Loeb, Vernon. "Key CIA Official To Step Down: Downing Heads Clandestine
Service." Washington Post, 7 May 1999, A37. [http://www.washingtonpost.com]I am not certain that the retirement of a Deputy Director of Operations -- or even the re-retirement of this situation -- warrants this much coverage, but substantial stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post suggest otherwise. I will note, however, that the first two articles read as though they were written out of the same briefing book.
Materials presented chronologically.
Loeb, Vernon. "Key CIA Official To Step Down: Downing Heads Clandestine
Service." Washington Post, 7 May 1999, A37. [http://www.washingtonpost.com]
"Jack G. Downing, a noted intelligence operative who served as CIA station chief in Beijing and Moscow, will step down in July as deputy director for operations after spending the last two years trying to rebuild the CIA's deeply troubled clandestine service.... [H]e will be replaced by his deputy, James L. Pavitt."
Risen, James. "C.I.A. Veteran Retires Again, After Rebuilding Spy Operation."
New York Times, 7 May 1999. [http://www.nytimes.com]
Jack Downing, "who came out of retirement two years ago..., is stepping down as the agency's top spy.... Downing ... is one of the last of a generation of C.I.A. officers who spent their careers fighting and winning the cold war. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who retired soon after the Soviet Union's collapse, the Aldrich Ames spy scandal and drastic budget cuts, Downing returned to help pull the agency out of its post-cold-war identity crisis. His return has parallels to the fictional return of George Smiley, the spy master who, in the novels of John le Carré, returned to save British intelligence." [Clark comment: Whew! That's laying it on pretty thick. Guess the journalist wants us to understand he once read a book.]
Pincus,
Walter. "Top Spy Retiring from CIA: Downing Led Revamp of Clandestine Service." Washington Post,
29 Jul. 1999, A27. [http://www.washingtonpost.com]
Jack G. Downing, retiring as Deputy Director for Operations, said in an interview that "it will take until 2005 for the agency to complete the task of rebuilding its clandestine service after years of thin budgets, rapid management turnover and low morale." He spoke "enthusiastically about the agency's future." He noted, however, that while "the agency is now in the midst of 'the largest drive to recruit new case officers in its history',... because recruits have to go through training and language schools,... 'over the next few years there still will be a paucity of trained personnel overseas.'"
Loeb,
Vernon. "At Hush-Hush CIA Unit, Talk of a Turnaround: Reforms Recharge
Espionage Service." Washington Post, 7 Sep. 1999, A8. "Bringing
Esprit Back to the CIA." Washington Post National Weekly
Edition, 13 Sep. 1999, 30.
"Shortly after CIA Director George J. Tenet coaxed Jack G. Downing out of retirement to run the agency's troubled espionage service, the legendary spy took stock of flagging morale and prescribed a cure: jump training.... The CIA's super-secret Directorate of Operations now seems on the mend.... Money is pouring in from Congress, the CIA is engaged in the most significant recruiting drive in its history, morale is up and resignations by DO case officers are way, way down."
[Downing, Jack.] "Speech
by Former DDO Jack Downing." CIRA Newsletter 24, no. 4 (Winter
1999): 3-8.
Remarks at Central Intelligence Retirees' Association luncheon on 4 October 1999 at Ft. Myer, VA. Includes question-and-answer session.
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