THE COMING WARS by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

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http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050124fa_fact

 

 

THE COMING WARS

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH

 

 

 

What the Pentagon can now do in secret.

Issue of 2005-01-24 and 31

Posted 2005-01-17

 

George W. Bush's reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The

President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control

over the military and intelligence communities' strategic analyses and

covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the

post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive

and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in

Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his

second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency

will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties

to the Pentagon put it, as " facilitators " of policy emanating from

President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well

under way.

 

Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush

Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal

in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the

region. Bush's reëlection is regarded within the Administration as

evidence of America's support for his decision to go to war. It has

reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon's

civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul

Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the

Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level

intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with

the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in

essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did

not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to

staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.

 

" This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The

Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone, " the former

high-level intelligence official told me. " Next, we're going to have

the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever

they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we've got four years,

and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism. "

 

Bush and Cheney may have set the policy, but it is Rumsfeld who has

directed its implementation and has absorbed much of the public

criticism when things went wrong—whether it was prisoner abuse in Abu

Ghraib or lack of sufficient armor plating for G.I.s' vehicles in

Iraq. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for

Rumsfeld's dismissal, and he is not widely admired inside the

military. Nonetheless, his reappointment as Defense Secretary was

never in doubt.

 

Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In

interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials,

I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential

election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld's responsibility. The war

on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the

Pentagon's control. The President has signed a series of findings and

executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special

Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist

targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

 

The President's decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations off

the books—free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under

current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized

by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House

intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of

scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying

and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.) " The Pentagon

doesn't feel obligated to report any of this to Congress, " the former

high-level intelligence official said. " They don't even call it

`covert ops'—it's too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it's

`black reconnaissance.' They're not even going to tell the cincs " —the

regional American military commanders-in-chief. (The Defense

Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment

on this story.)

 

In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target

was Iran. " Everyone is saying, `You can't be serious about targeting

Iran. Look at Iraq,' " the former intelligence official told me. " But

they say, `We've got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we

did it politically. We're not going to rely on agency pissants.' No

loose ends, and that's why the C.I.A. is out of there. "

 

For more than a year, France, Germany, Britain, and other countries in

the European Union have seen preventing Iran from getting a nuclear

weapon as a race against time—and against the Bush Administration.

They have been negotiating with the Iranian leadership to give up its

nuclear-weapons ambitions in exchange for economic aid and trade

benefits. Iran has agreed to temporarily halt its enrichment programs,

which generate fuel for nuclear power plants but also could produce

weapons-grade fissile material. (Iran claims that such facilities are

legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or N.P.T., to which

it is a signator, and that it has no intention of building a bomb.)

But the goal of the current round of talks, which began in December in

Brussels, is to persuade Tehran to go further, and dismantle its

machinery. Iran insists, in return, that it needs to see some concrete

benefits from the Europeans—oil-production technology,

heavy-industrial equipment, and perhaps even permission to purchase a

fleet of Airbuses. (Iran has been denied access to technology and many

goods owing to sanctions.)

 

The Europeans have been urging the Bush Administration to join in

these negotiations. The Administration has refused to do so. The

civilian leadership in the Pentagon has argued that no diplomatic

progress on the Iranian nuclear threat will take place unless there is

a credible threat of military action. " The neocons say negotiations

are a bad deal, " a senior official of the International Atomic Energy

Agency (I.A.E.A.) told me. " And the only thing the Iranians understand

is pressure. And that they also need to be whacked. "

 

The core problem is that Iran has successfully hidden the extent of

its nuclear program, and its progress. Many Western intelligence

agencies, including those of the United States, believe that Iran is

at least three to five years away from a capability to independently

produce nuclear warheads—although its work on a missile-delivery

system is far more advanced. Iran is also widely believed by Western

intelligence agencies and the I.A.E.A. to have serious technical

problems with its weapons system, most notably in the production of

the hexafluoride gas needed to fabricate nuclear warheads.

