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.