Jami Miscik

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Jami Miscik (1958-) is Vice-Chairman of Kissinger Associates and member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was previously Global Head of Sovereign Risk at Lehman Brothers; before that, she was a U.S. intelligence professional.

She told an interviewer that an undergraduate experience brought her into analysis, both intelligence and financial. "When I was an undergraduate at Pepperdine University, in Malibu, California, I volunteered to tutor in a maximum security prison for juvenile offenders..." She was working with a 16-year-old involved in a drive-by shooting. "One day, I asked him how he decided which gang to join: Was it based on where he lived, where he went to school, or what? He floored me when he said, "Oh, I just joined the one my mother was in."

I remember thinking that he probably grew up 15 miles away from where I did, in Redondo Beach, and what incredibly different experiences and influences we had. I extrapolated that into what differences there must be in the world, based on our different experiences. And I became intrigued with the need to understand other cultures before you can ever begin to understand international issues.[1]

Industry

Speaking of her career, she told an interviewer that she had originally planned on banking. "...After I got my Masters degree at the University of Denver's School of International Studies, I ditched the idea of a New York banking career to join the CIA. I stayed 22 years. Now that I'm at Lehman Brothers, I realize that I have invaluable international perspective. How strange that it started with a wayward kid in the Santa Monica Mountains."[1]

At Lehman Brothers, her job was forecasting world events that might affect financial markets. In one case, she predicted calm after a North Korean nuclear test, but, with respect to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's boasts about nationalization were generally dismissed, she warned, "He really means this." She predicted an acceleration of his program to nationalize industries: "He'll be doing things bigger, bolder."[2]

Intelligence

Central Intelligence Agency

She was Deputy Director for Intelligence, the head of the analytical side of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2002 to 2005, with a close professional relationship to George Tenet.

Miscik complained to Tenet, before the Iraq War, of White House pressure to give them justification of a specific link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

“I’m not going back there again, George. If I have to go back to hear their crap and rewrite this g_ddamn report… I’m resigning, right now.” Tenet calls (Assistant National Security Adviser) Stephen Hadley and shouts into the phone, “She is not coming over. We are not rewriting this f_cking report one more time. It’s f_cking over. Do you hear me! And don’t you ever f_cking treat my people this way again. Ever![3]

In a 2004 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, however, it was suggested she bowed to politics enough to recommend "stretching to the limit" the available evidence of the connection. [4]

National Security Council

She was Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration from 1995 to 1996.

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "In her own words: Jami Miscik's path to the CIA", Forbes (magazine), 11 July 2007
  2. Patricia Sellers (11 July 2007), "The spy goes to Wall Street", Fortune (magazine)
  3. Ron Suskind (2006), The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 9780743271097, pp. 190-191
  4. Spencer Ackerman (16 November 2004), "Killing the messenger", Salon.com