hist2004
01-10-2010, 08:03 AM
Could the CIA have achieved what al-Qaeda did?
The audacious al-Qaeda attack in Khost, Afghanistan and the failures to detect the Detroit bomb plot are indications of a broken CIA, writes Toby Harnden in Washington
By Toby Harnden
09 Jan 2010
At the George Bush Center for Intelligence – better known as CIA headquarters – in Langley, Virginia there is a crisis of confidence. Last week, seven of its personnel returned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in flag-draped coffins.
They were killed in an audacious attack in which a triple agent detonated a suicide bomb as he was debriefed at a remote base in Khost, Afghanistan. The agent, an al-Qaeda operative working for the Jordan's General Intelligence Service (GID) which in turn facilitated his working for the CIA, has been identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian trainee doctor.
At the George Bush Center for Intelligence – better known as CIA headquarters – in Langley, Virginia there is a crisis of confidence. Last week, seven of its personnel returned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in flag-draped coffins.
They were killed in an audacious attack in which a triple agent detonated a suicide bomb as he was debriefed at a remote base in Khost, Afghanistan. The agent, an al-Qaeda operative working for the Jordan's General Intelligence Service (GID) which in turn facilitated his working for the CIA, has been identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian trainee doctor.
The CIA dead included the CIA base chief, a mother of three and al-Qaeda specialist who was an alumnus of the Alec Station, the CIA unit that tracked Osama bin Laden.
They perished just as the CIA was coming under political attack in Washington with the revelation that its station chief in Nigeria had been told by the worried father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that his son was involved with Yemeni Islamists.
A cable had been sent but it had sat in Langley without being actioned until after Abdulmutallab boarded a Detroit-bound plane with PETN sewn into his underpants.
As details of the Khost attack first emerged, a blistering 26-page report by Major General Michael Flynn, the senior military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, was released. He charged that "the US intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy" in Afghanistan and "is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which US and allied forces operate".
So what is happening at the CIA? First, we have to dispense with the myth that this is a band of James Bond characters operating independently with a vast array of ingenious gizmos and an unending supply of derring-do.
Alas, the reality is that most CIA employees are bureaucrats and since it was infiltrated by the KGB during the Cold War the rules governing counter-intelligence are so stringent they have created a culture of paranoia and navel-gazing.
CIA officers have to submit a multi-page electronic form to be signed by three levels of supervisor each time they have contact with a foreigner. Entry background checks last more than a year and many recruits fail if they have foreign relatives or have travelled to places like Cuba or Iran. All CIA officers have to take regular lie-detector tests.
The result is that the ideal CIA recruit is a Mormon – clean-living, all-American and perhaps with a language from a year proselytising abroad. Some of the most impressive and courageous citizens the US can produce are in the CIA – and those killed at Khost were of this highest calibre. But these days they are the exceptions.
After 9/11 a behemoth in the form of the Directorate of National Intelligence was created to oversee the CIA and the myriad other US spy agencies. Initiative and creative thinking are stifled; form-filing and rear-covering are rewarded.
Security has become a CIA obsession. In Iraq, its officers lived in their compound within a compound in the Green Zone and very few ever ventured outside the wire. Instead, potential sources were brought inside.
This meant they had little chance to develop contacts or experience Iraqi culture. Most CIA officers in Iraq and Afghanistan spend only a few months in country and for many their spell is just a career tick in the box. Only a handful speak Arabic, Pashto or Dari.
Ironically, in the instance of Khost the very security concerns about meeting al-Balawi outside the base led to the catastrophic decision to let him inside.
Inexperience meant that the CIA relied too heavily on the GID vouching for him so he was not frisked. And an elementary breach of tradecraft meant that at least 13 CIA personnel were bunched around him as he exploded.
In the Cold War, no more than a pair of officers would meet a source. It seems that in the clamour to use al-Balawi to get to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian physician who is al-Qaeda's number two, basic procedures were abandoned.
The Khost attack showed that al-Qaeda was capable of mounting a sophisticated deception operation that required months of planning – across borders and among multiple adversaries of the West, judging by the newly-released video of al-Balawi with the Taliban's leader in Pakistan.
As bait, al-Balawi provided genuine intelligence, perhaps even to the extent of sacrificing al-Qaeda operatives in the process.
It was exactly the kind of operation to infiltrate the enemy that the CIA should be conducting against al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, with the Agency risk-averse, choked up with bureaucracy and demoralised, there is precious little indication that the CIA would even attempt it, let alone pull it off.
