Here is the simple takeaway–as a taxpayer you are a victim of fraud being perpetrated by the National Security Agency and the CIA. What do I mean? After spending almost a half trillion dollars since 2001 (the combined budgets of the CIA and NSA), these two primary collectors of intelligence have utterly and consistently failed to detect and prevent major terrorist attacks. We need to stop kidding ourselves that the answer to terrorism is more “cowbell” er, I mean, more intelligence.
You may often hear the refrain about “14” intelligence agencies, which would lead you to believe that we have a variety of systems and methods for gathering intelligence. Nope. In reality, you have the NSA that collects “electronic communications” while the CIA is the only entity charged with recruiting foreigners to give us secrets. That is know as Human Intelligence/HUMINT.
In theory both agencies are supposed to be gathering timely information that is then used to identify and disable terrorist attacks. Judging from the actual terrorist trends there is but one conclusion–both have failed.
The list of failures is long and troubling. Here’s a quick list of attacks that have left more than 1000 people dead.
- Brussels (March 2016)
- Paris (November 2015)
- San Bernardino, California (January 2016)
- Iraq (July 2015)
- Baga and Doro Gowon, Nigeria (January 2015)
- Pakistan (Jan 2013
Despite the United States defacto “war” on terror, which was launched in the aftermath of the attacks on 11 September 2001, terrorism has spread and the number of victims have increased. More people have been killed and wounded in terrorist attacks in the last 15 years than were killed in injured in the previous 36 years. Some hard but true facts.
You are probably numb from listening to ignorant pundits who go on air in the aftermath of the latest terrorist outrage and pontificate about the need for “more” intelligence or “better” intelligence sharing. We should realize by now that this prescription is utter nonsense.
I do not blame CIA or the NSA for failing to prevent terrorist attacks inside the United States. Why? Because their responsibility for collecting intelligence lies outside the boundaries of the United States. But when we are witness to incidents such as Brussels and Paris we must grapple with the uncomfortable truth that neither picked up information with enough specificity that could have been used to warn local authorities to take pre-emptive measures.
The problem is that both intelligence collection systems were created and designed to deal with a nation-state target. The CIA and the NSA are creatures born in World War II and refined by the Cold War as policymakers demanded information about the plans, capabilities and motivations of the Soviets and the Chinese.
Consider how the CIA operated. The primary purpose for assigning CIA officers undercover to US Embassies in countries in South America, for example, was not for the primary purpose of mounting coups or destabilizing up-and-coming dictators. Their mission was to hunt down potential Soviet and Chinese recruits–in other words, interact with the people assigned to those embassies, develop friendships and, if things went right, convince them to spy for the United States.
That was the so-called “good old days.” The CIA today is completely and totally ill-equipped and staffed to confront the current terrorist reality. Islamic radicals, who are the driving force in modern terrorism, are not hanging out at embassies nor are they attending cocktail parties or diplomatic receptions. They don’t have a regular weekly golf game, they don’t go fly fishing, they are not recreational hunters or bird watchers. They are cocooned within family and faith-based networks. The old skills that the CIA relied on to recruit spies, i.e., forging personal relationships, no longer applies.
The shortcomings of the CIA are highlighted, inadvertently I believe, in a recent book by Doug Laux (a former CIA case officer), “Left of Boom.” A review in the NY Times noted that:
Laux believes his command of Pashto made him a much better case officer in Afghanistan, allowing him to suss out liars and bond with the locals. One of the absurdities he highlights is how few CIA officers spoke that language in 2012 and 2013 after a decade or more of war in that country.
The reason, he says, is numbingly bureaucratic — it takes two years of intensive study to become proficient in Pashto, but CIA war zone deployments are typically only one year. The agency won’t train a case officer for two years so he can do a one-year war zone bid, he said. (A U.S. official said that isn’t always the case.)
The ability to collect sensitive information in a foreign environment depends on one’s ability to integrate the local community. It is a very simple principle in theory but becomes very complex when you ask caucasians from the Mid West to go hang out in a local market in Mosul. Most CIA personnel are unwilling to subject themselves to the risk and commitment required to be genuinely immersed in a society without the protection of any official/formal cover. Without such immersion we will not penetrate the radical Islamic movements that are behind most of the violence.
We also must come to acknowledge and accept the fact that our own actions in the Middle East, especially Afghanistan and Iraq, have fueled the rise of what we define as terrorism. Those carrying out the attacks oftentimes view themselves as soldiers engaged in a war. Yet, our own efforts at waging “war” have added fuel to the fire. Despite almost 15 years of persistent military-based counter-terrorism operations around the world, the threat and reality of terrorism has grown rather diminished. It seems to me we should take a step back and consider the possibility that we have incorrectly diagnosed the threat and failed to prescribe the proper remedy.
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