U.S. spy failings in Afghanistan

The attack on our intelligence professionals is starting to look a lot like a witch-hunt. The liberals want us out of Afghanistan. Anything that hints at a loss or an incompetent military furthers the liberal agenda. Let us take a quick look at the issue as seen by liberals.

Ewen MacAskill, Daniel Nasaw and Jon Boone, 6 Jan 10, the Hindu
Long-term weaknesses in U.S. intelligence gathering have been ruthlessly exposed over the last fortnight by the Christmas Day airline plot and the Afghanistan suicide bombing that killed seven CIA officers, according to former and serving intelligence officers.
-Ok, I could care less how good your intelligence is there is no way to know the intentions of every single passenger. The calls for investigations and all the drama is not about security it is a distraction. The poll numbers show politicians are worried, distractions give them breathing room. Watch the news for even more “retirements” they know they are not going to get reelected so it is spend now, party later. We are all supposed to sit down and watch the shiny object while mom and pop play in the halls of congress with our money.

They are scathing about the way the operation in Afghanistan has been run and say it is part of an institutional weakness on the part of the CIA and other intelligence-gathering agencies.

The biggest crisis in intelligence-gathering since 9/11 has been brought about mainly because no single agency is in charge, they say, creating a situation in which about a dozen U.S. intelligence agencies fight for their own turf.
-Ask yourself why you diversify your portfolios. Does a single point of failure really make you safer? Or is it just easier for our masters to control? One thing is clear, the government has never really worked very hard at controlling who comes and goes inside or outside of our border. Your security while traveling is part technology and part smoke and mirrors.

The former officers were speaking as President Barack Obama held an inquest at the White House into the communication breakdown between the CIA and other agencies that allowed the Nigerian bomb suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to come close to blowing up a U.S. passenger plane on Christmas Day.

A report published on the eve of that meeting by the deputy head of military intelligence, Major-General Michael Flynn, offered a damning assessment of intelligence-gathering in Afghanistan. He said the vast apparatus there was only marginally relevant. Analysts in Washington were so starved of information, that “many say their jobs feel more like fortune-telling than detective work”.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and counterterrorism agent, said the CIA had become “sloppy” in its field intelligence gathering, and the suicide bombing at Khost in Afghanistan was part of that.
-For those of you that don’t know who he is, Mr. Johnson runs a well known liberal blog, was pro Hilary for president and a long time liberal.

The CIA thought they had turned Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor, into one of their agents and it allowed him on to the base after he asked for a meeting, promising to provide information about al-Qaeda. He then blew himself up.
-At least now the left has a reason to look harder at their muslim friends, something the right has warned them about for years.

A school friend, Mohammed Yousef, said Balawi had deceived family and friends, telling them in March he was going to Turkey for further medical studies when he in fact travelled to Afghanistan to join the militants. He had wanted to die in a holy war, and wrote angry articles on the web calling for jihad against the U.S. and Israel.

Mr. Johnson pointed to tactical failures at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan, where the attack was made. He said an intelligence source as significant as Balawi should never have been brought inside the base, because it risked exposing him. Balawi should also have been debriefed by a much smaller group than the dozen or so CIA employees present when he set off the bomb.
-True, the wrong methods were used, the results are clear. What is also clear is PC thinking about show him that we trust him 100% was a bad idea. There is a simple method to tell when a practicing muslim is lying-watch the mouth if it moves then he or she is lying.

He described those errors as symptomatic of a larger trend within the agency of putting desk workers into the field. “You have a lot of inexperienced people being shoved out into the field without adequate mentoring and without proper training,” Mr. Johnson said.
-It is not just the CIA. The next military officer you see, ask them if they have read the koran. Know your enemy is as basic as it gets, radical muslims are proud to say the koran justifies their actions so how can any officer that has not read the book claim to understand what motives an insurgent?
The CIA has suffered one crisis after another since its inception in the middle of the last century. One of its high points was its claim to have contributed to winning the Cold War, but a low point was reached with the failure to prevent 9/11. Last year the Obama administration revealed details of waterboarding and other torture, and there were newspaper reports about links between the CIA and the private contractor Blackwater.

Pat Lang, a veteran of military intelligence, who was head of the analysis and clandestine human intelligence for the Defence Intelligence Agency, echoed Mr. Johnson’s criticism of the Khost operation. “A number of basic rules were violated. One that comes to mind is you never trust foreign agent assets,” he said.

“I think it is a very big crisis. It shows that the level of skill in operations has declined so far that they are a menace to themselves,” said Mr. Lang.

According to Mr. Lang, one of the major flaws in intelligence gathering was the failure of the Bush administration after 9/11 to put one agency in overall charge.
-Really and having one political party in charge of the country has benefited who exactly?

Gary Berntsen, a former senior CIA officer who served in West Asia, said a hiring freeze under President Clinton had left the CIA with a lack of experienced senior intelligence gatherers.

“When a bunch of guys like me retired all at 50, there’s a gap. And now we’ve got a lot of inexperienced people coming on who are being forced into senior positions in the field before they’re ready.”
-The next push will follow that theme, most government workers are paid way too much. We need to cut back. No mention that many professionals are also in their 50’s and have decades of experience. Cut their pay, discredit them, force them out, and replace them with cheaper and less expensive young people. Feel safer?

But he disputed suggestions that the bombing at the base in Khost indicated systemic problems within the agency. “The agency deals with these sorts of things every single day successfully, and this is an individual case where they failed. They got beat on this case, they got beat bad … My heart goes out to the families, but this does not indicate that the agency is in crisis in any way.”

He also criticised Mr. Obama’s selection of Leon Panetta to head the CIA, noting his lack of intelligence experience. “I’m sure he’s learning every day, but you don’t need to be learning on the job. For anyone to say it doesn’t have an effect is dishonest.”
-Most of us have worked for at least one clueless boss and all of us have seen what happens when you put a clueless, agenda driven moron in the Whitehouse.

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