Background
Hart was born Howard Lester Phillips, Junior. 16 October 1940 in Saint Louis, Missouri the only son of Eleanor Laidley and Howard Lester Phillips.
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Howard Hart
Edit ProfileEducation
Hart attended Kent School and graduated from Brent School in the Philippines in 1958. He attended Colby College and the University of Arizona, and has both Bachelor of Arts (Honors) and Master of Arts
Career
He worked as the Central Intelligence Agency chief of station in Islamabad, Pakistan from May 1981 until 1984. He was succeeded by William Piekney in the summer of 1984. Within months of his birth the family traveled to Manila, Philippines where Howard Senior was an engineer with a United States. firm.
When the Japanese invaded Manila early in World World War II, the family was interned first at the 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.
Joseph Hart was a banker with Citi Bank and following an assignment in Calcutta, India they returned to Manila in 1950. degrees in Oriental Studies and Political Science. His languages include Urdu, Indonesian, and German.
Hart joined the Central Intelligence Agency after finishing graduate school at the University of Arizona in 1965.
He spent two years at Camp Peary in Virginia, attending "the standard two-year course foreign.aspiring case officers." He joined the Directorate of Operations after graduation. In 1978 Hart began working the streets of Tehran. His reports that, contrary to over 15 years of Central Intelligence Agency estimates, the Shah"s rule was far from stable or secure were suppressed by more senior personnel within the Central Intelligence Agency. He was captured a few days after the Shah"s fall by an armed group of supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and escaped summary execution by appealing 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 extraordinary Central Intelligence Agency-in-county support structure for the ill-fated Iran Rescue Mission in 1980, and accompanied the mission on deployment. Hart jump-started the Central Intelligence Agency"s efforts to equip the Afghan resistance with weapons and supplies to allow them to mount an effective campaign during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Hart is a United States. Martial Arms weapons collector with a "passion for weapons and paramilitary tactics," making him a natural choice for the Islamabad post. In 2010 Hart published a book called: Intelligence Thoughts: Afghanistan and Iran.
Hart has just published, "A Life for a Life A Memoir: My in Espionage Working for the Central Intelligence Agency": Lulu.com, 2015.
Print and eBook.
Politics
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. And COS, Germany in the period leading up to the collapse of Communism.
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United States