd. Bearden also worked with director Mike Nichols and producer Tom Hanks on the film, Charlie Wilson's War. He lives in Virginia with his French-born wife, Marie-Catherine.
CIA will have some legitimate accountability issues in the coming months, but the uproar over an alleged “targeted assassination” program ought not be one of them. Indeed, there is something strangely contrived in the latest “CIA Scandal” playing out in Washington summer stock. In the end, the drama will probably tell us more about Congress and the politically flawed oversight process than it will reveal about CIA missteps in carrying out its mission. At issue is the claim that for the last eight years CIA has had a program to kill or capture al-Qaeda leaders wherever they might be found,… Read more
The bobbing and weaving of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week on “what she knew and when she knew it” was unseemly. Standing alone at her press conference she seemed trapped by the press into charging that CIA had misled her, lied to her. Her half hearted retractions and redirections of her attack toward the Bush administration over the weekend, have only reinforced the growing sense that Congress is so thoroughly compromised by its acquiescence on the Bush administration’s interrogation program that it cannot conduct a fair investigation of the accumulating wrongdoings of the last seven years. Members of both… Read more
There are at least two independent dynamics impacting the handling of the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation programs. One is the reality of a process already fully in motion and the other is the pure theater of political bobbing and weaving in Congress and, to some extent, the Obama administration. Ultimately, uncontrollable realities will overtake the political theater, forcing a weak form of accountability that will do little to contribute to the restoration of America’s honor. There is an army of human rights investigators working the issue, and even without the information available to congressional investigators with subpoena power, they… Read more
The two state solution has been dead for awhile, perhaps dating back to Hamas “shocking” Washington (but practically nobody else) with its sweeping win in the 2006 parliamentary we pushed so hard for in the first place. The equally feeble scrambling after the slapstick effort by Fatah to topple Hamas in Gaza the next year only compounded American embarrassment. After the fanciful and sad performance of the Bush administration over the last eight years, it will be a tall order for Obama to restore America’s credentials as anything approaching an honest broker. It may still be worth a try,… Read more
I have a slightly different take on the question. It is, indeed, a fact that we have not been struck at home by terrorists since 9/11. And it is indeed a fact that many fine American men and women in many agencies have worked tirelessly, creatively, and unselfishly in making the lives of Americans more secure. We can all salute them. But when the usual GOP politics kicked in over the last year or so, the facts and the sacrifices were degraded into just another just another deception by the Bush administration. When challenged on any aspect of homeland… Read more
I've just returned from ten days in the sun in the Pacific and carried with me a handful of books, including Thomas Asbridge's "New History of the First Crusade", a sobering reminder that though the names change the realities of foreign armies in the lands of the Saracens really don't. Niall Ferguson's "War of The World" reminds us that foreign policy has never really been America's strong suit (or anybody else's for that matter). Nothing that we've planned for has happened, and nothing that has happened was planned for, would sum him up. And finally, I always carry my copy… Read more
I have a slightly different take on the question. It is, indeed, a fact that we have not been struck at home by terrorists since 9/11. And it is indeed a fact that many fine American men and women in many agencies have worked tirelessly, creatively, and unselfishly in making the lives of Americans more secure. We can all salute them. But when the usual GOP politics kicked in over the last year or so, the facts and the sacrifices were degraded into just another deception by the Bush administration. When challenged on any aspect of homeland security, the… Read more
Aside from major setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, other possibilities for short-term grief are percolating the Middle East, where a struggle to fill perceived vacuum left by retreating U.S. and western influence is forming up. There may be sharp challenges by the “movements” to the Monarchy in Saudi Arabia and to the Mubarak dynasty in Egypt; these formerly dominate Arab powers now feel increasingly vulnerable and isolated. Don’t count on Jordan being calm, either. These struggles will be compounded by the proxy contests for regional control between Sunni power centers with adversaries Syria and Iran, probably erupting in the Levant.… Read more
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