Howard Hart Howard Phillips Hart is a former Central Intelligence Agency officer . He worked as the CIA chief of station in Islamabad , Pakistan 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 in 1958 . He attended Cornell University and the University of Arizona , and has both B . A . ( Honors ) and M . A . degrees in Oriental Studies and Political Science . His languages include Urdu , Indonesian , and German . Career . Hart joined the CIA 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 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 ; and COS , Germany in the period leading up to the collapse of Communism . In 1978 Hart began working the streets of Tehran . His reports that , contrary to over 15 years of CIA estimates , the Shah ' 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 , 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 . 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 . His heroic actions in leading the resistance to the Soviet occupation . For his action he received the Intelligence Star . Currently , Howard Hart and his wife , Jean , live in the mountains above Charlottesville , Virginia . In 2010 Hart published a book called : " Intelligence Thoughts : Afghanistan and Iran . "