Espionage Recruitment 101

There's a very good article from the WSJ about the challenges of recruiting assets & sources in international espionage.

An excerpt...

How, then, does a case officer persuade someone to become a traitor? There is no definitive handbook. The process is as complex as human relationships. If possible, a friendship should develop between the case officer and the prospective agent; bonds of trust must be established. But beneath the surface, there is the CIA officer's constant and often uncharitable assessment of the target's aspirations, fears and desires. You must know what motivates the potential recruit so that you can better exploit his vulnerabilities and, in the end, put him in the right frame of mind for your "pitch." In making this assessment, the CIA relies on four basic human motivations, described by the acronym MICE: money, ideology, conscience and ego. Some agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, perhaps not realizing that MICE is already a plural word, insist on adding an S to the end for sex. But sexual entrapment is not a reliable recruitment technique. A blackmailed agent tends to be resentful, brooding, prone to disloyalty and the fabrication of intelligence. Other countries, most infamously Russia, have used sexual entrapment in intelligence operations without compunction. The relationship with an agent motivated by money is straightforward: "We give you cash, and you steal secrets." Consider the case of the aircraft mechanic in a North African country who, in 1974, reported that six new export models of the Soviet MiG 23 fighter had been delivered to his military air base. He was willing to photograph every detail of the planes and proposed being paid per frame, as long as the images were of value. One night, under a brilliant African moon, he crawled all over the plane, snapping photos. For a final rear-facing shot, he shinnied out onto the shark's nose of the aircraft—and suddenly slid backward off the front. He looked up to discover that he had bent down the hollow nose needle at a twenty-degree angle. Unable to straighten the thing out—and worried that his payment would be jeopardized—he proceeded down the flight line in a panic and bent the five needles on the remaining fighters to match the first. He got his money, but his access was lost, along with his usefulness.

Plenty more entertainment at the link. Go read.

By: Brant

No Lack of Irony in Snowden Case

We've all heard about the 2009 chat log in which Snowden says that leakers should be shot.

Worse yet, during a remarkable January 2009 chat, Snowden wrote that Obama had "appointed a fucking politician to run the CIA." In that same conversation, he vented his rage over reading a New York Times article about US actions in Iran, which was based on confidential leaks.

TheTrueHOOHA HOLY SHIT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?_r=1&hp
TheTrueHOOHA WTF NYTIMES
TheTrueHOOHA Are they TRYING to start a war?
Jesus christ
they're like wikileaks
User19 they're just reporting, dude.
TheTrueHOOHA They're reporting classified shit
User19 shrugs
TheTrueHOOHA about an unpopular country surrounded by enemies already engaged in a war
and about our interactions with said country regarding planning sovereignity violations of another country
you don't put that shit in the NEWSPAPER
User19 meh
TheTrueHOOHA moreover, who the fuck are the anonymous sources telling them this?
TheTrueHOOHA those people should be shot in the balls.
TheTrueHOOHA But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.
TheTrueHOOHA HELLO? HOW COVERT IS IT NOW? THANK YOU
User19 meh
TheTrueHOOHA I wonder how many hundreds of millions of dollars they just completely blew.
User19 you're over reacting. its fine.
TheTrueHOOHA It's not an overreaction. They have a HISTORY of this shit
User19 with flowersand cake.
User20 [User21]'s mushrooms are :o
TheTrueHOOHA these are the same people who blew the whole "we could listen to osama's cell phone" thing
the same people who screwed us on wiretapping
over and over and over again
Thank god they're going out of business.
User19 the NYT?
TheTrueHOOHA Hopefully they'll finally go bankrupt this year.
yeah.

But now, apparently, Ecuador is pissed that someone leaked the memo about them granted amnesty to the leaker, and want to prosecute the leaker who leaked the leak about the leaker leaking into leakedhood.

Officials on Thursday acknowledged that the Ecuadorean Embassy in London had issued a June 22 letter of safe passage for Snowden that calls on other countries to allow him to travel to asylum in Ecuador. But Ecuador's secretary of political management, Betty Tola, said the letter was invalid because it was issued without the approval of the government in the capital, Quito.

