The Secret War
Frustrated by intelligence failures, the Defense Department
is dramatically expanding its `black world' of covert operations
by William M. Arkin
27 October 2002
Los Angeles Times
SOUTH POMFRET, Vt. -- In what may well be the largest expansion of
covert action by the armed forces since the Vietnam era, the Bush
administration has turned to what the Pentagon calls the "black
world" to press the war on terrorism and weapons of mass
destruction.
The Defense Department is building up an elite secret army with
resources stretching across the full spectrum of covert
capabilities. New organizations are being created. The missions of
existing units are being revised. Spy planes and ships are being
assigned new missions in anti-terror and monitoring the "axis of
evil."
The increasingly dominant role of the military, Pentagon officials
say, reflects frustration at the highest levels of government with
the performance of the intelligence community, law enforcement
agencies and much of the burgeoning homeland security apparatus.
It also reflects the desire of Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld to gain greater overall control of the war on terror.
Insulated from outside pressures, armed with matchless weapons and
technology, trained to operate below the shadow line, the
Pentagon's black world of classified operations holds out the hope
of swift, decisive action in a struggle against terrorism that
often looks more like a family feud than a war.
Coupled with the enormous effort being made throughout the
government to improve and link information networks and databases,
covert anti-terror operations promise to put better information in
the hands of streamlined military teams that can identify, monitor
and neutralize terrorist threats.
"Prevention and preemption are ... the only defense against
terrorism," Rumsfeld said in May. "Our task is to find and destroy
the enemy before they strike us."
The new apparatus for covert operations and the growing government
secrecy associated with the war on terrorism reflect the way the
Bush administration's most senior officials see today's world:
First, they see fighting terrorism and its challenge to U.S.
interests and values as the 21st century equivalent of the Cold
War crusade against communism. Second, they believe the magnitude
of the threat requires, and thus justifies, aggressive new
"off-the-books" tactics.
In their understandable frustration over continued atrocities such
as the recent Bali attack, however, U.S. officials might keep two
points in mind.
Though covert action can bring quick results, because it is
isolated from the normal review processes it can just as quickly
bring mistakes and larger problems. Also, the Pentagon is every
bit as capable as the civilian side of the government when it
comes to creating organization charts and bureaucracy that stifle
creative thinking and timely action.
The development of the Pentagon's covert counter-terror capability
has its roots in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The Army created a
highly compartmentalized organization that could collect
clandestine intelligence independent of the rest of the U.S.
intelligence community and follow through with covert military
action.
Known as the Intelligence Support Activity, or ISA, when it was
established in 1981, this unit fought in drug wars and
counter-terror operations from the Middle East to South America.
It built a reputation for daring, flexibility and a degree of
lawlessness.
In May 1982, Deputy Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci called the
ISA "uncoordinated and uncontrolled." Though its freelance
tendencies were curbed, the ISA continued to operate under
different guises through the ill-starred U.S. involvement in
Somalia in 1992 and was reportedly active in the hunt for Bosnian
Serbs suspected of war crimes.
Today, the ISA operates under the code name Gray Fox. In addition
to covert operations, it provides the war on terrorism with the
kind of so-called "close-in" signals monitoring -- including the
interception of cell phone conversations -- that helped bring down
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Gray Fox's low-profile eavesdropping planes also fly without
military markings. Working closely with Special Forces and the
CIA, Gray Fox also places operatives inside hostile territory.
In and around Afghanistan, Gray Fox was part of a secret sphere
that included the CIA's paramilitary Special Activities Division
and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command.
These commands and "white" Special Forces like the Green Berets,
as well as Air Force combat controllers and commandos of eight
different nations report to a mind-boggling array of new command
cells and coordination units set up after Sept. 11.
An Army brigadier general commands the Joint Interagency Task
Force at Bagram air base north of Kabul to coordinate CIA, Defense
Department and coalition forces in Afghanistan. A new Campaign
Support Group has been established at Ft. Bragg, N.C. The Special
Operations Joint Interagency Collaboration Center has been created
in Tampa, Fla.
In Europe, the Joint Interagency Coordination Group handles
information-sharing and logistical support with NATO. Hawaii's
Pacific Command stood up a Joint Interagency Counter-Terrorist
Group this summer.
