The Afghan Shooter and the Limits of Vetting
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Polygraph
13 min read
The article centers on vetting intelligence assets, with polygraph testing mentioned as a key step that was initially skipped. Understanding the history, methodology, and limitations of polygraph testing provides essential context for evaluating intelligence vetting procedures.
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Phoenix Program
10 min read
The author describes running spy networks in Da Nang during the Vietnam War in 1969, which was during the height of the CIA's Phoenix Program—the controversial intelligence and assassination operation that relied heavily on local informant networks like the one described.
Many decades ago in South Vietnam, I was running a spy targeted on communist troops headquartered in the jungles about 15 miles away from my office in Da Nang, a bustling former French colonial port on the central coast. When I arrived on scene in late 1969 we didn’t know much about Mr. Dao, a man twice my age, other than he’d worked for the French before us and was a fervent anticommunist. That was good enough for my predecessor, who had hired him a month or so before I arrived. I assumed Dao had been vetted, starting with a records check with the South Vietnamese police, and mission testing to see if he would carry out an assignment without question or raising suspicion. Frankly, I don’t remember whether I asked in my nervous first days. My job was to keep him and his network of informants gathering information on the enemy—and they were good at that—and to elicit more about him during our first secret meetings in ramshackle downtown hotels.
It turned out, though, he’d never been polygraphed, so we started with that.
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