"WE LOST THE ENEMY WE CAME TO KNOW AND LOVE "

Intelligence veteran Mark Lowenthal reveals how after a shift to counter-terrorism from the 1990s, spycraft is returning to its Cold War operations

- WORDS: LOUIS HARDIMAN

The past 35 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union have seen an unprecedented upheaval within the US intelligence community. It's something with which Mark Lowenthal, former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence, is all too familiar. After joining the US government in 1975, Lowenthal spent the remainder of the first Cold War forging a career in the intelligence services, a career which lasted until 2005.

“The major focus was the Soviet Union,” Lowenthal tells History of War. “Robert Gates, the Director of Central Intelligence [from 1986 to 1989], said that we spent over 50 cents of every intelligence dollar on some aspect of the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact or China. The Soviet Union collapsed and Jim Clapper, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at the time, said: ‘We lost the enemy we came to know and love.’”

Uncertainty followed as the US intelligence community scrambled to find a new target, while funding and personnel shrunk. Lowenthal reflects: “George Tenet, [Director of Central Intelligence from 1997 to 2004] said that we lost the equivalent of 23,000 positions over those years.” In 2001, the intelligence community found its new target. “9/11 happened and we had a focus again,” says Lowenthal.