She also threatened legal action against whoever leaked the document, which she said "has no validity and is the exclusive responsibility of the person who issued it."

"This demonstrates a total lack of co-ordination in the department of foreign affairs," said Santiago Basabe, a professor of political science at the Latin American School of Social Sciences in Quito. "It's no small question to issue a document of safe passage or a diplomatic document for someone like Snowden without this decision being taken directly by the foreign minister or president."

So apparently, people who leak things to the media should be shot in the balls, and people whose country is protecting leakers should leak themselves.

By: Brant

The DoD's New Intel Agency

Because apparently our problem is that we don't have enough spies, we now have the Defense Clandestine Service.

The world's newest spy agency is now open for business. The Defense Clandestine Service now has its own website, a motto, and, finally, money from Congress to operate. The DCS, in its own words, "conducts human intelligence (HUMINT) operations to answer national-level defense objectives for the President, the Secretary of Defense, and senior policy-makers." DCS case officers "conduct source operations in every region of the world, alone or in teams. They use their innate intellect, flexibility and creativity — augmented by knowledge of the culture and comprehensive training — to recruit and manage HUMINT sources whose information answers national-level defense objectives."

By: Brant

Was Petraeus Brought Down By Insider Intrigue?

A forthcoming ebook on Benghazi is claiming Petraeus' downfall was engineered by his bodyguards and others inside the CIA.

David Petraeus was betrayed by his own bodyguards and vengeful high-ranking enemies in the CIA, who made sure his affair with his biographer was exposed to the public, a new book claims.
MailOnline can reveal a new angle on the story that rocked Washington last fall. It comes from two retired special operations commandos - a Navy SEAL and a Green Beret - who say they discovered a plot against the former CIA director while doing research about the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Senior CIA officers targeted Petraeus because they didn't like the way he was running the agency - focusing more on paramilitary operations than intelligence analysis. They used their political clout and their connections to force an FBI investigation of his affair with Paula Broadwell and make it public, according to 'Benghazi: The Definitive Report.'
'It was high-level career officers on the CIA who got the ball rolling on the investigation. It was basically a palace coupe to get Petraeus out of there,' Jack Murphy, one of the authors, told MailOnline.
Murphy and co-author Brandon Webb also revealed that the September 11 Benghazi terrorist attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, was retaliation by Islamist militants who had been targeted by covert U.S. military operations.
The book claims that neither Stevens nor even Petraeus knew about the raids by American special operations troops, which had 'kicked a hornet's nest' among the heavily-armed fighters after the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
John Brennan, President Barack Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser, had been authorizing 'unilateral operations in North Africa outside of the traditional command structure,' according to the e-book. Brennan is Obama's pick to replace Petraeus as head of the CIA.

By: Brant

Another Look at Petraeus

Another look at The Petraeus affair from The Economist

Of more abiding interest is what sort of legacy an extraordinary career has left. The general’s status as the epitome of the modern soldier-statesman-scholar was rooted in both real achievement and a myth of his own and others’ creation. Back home after two tours in Iraq, he used the time to digest the lessons he had learned to rewrite the army’s field manual on counterinsurgency (COIN). At the heart of what became known as “population-centric COIN” was the notion that the operational priority should be providing security for ordinary people and thus creating the conditions for a government under attack by an insurgency to earn legitimacy through the provision of goods and services.

By late 2006, faced with what looked like a descent into bloody civil war, most senior American officers were ready to give up on Iraq. However George W. Bush, desperate to try to find a less appalling denouement to the war, saw General Petraeus, supported by a controversial “surge” in troop numbers, as a possible lifeline for his reputation. How much of the (relative) success that followed was due to General Petraeus and how much the so-called “Anbar Awakening”—the rejection by Sunni tribal leaders of al-Qaeda’s ethnic slaughter that had begun shortly before the general’s return in January 2007—is still argued over. General Petraeus may have been lucky, but he worked with the grain of events to bend the history of the war around a narrative of narrowly averted disaster that was more or less true.

