by J.R. Seeger For this week’s Dispatch, former senior CIA Case Officer J.R. Seeger writes about the role his watches played in the early days of the conflict in Afghanistan. As Seeger outlines, watches are tools, and one should choose the best tool for the job. In the world of espionage, the tool is not always a Rolex. We often worry that W.O.E. gives the perception that every Case Officer, Navy SEAL or Special Forces operator is running around the world with a luxury timepiece on their wrist.  While that is largely the focus of this platform, the truth is many of the best practitioners rely on digital tools to accomplish their task. Sometimes cheap, reliable digital watches are the best tools for espionage. Digital Watches of Espionage - The Role Watches Played in the Early Days of the CIA’s War in Afghanistan October 2001: I was the team leader on one of the first CIA teams into Afghanistan. Other, more articulate writers have related the story of our team and work with US Special Forces. 12 Strong by Doug Stanton and First Casualty by Toby Harnden are detailed accounts of the Fall of 2001. Instead, this is a short essay about the watches I wore during that deployment behind the Taliban lines in the Fall of 2001. For most of my deployments in the 1990s, I wore either a Timex Ironman or a Casio G-shock. My watch choice was based on two requirements: accurate timekeeping and low cost.  During travels in the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia, the idea of wearing something other than an expendable watch was out of the question.  Plus, my only “good” watch, a 1971 Bulova Deep Sea Chronograph, was engraved with my initials, not always something you want on your wrist when you might be someone else. CIA’s Team Alpha Prior to Insertion into Afghanistan. Seeger Back Row, Third From Left As the team headed to our intermediate stop in Uzbekistan, our level of kit was minimal. I often say our team picture (above) looks like eight bikers with Kalashnikovs. Jeans, work shirts, boots and fleece jackets, weapons, radios and money. Everything you would need for a successful trip into a war-zone. During my pack-out, I didn’t pay any attention to the watch on my wrist. Of course, I should have realized that I was probably pushing the envelope on the battery in my Timex, but I had a couple of other things to worry about as we designed a campaign plan for five provinces in Afghanistan. As we completed our final briefings in isolation at Karshi Khanabad Airbase (aka KKUZ), I realized my watch had quit. No warning. Just a blank screen. Less than ideal when precision is required. Casio F-91W, w/ AKS-74U (Photo Credit James Rupley) One of my teammates laughed and said, “Boss, you forgot that two is one and one is none.” He reached into his ruck and pulled out a Casio F-91W.  Probably the least expensive piece of kit in all our inventory. He tossed it to me, and it went on my wrist.  A cheap watch is better than no watch at all! We loaded into MH-60 helicopters in the early morning of 16 October for our insertion.  That’s a story that has nothing to do with watches. Lessons: - two is one and one is none- you may never know when a piece of kit is going to be essential Tool Watches as Operational Gifts to Afghan Warlords In November 2001, we were in a consolidation phase of the effort to defeat the Taliban. By this time, we had consolidated the two teams, Alpha and Bravo and had a full complement of eleven to handle the region. We often split into buddy teams to travel with our Afghan and Army Special Forces colleagues, hunting Taliban and building tribal alliances.  Early in November, in one of our parachute resupplies, I received a Suunto watch - an early version of the Suunto tool watch series.  Someone on the team decided I needed a better watch and put in the request. The early Suunto watches were large plastic timepieces that served as a compass, thermometer, and barometer as well as the standard multiple time zones display, timers and alarms.  It was a bit more of a commando watch than I thought I needed, but I was certainly ready to use it.  It was big and regularly got caught on rucksack straps as we loaded on horseback and/or trucks.  Still, it was light and had a large display.  At 47 with already aging eyesight, I was ready to enjoy a larger screen. “Suunto on my wrist in the Darya Suf Valley”, J.R. Seeger pictured left, (Photo Credit: Toby Harnden/Unknown) In mid-November, two of us went with Afghan warlord and then CIA partner - Abdul Rashid Dostum on a tour of the Uzbek region of Northwestern Afghanistan.  More than anything else, it was a “victory lap” for our Uzbek ally and that meant traveling miles on dirt roads between Sheberghan and cities and towns in northwest Afghanistan. A Toyota Land Cruiser for us, two Toyota Hi-Lux pickups for the security detachment.  Washboard roads punctuated by public events made for a very long ride. At the end of the day, Dostam decided to take a shortcut by traveling on what he said was an old smugglers’ trail running through the desert and ending back in Sheberghan.  We were all tired and dozed off as the headlights of the Toyotas cut through the dust raised by our vehicles. I don’t know exactly what woke me from my dozing, but when I finally cleared my head, it seemed like I recognized the terrain.  Of course, desert terrain is not all that distinctive, so I would have been willing to accept the fact that it was a trick of memory and fatigue. Still, I used the Suunto compass feature to check our heading. After twenty minutes, I realized we were slowly circling a prominent hill.  