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Ishmael Jones
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Ishmael Jones is the pseudonym used by a former CIA officer. He resigned from the CIA and became a leading proponent of American intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...

 reform, with special emphasis on the improvement of human source intelligence collection (Humint
HUMINT
HUMINT, a syllabic abbreviation of the words HUMan INTelligence, refers to intelligence gathering by means of interpersonal contact, as opposed to the more technical intelligence gathering disciplines such as SIGINT, IMINT and MASINT...

). He is a former deep cover case officer (or clandestine officer
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...

) for the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

 (CIA). He is the author of the book The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture and many articles on intelligence reform. He believes that improvement of American intelligence capabilities is necessary to protect Americans and American allies. .

Early years

Jones was born in the United States and raised in the Middle East, East Asia, and East Africa. He attended universities in the US and served as an officer in the US Marine Corps.

Active CIA career

In the late 1980’s he joined the Central Intelligence Agency where he served as a deep cover officer focusing on human sources with access to intelligence on weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...

 and terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

. Except for his initial training and service in the United States, his career was spent entirely in the field, and his assignments included more than 15 years of continuous overseas service in numerous exotic countries and several rogue nations. He resigned from the CIA in good standing in order to work toward intelligence reform.

Work toward intelligence reform

After resigning in good standing, Jones began to work for intelligence reform by meeting with members of Congress and their staffs, members of the executive branch, journalists, political operatives and political contributors, and writing articles and a book.

While many policy and opinion makers agree that the CIA's human source programs do not function effectively, Jones believes the problems are not to be found with the quality of employees in the CIA, who are overwhelmingly talented and intelligent. Rather, the problem lies within the structure of the organization itself, which encourages a bureaucracy featuring excessive layers of non-producing administrators and managers.

Jones recommends dramatic reductions in the layers of managers and administrators and restructuring of the CIA’s chain of command to clarify precisely who is in charge of any given operation.

He also recommends the introduction of a whistleblower system in which any CIA employee with information on fraud can contact a cleared FBI agent.

The Human Factor

In 2008, Jones published The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture describing his work against weapons of mass destruction proliferators and terrorists, and offering solutions to intelligence reform in an appendix. While the topic of intelligence collection and intelligence reform are deadly serious, Jones's writing when dealing with situational espionage and government bureauracy contains humor. "If the subject were not so deadly serious, The Human Factor would be one of the funniest books of the year."

In 2011 US District Court judge Gerald Lee ruled that Jones had violated the law by not properly going through CIA's pre-publication review process. Jones defense claimed the process was deliberately stalled by the CIA. The ruling marked the first time a judge has used summary judgment
Summary judgment
In law, a summary judgment is a determination made by a court without a full trial. Such a judgment may be issued as to the merits of an entire case, or of specific issues in that case....

 to rule in favor of the CIA, as plaintiff, in a censorship case.

External links

Articles by Ishmael Jones

Interviews

Articles about Ishmael Jones
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