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Jack Devine | |
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 Jack Devine | |
| Occupation | CIA veteran |
Jack Devine is a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a founding partner and President of The Arkin Group LLC.
Devine's career at the CIA spanned from the late 1960s to the early 1990s, including the fall of President Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, the Iran–Contra affair in the mid-1980s, and the fight to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the late 1980s. [1] Devine retired after serving as both the acting director and associate director of the CIA's operations outside the United States, a capacity in which he had supervisory authority over thousands of CIA employees involved in sensitive missions throughout the world, as well as Acting Deputy Director of Operations from May 3, 1995, to July 18, 1995. [1]
Devine joined the CIA in 1967, after his wife gave him a book about the CIA and its role in U.S. national security. [2] Devine completed his training at "the Farm" and various other espionage and paramilitary courses. In his first Headquarters assignment he spent time as a "documents analyst" where he shared close quarters with Aldrich "Rick" Ames, who later became a spy for the Soviet Union. Ames would later reemerge as an employee and suspect in the hunt for a mole within the Agency. [3]
His first overseas assignment was to Santiago, Chile in August, 1971. Devine learned the ins and outs of recruiting sources and running covert action operations in the time before the 1973 Chilean coup d'état.
His service on the Afghan Task Force was perhaps the pinnacle of his varied career, and put him at the head of the largest covert action campaign of the Cold War. Devine replaced Gust Avrakotos, the chief of the South Asia Operations Group portrayed by actor Philip Seymour Hoffman in the 2007 film, Charlie Wilson's War , and inherited a program funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to the Afghan mujahideen. [4] It was under Devine that the CIA ramped up threefold support to the mujahideen and made the critical decision to provide them with U.S.-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, a move that would ultimately shift the course of the war and force a Soviet retreat. By the time Devine left the Task Force for an assignment as Chief of Station in Rome, the war was winding down. [5]
Devine would go on to run the Counter Narcotics Center and Latin America Division at CIA in the 1990s, and helped oversee the operation that captured Pablo Escobar in 1993. [5] He also served as the head of the division during the military intervention in Haiti in the early 1990s, and was later promoted to associate director and acting director of Operations as well as serving as Acting Deputy Director of Operations from May 3, 1995, to July 18, 1995. [5] Devine retired from CIA in 1999, after 32 years, and joined the private sector where he joined forces with New York litigation attorney Stanley Arkin. [6] Together they have provided high-end consulting services along with sophisticated international intelligence and investigative services for the last 23 years. [7]
Devine is the recipient of the Agency's Distinguished Intelligence Medal and several meritorious awards. [8] [9] He is a recognized expert in intelligence matters and has written op-eds and articles for The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Miami Herald and The World Policy Journal. He has also made guest appearances on CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, as well as the History and Discovery channels, PBS and ABC Radio. On June 13, 2014, speaking in McLean, VA to former intelligence officers he predicted the likely partition of Iraq and further troubles in Afghanistan and Ukraine. [10]
Devine resides in New York City and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. [11]
William Joseph Casey was an American lawyer who was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1981 to 1987. In this capacity he oversaw the entire United States Intelligence Community and personally directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Charles Nesbitt Wilson was an American politician and naval officer who was a 12-term Democratic Representative from Texas's 2nd congressional district. Wilson is best known for leading Congress into supporting Operation Cyclone, the largest-ever Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert operation, which during the Carter and Reagan administrations supplied military equipment to the Afghan Mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. His behind-the-scenes campaign was the subject of the non-fiction book Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History by George Crile III and the subsequent film Charlie Wilson's War, in which he was portrayed by Tom Hanks.
The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2015. Within SAC there are two separate groups: SAC/SOG for tactical paramilitary operations and SAC/PAG for covert political action.
Howard Phillips Hart was an American Central Intelligence Agency officer. He worked as the CIA chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan from May 1981 until 1984. He was succeeded by William Piekney in the summer of 1984. He died on April 30, 2017.