The drivers were following a track that circled the hill.  The compass showed our heading.  Sheberghan was east.  We were going north, then west then south…. Well, that was enough to convince me we were lost. Seeger Center, Dostum looking at him, Casio F-91W (Photo Credit Unknown / Toby Harnden) I woke up Dostum.  He was incredulous.  There was no way we could be lost on his turf.  I took off the watch, showed him the compass readings.  He was furious.  This was smugglers’ country.  Wandering about might not get us in a battle with remnants of the Taliban, but it certainly could get us in a firefight with smugglers.  Dostum put the watch on his wrist, dope slapped his driver, and took charge of the navigation. Dostum wore the Suunto for the rest of our time in Afghanistan. I wore the F-91W for another two years and then switched to a G-shock.  At the end of the day, a good tool watch is important.  What you need depends on where you are.  Today, I have far more watches than I need.    Most of which are inexpensive mechanical tool watches and I enjoy wearing them. I recently had the 1971 Bulova serviced, and it will remain a cherished possession. But, I still have an F-91W in the inventory – just in case. Seeger and Dostum on the night of insertion, 16 October 2001, Casio F-91W on J.R. Seeger’s wrist. (Photo Credit: Unknown Toby Harnden) J.R. Seeger served as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne and as a CIA officer for a total of 27 years of federal service. He served 17 years in multiple field assignments focused on counterterrorism, counterintelligence and irregular warfare.  During his final, 3-year assignment in CIA Headquarters, he first served as a chief of operations for a geographic division in the Directorate of Operations and then served as a deputy director and deputy chief of the CIA Counterterrorism Center.  Seeger led multiple, small unit teams during his service, including leading one of the CIA teams that infiltrated into Afghanistan after 9/11. Since his retirement, J.R. has written articles and book reviews in the CIA professional journal “Studies in Intelligence” and the T.E. Lawrence Society newsletter. His seven-part MIKE4 series is about a family who have served in the special operations and intelligence community from World War II to the present. This newsletter has been reviewed by the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board to prevent the disclosure of classified information. Further Reading:CIA’s JAWBREAKER Team And A Rolex Submariner

By Cole Pennington I spent four years writing about watches professionally as an editor at Hodinkee, the leading publication in the world of horology. I focused my writing mainly on tool watches, meaning watches that were engineered and used for a specific function, oftentimes by members of the military, scientists, explorers, or other professionals that didn’t treat their watch as a decorative piece of jewelry.  The stories that kept me up for days at a time researching and writing focused on watches that played a small but important role in shaping history. For example, the Rolex Oyster Datejust that Civil Air Transport pilot Norman Schwartz was wearing when his C-47 was shot down during a 1952 CIA covert operation in Jilin Province, China. Or the WWII-era Active Service watch that Lt. Alex C. Jones wore aboard the HMCS Oakville that eventually returned home to a museum in Canada, over half a century later.  I was lucky to explore stories like these, any many more. But there were so many stories that I didn’t have the opportunity to dig into, simply because of the fact that their very nature was deemed far too controversial for mainstream consumption. I had to turn down dozens of pitches and kill my own ideas that I thought were fascinating, but were unfit for the larger world of watch enthusiasm.  These stories never found a place to land – until now. (Photo Credit: Cole Pennington/Hodinkee) I connected with Watches of Espionage a year and a half ago over a shared appreciation for watches that had fascinating stories to tell, long before it grew into a well-known platform in both the world of watch nerdery and intelligence/Special Operations. It’s been a long time in the making, but I’ve finally found a space to tell those stories, right here at W.O.E.  What’s the story behind the Omega Constellation that North Korean founder Kim Il-sung commissioned for his most senior officials? What happened to the infamous Rolex GMT-Master once worn by Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara? Or Fidel Castro’s Rolex collection? What does the “Blackwater Breitling” represent? “Blackwater Breitling” - W.O.E. Personal Collection (Photo Credit: James Rupley) As the Dispatch takes on a life of its own, we’ll answer those questions. But first, it’s important to turn the lens on ourselves, the readership of this newsletter, and look at how we can best approach controversial watches and the stories connected to them. Mainstream watch media often shies away from controversial watches because undoubtedly someone will be offended by the discussion of the watch in question. But by doing that we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to educate ourselves. When it comes to war, conflict, espionage, and geopolitical affairs, it’s always murky. Sometimes there isn’t an obvious “right” answer immediately. We’re very quick to judge without knowing all the facts. There’s a haze of mystery around watches connected to this world. But through scholarship and a nuanced approach, we can cut through that haze and get to the truth. That’s part of the mission of WOE.  