In June 2010, when Stanley McChrystal, his dedicated protégé, resigned as commander in Afghanistan after the reporting of remarks by his staff critical of the new administration, General Petraeus was sent for by Mr Obama to repeat his magic in Kabul. A time-limited troop surge was under way, but he knew official patience was running out and that the chances of applying a successful COIN strategy in a country as divided and poor as Afghanistan were slim. Even so, the speed with which he abandoned it in favour of a much more “kinetic” approach aimed at getting a quick improvement in security by killing as many Taliban as possible was breathtaking.

By the time General Petraeus handed over to his successor, General John Allen, 13 months later, a deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops at the end of 2014 had been set. General Allen was bizarrely drawn into the Petraeus scandal on November 13th when the Pentagon revealed that he had exchanged thousands of e-mails over a four-year period with Jill Kelley. Ms Kelley, a Tampa-based socialite who knew both men, triggered the FBI inquiry into the CIA director last May after receiving threatening e-mails from an apparently jealous Ms Broadwell. General Allen’s confirmation hearing as the new supreme commander in Europe has been put on hold because of the “inappropriate” nature of some of the e-mails.

COIN required more time and money than war-weary, economically stressed voters would stomach. As Mr Obama reiterated during his re-election campaign, nation-building now needs to take place at home. Boots on the ground are out again; special forces and drones, used to seek out and kill America’s enemies, are back in. After becoming director of the CIA, which has become the lead agency in fighting the high-tech, intelligence-led campaign against al-Qaeda and its offshoots, General Petraeus had no compunction in helping strangle his own COIN baby when it had outlived its usefulness.

Much more at the link

By: Brant

Petraeus, Allen, and the Rest

We've been resisting saying much of anything about the Petraeus scandal, as it's moving faster than we can really keep up with. But CNN has described it as a "dizzying saga", and that's about accurate.

The complicated web entangling an ex-CIA director, his mistress, a top military leader and a woman he allegedly flirted with got no less confusing Wednesday, though the U.S. defense secretary insisted facts will emerge.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta defended his request to withhold Marine Gen. John Allen's nomination to become NATO's supreme allied commander, pending an investigation into Allen's communications with a Florida woman.

The move was "a prudent measure until we can determine what the facts are, and we will," Panetta told reporters Wednesday. "No one should leap to any conclusions."

He added that the general "certainly has my continued confidence to lead our forces."

According to the Defense Department, Allen is under investigation for what one defense official referred to as "flirtatious" e-mail messages with Jill Kelley -- the woman whose complaints about anonymous, harassing e-mails led to the discovery of CIA Director David Petraeus' affair with a woman later identified as his biographer. Petraeus resigned Friday after acknowledging the affair.

Allen will retain his post as the commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, pending Senate confirmation of a successor, according to the Defense Department. That vote is due Thursday, Senate officials said.

Allen has denied wrongdoing, a senior defense official said.

There's a whoooooole lot more at the link.

By: Brant

Busting Bond: The myths of movie spycraft – CNN Security Clearance - CNN.com Blogs

CNN Security Clearance blog has an entertaining read about "the myths of movie spycraft" in honor of the release of Skyfall, the new Bond flick.

The latest James Bond movie, "Skyfall," delves into some tantalizing personal details about the world's favorite British spy, from formative events in his childhood to an up-close look at his relationship with M, the chief of the super-secret British spy service where Bond works.

The new film offers plenty of the heart-thumping chase scenes one expects from a Bond movie, and it also gives glimpses of Bond's well honed art of spycraft. Which begs the question: How realistic is today's Bond?

And they proceed to run through a handful of 'myths' - in some cases with some amusing revelations.

Bond Myth 1: Spies have super human abilities
Bond Myth 2: Style is a spy's best weapon
Bond Myth 3: It's easier to work alone
Bond Myth 4: Breaking the rules makes you bad
Bond Myth 5: Technology always makes the job easier
Bond Myth 6: Sophisticated drinks and theme songs make you cooler

By: Brant

US Treated Benghazi Attack as Terrorism From The Start

As soon as word of the attack came in, the US responded as thought it was a terror attack.