 

A retired senior C.I.A. official, one of many who left the agency

recently, told me that he was familiar with the assessments, and

confirmed that Iran is known to be having major difficulties in its

weapons work. He also acknowledged that the agency's timetable for a

nuclear Iran matches the European estimates—assuming that Iran gets no

outside help. " The big wild card for us is that you don't know who is

capable of filling in the missing parts for them, " the recently

retired official said. " North Korea? Pakistan? We don't know what

parts are missing. "

 

One Western diplomat told me that the Europeans believed they were in

what he called a " lose-lose position " as long as the United States

refuses to get involved. " France, Germany, and the U.K. cannot succeed

alone, and everybody knows it, " the diplomat said. " If the U.S. stays

outside, we don't have enough leverage, and our effort will collapse. "

The alternative would be to go to the Security Council, but any

resolution imposing sanctions would likely be vetoed by China or

Russia, and then " the United Nations will be blamed and the Americans

will say, `The only solution is to bomb.' "

 

A European Ambassador noted that President Bush is scheduled to visit

Europe in February, and that there has been public talk from the White

House about improving the President's relationship with America's E.U.

allies. In that context, the Ambassador told me, " I'm puzzled by the

fact that the United States is not helping us in our program. How can

Washington maintain its stance without seriously taking into account

the weapons issue? "

 

The Israeli government is, not surprisingly, skeptical of the European

approach. Silvan Shalom, the Foreign Minister, said in an interview

last week in Jerusalem,with another New Yorker journalist, " I don't

like what's happening. We were encouraged at first when the Europeans

got involved. For a long time, they thought it was just Israel's

problem. But then they saw that the [iranian] missiles themselves were

longer range and could reach all of Europe, and they became very

concerned. Their attitude has been to use the carrot and the stick—but

all we see so far is the carrot. " He added, " If they can't comply,

Israel cannot live with Iran having a nuclear bomb. "

 

In a recent essay, Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert who is the deputy

director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (and a

supporter of the Administration), articulated the view that force, or

the threat of it, was a vital bargaining tool with Iran. Clawson wrote

that if Europe wanted coöperation with the Bush Administration it

" would do well to remind Iran that the military option remains on the

table. " He added that the argument that the European negotiations

hinged on Washington looked like " a preëmptive excuse for the likely

breakdown of the E.U.-Iranian talks. " In a subsequent conversation

with me, Clawson suggested that, if some kind of military action was

inevitable, " it would be much more in Israel's interest—and

Washington's—to take covert action. The style of this Administration

is to use overwhelming force—`shock and awe.' But we get only one bite

of the apple. "

 

There are many military and diplomatic experts who dispute the notion

that military action, on whatever scale, is the right approach.

Shahram Chubin, an Iranian scholar who is the director of research at

the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, told me, " It's a fantasy to

think that there's a good American or Israeli military option in

Iran. " He went on, " The Israeli view is that this is an international

problem. `You do it,' they say to the West. `Otherwise, our Air Force

will take care of it.' " In 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed

Iraq's Osirak reactor, setting its nuclear program back several years.

But the situation now is both more complex and more dangerous, Chubin

said. The Osirak bombing " drove the Iranian nuclear-weapons program

underground, to hardened, dispersed sites, " he said. " You can't be

sure after an attack that you'll get away with it. The U.S. and Israel

would not be certain whether all the sites had been hit, or how

quickly they'd be rebuilt. Meanwhile, they'd be waiting for an Iranian

counter-attack that could be military or terrorist or diplomatic. Iran

has long-range missiles and ties to Hezbollah, which has drones—you

can't begin to think of what they'd do in response. "

 

Chubin added that Iran could also renounce the Nuclear

Non-Proliferation Treaty. " It's better to have them cheating within

the system, " he said. " Otherwise, as victims, Iran will walk away from

the treaty and inspections while the rest of the world watches the

N.P.T. unravel before their eyes. "

 

The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions

inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the

accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian

nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The

goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such

targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term

commando raids. " The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran

and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible, " the

government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.

 

Some of the missions involve extraordinary coöperation. For example,

the former high-level intelligence official told me that an American

commando task force has been set up in South Asia and is now working

closely with a group of Pakistani scientists and technicians who had

dealt with Iranian counterparts. (In 2003, the I.A.E.A. disclosed that

Iran had been secretly receiving nuclear technology from Pakistan for

more than a decade, and had withheld that information from

inspectors.) The American task force, aided by the information from

Pakistan, has been penetrating eastern Iran from Afghanistan in a hunt

for underground installations. The task-force members, or their

locally recruited agents, secreted remote detection devices—known as

sniffers—capable of sampling the atmosphere for radioactive emissions

and other evidence of nuclear-enrichment programs.

