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As President Obama pointed out in his recent speech, we’ve got a major problem with our ‘Intelligence Community’, in failing to connect the dots on the underpants bomber. Although he briefly mentioned the CIA tragedy in Khost, he didn’t dwell on it. I would posit that that tragedy was more of a problem systemic to our Intelligence Apparatus than the undies bomber…
Pat Lang points out three principles that were violated or ignored outright…
1- Never trust a recruited foreign asset (spy).
2- Never let the asset direct what is going to happen in the operation.
3- Never bring a recruited asset into any permanent operational facility, much less your base.
…Three Middle Eastern counterterrorism officials said 32-year-old physician al-Balawi was jailed for three days after he signed up for a humanitarian mission to the Gaza Strip with a Jordanian field hospital following Israel’s offensive there. At that time, authorities were aware that al-Balawi had posted fiery writings on militant Web sites, calling on Muslims to join a holy war against Israel and the United States… …The Jordanian Intelligence Directorate wanted al-Balawi, who was respected among al-Qaida and other militants for his Web writings, to help them and their CIA allies capture or kill al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man, according to a counterterrorism official based in the Middle East… …Another counterterrorism official in the Middle East confirmed the account of al-Balawi’s jailing and said his allegiance was to al-Qaida from the start — not with his Jordanian recruiters or their CIA friends — and never wavered.
Former intelligence officials said they were aghast at Balawi’s ability to surround himself with CIA officers on a base.
"I have no idea how a potential hostile ends up standing next to at least 13 CIA personnel," said a former agency case officer. "It’s incredibly regrettable, the loss of life, but I have never heard of anything as unprofessional. There’s an old infantry rule: Don’t bunch up."
Traditionally, even informants who are assets of friendly countries are handled with caution, the former case officer said. "He is a potential hostile," he said.
…Al-Balawi was not searched for bombs when he got onto Camp Chapman, according to both former officials and a current intelligence official.
The former senior intelligence official said one of the big unanswered questions is why so many people were present for the debriefing – the interview of the source – when the explosive was detonated.
A half-dozen former CIA officers told The Associated Press that in most cases, only one or two agency officers would typically meet with a possible informant along with an interpreter. Such small meetings would normally be used to limit the danger and the possible exposure of the identities of both officers and informants.
As Obama said in his speech that he’s not interested in seeing finger-pointing and looking forward, I strongly disagree and in fact, heads should roll…
Who is the juvenile ass that was running this operation?
The CIA decided that the "take" sounded so appealing that they would bring this foreign espionage agent, recruited by the Jordanians but not a Jordanian intelligence man, into the CIA’s operating base near the Pakistan border for de-briefing? They did it because he wanted it that way? HELLO!! Anyone home here? Anyone? They drove him from Pakistan? From the Quetta area? Hello!!
First of all, if they could pick him up, then they could have taken him to another location in Afghanistan, the region, Jordan or ANYWHERE ELSE but the damned base where the field team was located. What were they going to do, stage a dinner in his honor at the base? Were they going to dress him up in some uniform (an old CIA trick) to make him feel good?
What would have been wrong with de-briefing him in some distant place with the team sitting in by VTR?
Heads should roll, those that are left among the people who had any part in these stupidities. pl
Ironically, it’s not just the CIA Apparatchik in Afghanistan that is a major fail…
General Hits US Spy Ops in Afghanistan
… Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only "marginally relevant" to the overall mission, focusing too much on the enemy and not enough on civilian life, according to NATO’s top intelligence official.
The stinging assessment – released less than a week after a suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer in eastern Afghanistan – said field agents are not providing intelligence analysts with the information needed to answer questions asked by President Barack Obama and the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
U.S. intelligence officials and analysts are "ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects … and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers," U.S. Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn wrote in a 26-page report released Monday by the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington…
"These analysts are starved for information from the field – so starved, in fact, that many say their jobs feel more like fortune telling than serious detective work," said the report. "It is little wonder then that many decision makers rely more on newspapers than military intelligence to obtain `ground truth.‘"
Field intelligence officers should not limit their reports to diagraming insurgent networks, Flynn suggested. They also should provide information about meetings with villagers and tribal leaders, translated summaries of local radio broadcasts that influence local farmers and field observations of Afghan soldiers and aid workers.