When gunmen struck the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 of this year, the response from American officials was almost simultaneous: They immediately set about collecting information about the attackers, some of whom were quickly identified as foreigners, and tracing links from them to known extremist groups, a knowledgeable source has told Yahoo News.
The source's description came as fresh news accounts cast doubt on the White House's insistence that it has been forthright all along about what it knew about the attack. (I tweeted on Sept. 21 that this same source informed Yahoo News that the administration privately labeled the attack as terrorism on "Day One.")
"Friendly Libyans were saying almost immediately that the organized attackers (not the protesters) seemed to be mostly foreigners. By the 13th, people were beginning to be identified and rolled up," the source, who has been critical of the administration in the past, told Yahoo News. One early asset: Social media, where videos and photos of the attack gave intelligence officials early clues to what really happened.
"In this case, the intel has been spot-on from the beginning," the source said. American intelligence reached the conclusion that the assault on the consulate was terrorism "on Day One" and "the Brits, the French, Italians all said the same thing … within 48 hours." The source agreed to detail the American response to the tragedy on condition of anonymity.
The day after the attack, President Barack Obama used his first public remarks on the tragedy to declare that "no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for." That contradicts Republican charges that the president has refused to label the attack as "terrorism."
The issue is not merely an inside-the-Beltway word game. A formal finding of terrorism enabled the U.S. government to respond with more military and intelligence assets than if the attack had been judged to be merely a criminal act.

By: Brant

Palantir and the Acquisitions System

Did 3MECH try to sneak their way around the system?

The issue that alarmed Shyu was that the unit said it couldn’t pay for the system, and the company offered its technology on a cost-free basis, as opposed to normal contracting methods. Shyu wrote that “these circumstances warrant immediate corrective action by the Army to ensure that we comply with fundamental rules relating to how the government obtains goods and services from industry.”
The memos, addressed to the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office and the Technical Support Working Group; and to intelligence contractor Praescient Analytics and Palantir, asked for a “temporary training/reach-back server” from Palantir before the 3rd ID’s deployment to Afghanistan to assume command of Regional Command-South. The unit deployed in August.
The 3rd ID’s memo said that the unit’s budget “will not support the purchase of Palantir. Operational Needs Statement (ONS) was considered, but standard length of timeline for ONS cannot be tolerated. This requirement needs to be filled immediately.” The memos obtained by Defense News show that the 3rd ID considered the 82nd Airborne’s use of Palantir in Afghanistan in 2012 critical in helping to fill “major capability gaps” in the division’s existing intelligence software, and that Palantir is “the only platform capable of filling their advanced analytic requirements.” Because the unit planned on using the software on its upcoming deployment, the memo states that “3rd ID needs a rapid fielding of this system to quickly fill critical capability/training gap prior to our pending deployment.”

One has to wonder whether or not all this bullshit would have happened if CIDNE hadn't fucked CENTCOM, and the Army as a whole, with all their political machinations surrounding the shutdown of FusionNET. There's nothing that we've heard that Palantir can do that FusionNET couldn't do 7 years ago, and it was already in the Army inventory, bought and paid for by the government.
CIDNE ramped up their political whining machine instead of improving their software, and got FusionNET shut down. As far as CIDNE was concerned, their problem was solved.
But the ground forces' problems were not, and thus Palantir was born to try to help unfuck the gaps in capability that CIDNE continued to have. The difference this time is that Palantir has better political cover than FusionNET did.
However, we're now paying for another system to do what CIDNE claimed they could do all along, when we'd already paid for one back in '04-'07. The US taxpayer is sucking up the cost of CIDNE's political dick-dancing by being forced to pay for the same capabilities all over again.

By: Brant

Every Service Has At Least One Bat-Shit Crazy Senior Officer

And apparently the Navy's guy wanted to pick a fight with Iran.

According to Todd and another witness, Cosgriff’s idea, presented in a series of staff meetings, was to sail three “big decks,” as aircraft carriers are known, through the Strait of Hormuz — to put a virtual armada, unannounced, on Iran’s doorstep. No advance notice, even to Saudi Arabia and other gulf allies. Not only that, they said, Cosgriff ordered his staff to keep the State Department in the dark, too.

To Todd, it was like something straight out of “Seven Days in May,” the 1964 political thriller about a right-wing U.S. military coup. A retired senior naval officer familiar with Cosgriff’s thinking said the deployment plan was not intended to be provocative.