 

Getting such evidence is a pressing concern for the Bush

Administration. The former high-level intelligence official told me,

" They don't want to make any W.M.D. intelligence mistakes, as in Iraq.

The Republicans can't have two of those. There's no education in the

second kick of a mule. " The official added that the government of

Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, has won a high price for

its coöperation—American assurance that Pakistan will not have to hand

over A. Q. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, to

the I.A.E.A. or to any other international authorities for

questioning. For two decades, Khan has been linked to a vast

consortium of nuclear-black-market activities. Last year, Musharraf

professed to be shocked when Khan, in the face of overwhelming

evidence, " confessed " to his activities. A few days later, Musharraf

pardoned him, and so far he has refused to allow the I.A.E.A. or

American intelligence to interview him. Khan is now said to be living

under house arrest in a villa in Islamabad. " It's a deal—a trade-off, "

the former high-level intelligence official explained. " `Tell us what

you know about Iran and we will let your A. Q. Khan guys go.' It's the

neoconservatives' version of short-term gain at long-term cost. They

want to prove that Bush is the anti-terrorism guy who can handle Iran

and the nuclear threat, against the long-term goal of eliminating the

black market for nuclear proliferation. "

 

The agreement comes at a time when Musharraf, according to a former

high-level Pakistani diplomat, has authorized the expansion of

Pakistan's nuclear-weapons arsenal. " Pakistan still needs parts and

supplies, and needs to buy them in the clandestine market, " the former

diplomat said. " The U.S. has done nothing to stop it. "

 

There has also been close, and largely unacknowledged, coöperation

with Israel. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon said

that the Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas

Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to

develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile

targets inside Iran. (After Osirak, Iran situated many of its nuclear

sites in remote areas of the east, in an attempt to keep them out of

striking range of other countries, especially Israel. Distance no

longer lends such protection, however: Israel has acquired three

submarines capable of launching cruise missiles and has equipped some

of its aircraft with additional fuel tanks, putting Israeli F-16I

fighters within the range of most Iranian targets.)

 

" They believe that about three-quarters of the potential targets can

be destroyed from the air, and a quarter are too close to population

centers, or buried too deep, to be targeted, " the consultant said.

Inevitably, he added, some suspicious sites need to be checked out by

American or Israeli commando teams—in on-the-ground

surveillance—before being targeted.

 

The Pentagon's contingency plans for a broader invasion of Iran are

also being updated. Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S.

Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the

military's war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion

of Iran. Updating the plan makes sense, whether or not the

Administration intends to act, because the geopolitics of the region

have changed dramatically in the last three years. Previously, an

American invasion force would have had to enter Iran by sea, by way of

the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman; now troops could move in on the

ground, from Afghanistan or Iraq. Commando units and other assets

could be introduced through new bases in the Central Asian republics.

 

It is possible that some of the American officials who talk about the

need to eliminate Iran's nuclear infrastructure are doing so as part

of a propaganda campaign aimed at pressuring Iran to give up its

weapons planning. If so, the signals are not always clear. President

Bush, who after 9/11 famously depicted Iran as a member of the " axis

of evil, " is now publicly emphasizing the need for diplomacy to run

its course. " We don't have much leverage with the Iranians right now, "

the President said at a news conference late last year. " Diplomacy

must be the first choice, and always the first choice of an

administration trying to solve an issue of . . . nuclear armament. And

we'll continue to press on diplomacy. "

 

In my interviews over the past two months, I was given a much harsher

view. The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become

clear that the Europeans' negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that

at that time the Administration will act. " We're not dealing with a

set of National Security Council option papers here, " the former

high-level intelligence official told me. " They've already passed that

wicket. It's not if we're going to do anything against Iran. They're

doing it. "

 

The immediate goals of the attacks would be to destroy, or at least

temporarily derail, Iran's ability to go nuclear. But there are other,

equally purposeful, motives at work. The government consultant told me

that the hawks in the Pentagon, in private discussions, have been

urging a limited attack on Iran because they believe it could lead to

a toppling of the religious leadership. " Within the soul of Iran there

is a struggle between secular nationalists and reformers, on the one

hand, and, on the other hand, the fundamentalist Islamic movement, "

the consultant told me. " The minute the aura of invincibility which

the mullahs enjoy is shattered, and with it the ability to hoodwink

the West, the Iranian regime will collapse " —like the former Communist

regimes in Romania, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Rumsfeld and

Wolfowitz share that belief, he said.

