Blog 2 Operation Geronimo: The military and Intelligence

Blog. 27/6/11

This blog is the second part of a longer piece on the CIA and the developments which have led to Operation Geronimo and the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

 I will post further excerpts as I edit them. I expect to produce a book on this and related topics, based on a 2007 MA thesis. I am interested in publishing the longer essay, preferably for a newspaper or journal.

Blog. 27/6/11

Operation Geronimo: The military and Intelligence

The military and Intelligence

When the CIA was founded, in 1947, and the National Security beast was set free upon the world, the primacy of the military in that structure was an established fact.[1]

It was clear that in theatres of war it would have to be ultimately responsible to the military. In its early days, in the atmosphere of a Cold War, it inevitably found itself at odds with sokme of the priorities and the demands of the conventional warfare oriented military services, However, it was integrated within the military and national security structures from its earliest days.

The World War 2 experience of the CIA’s  predecessor, the Office of Special Services (OSS) had shown that the military would not tolerate a conflict between its needs and those of an external intelligence service, especially in combat zones.

An early consideration during World War 2 was whether or not the precursor to the OSS, the office of the Co-ordinator of Intelligence (COI) under General William Donovan, was subject to military control and co-ordination in theatres of war. This was resolved by the abolition of the COI and the establishment of the OSS, as an organisation subordinate to the military structures it served. Only when each component part of the OSS had found a military sponsor was it permitted to become an operational part of the US war effort in Europe.

After the war the OSS was immediately disbanded, but elements of its capabilities were preserved within the State and War Departments. Using resources retained from the OSS, illegal and covert operations were undertaken by precursor organisations to the CIA, such as the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), prior to the formal adoption of the National Security Act of 1947, the establishment of the Defense Department and the CIA in 1947 and subsequent declarations by the National Security Council (NSC).

The CIA however, was valued for two reasons. It gave credence to the notion that national security would be enhanced by a vigilant collection and analysis of foreign intelligence. It would also provide a means to conduct politics and warfare by covert means. What Victor Marchetti referred to in 1974 as the ‘Cult of Intelligence’ was the overwhelming sense of power in the hands of Presidents and their Foreign policy structures of being able to do the forbidden and the illegal to achieve their political aims.[2]

Even prior to its official existence or the official proclamation of a Cold War by President Truman in 1947, the component elements of the CIA were picking up the programmes begun by UK intelligence services, under the Attlee Labour government, to subvert and divide the European left. When the British ran out of money US Marshall Plan aid funds were diverted to keep the Communists from power in the Italian elections of 1948. Across Western Europe several front organisations, such as The Congress for Cultural Freedom  and related publications were launched. Connections with the heroin trade and the Corsican Mafia were established through the suppression of Communist led maritime strikes in1948 in Marseilles. Those who know that real events inspired the movie “The French Connection” will not be surprised to find that the heroin involved had been imported by and for the CIA through those same Corsican connections..

Early operations included a series of failed attempts to foment guerrilla wars inside the Soviet Union’s territory. When more conventional nuclear stand-off became the norm in Europe, the CIA was employed to organise a series of secret wars and bloody coups throughout the third world, such as the Guatemala coup of 1953 and the coup in Iran of the same year, and in the 60’s the overthrow of president Soekarno in Indonesia, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands at the hands of CIA inspired ‘death squads’.

The most prominent but often neglected CIA operation was the 25 year long secret war it fought in Vietnam, from the provision of resources and advisors to keep the French in Indo-China, to the pacification programmes, the assassination of the South Vietnamese President Diem, under orders from president Kennedy, and the slaughter of thousands carried out under Operation Phoenix, led by a later DCIA, William Colby.[3]

What was clear about Vietnam was that the CIA contained within it the capabilities to carry out covert counter insurgency actions, tantamount to being able to organise and initiate small wars. Within the structure of the military, such wars were not productive. They emphasised individual initiative, original thinking and a precise set of surgical procedures. They did not produce body counts or allow for knock out blows. Conventional warfare was visited upon Vietnam in 1965 when the bombing of North Vietnam began and the US conscript armies were sent in, along with their less than reluctant Australian and other allies.