But Todd, in an account backed by another Navy official, said the admiral “was very, very clear that we were to tell him if there was any sign that Washington was aware of it and asking questions.”

For the past year, the air had been electric with reports of impending U.S. or Israeli attacks on Iran. If this maneuver were carried out, Todd and others feared, the Iranians would freak out. At the least, they’d cancel a critical diplomatic meeting coming up with U.S. officials. Todd suspected that was Cosgriff’s aim. She and others also speculated that Cosgriff wouldn’t propose such a brazen plan without Fallon’s support.

Retired Adm. David C. Nichols, deputy Centcom commander in 2007, recalled in an interview last year that Fallon “wanted to do a freedom-of-navigation exercise in what Iran calls its territorial waters that we hadn’t done in a long time.” Nothing wrong with that, per se, but the problem was that “we don’t understand Iran’s perception of what we’re doing, and we haven’t understood what they’re doing and why,” Nichols said. “It makes miscalculations possible.”

By: Brant

DoD Firing Up Initiatives on Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information

What's funny about the Statement from George Little on Defense Initiatives to Limit Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information is that they are initiatives to "limit" - not "prevent" or "eliminate".

Department of Defense Fact Sheet
Recent Actions to Counter Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information

The Department of Defense has taken a comprehensive approach to reducing unauthorized disclosures of classified information. The department is continuously improving its security posture and overall capability to prevent unauthorized disclosures. Today, Secretary Panetta directed:

- A new “top down” approach to improve reporting leaks of classified information. The Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, in consultation with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, will monitor all major, national media reporting for unauthorized disclosures of defense department classified information. The Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence will ensure that the appropriate component of the department has been tasked with investigating leaks and that the required legal referrals to the Department of Justice and Congressional notifications are made.

In addition, over the past months, the following actions have been taken to help safeguard classified information:

- Improved personnel training on how to handle and protect classified information. The department has updated its information assurance and information security training courses that all personnel are required to take each year. The department has developed training designed to help individuals know what to do if they suspect a threat from an insider or observe security incidents such as leaks of classified information.

- Clarification of Information Security Policy. The department published the 5200.1M Information Security Program Manual which contains clearer instructions as to what constitutes an unauthorized disclosure, reporting requirements, the conduct of preliminary inquiries and other investigations, as well as roles and responsibilities across the department.

- Automated Security Incident Reporting System. The department has put into effect for the first time an online reporting system for significant security incidents for use across the department. This capability went into full operation in December of 2011 and is currently under evaluation for improvements in data management and tracking of investigations and other associated actions.

- Lockdown of removable storage device use on the Defense Secure Network (SIPRNET). The department has deployed a host-based security system (HBSS) tool to virtually monitor every defense department computer. HBSS prevents the downloading of information onto removable storage like DVDs, CDs, and memory sticks, with very limited exceptions. The tool also sends an alarm any time someone tries to write classified information to such removable storage. For authorized exceptions, the tool audits any downloads of information.

- Improved monitoring of DoD networks. The department issued a cyber identity credential (Public Key Infrastructure certificate) to every person operating on the department unclassified network. That process is underway for the classified network as well. Department personnel are working with other federal departments and agencies to help them issue the same cyber identity credential to all employees who need to access any of the government’s secret networks.

- Improving the auditing of information accesses so as to spot anomalous behavior. Department information officers are assessing the use of HBSS and other tools to collect and centralize data about information accesses to more quickly improve detection of malicious insiders.

- Stepping up internal oversight and assessment programs. The department has established the first Defense Security Oversight and Assessment Program (DSOAP) to conduct on-site interviews and staff assistance visits to determine and proliferate best practices as well as assess security policy affects on components. The effort identifies policy changes and gaps and provides data to the Defense Security Enterprise to effect policy remedies.

- An “Enterprise Approach” to managing Defense Department security. In response to findings of the DoD IG and issues raised during the WikiLeaks investigation, the department is publishing the DoD Directive 5200.LL, Managing the Defense Security Enterprise. This issuance stands up an executive level governance structure aimed at creating strategic management of department investments in security resources. It is the first body to bring the functions of security, counterintelligence, and information assurance together for decision-making and proponency of the security mission and for its workforce.

