[Marxism] The Secret War

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

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
<http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/IranContra.html> . 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@xxxxxxx) He is also a senior
fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International
Studies. 




                Copyright (c) William Arkin 2002 
                Reprinted for Fair Use Only. 



                See Also: 

                *       Global Eye - Into the Dark
<http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/IntoTheDark.html>  by Chris Floyd,
11/5/02 
                *       `P2OG' allows Pentagon to fight dirty
<http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/P2OG.html>  by David Isenberg,
11/5/02 
                *       Understanding Special Operations
<http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/> , 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
<http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/chp2_p1.html#pgfId=2345>  
                        *       The Function of the Director of Central
Intelligence:
                                Coordinating Intelligence of the
Government Intelligence Community
<http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/chp2_p1.html#pgfId=1547>  
                        *       Clandestine Operations: Out of Control
                                If Not Directed by the National Security
Council
<http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/chp2_p1.html#pgfId=2369>  

                *       Executive Summary and Summary of Prosecutions:
                        Final Report Of The Independent Counsel For
Iran/Contra Matters
<http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/IranContra.html>  
                        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 
                *       The Secret Team
<http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/> , 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 




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James M. Craven
Blackfoot Name: Omahkohkiaayo-i'poyi
Professor/Consultant,Economics;Business Division Chair
Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd.
Vancouver, WA. USA 98663
Tel: (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863
http://www.aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com
<http://www.aradicalblackfoot.blogspot.com/>  
"Naturally, the common people don't want war ... 
it is always a simple matter to drag the people 
along...the people can always be brought to the 
bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have 
to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and 
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and 
exposing the country to danger. It works the same 
in every country." 
(Hermann Goering, No. 2 Nazi in "Third Reich")
Employer has no association with private/protected opinion
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