Extremely Quiet Americans

Jeff Stein, a CQ reporter who used to be an intelligence officer in Vietnam, recounts how back during that war he had a daily routine to see if his spy had new information for him: "I’d drive by a soccer stadium in Danang, the large coastal city where I lived, and I’d look for a particular mark on the wall. If it was there, I’d go to a prearranged place at a set time for a clandestine meeting with a go-between." Danang wasn't the capital of South Vietnam, and "The war was raging in the jungles and rice paddies less than 10 miles away, and communist agents were everywhere in the city," nevertheless "security was good enough that they weren’t likely to risk exposing themselves by kidnapping or killing me." Even under those conditions, however, the US government never really got a grip on the situation and, of course, the American military effort was doomed to failure.

In Iraq, our intelligence is fantastically worse than that and "according to several well informed intelligence sources, hundreds of CIA operatives have become virtual prisoners in the Green Zone, the sprawling American enclave whose high walls and guards separate the U.S. embassy, military command and related civilian agencies from the raging sectarian violence in Baghdad’s streets." Stein quotes a former CIA Operations official as saying Agency personnel in Baghdad "spend their days playing cards and watching DVDs" because the insecurity makes it impossible for them to do their jobs. But, obviously, the military can't provide security without intelligence. Nevertheless, soldiers and spies alike keep being sent to Iraq to, in essence, wander in circles. Except they're wandering in circles in potentially lethal situations, dying and being gravely injured, inflicting serious wounds on others and destroying their property in attempts to defend themselves -- killing and dying for a clearly hopeless mission.

Via Henly who has further remarks.

Comments

(A) Today, you dn't need to go out like that - you can just use a cellphone.

(B) What about the DIA and any other defense intelligence? Shouldn't they be the primary intelligence channels in the middle of a war?

(C) This says a hell of a lot more about about the risk averse CIA than it does about Iraq. Seriously, we might as well just disband the CIA. It isn't capable of gathering intelligence any more, as proven by the 9/11 and WMD debacles. It isn't permitted (ever since the '70s) of actually carrying out operations. And it seems its sole purpose is to leak information intended to damage Republicans. We're better off saving the $X billion and just forgetting the CIA altogether.

Posted by Al | January 21, 2007 7:19 PM

*sigh*

Posted by Ed Marshall | January 21, 2007 7:27 PM

I'm with Al, we should just disband the CIA and buy the DIA a whole lot of cell phones.

On a related note, I watched Idiocracy and enjoyed it.

Posted by daveNYC | January 21, 2007 8:37 PM

9/11 was the result of a lack of coordination between the CIA and the FBI. Killing the CIA and putting the DIA in its place won't get rid of the whole "turf wars" problem that inhibited coordination between domestic and international intelligence gathering. The proper structures have to be put in place and the necessary leadership is a pre-requisite to making the two sides work together. Instead, the majority of counterterrorism experts who have gone to work for the FBI since 9/11 have quit because the FBI didn't respect them enough to give them real work, instead forcing them to spend the majority of their time on grunt work like taking out trash. Moving up in the FBI is still best accomplished by focusing on issues like organized crime, porn and drugs. Even if the CIA had been completely right on WMD, it wouldn't have mattered anyway because Bush would have still only listened to the Office of Special Plans, who just told Bush what he wanted to hear. Where was the Office of Special Plans located? Why, the Department of Defense. No wonder Al would like to replace the CIA with the DIA.

Posted by Reality Man | January 22, 2007 12:27 AM

So the CIA doesn't need to go out because of our modern technology and such, but when they don't, it's because the CIA is notoriously 'risk-averse'?

Of course, maybe Al meant that the CIA is too risk-averse to actually use the cel phones they have, because they're worried about getting brain cancer or something. I don't really know.

Posted by S. Tarzan | January 22, 2007 8:18 PM