- Comprehensive Insider Threat Program. The department has now initiated a comprehensive DoD Insider Threat Program which includes elements from Physical Security, Cyber Security, Counterintelligence, Antiterrorism, and Force Protection. A forthcoming DoD directive (2000.rr) will codify this approach to address aspects of the insider threat.

- Unauthorized Disclosure Working Group (UDWG) and Unauthorized Disclosure Action Plan. The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence has commissioned the UDWG in April 2012 to develop a strategy and plan of action and milestones aimed at improving our ability to prevent accidental and deter intentional public disclosure of classified national security information. The group has its plan in draft and is in the process of overseeing its execution.

By: Brant

CIA Outsourcing "Assassinations"?

The problem with calling this "assassination" is that although semantically accurate, it deliberates uses the politically- and socially-charged terminology typically associated with the ideological targeting of major political figures. No one calls administration of a death penalty to a prisoner an "assassination" and no one considers snipers taking aim a key leaders on a battlefield to be an "assassination". This is not to excuse the deliberate hiding of a program from Congress, but it does raise a point about the language we use to describe it.

What are your thoughts?

It was one of the biggest secrets of the post-9/11 era: soon after the attacks, President Bush gave the CIA permission to create a top secret assassination unit to find and kill Al Qaeda operatives. The program was kept from Congress for seven years. And when Leon Panetta told legislators about it in 2009, he revealed that the CIA had hired the private security firm Blackwater to help run it. "The move was historic," says Evan Wright, the two-time National Magazine Award-winning journalist who wrote Generation Kill. "It seems to have marked the first time the U.S. government outsourced a covert assassination service to private enterprise."

The quote is from his e-book How to Get Away With Murder in America, which goes on to note that "in the past, the CIA was subject to oversight, however tenuous, from the president and Congress," but that "President Bush's 2001 executive order severed this line by transferring to the CIA his unique authority to approve assassinations. By removing himself from the decision-making cycle, the president shielded himself -- and all elected authority -- from responsibility should a mission go wrong or be found illegal. When the CIA transferred the assassination unit to Blackwater, it continued the trend. CIA officers would no longer participate in the agency's most violent operations, or witness them. If it practiced any oversight at all, the CIA would rely on Blackwater's self-reporting about missions it conducted. Running operations through Blackwater gave the CIA the power to have people abducted, or killed, with no one in the government being exactly responsible." None of this is new information, though I imagine that many people reading this item are hearing about it for the first time.

Isn't that bizarre?

By: Brant

BULLETS! - Trust

BULLETS!
-- quick and dirty words of wisdom collected over the years --

Trust your recon, but trust your recon.


your thoughts always welcome in the comments below!

By: Brant

The Pre-9/11 Chase For OBL

CNN's got a very good column based on some recently-declassified docs about the hunt for OBL, pre-9/11. It's a frustrating read, to know that we passed on a lot of opportunities to plant him in the dirt. Would it have stopped 9/11? Who knows. But it couldn't have hurt.

On December 20, 1998, an internal CIA memo was sent by a field agent about a missed opportunity to "hit" Osama bin Laden while he was reportedly visiting a mosque near Kandahar, Afghanistan. "I said hit him tonight; we may not get another chance," CIA agent Gary Schoen wrote. "We may well come to regret the decision not to go ahead."

The memo was sent to to Michael Scheuer, then head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden "station," and is one of more than 100 documents declassified and published by the National Security Archive this week. Although some have been previously cited or quoted in the Report of the 9/11 Commission, the raw documents themselves illustrate the frustrations and missteps in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and alarm among some at the CIA about al Qaeda's growing sophistication and its plans for attacking U.S. interests.

Scheuer replies to Schoen the following day. "This is the third time you and your officers have put UBL in this government's sights and they have balked each time at doing the job. ... They spent a good deal of time yesterday worrying that some stray shapnel might hit the Habash mosque and 'offend' Muslims."

By: Brant

SF Ops in Africa Focusing on Intel Work?

WaPo has a very revealing - and long - article about the expansion of special ops missions in Africa, and their focus on intel work.

