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