Douglas London’s memoir The Recruiter is a fascinating tale of a CIA spymaster who spent 34 years running foreign agents and trying not to get pulled down in the vicious undertow of shark-infested waters.

London was threatened at gunpoint, chased through the streets, and lied his way out of danger for a living but his story is more George Smiley than James Bond. London is an intellect, a gentleman spy, a Jewish kid from the South Bronx who was tapped on the shoulder by a college professor and ran CIA agents in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia in the years leading up to and after 9/11.

Before retiring in 2019, London mainly worked abroad as a case officer, slipping out of the back door of his home while his children slept to meet spies who were stealing secrets for the US. (One of his wife’s friends compared London to Batman after he happened to stumble on the ladies’ car in a dangerous neighborhood, stepped out of the shadows, and directed them to safety.)

In one of many nerve-wracking encounters before 9/11, London had only one shot - 24 hours - to recruit a key al-Qaeda associate known as Yousef. The CIA knew Osama bin Laden wanted to strike at America’s heart but didn’t know where or how. London needed to quickly find common ground with Yousef and develop a rapport (luckily they were both devoted family men), then convince him to spy for the US rather than risk his life in prison. London closed the deal and developed a trusting relationship with Yousef - well, up to a point. 

“While some like to think that developing a prospective agent is a lot like dating, I’d caution that it’s more like trying to have an affair with a person whose spouse is a mentally unbalanced, irrationally jealous, and violent partner who is capable of killing your date and you both,” Douglas explains in The Recruiter.
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Douglas London: Spy & master manipulator

London’s The Recruiter lays bare the perils of the profession - both the dangers of operating in conflict zones and the testy exchanges, standoffs, and power plays between the CIA’s HQ and field operators where Olympic-sized egos on both sides can impact life, death, and careers.

When London was running a spy known as ‘Sulayman’, a religious leader who feared an uncomfortable death if he carried on spying for the CIA, London had strict orders from Langley HQ to keep Sulayman operational regardless of the danger: “Make it work.”

London convinced his agent - who at this point was in tears - that Sulayman would need to go back into the belly of the beast and gather more intel from the terrorist network. Douglas gently persuaded Sulyman that, as a man of God, he owed it to humanity to meet evil people and disrupt sinister plots.

For London, it was a matter of balancing risk versus gain. He also needed to consider that he was operating in a CIA environment where questioning the chain of command could derail his career. “It’s a moral conundrum for which I still have a sense of guilt,” London told SPYSCAPE but, at the end of the day, Sulayman conducted his own risk analysis and survived.

The Farm: The making of a CIA spy

Douglas London studied for his Bachelor of Arts in political science and international relations at Manhattanville College, a private college outside of New York. He joined the CIA in 1984 but it was anything but smooth sailing - even for a man who had previously joined the US Marines and speaks fluent French and Russian.

CIA HQ was a sea of white Christian men in the ‘80s, many from East Coast Ivy League universities, and Douglas London felt like an outcast. A senior officer tried to discourage him from working in the Near East and South Asia Division of the Directorate of Operations (the Clandestine Service) muttering a question along the lines of: “So, do you wear being Jewish on your sleeve?” He did not, and it was not an issue while London was working in Muslim-dominated countries.

While at the CIA’s notorious training facility called ‘the Farm’, London completed 12 weeks of military training, wearing camouflage and functioning as part of a platoon under the command of mainly grizzly old paramilitary veterans from the CIA’s Vietnam era: “We largely indulged their oft colorful conduct, particularly among one or two instructors whom we feared would kill us in our sleep at the onset of a PTSD flashback, or just for the pure joy.”

He learned about explosives, booby traps, weapons, escape and evasion techniques, survival training, and interrogation. When it came to airborne training, London looked forward to the five parachute jumps. On his last leap, a strap wrapped around his leg and London sped to the ground head first. Luckily, he braced, curled, and survived. His classmates marked London’s inverted dive with a memorial pin - two upside-down boots protruding from the point on the ground where they expected London to impale himself.
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The CIA & the Lost Art of American Intelligence

Case officers must understand their spies’ needs, wants, and values to make an informed analysis of how they will react in any given circumstance. London doesn’t dress it up: “The case officer’s tool is manipulation.” 

He also doesn’t pull any punches in The Recruiter when it comes to assessing whether the CIA lost its way after 2001 when the Agency missed the blinking red lights warning of 9/11 and invaded Iraq in 2003 over weapons of mass destruction that didn’t materialize. Many Americans were looking for a scapegoat.

“The CIA saw itself as most likely the target of that desire for someone to take the wrap, take  the blame, and saw the events of 9/11 as an existential crisis,” London told SPYSCAPE. “What the CIA did right was forecast that an attack was coming, and actually even spoke to the possibility of aviation attacks - obviously didn’t get down to the details and where it was going to be - but it was pretty close. And it wasn’t just the one Presidential Daily Briefing.”

Still, the CIA was fearful that it might be swallowed up by the Department of Defense or subsumed into another intelligence agency. In London’s opinion, that led CIA leaders to pivot from the traditional role of speaking truth to power - offering unbiased foreign intelligence collection, analysis, and covert action - to allowing intelligence to be weaponized by politicians and shifting to more paramilitary-style operations.

He’s seen a slow swing back toward tradecraft and HUMINT - human intelligence - in the post-Trump years, however.

Douglas London: On winding down

Having lived a secretive life for 34 years - a life where London stole weapons manuals that were reverse-engineered to protect Americans on the battlefield, and stole plans about terrorist operations - he said he found his life as a CIA case officer to be exhilarating and rewarding: “You can shape history.”

And while he downplays the superhero aspect, there is something to the Bruce Wayne comparison that still resonates - even if just a little bit.

“Not to go off into comic land, but Batman is an individual, a single person, who is out there pretty much without a lifeline, with limited support, and that’s very much the role of a case officer on the street,” he told SPYSCAPE.

“It is a team activity that gets you there, that supports you up to that point and that leverages what you collect, but when you are out there, and you are meeting your agents, and you are running your operations, there’s no cavalry. There’s no calling in air support. It’s basically the case officer and the case officer’s wits and guile on which they depend.”