 

" The idea that an American attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would

produce a popular uprising is extremely illinformed, " said Flynt

Leverett, a Middle East scholar who worked on the National Security

Council in the Bush Administration. " You have to understand that the

nuclear ambition in Iran is supported across the political spectrum,

and Iranians will perceive attacks on these sites as attacks on their

ambitions to be a major regional player and a modern nation that's

technologically sophisticated. " Leverett, who is now a senior fellow

at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings

Institution, warned that an American attack, if it takes place, " will

produce an Iranian backlash against the United States and a rallying

around the regime. "

 

Rumsfeld planned and lobbied for more than two years before getting

Presidential authority, in a series of findings and executive orders,

to use military commandos for covert operations. One of his first

steps was bureaucratic: to shift control of an undercover unit, known

then as the Gray Fox (it has recently been given a new code name),

from the Army to the Special Operations Command (socom), in Tampa.

Gray Fox was formally assigned to socom in July, 2002, at the

instigation of Rumsfeld's office, which meant that the undercover unit

would have a single commander for administration and operational

deployment. Then, last fall, Rumsfeld's ability to deploy the

commandos expanded. According to a Pentagon consultant, an Execute

Order on the Global War on Terrorism (referred to throughout the

government as gwot) was issued at Rumsfeld's direction. The order

specifically authorized the military " to find and finish " terrorist

targets, the consultant said. It included a target list that cited Al

Qaeda network members, Al Qaeda senior leadership, and other

high-value targets. The consultant said that the order had been

cleared throughout the national-security bureaucracy in Washington.

 

In late November, 2004, the Times reported that Bush had set up an

interagency group to study whether it " would best serve the nation " to

give the Pentagon complete control over the C.I.A.'s own élite

paramilitary unit, which has operated covertly in trouble spots around

the world for decades. The panel's conclusions, due in February, are

foregone, in the view of many former C.I.A. officers. " It seems like

it's going to happen, " Howard Hart, who was chief of the C.I.A.'s

Paramilitary Operations Division before retiring in 1991, told me.

 

There was other evidence of Pentagon encroachment. Two former C.I.A.

clandestine officers, Vince Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi, who

publish Intelligence Brief, a newsletter for their business clients,

reported last month on the existence of a broad counter-terrorism

Presidential finding that permitted the Pentagon " to operate

unilaterally in a number of countries where there is a perception of a

clear and evident terrorist threat. . . . A number of the countries

are friendly to the U.S. and are major trading partners. Most have

been cooperating in the war on terrorism. " The two former officers

listed some of the countries—Algeria, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and

Malaysia. (I was subsequently told by the former high-level

intelligence official that Tunisia is also on the list.)

 

Giraldi, who served three years in military intelligence before

joining the C.I.A., said that he was troubled by the military's

expanded covert assignment. " I don't think they can handle the cover, "

he told me. " They've got to have a different mind-set. They've got to

handle new roles and get into foreign cultures and learn how other

people think. If you're going into a village and shooting people, it

doesn't matter, " Giraldi added. " But if you're running operations that

involve finesse and sensitivity, the military can't do it. Which is

why these kind of operations were always run out of the agency. " I was

told that many Special Operations officers also have serious misgivings.

 

Rumsfeld and two of his key deputies, Stephen Cambone, the

Under-secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Army Lieutenant

General William G. (Jerry) Boykin, will be part of the chain of

command for the new commando operations. Relevant members of the House

and Senate intelligence committees have been briefed on the Defense

Department's expanded role in covert affairs, a Pentagon adviser

assured me, but he did not know how extensive the briefings had been.

 

" I'm conflicted about the idea of operating without congressional

oversight, " the Pentagon adviser said. " But I've been told that there

will be oversight down to the specific operation. " A second Pentagon

adviser agreed, with a significant caveat. " There are reporting

requirements, " he said. " But to execute the finding we don't have to

go back and say, `We're going here and there.' No nitty-gritty detail

and no micromanagement. "

 

The legal questions about the Pentagon's right to conduct covert

operations without informing Congress have not been resolved. " It's a

very, very gray area, " said Jeffrey H. Smith, a West Point graduate

who served as the C.I.A.'s general counsel in the

mid-nineteen-nineties. " Congress believes it voted to include all such

covert activities carried out by the armed forces. The military says,

`No, the things we're doing are not intelligence actions under the

statute but necessary military steps authorized by the President, as

Commander-in-Chief, to " prepare the battlefield. " ' " Referring to his

days at the C.I.A., Smith added, " We were always careful not to use

the armed forces in a covert action without a Presidential finding.