Gust Lascaris Avrakotos was an American case officer and the Afghanistan Task Force Chief at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Charlie Wilson's War is a 2007 American biographical comedy-drama film based on the story of U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson and CIA operative Gust Avrakotos, whose efforts led to Operation Cyclone, a program to organize and support the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989).
The Central Intelligence Agency, known informally as the Agency, metonymously as Langley and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
George Washington Crile III was an American journalist most closely associated with his three decades of work at CBS News. He specialized in dangerous and controversial subjects, resulting in both praise and controversy. He received an Emmy Award, Peabody Award, and Edward R. Murrow Award.
Thomas Hercules Karamessines was the Deputy Director for Plans of the United States Central Intelligence Agency from July 31, 1967 until February 27, 1973. Karamessines was actively involved in the Agency's Project FUBELT to undermine the government of Chilean president Salvador Allende.
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The mujahideen were also supported by Britain's MI6, who conducted their own separate covert actions. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups, including groups with jihadist ties, that were favored by the regime of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in neighboring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Soviet-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan administration since before the Soviet intervention.
The Soviet–Afghan War had an important impact in popular culture in the West, due to its scope, and the great number of countries involved. The Russian-Ukrainian film The 9th Company, for example, became a blockbuster in the former USSR earning millions of dollars and also representing a new trend in Russia in which some domestic films are "drawing Russian audiences away from Hollywood staples." The use of the war in Russian cinema has attracted scholarly attention as well. Some of this attention focuses on comparisons of the conflict with other modern wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Other work focuses on the war and fictional accounts of it in the context of Soviet military culture. Even when not directly portrayed, service in the war is sometimes used as a backstory for Russian characters to explain their combat prowess, such as in the manga and anime series Black Lagoon.
Thomas Alan Twetten was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer. From 1991 to 1993, he was Deputy Director of Operations (DDO).
Several sources have alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ties with Osama bin Laden's faction of "Afghan Arab" fighters when it armed Mujahideen groups to fight the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War.
Michael George Vickers is an American defense official who served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD-I). As USD-I, Vickers, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010, was the Defense Department's top civilian military intelligence official. Before becoming USD-I, Vickers served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict.
The Afghanistan conflict began in 1978 and has coincided with several notable operations by the United States (U.S.) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The first operation, code-named Operation Cyclone, began in mid-1979, during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. It financed and eventually supplied weapons to the anti-communist mujahideen guerrillas in Afghanistan following an April 1978 coup by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and throughout the nearly ten-year military occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, supported an expansion of the Reagan Doctrine, which aided the mujahideen along with several other anti-Soviet resistance movements around the world.
Hugh Montgomery was a United States diplomat and intelligence officer. He served for 63 years with the Central Intelligence Agency and has been called one of the CIA's founding fathers.
Vernon F. Loeb is an American journalist and book author. Before being named managing editor at the Houston Chronicle Loeb was Metro Editor at the Washington Post.
Sandra Grimes is a former CIA officer who participated in a small team that investigated and uncovered the actions of Aldrich Ames, a United States counterintelligence officer who was subsequently convicted of spying for the Soviet Union.
Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History is a 2003 book by George Crile III. It details U.S. Representative Charlie Wilson's role in providing assistance to the Afghan Mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War.
Though not officially a belligerent during the Soviet–Afghan War, the United Kingdom was heavily involved, playing a key covert role in the conflict. Also known as the Second Great Game, the British provided both indirect and direct support for the Afghan mujahideen in their fight against the Soviet Union, including secretly arming, funding and supplying various factions. Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) primarily supported the Mujahideen group Jamiat-e Islami, commanded by Ahmad Shah Massoud who, having received little support from the US and Pakistan, became Britain's key ally in the conflict. Fighting in the Panjshir valley, Massoud and his fighters with British support and intelligence, overcame nine Soviet offensives and held out up to the Soviet withdrawal from the vital valley in 1986. Massoud became the most successful and feared out of any of the Mujahideen commanders.
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