Source - (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6956806/Could-the-CIA-have-achieved-what-al-Qaeda-did.html)
The audacious al-Qaeda attack in Khost, Afghanistan and the failures to detect the Detroit bomb plot are indications of a broken CIA, writes Toby Harnden in Washington
By Toby Harnden
09 Jan 2010
At the George Bush Center for Intelligence – better known as CIA headquarters – in Langley, Virginia there is a crisis of confidence. Last week, seven of its personnel returned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in flag-draped coffins.
They were killed in an audacious attack in which a triple agent detonated a suicide bomb as he was debriefed at a remote base in Khost, Afghanistan. The agent, an al-Qaeda operative working for the Jordan's General Intelligence Service (GID) which in turn facilitated his working for the CIA, has been identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian trainee doctor.
At the George Bush Center for Intelligence – better known as CIA headquarters – in Langley, Virginia there is a crisis of confidence. Last week, seven of its personnel returned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in flag-draped coffins.
They were killed in an audacious attack in which a triple agent detonated a suicide bomb as he was debriefed at a remote base in Khost, Afghanistan. The agent, an al-Qaeda operative working for the Jordan's General Intelligence Service (GID) which in turn facilitated his working for the CIA, has been identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian trainee doctor.
The CIA dead included the CIA base chief, a mother of three and al-Qaeda specialist who was an alumnus of the Alec Station, the CIA unit that tracked Osama bin Laden.
They perished just as the CIA was coming under political attack in Washington with the revelation that its station chief in Nigeria had been told by the worried father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that his son was involved with Yemeni Islamists.
A cable had been sent but it had sat in Langley without being actioned until after Abdulmutallab boarded a Detroit-bound plane with PETN sewn into his underpants.
As details of the Khost attack first emerged, a blistering 26-page report by Major General Michael Flynn, the senior military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, was released. He charged that "the US intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy" in Afghanistan and "is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which US and allied forces operate".
So what is happening at the CIA? First, we have to dispense with the myth that this is a band of James Bond characters operating independently with a vast array of ingenious gizmos and an unending supply of derring-do.
Alas, the reality is that most CIA employees are bureaucrats and since it was infiltrated by the KGB during the Cold War the rules governing counter-intelligence are so stringent they have created a culture of paranoia and navel-gazing.
CIA officers have to submit a multi-page electronic form to be signed by three levels of supervisor each time they have contact with a foreigner. Entry background checks last more than a year and many recruits fail if they have foreign relatives or have travelled to places like Cuba or Iran. All CIA officers have to take regular lie-detector tests.
The result is that the ideal CIA recruit is a Mormon – clean-living, all-American and perhaps with a language from a year proselytising abroad. Some of the most impressive and courageous citizens the US can produce are in the CIA – and those killed at Khost were of this highest calibre. But these days they are the exceptions.
After 9/11 a behemoth in the form of the Directorate of National Intelligence was created to oversee the CIA and the myriad other US spy agencies. Initiative and creative thinking are stifled; form-filing and rear-covering are rewarded.
Security has become a CIA obsession. In Iraq, its officers lived in their compound within a compound in the Green Zone and very few ever ventured outside the wire. Instead, potential sources were brought inside.
This meant they had little chance to develop contacts or experience Iraqi culture. Most CIA officers in Iraq and Afghanistan spend only a few months in country and for many their spell is just a career tick in the box. Only a handful speak Arabic, Pashto or Dari.
Ironically, in the instance of Khost the very security concerns about meeting al-Balawi outside the base led to the catastrophic decision to let him inside.
Inexperience meant that the CIA relied too heavily on the GID vouching for him so he was not frisked. And an elementary breach of tradecraft meant that at least 13 CIA personnel were bunched around him as he exploded.
In the Cold War, no more than a pair of officers would meet a source. It seems that in the clamour to use al-Balawi to get to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian physician who is al-Qaeda's number two, basic procedures were abandoned.
The Khost attack showed that al-Qaeda was capable of mounting a sophisticated deception operation that required months of planning – across borders and among multiple adversaries of the West, judging by the newly-released video of al-Balawi with the Taliban's leader in Pakistan.
As bait, al-Balawi provided genuine intelligence, perhaps even to the extent of sacrificing al-Qaeda operatives in the process.
It was exactly the kind of operation to infiltrate the enemy that the CIA should be conducting against al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, with the Agency risk-averse, choked up with bureaucracy and demoralised, there is precious little indication that the CIA would even attempt it, let alone pull it off.
Source - (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6956806/Could-the-CIA-have-achieved-what-al-Qaeda-did.html)