Secret weapon in US war against Iraq: the CIA

Less than one week into the US-led war in Iraq, it is already clear that the campaign involves an unprecedented level of involvement by the CIA.

The shift was clear from the get-go.

President Bush launched the campaign's first airstrikes ahead of schedule after Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, in a now-famous rush to the Pentagon and White House, alerted the president about a fortified bunker where Saddam Hussein and two of his sons were believed to be sleeping.

The results of the airstrikes are still not fully known. But one thing is certain: Since Mr. Tenet was the first to come up with a concrete plan for routing the Taliban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, he and his CIA operatives have been playing a much larger role in both shaping American war plans and working together with military Special Operations Forces to implement them than ever before

"The fact that the CIA got into Afghanistan very early and was apparently very helpful is extremely significant," says Stansfield Turner, former director of the CIA. "Now again, we seem to have CIA agents on the ground [in Iraq]. Just to know where Saddam Hussein is in that city is one thing. But to have the confidence that this intelligence wasn't perishable for several hours [in order to recalibrate missile strikes] is quite remarkable."

It may take some time to clarify how successful intelligence-gathering efforts have been in targeting the Iraqi leadership and locating weapons of mass destruction - two main war goals of the Bush administration.

The fighting is still extremely fluid, with daily ups and downs for advancing ground troops engaging enemy forces. The role of intelligence gathering - crucial in all wars - is not only vital in this case, but much more prominent and public. "Those 72 strikes targeting the leadership in the Baghdad area may have impacted tremendously the ability of the leadership group to sustain operations once the war did begin," says retired Brig. Gen. John Reppert, a military-strategy expert at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "But the other thing I think they deserve a lot of credit for, combined with the military, is what has not happened."

For one thing, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the day after the attacks on Hussein's headquarters that only one civilian had been killed. The person had gone into one targeted building at the last minute to make a phone call.

Another is that the war has not spread beyond Iraq's borders. One of the biggest fears in the execution of this war is that it could have caused retaliatory strikes - especially against Israel and Kuwait. A few Iraqi missiles have been launched toward Kuwait, but none has caused lethal or destructive damage to date.

Page: 1 | 2