Howard Hart
Encyclopedia
Howard Phillips Hart is a former Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

 officer. He worked as the CIA Chief of Station in Islamabad
Islamabad
Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and the tenth largest city in the country. Located within the Islamabad Capital Territory , the population of the city has grown from 100,000 in 1951 to 1.7 million in 2011...

, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 from May 1981 until 1984. He was succeeded by William Piekney in the summer of 1984.

Early life

Hart was born Howard Lester Phillips, Jr. 16 October 1940 in St. Louis, Missouri the only son of Eleanor Laidley and Howard Lester Phillips. Within months of his birth the family traveled to Manila, Philippines where Howard senior was an engineer with a U.S. firm. When the Japanese invaded Manila early in World War II, the family was interned first in University of Santo Tomas in Manila, then moved to Los Banos. On 26 February 1945, The 11th Airborne Division jumped in behind Japanese lines and extricated the 2000+ internees under fire. They took them to Manila and onward to the United States.

Following their return to the United States, Eleanor and Howard Sr. divorced and Eleanor married Joseph Chittendon Hart. Joseph Hart was a banker with Citi Bank and following an assignment in Calcutta, India they returned to Manila in 1950.

Hart graduated from Kent School
Kent School
Kent School is a private, co-educational college preparatory school in Kent, Connecticut, USA. The Reverend Frederick Herbert Sill, Order of the Holy Cross, established the school in 1906 and it retains its affiliation with the Episcopal Church of the United States.Students at Kent come from more...

 in 1958. He attended Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 and the University of Arizona
University of Arizona
The University of Arizona is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The University of Arizona was the first university in the state of Arizona, founded in 1885...

, and has both B.A. (Honors) and M.A. degrees in Oriental Studies and Political Science. His languages include Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...

, Indonesian, and German.

Career

Hart joined the CIA after finishing graduate school
Graduate school
A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...

 at the University of Arizona in 1965. He spent two years at Camp Peary
Camp Peary
Camp Peary is a military reservation in York County near Williamsburg, Virginia. Officially it is referred to as the Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity under the auspices of the Department of Defense, but it is widely believed to be the location of a covert CIA training facility known...

 in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

, attending "the standard two-year course for...aspiring case officers." He joined the Directorate of Operations after graduation.

A career Near East Division officer, Hart's overseas postings included five years in India; two years as a Chief of Station (COS) in the Persian Gulf; a three year posting in Iran, before, during and after the Iranian Revolution (where he was Chief of Station after the Shah fell and the American Embassy was overrun by Khomeini elements); three years as COS Pakistan during the Soviet war in Afghanistan
Soviet war in Afghanistan
The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers...

; and COS, Germany in the period leading up to the collapse of Communism.

In 1978 Hart began working the streets of Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

. His reports that, contrary to over 15 years of CIA estimates, the Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, Shah of Persia , ruled Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow by the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979...

's rule was far from stable or secure were suppressed by more senior personnel within the CIA. He was captured a few days after the Shah's fall by an armed group of supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini
Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran...

, and escaped summary execution by appealing asking to speak to a mullah, who agreed that the Koran did not sanction such punishment.

Immediately following his return from Iran in the fall of 1979 he was assigned to the Pentagon's "Iran Rescue Mission Joint Task Force" as the senior intelligence advisor to the Task Force commander. Hart established and managed an extraordinay CIA-in-county support structure for the ill-fated Iran Rescue Mission in 1980, and accompanied the mission on deployment.

Hart jump-started the CIA's efforts to equip the Afghan resistance with weapons and supplies to allow them to mount an effective campaign during the Soviets, known as Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency program to arm, train, and finance the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, 1979 to 1989...

. Hart is a U.S. Martial Arms weapons collector with a "passion for weapons and paramilitary tactics," making him a natural choice for the Islamabad post. In his words: "I was the first chief of station ever sent abroad with this wonderful order: `Go kill Soviet soldiers’. Imagine! I loved it.” “the mission was not to liberate Afghanistan,” “it was a noble goal.” Hart's background as a Paramilitary Operations Officer made him a perfect candidate to be the field general for the covert war in Afghanistan. His heroic actions in leading the resistance to the Soviet occupation. For his action he received the Intelligence Star
Intelligence Star
The Intelligence Star is an award given by the Central Intelligence Agency for a "voluntary act or acts of courage performed under hazardous conditions or for outstanding achievements or services rendered with distinction under conditions of grave risk." The award citation is from the Director...

.

Currently, Howard Hart and his wife, Jean, live in the mountains above Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville is an independent city geographically surrounded by but separate from Albemarle County in the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, and named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the queen consort of King George III of the United Kingdom.The official population estimate for...

.

In 2011 Hart published a book called: "Intelligence Thoughts: Afghanistan and Iran" available from www.lulu.com
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