 After Vietnam, wars were fought by proxy, especially in Africa. The CIA could identify its enemies by their alliances. The Iran-contra years, and the suppression of both democratic governments and liberation movements in Latin America, the organisation and the marshalling together of the Muhajadeen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and funding of the Eastern European Velvet revolutions, provided the CIA with continuing experience in the use of special forces and ‘special’ tactics.

As the Cold War came to a close, the CIA held the experience of covert action against states it found objectionable within its Special Activities Division (SAD). The CIA was faced with the prospect of redundancy as the ‘Evil Empire’ of the USSR crumbled. Terrorism and Organised Crime were both flagged as potential new targets for the organisation, but it found it hard to justify its existence in a post-Cold War world.

The military was in a similar bind. It held vast amounts of advanced expensive weaponry and faced a public demanding a peace dividend. With seemingly fortuitous timing, under former CIA Director George Bush, along came Gulf War 1, Operation Desert Storm,

The advent of Al Quaeda. and a host of diminutive dictators, in places such as Serbia, saw  selectively applied ‘Humanitarian’ interventions, and the assertion of rights to intervene in ‘failed states’ under the Clinton administration. These assertions of power led us to the years of George W Bush and the era of Intelligence Reform.

Blog 3

The CIA and Intelligence Reform

The CIA and Intelligence Reform. 911 to Operation Geronimo Blog 1

 

This blog is the introduction to a longer piece on the CIA and the developments which have led to Operation Geronimo. I will post further excerpts as I edit them. I expect to produce a book on this and related topics, based on a 2007 MA thesis. I am interested in publishing the longer essay, preferably for a newspaper or journal, or excerpts from the book.

The CIA and Intelligence Reform 911 to Operation Geronimo Blog 1

by Rob Scott

Monday, June 20, 2011 at 4:25pm

The CIA and Intelligence Reform 911 to Operation Geronimo

Blog 1


Geronimo and Rough Justice-The saga of the killing of Osama Bin Laden
Rob Scott 20/6/11

The incredible events and posthumous speculations which have accompanied the killing of Osama Bin Laden, by US forces under the banner of Operation Geronimo, leave many questions unanswered and many speculative avenues open to investigation.

The way Operation Geronimo was undertaken, and the context within which such operations are carried out has the potential to tell us a great deal about the prominent role the US has given to clandestine and covert operations in the ‘War On Terror’. This in turn provides a window into the ‘real-politik’ of US contemporary foreign policy and the processes at work in the formulation and execution of that policy.

As is becoming increasingly clear, an understanding of the structure and state of US intelligence services, and their clandestine and covert use, has implications for any serious assessment of the state of US Foreign Relations and contemporary international power relations.

Operation Geronimo will remain a live issue in part because of the issue of ‘blowback’ from what will be broadly perceived as an assassination. The decision by the US not to release photographs of Osama’s wounds is an acknowledgement that it is concerned about the potential effects of its own actions. Clearly they are aware of the possibility that Osama Bin laden will become an iconic focus for the discontent with the West that has fuelled the creation of groups such as Al Quaeda.
Of note in this respect is the commentary provided by Michael Scheuer, the top US expert on Bin laden during the late 1990's. In a speech to the US Commonwealth Club in February 2011 broadcast on ABC Australia, Scheuer made it clear that the war being waged by Bin Laden and his varied supporters has a political and strategic depth which goes far beyond the simple formulas evoked to fuel enthusiasm for the ‘War On Terror’.

Pakistani ISI

Following the killing of Osama, Robert Fisk was one of the first to touch upon the question of the involvement of the Pakistani security and intelligence service, The Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (more commonly known as Inter-Services Intelligence or simply by its initials ISI), in the Osama saga.
Fisk’s position is that at least one element of the Pakistani ISI was aware of the existence of Osama in their midst. The rancour in the US over such a possibility was widely regarded as the reason for the visit of US Vice-President Jo Biden to Pakistan on May 17th. CIA Director Leon Panetta also visited Pakistan, only a few days before the June 15th announcement that 5 CIA informants in Pakistan had been detained.
As early as a week after the killing, the US was asking publicly how Bin laden could have been sustained in a mansion in Pakistan for so long. There were immediately open suggestions from other sources that 'retired' elements of the ISI may have been part of the support base. As the CIA also maintained a safe house in the same city from which to observe the Bin laden residence, one wonders who was assisting whom to watch who. The Pakistani government has been quick to deny that a Major from the Pakistani Army assisted the CIA in its preparations against Bin laden.