The Bush Administration has taken a much more aggressive stance. "

 

In his conversation with me, Smith emphasized that he was unaware of

the military's current plans for expanding covert action. But he said,

" Congress has always worried that the Pentagon is going to get us

involved in some military misadventure that nobody knows about. "

 

Under Rumsfeld's new approach, I was told, U.S. military operatives

would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen

seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons

systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local

citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or

terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out

combat operations, or even terrorist activities. Some operations will

likely take place in nations in which there is an American diplomatic

mission, with an Ambassador and a C.I.A. station chief, the Pentagon

consultant said. The Ambassador and the station chief would not

necessarily have a need to know, under the Pentagon's current

interpretation of its reporting requirement.

 

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what

it calls " action teams " in the target countries overseas which can be

used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. " Do you remember

the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador? " the former high-level

intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs

that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. " We founded

them and we financed them, " he said. " The objective now is to recruit

locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about

it. " A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon's

commando capabilities, said, " We're going to be riding with the bad boys. "

 

One of the rationales for such tactics was spelled out in a series of

articles by John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the

Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, and a consultant

on terrorism for the rand corporation. " It takes a network to fight a

network, " Arquilla wrote in a recent article in the San Francisco

Chronicle:

 

When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the

Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s, the British formed teams of

friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists.

These " pseudo gangs, " as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau

on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of

fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists' camps. What worked

in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining

trust and recruitment among today's terror networks. Forming new

pseudo gangs should not be difficult.

 

" If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with Al Qaeda, "

Arquilla wrote, referring to John Walker Lindh, the twenty-year-old

Californian who was seized in Afghanistan, " think what professional

operatives might do. "

 

A few pilot covert operations were conducted last year, one Pentagon

adviser told me, and a terrorist cell in Algeria was " rolled up " with

American help. The adviser was referring, apparently, to the capture

of Ammari Saifi, known as Abderrezak le Para, the head of a North

African terrorist network affiliated with Al Qaeda. But at the end of

the year there was no agreement within the Defense Department about

the rules of engagement. " The issue is approval for the final

authority, " the former high-level intelligence official said. " Who

gets to say `Get this' or `Do this'? "

 

A retired four-star general said, " The basic concept has always been

solid, but how do you insure that the people doing it operate within

the concept of the law? This is pushing the edge of the envelope. " The

general added, " It's the oversight. And you're not going to get

Warner " —John Warner, of Virginia, the chairman of the Senate Armed

Services Committee— " and those guys to exercise oversight. This whole

thing goes to the Fourth Deck. " He was referring to the floor in the

Pentagon where Rumsfeld and Cambone have their offices.

 

" It's a finesse to give power to Rumsfeld—giving him the right to act

swiftly, decisively, and lethally, " the first Pentagon adviser told

me. " It's a global free-fire zone. "

 

The Pentagon has tried to work around the limits on covert activities

before. In the early nineteen-eighties, a covert Army unit was set up

and authorized to operate overseas with minimal oversight. The results

were disastrous. The Special Operations program was initially known as

Intelligence Support Activity, or I.S.A., and was administered from a

base near Washington (as was, later, Gray Fox). It was established

soon after the failed rescue, in April, 1980, of the American hostages

in Iran, who were being held by revolutionary students after the

Islamic overthrow of the Shah's regime. At first, the unit was kept

secret from many of the senior generals and civilian leaders in the

Pentagon, as well as from many members of Congress. It was eventually

deployed in the Reagan Administration's war against the Sandinista

government, in Nicaragua. It was heavily committed to supporting the

Contras. By the mid-eighties, however, the I.S.A.'s operations had

been curtailed, and several of its senior officers were

courtmartialled following a series of financial scandals, some

involving arms deals. The affair was known as " the Yellow Fruit

scandal, " after the code name given to one of the I.S.A.'s cover

organizations—and in many ways the group's procedures laid the

groundwork for the Iran-Contra scandal.