Meantime, old commands are being morphed into new ones for the
covert war. The two Joint Interagency Task Forces in the United
States previously devoted to fighting drugs now have the war on
terrorism as their highest priority.
The epicenter of the Pentagon's covert operations remains the
North Carolina-based Joint Special Operations Command, often
referred to as Delta Force. The super-secret command is still not
officially acknowledged to exist. Its two-star commander, Army
Maj. Gen. Dell L. Dailey, who spent much of the Afghan war in
Oman, has no public biography.
Among Dailey's assets is a fleet of aircraft specially equipped
for secret operations -- conventional and covert military planes
and helicopters, and even former Soviet helicopters. The bulk of
those craft, including the reconfigured Russian choppers, fly from
airfields in Uzbekistan and from two Pakistani air bases, Shahbaz
and Shamsi.
The Air Force and the CIA collect additional intelligence from
unmanned Predator and Global Hawk drones. They also have
low-profile reconnaissance assets that look like transport planes
and operate under such code names as ARL-Low, Keen Sage, Scathe
View and Senior Scout.
Not to be left out, the Navy's Gray Star spy vessel, reminiscent
of the old Pueblo, captured by North Korea in 1968, now sweeps up
sophisticated -- and obscure -- "measurements and signatures
intelligence" to monitor the ballistic missile capabilities of
Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
Even with all this, the Pentagon wants to expand covert
capabilities.
Rumsfeld's influential Defense Science Board 2002 Summer Study on
Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering
Terrorism says in its classified "outbrief" -- a briefing drafted
to guide other Pentagon agencies -- that the global war on
terrorism "requires new strategies, postures and organization."
The board recommends creation of a super-Intelligence Support
Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive
Operations Group, (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military
covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and
deception.
Among other things, this body would launch secret operations aimed
at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing
weapons of mass destruction -- that is, for instance, prodding
terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to
"quick-response" attacks by U.S. forces.
Such tactics would hold "states/sub-state actors accountable" and
"signal to harboring states that their sovereignty will be at
risk," the briefing paper declares.
Never to be outdone in proposing hardware solutions, the Air Force
is designing its own Global Response Task Force to fight the war
on terrorism. The all-seeing, all-bombing Air Force envisions
unmanned A-X aircraft capable of long-range, nighttime gunship
operations and an M-X covert transport, as well as hypersonic and
space-based conventional weapons capable of delivering a
"worldwide attack within an hour."
Who says the arms race is over? Rumsfeld's science board warns
against overemphasis on equipment even as it recommends more.
Washington is well on its way to an arms race with itself.
And for those who worry that all these secret operations and
aggressive new doctrines will turn the United States into the
world's policeman, there is a ray of hope.
Rumsfeld is now the field marshal of the war on terrorism, but the
Pentagon is also creating new layers of bureaucracy that may save
it from itself. Not to mention the rest of us.
William M. Arkin is a military affairs Times analyst who writes
regularly for Opinion. (warkin@igc.org) He is also a senior fellow
at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International
Studies.
Copyright © William Arkin 2002
Reprinted for Fair Use Only.
See Also:
o Global Eye - Into the Dark by Chris Floyd, 11/5/02
o `P2OG' allows Pentagon to fight dirty by David Isenberg, 11/5/02
o Understanding Special Operations, And Their Impact on The Vietnam
War Era - 1989 Interview with L. Fletcher Prouty, Colonel USAF
(Retired), by David Ratcliffe, 1999.
With special note of:
+ Opening the Door to CIA Clandestine Operations:
Shifting NSC Oversight from Directing to Approving Plans
+ The Function of the Director of Central Intelligence:
Coordinating Intelligence of the Government Intelligence
Community
+ Clandestine Operations: Out of Control
If Not Directed by the National Security Council
o Executive Summary and Summary of Prosecutions:
Final Report Of The Independent Counsel For Iran/Contra Matters
Volume I: Investigations and Prosecutions
Lawrence E. Walsh, Independent Counsel
4 August 1993, Washington D.C.
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
CIRCUIT
o The Secret Team, The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United
States and the World, by L. Fletcher Prouty, Col., U.S. Air Force
(Ret.), 1973, 1997
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/SecretWar.html (hypertext)
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/SecretWar.txt (text only)
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/SecretWar.pdf (print ready)