The recent detention of the CIA contacts has highlighted the different currents at work in the intelligence relationship between the US and Pakistan. As the ongoing ramifications of the unlicensed US incursion unfold, there is an element of the bizarre at play when Pakistan arrests the people who worked for the US against Bin laden, rather than those who maintained his dwelling and his security.

In the context of the continuing questioning of official Pakistani involvement in sustaining Osama Bin laden, it remains reasonable to surmise that Osama had supportive elements in the Pakistani ISI, possibly linked to the retired ISI chief Hamid Gul, or to another element in the ISI which is hostile to US policy.

Given the role of the ISI in creating and sustaining the Taliban, it is more than probable that a small part of the military intelligence service was involved in sustaining Bin laden. Intelligence services make strange bedfellows at the best of times.

Operation Geronimo and The CIA
An examination of the structures used to initiate, command and carry out Operation Geronimo allows us to gain insight into all of these issues. Of particular interest is the role of the CIA in Operation Geronimo and the clues the operation gives us about the state of the CIA today, after 10 years of post= 911’reform’.
Beyond the immediate issue of who did what for whom, raised by Robert Fisk, there is the larger issue of the ramifications of Operation Geronimo. The political, strategic and military implications of such a clandestine operation are all worthy of consideration.

Although soon to be replaced as Director of Central Intelligence (DCIA) by General Richard Petraeus, current DCIA, Leon Panetta has just personally directed and carried out a bold coup de main, yielding President Obama a great harvest of political capital and votes for 2012.
General Petraeus is known as a thoughtful and scholarly military leader, and as a strategic thinker, due to his successful roles as a theatre commander in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also apparently been a reliable and non-controversial replacement for General Stanley Mc Chrystal, which may be a factor in his appointment as DCIA. The former Afghanistan Theatre Chief , Mc Chrystal is incidentally a counter insurgency specialist and a sponsor and originator of much of the Joint Task Force approach currently in use in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Petraeus is not alone in being appointed to head what has long been at least a nominally civilian based organisation, directly from a combat oriented military position. The first 3 Directors of the CIA and its immediate predecessor the CIG were from the senior ranks of the military. Recently the DCIA has been from the Navy (Admiral Mike Hayden) and the first ever DCIA Vandenberg was from the USAF.

As US commentator David Brooks has noted, the appointment of a senior serving military figure as DCI at this time is appropriate because [ 'the CIA is moving from conducting itself as a Cold War entity into a mode appropriate for fighting several wars which involve clandestine activity.]

The CIA’s active role during the Cold War included that of carrying out covert action.
Its contemporary, more directly militarised role involves working in joint teams with military Special Operations Units to carry out ‘clandestine ‘operations.

The distinction between covert and clandestine activities may seem to be one which is difficult to make, but there is such a distinction and upon this point rests much of the likely future of the CIA.

Adopting a war fighting mode may bring the CIA back to its roots, particularly as a covert action organisation.
Some Intelligence History.

The “Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report”

In this sense it is important to note that the CIA only became a definitively civilian based organisation under the influence of its mentor and first civilian Director, Allen Dulles.

The “Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report.” Of January 1949 had signalled the rising prestige of the CIA in the US National Security community and the transition to a nominally civilian CIA.
This occurred after it had established its value in part by virtue of its covert operations in the western sector of occupied Germany. A notable covert operation was Project Rusty. This project used former Wehrmacht General Reinhold Gehlen’s intelligence files and other resources marshalled from Wehrmacht and SS military operations records compiled during World War 2, in support of covert operations against the USSR and its satellites .

