CHAPTER 29
IGNORE MY INTELLIGENCE
AT YOUR PERIL
(I AM NOT AS STUPID AS I LOOK)
A
former Bulgarian friend of mine, when trying to convince me of the
righteousness of some absurd argument, was fond of saying, in his
very heavy Bulgarian accent, “But, H. K., you don’t understand. I am not
as stupid as I look.”
To clarify, he’s a former friend, but he’s still Bulgarian.
After resigning from the CIA, and even after launching my Iraqi start-
up, Babylon Inc., I have continued to support the US government national
security mission with the same dedication as when I was a staff officer.
Unfortunately, I have been repeatedly reminded that American officials
and policy makers routinely ignore potentially valuable intelligence, pos-
sibly to the detriment of America’s national security.
I often felt like my former friend from Bulgaria when it became clear my
efforts to report important intelligence to relevant US government authorities
were in vain. To cite but one example, I’m still convinced that had the govern-
ment done things my way in Bosnia, we could have captured notorious Serb
war criminal Radovan Karadžić at that time, and my team and I could have
collected the icing-on-the-cake five million dollars in reward money. What
follows are several more examples of this maddening phenomenon and com-
pelling evidence, I hope, that I am not nearly as stupid as I look.During the three years leading up to the 9/11 attacks, I was working with
the wealthy client mentioned in chapter 22, who financed the humanitarian263