Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Russian spies were no Cold War remnants: Agents arrested in the U.S. show a new focus for Russian intelligence

July 1, 2010 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Baltimore Sun.]

The recent arrest of 10 Russian citizens in America on charges of espionage at first blush appears to be a typical Cold War scenario. But it clearly is not.

Human intelligence operations are uniquely equipped to ascertain an enemy’s intentions. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union ran extensive intelligence operations against the United States. They targeted just about any American they could, many of whom were insignificant employees of the U.S. Government and members of the armed forces. In short, the Soviets were omnivorous. They would take anybody. That is not to say that they were unsuccessful, only that their standards were not too high.

The Soviet espionage apparatus included an “illegals program.” “Illegals” were normally Soviet citizens who were documented as citizens of other countries. Armed with the necessary language fluency and area knowledge, they were dispatched to the United States and other countries, primarily to conduct the most sensitive and productive operations that the Soviets had. They had no contact with U.S.-based Soviets.

A Soviet couple who were exhaustively trained intelligence officers, carrying carefully forged or altered Argentine passports and speaking native Argentine Spanish might be sent to New York City to set up a support mechanism for the most sensitive and productive Soviet agent in the U.S. government in Washington. This would be done on the normally valid assumption that, as “Argentine” citizens, they would not be subject to U.S. surveillance and could thus securely handle the important assets in question.

They ran these illegals because they knew that their official representatives were subject to regular U.S. surveillance that might uncover Soviet intelligence’s most sensitive and productive American sources.

When the USSR came to an abrupt end in 1991, there were probably a handful of such illegals already in the U.S. There certainly were KGB officers in Moscow who had worked in support of illegals during the Soviet era. They would have stayed on and joined the KGB’s successor, the SVR, and continued to run illegals operations, albeit at a reduced pace, perhaps putting the Illegals they already had here on ice and continuing to infuse their original program with new blood.

The point is that the expertise required for running such costly, complicated and sensitive operations has almost certainly been alive and well in Russia since the fall of the USSR.

So, why is this different from the Cold War?

It has recently been reported in the media that in 2002 or 2003, at President Bush’s insistence, then-Russian President and former KGB officer Vladimir Putin quietly agreed to no longer run intelligence operations out of Russia’s legal rezidenturas (overseas intelligence offices) in diplomatic, trade and other official Russian enterprises in the U.S. Clearly in the knowledge that the old Soviet illegals program existed at minimum on paper, Mr. Putin had little difficulty acquiescing to President Bush’s proposal.

In addition, it now seems fairly obvious that not only had this Russian program been in place and functioning in the United States for a decade or more but that the FBI has been onto them for a number of years. It does seem a bit unusual that the arrests were not made years ago, which has led to additional press speculation that the White House, for reasons not yet explained, had not permitted the roll-up of the net until now.

Whatever the ultimate truths about this drama, it is clearly not a Cold War remnant. According to documents released by the government, these Russians were here not to handle the most sensitive Russian penetrations of the American body politic, as in the past, but to function as spotters of prospective new agents for the Russians to recruit outside the United States.

Maybe it’s as simple as the Russians sticking with Mr. Putin’s promise to President Bush not to conduct espionage from their legal rezidenturas, maybe they simply wanted to make use of old assets, but it’s more likely that they have simply changed their targeting.

Given the fact that they are now using illegals, their most complicated, costly and sensitive assets, in the mundane process of spotting Americans who have knowledge of and influence in important policy circles, the Russians clearly become far more selective in their targeting.

They would appear, finally, to have come to understand that in today’s post-Cold War world it is no longer profitable to target every American in sight and that the only Americans of any real espionage importance to Russia are those who can report on the most secret American intentions.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East. His 24-year career was focused on the Soviet Union.

Posted in Russia |

Military Approach in Afghanistan Is a Sure Way To Lose

June 24, 2010 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Randolph Herald.]

There is a major difference between the conduct of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. Critical to the process is correctly identifying the problem and then using the appropriate tools to combat it.

Terrorism has rarely if ever been defeated with military power. Historically, the best tools to use against it are police and intelligence organizations. They are often successful.

Insurgencies have rarely been defeated. This is particularly true when the insurgents are being fought by a foreign government as with the French in Algeria and Indonesia, with the British in Aden, Kenya, Cyprus and Malaysia and with us in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Even under the best circumstances, as in Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tigers, who began their insurgency in 1976, were only defeated in 2009 and then, if truly defeated, by the Sri Lankan government itself!

We went to Afghanistan in 2001 to deal with a terrorist threat. We destroyed the Al Qaida camps and put them on the run. We did serious damage to their hosts, the Taliban. We were still fighting terrorism.

When we invaded Iraq in 2003, there was absolutely no terrorism involved in the equation. We won a brief war and then entered into a counterinsurgency. The insurgents were joined by a terrorist group under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who had managed to coalesce a number of Kurdish Islamists and foreign fighters around him. They were ultimately recognized, if somewhat reluctantly, by Al Qaida Central as Al Qaida in Iraq.