Initial illegal support of Gehlen and other operations by the intelligence sections of the US Army was formalised in 1946, with the newly formed Central Intelligence Group (CIG) taking the responsibility for the thousands of former Wehrmacht and SS who would be employed by Gehlen. The illegal Gehlen organisation was described by Richard Helms in his 1948 report on Operation Rusty, as a threat if its funding was discontinued, as it was essentially the embryo of a new German General Staff.

Once the value of the CIG had been established its growing prestige and power were acknowledged and established by a succession of military figures, most notably Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s Chief of Military Intelligence during World War 2’s Allied invasion of Western Europe, Project Overlord.

General Bedell Smith was the most prominent early DCIA. It was arguably his appointment as DCIA that so firmly cemented the organisation into the structure of US intelligence, foreign and military policies. In turn it may have established the position of DCIA as a sufficiently plumb job for the vastly experienced and prestigious mandarin of US secret intelligence, Allen Dulles.
The appointment of General Petraeus may be seen to be a matter of similar importance, heralding a further development of the co-ordination of CIA policy and practice with that of its military cohorts, and perhaps signalling that the future of the CIA lies more firmly within the ongoing doctrines associated with asymmetrical warfare and counterinsurgency warfare.

Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. Global crises and political failure.

Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. Global crises and political failure.

 My partner is anxious and concerned. As part of a PHD programme she has been exposed to a concentrated dose of environmental doom and gloom. All of it warranted, no doubt, and much of it common currency amongst anybody concerned with the prospect of environmental breakdown and impending catastrophes, like Global Warming.[RS1] 

Now she would like to know what can be done about these problems. Gabriele is German. She is rightly proud of the progressive way that environmental issues have been approached in Germany, especially under the influence of the Greens.

She was surprised to find out that the Green Party in Australia is much less a specifically Socialist or left Wing Party than that of Germany. This is due to some historical peculiarities of the West German left and I will examine that at a later date.

Gabriele is also frustrated by the political games being played with the issue of reducing Carbon emissions in Australia. The extent to which the Liberal opposition has deliberately gone on a campaign against a Carbon Tax has frustrated her immensely, and made her ask if  the political system, adversarial and always focused  upon the next election, is capable of dealing with the real issues confronting Australia and the world.

Although I am generally inclined to blame the global capitalist system and its bureaucratic pseudo-Communist partners in crime for the whole mess, in this instance I will try to directly address Gabriele's concerns.

As the title of this piece presumes, we are all in this boat together but nobody wants to be thrown over the side to help save the rest. We are in complex territory, beyond the experience of any single human being. The politics of avoiding environmental catastrophe are going to be crucial.

Thanks to a clever Biology teacher, with a penchant for exposing his students to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and the population politics of Paul Ehrlich,I  Have lived with many of these issues  for much of my life. I have also tried to be an activist, where I thought it might help.

Sometimes I have sat back and waited, rather than been as active as I might have been.

The big wheels of society and the economic and social systems which sustain us take a long time to turn. Over the last 40 years the wheel has turned in favour of a vast expansion of the reach[RS2]  and effects of global capitalism.

Radical social change, which seemed to be within our grasp in the 60's and 70's, has slipped away. The prospect that anti-war movements and environmental activism might bring the collapse of capitalism closer has diminished and that leaves us holding the bag of an outdated system, and facing the catastrophic consequences of allowing that system to prevail. 

We are in the belly of the whale, awaiting the slow digestion and fouling of the world's environment, whilst feeding the behemoth of global capital, with our air and our forests and our water, and with the future of our offspring.

That said, what do we do?  I am afraid that the big picture has to look after itself. Capitalism has such a hold on the world, has so successfully spread its virus, that it is difficult to imagine its imminent supplanting by a socialist or similar model.  Reviving Rosa Luxemburg's notion that, if we fail to replace the capitalist system, the choice is between Socialism or Barbarism is intellectually attractive, but unlikely to solve our immediate dilemmas.

It is true, as Gabriele often tells me, that theer [RS3] are many elements amongst the existing structures who see the train wreck coming and are trying to adapt their processes and goals towards a sustainable future. Other elements such as Coal miners and financial interests, committed to a system based on expanding the wealth extracted from the environment, and maximising returns and continual growth, have probably got different ideas.

