Espionage Files: A CIA Officer’s Long, Futile Secret War

WASHINGTON — In Douglas Laux’s final days as a CIA officer, the futility of his mission prompted him to quote George Orwell to his boss.

Laux had spent months in 2012 working with various Middle Eastern nations that were trying to ship arms to Syria to help disparate rebel groups there. But it had become clear to him that the CIA had little ability to control the squabbling and backstabbing among the Saudis, Qataris and other Arabs.

He told a senior CIA officer he felt like Winston Smith, the character in “1984” known for his fatalism, because he was carrying out his work without comprehending the politics and competing agendas thwarting progress in aiding the rebellion. “I understand the how,” Laux said, paraphrasing one of Smith’s famous lines. “I do not understand the why.”

It is a sentiment that might sum up much of Laux’s career at the CIA, an organization he served for eight years as an undercover case officer and soldier in the agency’s shadowy conflicts overseas. His career at the agency began with a tour at a remote firebase in southern Afghanistan and ended with a spot on the agency’s Syria Task Force — a life in war zones that is emblematic of the lives of a large cadre of U.S. spies who joined the CIA after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He left the agency three years ago, but is speaking publicly about his experiences there for the first time in conjunction with the release of a memoir.

The collective weight of all CIA memoirs written since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks could collapse a bookshelf, but Laux brings a raw perspective to the canon. His memoir is not filled with recollections of White House meetings or lengthy defenses of waterboarding. Laux was thousands of miles from Washington, a grunt in a secret war.

“We have officers who have only done war zone stuff since they walked in the door,” said Laux, an intense, sometimes edgy 33-year-old with an athletic build and a trimmed beard. “The big question for the CIA is whether it can be sustained, and whether it finds enough people to invest that time psychologically and emotionally.” Laux spoke in a recent interview in a quiet Washington bar owned by one of his friends.

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