About a dozen air bases have been established in Africa since 2007, according to a former senior U.S. commander involved in setting up the network. Most are small operations run out of secluded hangars at African military bases or civilian airports.

The nature and extent of the missions, as well as many of the bases being used, have not been previously reported but are partially documented in public Defense Department contracts. The operations have intensified in recent months, part of a growing shadow war against al-Qaeda affiliates and other militant groups. The surveillance is overseen by U.S. Special Operations forces but relies heavily on private military contractors and support from African troops.

The surveillance underscores how Special Operations forces, which have played an outsize role in the Obama administration’s national security strategy, are working clandestinely all over the globe, not just in war zones. The lightly equipped commando units train foreign security forces and perform aid missions, but they also include teams dedicated to tracking and killing terrorism suspects.

How do you see the future of US operations in Africa? Conventional missions? SF ops supporting FD? Quasi-wars and proxy wars against trans-national troublemakers? Zimbabwe continuing under the rule of Methuselah Robert Mugabe?

By: Brant

US Troops On The Ground in North Korea?

The commander of SOF-Korea admits that we’ve sent troops into North Korea.

“At no time have SOF [Special Operations] forces been sent to the north to conduct special reconnaissance,” said the United States Forces Korea.

U.S. Army Gen. Neil Tolley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces in South Korea, told an audience in Tampa that U.S. and South Korean forces have been sent into North Korea to spy on the communist country’s vast collection of underground tunnels and military installations.

The extraordinary admission, which went unreported by U.S. media, came on May 22 during the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference. Tolley said his command has identified 20 airfields and 180 munitions factories that are partially underground, along with thousands of subterranean artillery positions.

“The entire tunnel infrastructure is hidden from our satellites,” Tolley added, according a report published Monday by The Diplomat, a Japan-based foreign affairs magazine.

“So we send ROK [Republic of Korea] soldiers and U.S. soldiers to the North to do special reconnaissance.”

Wow.

I do like this line from him:

The brigadier general appeared on a panel with his counterparts from the much larger African, European, Pacific and Southern commands. But the comparatively tiny region he oversees, he said, is nothing to sneeze at.

“We have only two countries and one time zone,” he explained, “but what we lack in size we make up for in kilotons of evil.”

So how do you incorporate this sort of recon into a game like Decision's DMZ or GMT's Next War: Korea?

UPDATE
The denials from USFK were swift and unequivocal.

A spokesman for US forces in South Korea subsequently dismissed the media report.
"Some reporting has taken great liberal licence with his comments and taken him completely out of context," Colonel Jonathan Withington, of the public affairs office of US Forces Korea, said in a statement.
"No US or ROK (Republic of Korea) forces have parachuted into North Korea," he said. "Though special reconnaissance is a core special operations force mission, at no time have SOF forces been sent to the north to conduct special reconnaissance.
"The use of tunnels in North Korea is well documented," he added. "Several of the known tunnels along the DMZ are visited by tourists every day."

By: Brant

Professional Intel Operator, oh yeah, and "Mom"

Just in time for Mothers' Day, and excellent article from CNN's Security Clearance blog about the intel communities female operators.

Nada Bakos used to go work with a Glock strapped to her thigh. The former targeting officer for the CIA started her intelligence career as an analyst in 2000. But then September 11 happened.

"Everybody's life changed," said Nada Bakos, who, like many other women who were serving as analysts prior to 9/11, moved to the counterterrorism and eventually made the switch to the operations side, which meant she wasn't just analyzing the data on the bad guys, she was going after them.

She didn't yet have a family when she accepted her assignment as a targeting officer in Iraq, working alongside special forces in the hunt for the now-deceased terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. She won't share the details of exactly what she did to help find him, but she saw definite advantages to being a woman in the arena, noting that she sometimes had a very different experience than her male counterparts when it came to working within the norms of the culture.

"I got a completely different response than the men did," said Bakos, describing one particular effort to gather information. "How is a 26-year-old white male gonna walk up to a woman in the Middle East and say 'Hey, why don't you talk to me?' "

After a couple of years, Bakos realized that she knew more about Zarqawi than she did about many of the other men in her life. That, in part, was a wake up call to do something more: She wanted to start a family. But she was deep into her career on the operations side. That was a problem."The difference between men and women is that it's really hard for women to live the lifestyle of a case officer," said Bakos. "If you have a significant other, it's hard for you both to be employed. I was 37 then and I can't really say, 'Hey, let's interrupt your career and you can carve out what you need."