 

Despite the controversy surrounding Yellow Fruit, the I.S.A. was kept

intact as an undercover unit by the Army. " But we put so many

restrictions on it, " the second Pentagon adviser said. " In I.S.A., if

you wanted to travel fifty miles you had to get a special order. And

there were certain areas, such as Lebanon, where they could not go. "

The adviser acknowledged that the current operations are similar to

those two decades earlier, with similar risks—and, as he saw it,

similar reasons for taking the risks. " What drove them then, in terms

of Yellow Fruit, was that they had no intelligence on Iran, " the

adviser told me. " They had no knowledge of Tehran and no people on the

ground who could prepare the battle space. "

 

Rumsfeld's decision to revive this approach stemmed, once again, from

a failure of intelligence in the Middle East, the adviser said. The

Administration believed that the C.I.A. was unable, or unwilling, to

provide the military with the information it needed to effectively

challenge stateless terrorism. " One of the big challenges was that we

didn't have Humint " —human intelligence— " collection capabilities in

areas where terrorists existed, " the adviser told me. " Because the

C.I.A. claimed to have such a hold on Humint, the way to get around

them, rather than take them on, was to claim that the agency didn't do

Humint to support Special Forces operations overseas. The C.I.A.

fought it. " Referring to Rumsfeld's new authority for covert

operations, the first Pentagon adviser told me, " It's not empowering

military intelligence. It's emasculating the C.I.A. "

 

A former senior C.I.A. officer depicted the agency's eclipse as

predictable. " For years, the agency bent over backward to integrate

and coördinate with the Pentagon, " the former officer said. " We just

caved and caved and got what we deserved. It is a fact of life today

that the Pentagon is a five-hundred-pound gorilla and the C.I.A.

director is a chimpanzee. "

 

There was pressure from the White House, too. A former C.I.A.

clandestine-services officer told me that, in the months after the

resignation of the agency's director George Tenet, in June, 2004, the

White House began " coming down critically " on analysts in the C.I.A.'sate of Intelligence (D.I.) and demanded " to see more support

for the Administration's political position. " Porter Goss, Tenet's

successor, engaged in what the recently retired C.I.A. official

described as a " political purge " in the D.I. Among the targets were a

few senior analysts who were known to write dissenting papers that had

been forwarded to the White House. The recently retired C.I.A.

official said, " The White House carefully reviewed the political

analyses of the D.I. so they could sort out the apostates from the

true believers. " Some senior analysts in the D.I. have turned in their

resignations—quietly, and without revealing the extent of the disarray.

 

The White House solidified its control over intelligence last month,

when it forced last-minute changes in the intelligence-reform bill.

The legislation, based substantially on recommendations of the 9/11

Commission, originally gave broad powers, including authority over

intelligence spending, to a new national-intelligence director. (The

Pentagon controls roughly eighty per cent of the intelligence budget.)

A reform bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 96-2. Before the House

voted, however, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld balked. The White House

publicly supported the legislation, but House Speaker Dennis Hastert

refused to bring a House version of the bill to the floor for a

vote—ostensibly in defiance of the President, though it was widely

understood in Congress that Hastert had been delegated to stall the

bill. After intense White House and Pentagon lobbying, the legislation

was rewritten. The bill that Congress approved sharply reduced the new

director's power, in the name of permitting the Secretary of Defense

to maintain his " statutory responsibilities. " Fred Kaplan, in the

online magazine Slate, described the real issues behind Hastert's

action, quoting a congressional aide who expressed amazement as White

House lobbyists bashed the Senate bill and came up " with all sorts of

ludicrous reasons why it was unacceptable. "

 

" Rummy's plan was to get a compromise in the bill in which the

Pentagon keeps its marbles and the C.I.A. loses theirs, " the former

high-level intelligence official told me. " Then all the pieces of the

puzzle fall in place. He gets authority for covert action that is not

attributable, the ability to directly task national-intelligence

assets " —including the many intelligence satellites that constantly

orbit the world.

 

" Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the

government's intelligence wringer, " the former official went on. " The

intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in

competition. What's missing will be the dynamic tension that insures

everyone's priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even

the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious

implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell

people what he's doing so they can ask, `Why are you doing this?' or

`What are your priorities?' Now he can keep all of the mattress mice

out of it. "