Flynn suggested setting up one-stop information centers where unclassified information could be organized and made available to the military, donor nations and aid workers.
We need to truly rethink our strategy and our goals…
Unlike, the undies bomber, in which Obama says it’s not a failure to collect intel, it’s the failure to connect the dots… Well, we do have a problem in collecting intel, much less connecting the dots…!
9 Comments
Same security appart that guards the President? People seem to be able to just walk into the WH these days. It all comes under the heading of “good enough for Gov’t work.” Under Naomi Wolf’s Shock Doctrine I guess its time to bring in even more Private blackwater type guards right?
That’s one of the probs…! We’ve contracted too much of our Intel Apparatchik out…! Thanks to Rummy and Darth’s evil designs we’ve turned our Intel ‘Bureaucracy’ into a Beltway Private Contractor haven…!!!
Yep. In my unending quest to find some kind of remunerative employment, I frequently run across positions that appear to be just that, private companies collecting/evaluating/processing intel on contract for the gubmint.
I’m frequently amazed at the job descriptions that turn up.
(I guess I find these because my “transferable skills” include “research and analysis.”) And I live in a military town, with lots of contractors.
Remember that 911 was caused because it didn’t work then, and won’t work in the future.
The same damn people are running most of the show, and the new assholes Obama appointed to head all of them haven’t a clue to what goes on.
It’s like expecting pigs to turn into thoroughbred horse’s.
The really dumb ones are us, because we pay for all of this and expect it to work.
I watched a NY Jets play-off game several years ago that’s memorable. In the game the field-goal kicker was having an awful time. He missed something like 3 times and one was at the end of the game to win.
I was so mad I said he shouldn’t bother going to the locker room because he should be fired before he gets off the field. Well, he was fired, but I suppose it was some time later.
I feel the same about what happened in Afghanistan. But, I too want to know who arranged this. Who thought breaking traditional security protocol was called for, and why? I want to know if the military arranged this and hung the CIA out to dry. I want to know who to leave in Afghanistan when we come home.
If we’re smart, only NGO’s providing humanitarian aid…! But, one can also dream…!
And there’s a vested interest with all those players in keeping it that way – contracted out at high$$ so that guys like Black and Tenet and Brennan etc. can leave the agency and know for damn sure they have a LOT more coming to them than a gov pension.
Obama and McChrystal (when not setting up assassinations) have supposedly been spending a hell of a lot of time “rethinking” Afghanistan. Not to lots of avail.
More to your piece, though, I think the reason he was taken to the base is going to be the answer that sheds light on a lot of the rest.
Sounds like we also don’t even realize we’re missing a bunch dots to connect. For example, I imagine the dead dudes died with a bunch of them and now it’s lug your token directly to GO and start over with no info in the bank. Everything Balawi said must be assumed to have been false. That probably includes most of the Al Queda intel Obama was relying on when he composed his not-so-grand-anymore grand plan.
Sort of reminds me of reading “Spy v. Spy” comics in Mad Magazine. Even as child, I thought that Antonio Prohias was onto something. And/or Boris & Natasha. Take your pick. Could this operation be any worse or any dumber?
But then I’m constantly amazed by some of the decisions and actions taken by our gov’t. The whole CIA/secret agent/spy thing is frought with issues; just read John LeCarre to get the picture.
I agree, though, that situation in Khost seems much worse than the undies bomber, but both beggar the imagination. People who expect the US gov’t – whether Dimocrat or Rethuglic – to keep them “safe” are living in a dream world that never existed except in the imagination of WWII movie-makers.