Much more - go read.

By: Brant

Intelligence Agencies: Keeping Us Safe

Here's the start of the article about the new underwear-bomb plot that was thwarted by the CIA.

The U.S. thwarted a bomb plot by al Qaeda's Yemeni branch aimed at bringing down a jetliner with a more advanced version of an underwear bomb used in a failed 2009 Christmas Day attempt, officials said Monday.

The Central Intelligence Agency, working with foreign security services, was able to seize the bomb—which they believed was intended for a U.S.-bound flight—before the would-be suicide bomber was able to move ahead with his plot, officials said. Because the plot was headed off in its early stages, officials said the effort never represented a threat to Americans or to U.S. allies, nor did airlines face a direct threat.

The bomb was "viable," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said. The official added that it probably would have gone off but it did have some flaws that may have impacted its ability to detonate properly. The Federal Bureau of Investigation now has the bomb and is analyzing its makeup. The agency hopes to better understand tactics being employed by the al Qaeda affiliate that U.S. officials say poses the greatest danger to the U.S.

In any version of the article, anywhere, you can't find a single mention of the TSA having anything to do with saving us from this scourge. But hey, the TSA's new rule over this will probably be that we all have to fly commando now.

By: Brant

Pentagon Intel Agency Reboot?

The DIA is starting over after a decade of war.

The Pentagon is rebranding and reorganizing its clandestine spy shop, sending more of its case officers to work alongside CIA officers to gather intelligence in places like China, after a decade of focusing intensely on war zones.

A senior defense official says several hundred case officers will make up the new Defense Clandestine Service.

Defense Department personnel already gather intelligence globally on everything from terrorism to weapons of mass destruction, mostly working out of CIA stations in embassies.

By: Brant

Covert UK Ops on the Ground in Libya

Mark Urban (no known relation to Keith) has a great article about the UK's covert actions on the ground during the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime.

The first significant involvement of British forces inside Libya was a rescue mission mounted just a couple of weeks after the rising against Gaddafi broke out. On 3 March, Royal Air Force C130 aircraft were sent to a desert airstrip at Zilla in the south of the country to rescue expatriate oil workers. Many had been threatened by gunmen and bandits.

This airlift of 150 foreigners, including about 20 Britons, to Valletta airport in Malta went smoothly, despite one of the aircraft being hit by ground fire soon after taking off.

Accompanying the flights were about two dozen men from C Squadron of the Special Boat Service (SBS), who helped secure the landing zone. It was a short-term and discreet intervention that saved the workers from risk of abduction or murder, and caused little debate in Whitehall.

OK, so not bad. But after another debacle (read the article - amazing these guys dorked up that bad) the straightjacket went on the ROE.

When half a dozen British officers arrived at a seaside hotel in Benghazi at the beginning of April, they were unarmed and their role was strictly limited. They had been told to help the NTC set up a nascent defence ministry, located in a commandeered factory on the outskirts of the city.

The first and most basic task of the advisory team was to get the various bands of Libyan fighters roaring around in armed pick-up trucks under some sort of central co-ordination. As reporters had discovered, most of these men had little idea of what they were doing, and soon panicked if they thought Col Gaddafi's forces were attacking or outflanking them.

There were a number of legal issues preventing them giving more help. Some Whitehall lawyers argued that any type of presence on the ground was problematic. Legal doubts were raised about arming the NTC or targeting Col Gaddafi.

Once the air operation was put on a proper Nato footing, these issues became even more vexed, insiders say, with the alliance saying it would not accept men on the ground "directing air strikes" in a way that some newspapers, even in late spring, were speculating was already happening.

The British government's desire to achieve the overthrow of Gaddafi while accommodating the legal sensitivities registered by various Whitehall departments led to some frustration among those who were meant to make the policy work.

This is the kind of news story you can see growing into a complete book, and an interesting one at that.

By: Brant