Sometimes history, and further, horological history, is ugly. A number of respected Swiss (and German) watch brands produced watches for the Nazi forces during the dark days of WWII. There’s nothing glorious about watches serving as a cog in a war machine meant to obliterate the societal ideals we hold dear.   But some watches take some time to work through; it’s important to understand the context surrounding them. For example, the series of Elgin watches ordered by The Russian War Relief in 1941 and delivered to Soviet troops to aid in the fight against the Nazi forces. From the story I wrote in 2019: The watches are inscribed with an encouraging note to Soviet soldiers: "To the Heroic People of the USSR – Russian War Relief USA,” with the latter half of the inscription being a transliteration into Cyrillic characters from English.  There was a healthy amount of skepticism from the Western Allies towards the Stalin-led Soviet Union at the time, but the need to work together became obvious as Hitler’s Germany grew more powerful. American policymakers handled Soviet cooperation with a sort of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach. It wasn’t necessarily an alliance formed from shared values, brotherhood, or kinship, but rather it was an alliance born out of sheer necessity. The only way to stop Germany was to band together. Winston Churchill shared the sentiment with typical English wit: "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons."  The war ended with the defeat of the Nazis, and the Russian War Relief dissolved as America entered peacetime. Pins, posters, and records at the New York Public Library are all that's left of the organization, but every now and then a confusing watch pops up from an American watchmaker with Cyrillic writing on the back. The relationship that developed between Russia and America in the post-war years is another chapter in history entirely, but the watch serves as a reminder of the time our nations came together to fight a greater evil.  The Russian War Relief gave the Soviet soldiers a vital timekeeping tool for warfare; the Soviet soldiers gave all they could in the fight against the Nazis. Right now Russian forces are carrying out a hostile and bloody invasion on neighboring Ukraine under the autocratic Putin regime, flying in the face of international diplomacy and leaving thousands dead and a number of cities in ruins. Even Switzerland, with its age-old neutrality, was challenged by these actions. With the war in Ukraine raging, the Elgin I wrote about in 2019 can be seen in a different light – but it shouldn't. Context is important when we think through watches with a contentious past. We must set aside our biases and look at watches through the lens of history.  Looking at watches with a complicated history requires ruthless objectivity, that’s the only way to cut through the discomfort of looking at topics and periods of history which don’t represent humanity at its best. By doing this, it allows us to produce scholarship around watches that we would normally write off as simply unacceptable. Che Guevara smoking a cigar with his infamous Rolex GMT Master Ref. 1675 (Photo Credit: Unknown) At W.O.E., we don’t shy away from hard truths. Many see watches in the context of a modern luxury status symbol, but watches can also serve as historical objects that challenge social narratives. As an editor at Hodinkee, when I first contacted W.O.E. to write about the role of the wristwatch in the world of intelligence, he debunked a lot of the common notions created by the likes of James Bond and instead revealed that watches are often used as gifts to build relationships in the modern world of intelligence operations. As early as WWI “trench watches” were used as a bargaining chip for a soldier's release. Some even had a gold insert set into the caseback that could be removed and traded for freedom. These watches are fascinating. I’ve written about their unlikely beauty at length.  WWI Era “Trench Watches” (Photo Credit: Cole Pennington/Hodinkee) But the timepieces were made for a singular purpose, to provide Allied soldiers with an advantage on the battlefield. They increased their lethal capabilities. And that’s why it’s important to consider context when looking at watches. They can teach us about design, history, and most importantly, ourselves.  Read Next: Man O'War And The Horological Symbols That Inspire Us

At the entrance of the CIA's Counterterrorism Mission Center (CTMC, formerly CTC) is a sign that reads, “Every day is September 12, 2001.” While most of the country moved on from the horrific days immediately following September 11th, the men and women of CTMC continue to live this motto, serving quietly in the shadows to prevent another mass casualty event. One of these men was Gary Schroen, a legendary CIA Case Officer who led the initial Northern Alliance Liaison Team –codenamed JAWBREAKER– into Afghanistan in late 2001. When he returned from that historic assignment, he commemorated the accomplishment by purchasing a two tone Rolex Submariner with a brilliant blue dial. Schroen passed away in August at the age of 80, after a career at the CIA lasting five decades. Schroen’s widow, Anne McFadden, recalls that the Submariner was a constant presence on Schroen’s wrist, and now she keeps the watch on the dresser in her bedroom next to a picture of Schroen as a memento of her late