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Date Posted: 17:47:26 09/25/01 Tue
Author: ��. �� "�� "
Subject: �� "�� "
In reply to: �� 's message, "�� " on 17:05:20 09/25/01 Tue

<a rel=nofollow target=_blank href="http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4262777,00.html">http://www.observer.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4262777,00.html</a>

The dirty war
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CIA gets go-ahead for a return to murderous Cold War tactics
War on terrorism - Observer special
Guardian Unlimited special: terrorism crisis

Peter Beaumont
Sunday September 23, 2001
The Observer

US intelligence agencies are preparing for a return to covert operations of the kind that made the CIA notorious during the Cold War.

The Bush administration is to give them the green light to revert to the tactics of Alden Pyle - Graham Greene's 'Quiet American' - and bomb, bug and corrupt as part of the secret strand of the President's global war on terrorism.

These tactics were alluded to by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week in a triumph of evasion as 'the other things' - components of what he called the 'shadow war'. On Wednesday, as Rumsfeld addressed a briefing for Pentagon reporters, he told them of things that might be done that the reporters and public would never know about, raising concerns of a return to operations - such as the Iran-Contra arms sales scandal - conducted without oversight and beyond the pale of political accountability.

While few would argue that US intelligence agencies - which failed signally to deter the catastrophic attacks on 11 September despite forewarnings - should be overhauled, critics fear a return to the darkest days of the CIA: including its support for General Augusto Pinochet's murderous coup and its alleged involvement in the killing of Congo's Marxist leader, Patrice Lumumba. Already it seems certain that - as reported by The Observer last week - the Bush administration will lift the ban on foreign assassinations by US agents or those working for them introduced in 1976 by President Gerald Ford after he discovered details of a CIA plot to kill the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has already thrown his weight behind demands - from the likes of Senator Richard Shelby of the House Intelligence Committee - to review the ban. Last week the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, confirmed that the executive order 'was under review'.

Pressure is also growing from senators and officials for a loosening of the tight controls on phone taps to allow easier surveillance of potential suspects within the United States, moves being met with growing concern by civil rights activists. The review of the assassination ban is the most visible sign of a sea change in US attitudes towards its intelligence community, marking a retreat from the recent portrayal of the work of the intelligence services, via their websites, as a wholesome career for the brightest young university graduates.

The recent heavy reliance on the technology of signals interception and analysis is likely to be replaced by the altogether more difficult and dangerous business of recruiting and running agents close to the terrorist groups, say experts. The intelligence agencies, including the CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency, will have to deal with unsavoury characters if they are to succeed in the war on terrorism.

One model likely to be under consideration is that of the Israeli intelligence services - Mossad and Shin Bet - which have matched a high counter-terrorism kill rate with an unpleasant reputation on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli undercover operations have traditionally put a heavy reliance on old-fashioned intelligence fieldwork, including blackmail and paying informers substantial salaries (by local standards) to spy on their Palestinian neighbours. Informers are then used to set up so-called 'targeted assassinations' - including car bombs, missile attacks and sniper shootings - and to identify suspects for the army undercover snatch squads of Dov Devan, the Cherry Brigade. Critics will point out, however, that even the unreconstructed approach of Mossad and Shin Bet has done little to deter Palestinian attacks.

According to a Democratic staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Senator Bob Graham, there is broad agreement that the US needs to get back to the basics of intelligence-gathering if it is to win the fight against terrorism. The staffer, who asked not to be identified, told The Observer: 'As far as repealing the ban on assassinations goes, Senator Graham and the committee are in favour of repealing it, although, because it is an executive directive, the President can do that on his own. Another aspect we are going to have to deal with is that we are going to have to get into the corrupt business of dealing with the really dirty folk - some of whom may have been involved in terrorism themselves - if we are going to get them over to our side.'

Senior Republicans are insisting that the rules on checking informants' pasts before hiring them be abolished by legislation, if the executive branch does not act soon, allowing the CIA to recruit agents with criminal records or records in terrorism. And while US intelligence insiders are said to be dubious about whether an end to the assassination ban would have helped stop the 11 September atrocity, they argue that what is really needed is more money for additional case officers with which to pay informants and agents. That, they say, 'could certainly help'.

By coincidence, the Senate Intelligence Committee had voted a few days before the suicide attacks to increase the classified intelligence budget, but the staffer admitted that more increases were likely. 'That vote,' he said; 'was in a different world.' Senator Graham himself is proposing new legislation to create an 'intelligence czar' based in the White House, established in law and answerable to Congress, who would co-ordinate the work of the different agencies and a big hike in funding for US intelligence efforts. Under Graham's proposed legislation, a new Office of Counter-Terrorism would be established to work alongside Bush's newly appointed head of a Homeland Defence Office, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge.

The emerging intelligence doctrine is not without its critics, who say a return to the kind of dirty operations that made the CIA notorious, and seen throughout Asia, Africa and South and Central America, would undermine America's moral claims in the war against terrorism.

The disclosures about the new direction that US intelligence is being asked to take comes against the background of emerging concern over the massive failures in intelligence by the FBI and CIA, who - it is claimed - had been warned in August that as many as 200 terrorists were slipping into the US and were planning 'a major assault on the United States'. According to a senior law enforcement official, the warning, issued by Mossad, cautioned that it had picked up indications of a 'large-scale target' in the US and that Americans would be 'very vulnerable'. The official added that the warning was linked 'to Afghanistan and [exiled Saudi militant] Osama bin Laden'.

But the most immediate problem now facing America's intelligence community, say insiders, is a shortage of expertise on Afghanistan and credible agents on the ground in an area intelligence sources say has been difficult to penetrate. Indeed, evidence of how US agencies were rushing to catch up came when FBI Director Robert Mueller publicly solicited résumés from Arabic and Farsi speakers. In the short term, however, the US is trying to plug the gap by asking for intelligence from Pakistan, whose Interservice Intelligence Agency has been markedly more successful in gathering information on what is going on in neighbouring Afghanistan.

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