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He also complained that CIA leaders have not been held accountable and noted that the official who had been in charge of the exposed Iran operation was later promoted.

Perle declined to name the individual, but other sources said it was Stephen Richter, who was appointed head of the agency's near east division in 1994. He has since retired and could not be reached for comment.

September 21, 1999

COMPANY OF SPIES: A new DO leadership team has come together under Pavitt, 53, a former operations officer and National Security Council official, and his new deputy, Associate Deputy Director for Operations Hugh Turner, 56, a legendary DO operator who won the Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart as a Green Beret in Vietnam.

Directly below Turner in the clandestine service's chain of command are Barry G. Royden, 61, associate deputy director in charge of counterintelligence, and John F. Nelson, 47, associate deputy director for resources, plans and policy.

Royden assumed the CIA's top counterintelligence post after serving as chief of the Latin America Division. Nelson filled a newly created associate deputy director's post after serving as CIA Director George J. Tenet's chief of staff, chief financial officer at the National Reconnaissance Office and a budget analyst on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Replacing Turner as director of the technology management group within the directorate is Stephen W. Richter, 57, former chief of the Near East Division.

While Pavitt, Turner, Nelson and Royden have all spent their careers mostly in the shadows, the preferred state for directorate officials, Richter last year earned the wrath of Richard Perle, an assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration, who publicly demanded Richter's ouster for allegedly botching a series of covert actions aimed at toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"Stephen Richter has an unbroken record of failure," Perle said in a speech last October at the American Enterprise Institute. "The head of the Near East division at the CIA . . . should be removed on grounds of incompetence and a lack of the fundamental qualifications to hold that position."

A CIA official responded that, far from removing Richter, the agency awarded him its Distinguished Intelligence Medal just last week. In five years running the Near East Division, the official said, Richter sharpened "its focus on key issues, was a forceful advocate for more resources, and put unprecedented emphasis on language training."

Clinton's CIA: rewarding failure.