husband. Rolex Submariner visible during Schroen’s 2005 appearance on NBCs Meet the Press. (Photo credit: NBC) After the attacks of September 11th 2001, Schroen, then 59 years-old, delayed his retirement to lead the team of CIA officers who were among the first on the ground in Afghanistan. Within 15 days of the attacks, Schroen and six other CIA officers linked up with the Northern Alliance in the Panjshir Valley. The JAWBREAKER team would establish the foundation for the swift defeat of the Taliban and deal a significant blow to al-Qaeda. As publicly documented by CIA, “by early December 2001–in less than three months–the Taliban regime had been overthrown, a significant number of the al-Qa’ida leadership had been killed or captured, and a major terrorist safe haven had been eliminated.” This was made possible by the heroic actions of Schroen and his team, and the decades of work in preparation for that pivotal moment. Schroen, realizing the historical significance of the operation, documented his experiences in the 2005 book, First In. According to a recent Washington Post article, Schroen also commemorated his successful mission against the Taliban by purchasing a Rolex Submariner. At the time, Schroen reportedly said, “I’ve always wanted a Rolex and I survived Afghanistan and I am buying one.” And so he did. Schroen’s widow, Anne McFadden, holding her husband's Rolex Submariner 16613. (Photo credit: Bill O’Leary, Washington Post) The watch is a Rolex Submariner 16613, nicknamed the “Bluesy” for the unique sunburst dial. Produced from 1988-2009, the reference showcases a striking blue dial and two-tone “Rolesor” bezel and bracelet. (Rolesor is Rolex’s term for two-tone gold and stainless steel.) The drilled lug holes match the purchase date of the early 2000s as Rolex phased out drilled lugs shortly after. Despite the Hollywood depiction, even legendary CIA officers are normal people. Like the real estate agent who commemorates his accomplishment as “salesman of the year” with a new watch, CIA officers are no different. In fact, at CIA, there is even an informal name for this, the so-called “war zone watch.” W.O.E. wrote about this in a Hodinkee article, after returning from Iraq, Afghanistan, or one of the undeclared expeditionary locations, many officers take a portion of their savings and purchase a watch to discreetly commemorate the accomplishment. The Submariner reference 16613 with the blue dial is an interesting choice by Schroen; I've generally viewed this reference as flashier than the subtle black Submariner. Having crossed paths with Gary several times throughout my career, he was a humble guy. He could easily be mistaken for an accountant, small business owner or stay-at-home dad if you met him at a neighborhood bar-b-que. He was not flashy, and this watch appears at odds with his more traditional demeanor and quiet professional ethos. But as true watch connoisseurs know, a watch is (or should be) a deeply personal choice. It is something one buys for oneself and not for others. We can only speculate on his reasons for purchasing that specific reference, but something about the gold and blue dial clearly spoke to Schroen. This story underscores the notion that seemingly insignificant tools are a part of our identity when we are alive and our legacy when we pass. Sure, It is easy to say, “it's just a watch,” but to McFadden, it’s so much more. Like Todd Beamer’s Rolex found in the rubble of Flight 93, the Submariner is a permanent piece of her husband, a memento she will cherish and a symbol of both his service and the CIA’s response to 9/11. CIA Medals earned by Gary Schroen. (Photo credit: Bill O’Leary, Washington Post) In a rare statement by CIA Director William J. Burns, the CIA honored Schroen’s service to the nation, calling him “a legend and inspiration to every Agency officer. . . . Gary embodied the very best of our organization. We will never forget his unwavering dedication, loyalty, and perseverance to protect and defend our country.” In fact, Gary was one of the few officers I am aware of that was able to write a book and still maintain his credibility within the CIA. In our world, that’s a rare occurrence. Gary, thank you for everything you have done for our nation, you have made your mark on the history of the United States and we are forever in your debt. Read Next: The Lasting Legacy Of The CIA’s Lockheed A-12 And The Watch That Served It This newsletter has been reviewed by the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board to prevent the disclosure of classified information.   Bonus: Mi-17 Helicopter Clock, used to insert the initial 7 member CIA Team in Afghanistan. Currently at the CIA museum in Langley, VA. CIA Museum Poster commemorating Jawbreaker Team. “Because of the relationship the CIA had developed with the Northern Alliance in the years leading up to the September attacks, the Agency was in a strong position to be first on the ground in Afghanistan. The CIA proposed a plan to send seven highly trained officers into the field to renew relationships with Afghan partners and collect real-time, actionable intelligence. By Sept. 26, 2001, just 15 days after the attacks on U.S. soil, the Northern Alliance Liaison Team-codenamed "JAWBREAKER"-was on the ground and operating in Afghanistan.”

A Former CIA Case Officer Reveals The Surprising Connection Between Watches and Espionage Luxury timepieces play a significant role in the murky world of spycraft – just not the way they're portrayed in Hollywood. (Originally featured in Hodinkee.)