There is no single capitalist system to which one might appeal to stop the activities that threaten the survival of our species. There are many divergent interests, which sort out their differences via the Market. It has been argued for many years under the banner of Thatcherite neo-Liberalism  that the Market will sort out competing interests and ensure positive outcomes. I don't subscribe to this notion at all.

I am trying to see a way forward that takes into account both the negatives, the urgency of the situation and the inability of the political, economic and social systems we have to deal with such issues. 

The answer has to come from what humans have done before. Even though the systems in which we live are incredibly complex, they are merely outgrowths of what has come before. The simple systems which sustained people in monetary poverty but in reasonable harmony with nature and the seasons and with what was sustainable and what was not have only been suborned and abandoned on a global scale in the last 100 years or so. The global trend is for more and more of the population to live in cities. There is obviously no prospect of returning at one fell stroke to some kind of rural idyll. There must however be at least one or two simple lessons from the past that show the way forward, with the least catastrophic consequences.

Implicit in Gabriele's frustration is the question of whether or not an authoritarian government might be able to impose the changes we need upon the society and avoid the policy weakness and sheer opportunism of 'Democracy'. This is a question which will inevitably be raised as deteriorating environmental conditions and related catastrophes become more urgent issues in the public mind.

To pose the question as a choice between the undesirable and the ineffectual is to dangerously narrow our options. I don't have the answers, but I do have at least one alternative pathway to explore. It came to me whilst watching a TV programme, from around 2007, on Australia's publicly funded multicultural TV station SBS.

Two brothers were examining all the options for the emergence of an electric or alternative fuel car. They showed everything from backyard operations to the Tesla car and in between. One participant in the movie made a comment to the effect that each year, bit by bit, people would begin to create the future. There would be no 'Big Bang', the future would be built, brick by brick, car by car, until eventually the combustion engine would be a thing of the past.

My natural inclination is to dismiss such optimism, but in this instance I believe it taps into something which has been brewing since the time of the recent Global Financial Crisis. The GFC made a large number of people look at the system, the bargains they had made with it, to pursue careers, get superannuation, live the good life, and they saw the flaws exposed graphically. As the house of cards that is global finance tumbled, it took with it a lot of the faith that people have in the system. As it continues on, thriving on chaos, if it can't thrive on irrational exuberance, the globalised capitalist system has left many trailing in its wake, ready to swim to another shore if they can find one.

Humans are strange creatures. My favourite author Kurt Vonnegut, was at pains to point out how random, ineffectual, deluded and often downright rotten we can be. Yet, deluded as we are, each day we begin at the beginning. Every day is an opportunity to change how we live, how we work with others and which parts of the system we want to buy and which ones we wish to exchange for something better.

Since the GFC people are acting for their own good. They are often doing it with others however. As the most dire of human situations, the hopeless existences of Concentration camp and Gulag inmates has shown, those who band together and co-operate have a much greater chance of survival. 

 Community Gardens are springing up across my city. People are talking again about community. Gabriele and I envisage that the lawns and backyards of suburbia will soon be defacto market gardens as people reject the systems that provide their food, or respond to the breakdown of impossibly complex systems by recreating simple systems. The movement towards Organic food is a prime example of the shift in consciousness which is currently occurring. The city dwellers are voting Green and voting with their feet and their bicycles and their use of public transport.

The old Socialist movements, prior to the deluge created by World War 1 and the Bolshevik revolution, were founded on a number of pillars. One of them was the role of the producers, as workers another was their role as consumers. Co-operatives were a fundamental component of the British Labour Party and remain part of it today. Although dismissed as a form of participation in capitalism, Utopian Socialism, easily sucked into the system, this role of organised producer and consumer may emerge again as the people show the way to the future.

Scared politicians and would be despots will not be the ones to stand up in the boat and set sail to the future. I have the funny suspicion it will be you, and hopefully me too.

The future is what we make it. Nobody else will do it for you.

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 [RS1]The possible end of civilisation

 [RS2]rich

 [RS3]there