Of late, the left is full of brilliant ideas on how we should fight terrorism, er whoops, I mean “man caused disasters” or do we refer to it as countering violent extremism this week? (I can’t seem to keep it straight.)
From Matthew Modine, who believes we should simply sit down and talk with terrorists to Barack Obama who hopes to defeat Islamic radicalism by not mentioning Islamic radicalism, there doesn’t seem to be any issue liberals can’t solve by simply waving a magic wand and applying their considerable genius.
Would that this dangerous method of thinking existed only in the realm of politics and Hollywood liberalism. Unfortunately, an even deadlier mindset exists at the Central Intelligence Agency.
As I have chronicled over the past several weeks, an impotent CIA, which better resembles a pack of jilted, jealous teen-aged girls has been waging a despicable proxy war against the Department of Defense for hiring former military and intelligence personnel to do the job the CIA is incapable of doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the process, there have been terrible character assassinations and the leaking of classified information.
Leading the charge on behalf of the CIA is the “venerable” New York Times, which seems ever-ready to broadcast sensitive operational details to our enemies that put American lives at risk. In fact, the New York Times appears to be the “paper of record” anytime “patriots” at the Central Intelligence Agency want to leak material which is damaging to America and helpful to those bent on destroying her.
And it doesn’t stop there. If the Times needs to ratchet up the outrage, it will even fabricate information as was done on March 14, 2010 when in an article entitled, Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants, it claimed that “It is generally considered illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies.”
This claim was made despite the fact that the Department of Defense openly and legally solicits private firms to gather and help analyze data on its behalf. Of course, if the CIA were capable of doing its job, DOD wouldn’t need to hire outside help. But the sad fact is that the CIA is a bloated, dysfunctional bureaucracy whose usefulness to America has long since passed.
The recent attack on F.O.B. Chapman is a prime example — all the usual rules of tradecraft were violated. You meet agents on the other guy’s turf, not in your own driveway. And the Abu Omar rendition in Milan is yet another example where the CIA used lousy tradecraft and the locals, whom we thought we were screwing, instead screwed us. In fact, because of such poor tradecraft we actually screwed ourselves!
It has become an open secret in the intelligence world that the CIA has nothing to contribute to the pot other than piles of cash. It has stopped doing any serious spy work. Foreign liaison services no longer do any quid pro quo with Langley because when it comes to the CIA, there is no quid. Basically, the Agency is augmenting the budgets of other services so that they can do the work it no longer does. In return, the CIA prays the other services will share what they produce. What a brilliant strategy! (Sarcasm aside, by financing others to take risks it will not take itself, the CIA shows itself to be an agency unable to survive on its own and which is being kept alive on life support funded with tax payer dollars.)
So what has so gotten under the CIA’s skin when it comes to the Department of Defense? In short it is that the D.O.D, with a low budget and by using old-fashioned techniques, is doing what the Central Intelligence Agency claims cannot be done.
Langley asserts that you cannot run HUMINT ops against “terrorists.” In reality, it simply takes language skills, knowledge of the environment, use of principal agents, and a personality that permits you to conceal that you hate the guy you are working on – all skills that used to be widely available in the Agency’s hallowed halls. Sadly, that is no longer the case.
The CIA should be doing all it can to assist the exceptional former military and intelligence operatives the D.O.D. is so successfully employing in the Af/Pak theater. Instead, it’s like that scene in Independence Day where when the alien is asked what he wants on our planet, the response is “We want you to die!” At its core, the CIA doesn’t want the D.O.D’s reporting, they just want the D.O.D’s contractors dead (bureaucratically speaking) so that Langley can continue to claim that what those brave Defense Department contractors are doing every day isn’t possible.
Not only is it possible, but countless American lives are being saved because of it. If the CIA succeeds in pulling the rug out from under this operation, American deaths will skyrocket and the blood will be on the Agency’s hands. Already, too much about this program has been revealed. The time to put our country before Langley’s wounded pride is long overdue.
The fact is, no major military force of a serious nation state can go to war without contractor support. Even the Roman legions during republican and imperial times had mercenary forces supporting their equivalent of our modern day Army. The Romans called them “Auxiliaries” and they supplied slingers, bowmen, cavalry, siege engineers, road designers and so on.
The term, “auxiliaries” was a wise and appropriate label; one that we ourselves would do well to adopt in lieu of the pejorative, “contractor.” It is much more appropriate and considerably more uplifting. Whether used by the military or our own CIA (which, ironically enough, has been hiring “contractors” since 1980, both independently and via private firms known as “Body Shops”), the Auxiliary is a professional and necessary force multiplier. We should be embracing our Auxiliaries, not demonizing them.
Finally, rather than spreading rumors and spiteful gossip from the girls’ bathroom, the CIA should focus on rebuilding itself. If young officers were given Alexander Foote’s 1949 book, “The Handbook for Spies” to read, along with some counter surveillance training, rather than wasting four to six months in spy school at Camp Perry, we would be creating a much better cadre. (Foote was the radio operator for the Lucy network, supposedly a Soviet control apparatus in Switzerland during WWII, but some think likely controlled in whole or in part by the British MI-6.)
Most of what one needs to know about the espionage game can be found in Foote’s book. Come to think of it, maybe it should be required reading across the board at Langley, starting with CIA Director Panetta and all those in management and leadership — not to mention the friendly reporters at the New York Times — who are convinced the way to win in Afghanistan is by tearing down what works at the Department of Defense.