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CIA may not be upto speed in anti-Terrorism War

The United States Intelligence community is in danger of being unable to deal with the next generation of cyber, bio and international terrorists unless it makes rapid changes not only to take advantage of the leading edge technology of the information warfare environment, but also essentially relearns many of the traditional skills of agent running and human intelligence gathering.

The CIA and NSA are creaking at the seams, old fashioned bureaucracies, wedded to risk avoidance and high-technology. Satellites and ELINT have replaced HUMINT, field officers with local knowledge and years of experience. The CIA today has a huge and very well paid staff, probably 90% of whom are either administrative,legal, technical or support. The number at the sharp end, in the DDO, CTC, CAS or SOG is derisory. The number with the necessary skills to run large scale field operations or penetrate terrorist groups is less still. An ex-CIA DDO staffer once said that in the 'good old days' a dead officer was a bad officer and that was indeed the hard-nosed attitude of the days when Helms, Bissell and Wisner ran the CIA like a private, but highly effective fiefdom.

The US Intelligence community has still not entirely thrown off the play-it safe attitudes of the last twenty years, when enemy or not the KGB had finally learnt to play by the rules of the game.  This no longer applies to international terrorists or global criminal organizations who practice a type of asymmetrical warfare quite foreign to much of the CIA's or for that matter to Britain's MI6 or France's DGSE's training and experience.  A return to the psychological mind-set and attitudes of the wartime Office of Strategic Services or Britain's Special Operations Executive are called for with their ability to make use of a wide variety of conventional and unconventional skills and to be far more responsive to the reality of intelligence gathering and effective counter-terrorism. A civil service mentality has crept into Intelligence services that now provide a safe career for its staff with as much risk and danger removed as possible.

Adapt or lose?

Combating Al Qa'ida, Hamas, Hizbollah and a veritable snakepit of other terrorist groups is going to be very dangerous for the counter-terrorist staff involved and a risky overall strategy for the US and its main allies and while the CIA has pointed out that many critics are simply in the dark about the level of operations being conducted by the agency and the considerable steps that have been taken to increase the level of staffing of the DDO with language experts and those with local knowledge of many of the target countries, this cannot be allowed to obscure not only the 'blackhole' in intelligence about Al Qa'ida's intentions prior to 9-11 or that after nearly fourteen weeks Osama Bin-Ladin is still at large and most of his international network still operational.

The West faces a ruthless, determined, sophisticated and skilful enemy. The great world war two codebreaking organizations at Bletchley Park and Arlington Hall called upon the best brains from both civilian and military sources to defeat an equally determined and ruthless opponent, so must the intelligence services of today be prepared to seek the skills they urgently need wherever they can be found.  If that means dramatic changes in recruiting, attitudes and operational parameters, then so be it.    Churchill famously ordered "action this day" and that is still apposite, after all there's a war to win!

Richard M. Bennett
 
 
 

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