Shifting roles of US spies and special forces
Pentagon takes over some CIA spy operations while US 'super-secret' commandos get duty on US soil.
The US Department of Defense is "
edging into foreign spy operations traditionally handled by the CIA," reports
Reuters.
Pentagon officials announced Monday that the department is now using its own intelligence support group to work directly with US special forces troops overseas.
The
Washington Post
revealed the existence of the group in a report Sunday.
The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting US law to give [Department of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld] broad authority over clandestine operations abroad. ...
Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
In the report, the
Post also points to a recent Pentagon memo stating that "recruited agents may include 'notorious figures' whose links to the US government would be embarrassing if disclosed."
The
Post also explains how the Pentagon perceives the benefits of the unit in contrast to CIA operations.
Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than comparable operations by the CIA. Rumsfeld's dissatisfaction with the CIA's operations directorate, and his determination to build what amounts in some respects to a rival service, follows struggles with then-CIA Director George J. Tenet over intelligence collection priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pentagon officials said the CIA naturally has interests that differ from those of military commanders, but they also criticized its operations directorate as understaffed, slow-moving and risk-averse.
A separate
Post report reveals that some skeptics of Pentagon intelligence initiatives worry about the background of the secret unit's leader. The report also cites special operations soldiers who worked with members of the secret unit as casting
doubts about the experience and abilities of the team.
Internal Pentagon briefings describe Strategic Support Branch members as experienced intelligence professionals with specialized skills, "military operations backgrounds," and the training to "function in all environments under adverse conditions." But four special operations soldiers who provided information for this article, directly or through intermediaries, said those assigned to work with them included out-of-shape men in their fifties and recent college graduates on their first assignments.
Reuters reports that defense officials who asked not to be identified said the support unit was for "tactical analysis" and had been working with elite military units for
nearly two years in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The
Post, citing Pentagon documents and interviews with participants, reported on Sunday that Mr. Rumsfeld had created the Strategic Support Branch to end "near total dependence" on the CIA for human intelligence.
The White House and Pentagon denied that the unit constitutes an attempt by Rumsfeld to grab authority over intelligence operations, suggesting that it was a part of military changes sparked by 9/11.
"There is no unit that is directly reportable to the secretary of defense for clandestine operations as described in the Post article," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday.
In a
written statement posted Sunday on the DoD website, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita asserts that the department is "not attempting to 'bend' statutes to fit desired activities, as is suggested in [the
Washington Post] article."
It is accurate and should not be surprising that the Department of Defense is attempting to improve its long-standing human intelligence capability.
A principal conclusion of the 9/11 Commission report is that the US human intelligence capability must be improved across the board.
The demands of the Global War on Terror necessitate a framework by which military forces and traditional human intelligence work more closely together and in greater numbers than they have in the past. These actions are being taken within existing statutory authorities to support traditional military operations and any assertion to the contrary is wrong.
The Associated Press reports that the Pentagon sent its top intelligence official to Capital Hill on Monday to
explain the mission and makeup of the Strategic Support Branch. The Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, John Warner (R) of Virginia, and the panel's top Democrat, Carl Levin of Michigan, met for over an hour with Stephen A. Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.
Pentagon officials said Monday that the unit had a hidden hand in interrogations and other aspects of the clue-sifting work inside Iraq that narrowed the search for Saddam Hussein and led to his capture, reports
AP.
Meanwhile,
The New York Times reported Saturday that a "
small group of super-secret commandos" were ready to protect President Bush during the inauguration in Washington last week. The
Times reports that "these elite forces were poised to act under a 1997 program that was updated and enhanced after the Sept. 11 attacks, but nonetheless departs from how the military has historically been used on American soil."
These commandos, operating under a secret counterterrorism program code-named Power Geyser, were mentioned publicly for the first time this week on a Web site for a new book, "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operation in the 9/11 World," (Steerforth Press). The book was written by William M. Arkin, a former intelligence analyst for the Army. ...
Mr. Arkin, in the online supplement to his book (
codenames.org/documents.html), says the contingency plan, called JCS Conplan 0300-97, calls for "special-mission units in extra-legal missions to combat terrorism in the United States" based on top-secret orders that are managed by the military's Joint Staff and coordinated with the military's Special Operations Command and Northern Command, which is the lead military headquarters for domestic defense. ...
Three senior Defense Department and Bush administration officials confirmed the existence of the plan and mission, but disputed Mr. Arkin's characterization of the mission as "extra-legal."
One of the officials said the units operated in the United States under "special authority" from either the president or the secretary of defense.
The
Times reports that advocates for government declassification of more of official documents said the book would "fuel the debate over the balance between the public's right to know and the need to keep more military and intelligence matters secret in the campaign against terror."
Also...
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BBC)
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Army plans to keep Iraq troop level through '06 (
The Washington Post)
•
The company that runs the empire (
Counter Punch)
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