They came to Iraq because they were attracted by a target-rich environment that gave them a perfect training ground and recruiting tool for future militants, as well as increased fundraising potential. They worked within the framework of the Iraqi insurgency against US forces. The primary US strategy in Iraq was to conduct a counterinsurgency operation.

By 2009, a number of spontaneous developments had calmed the situation in Iraq, permitting us to refocus on Afghanistan, which, we were told by both Bush and Obama, was the primary scene of the struggle with terrorism.

Yet, Afghanistan 2009 and 2010 is another US counterinsurgency in which our conventional forces have no involvement with counterterrorist operations—simply because Al Qaida has left Afghanistan, primarily for Pakistan and abroad.

What brought us to the Middle East was our concern about terrorism, yet our military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq are concerned primarily, if not exclusively, with insurgency.

Counterinsurgencies, however carefully they are run, are magnets for the recruitment and training of terrorists and for fundraising on their behalf. Just look at our recent missteps in Afghanistan and the numbers of noncombatants killed.

Our struggle is for hearts and minds. In fact, moderates, the overwhelming majority of Muslims, hold the key to the success or failure of Al Qaida and militant Islam. Whoever wins them over will win the battle. Moderates are potentially the most effective enemy of and counterbalance to the fundamentalists.

Everything we do in our counterinsurgency operations has the potential to make our struggle with terrorism more difficult because it has the potential to alienate moderates. The mere presence of the US military, let alone their counterinsurgency operations, represents an advantage for Al Qaida that it simply could not create on its own.

The facts that rankle all Muslims include: US military presence in the Muslim world, with the concomitant occupations; the killing of Muslims; US support of repressive and despotic regimes; and the unbalanced US approach to the Palestine problem. These facts all remain, yet all can potentially be changed, particularly and most simply our military approach.

The question is, when and why did we decide that it was OK to run counterinsurgency operations when our original motivation was solely to deal with terrorism? Precisely what do we hope to accomplish with this approach?

We can disengage militarily. The internal US political response to this strategy is a repetition of the “failed state” argument, which holds no water. Terrorists don’t need failed states and they have proven it in Europe and the U.S. Furthermore, there is every indication that the Taliban has had it up to the ears with Al Qaida and would never permit them to re-open in Afghanistan.

If we were to address those problems enumerated above and created by our policies in the Muslim world, we would cut the legs from under Al Qaida and all the other Muslim fundamentalist terrorist groups simply because they would lose the support, even the grudging tolerance, of moderate Muslims.

That’s why Al Qaida approved so strongly of the Bush approach and of the Obama adoption of the Bush strategy.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. A longtime resident of Brookfield, he now lives in Williston.

Posted in Afghanistan, foreign policy, Middle East |

What it will take to win in Afghanistan

June 22, 2010 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in The Herald of Randolph.]

David Kilcullen, one of the world’s leading counterinsurgency experts and preeminent advisor to the US government, says that we must meet certain markers if we are to “succeed” in Afghanistan: We must face the realities of historical and contemporary Afghanistan.  There must be agreement between Afghans and Americans on our goals.  We must eliminate the Taliban sanctuary in Pakistan.  There must be a solid, long-term US commitment including a flexible timeline.

However, before anything else, the Obama administration must define the words “success” and “win”.  As the leading free enterprise democracy in the world, we habitually insist that any enterprise in which we are inclined to invest be prepared to show us that it is making progress that will profit us.  That is no less true for the Afghan war than it is for Microsoft, yet our goals have never been defined by either the Bush or Obama administrations.

As a result, there is no way for anyone in this country to measure progress in this war.  Without that ability, we will predictably become more easily disenchanted with our Afghan war than we would if we knew fairly precisely what it was that America is fighting for.  Having once defined those goals, we must face Kilcullen’s realities as outlined above.

First, we need to face Afghanistan’s historical and current realities.   Afghanistan is geographically inhospitable, tribal country whose people are corruptible, indomitable, bellicose and armed to the teeth. The tribal Afghans have never had or wanted a strong central government.  They have often been invaded by foreign armies and as a result are strongly xenophobic.

The governing ideals for the majority Pashtun people are embodied in the “Pastunwali” or Pashtun Way.  It is designed to motivate its followers to support their way of life and resist by force of arms all attempts by anyone, particularly foreigners, to change it either by force or subterfuge.  It is clearly the product of a people who have often been under the gun from foreign cultures and who have evolved their own very efficient way of dealing with such incursions.

Second, we must get to the point where the American administration and people believe that the Afghan political establishment and people share with us a common definition of “success”, whatever that proves to be.  We are, after all, fighting this war for the people of Afghanistan, not for ourselves.  What do they think we want and do they share that goal? The fact that most Afghans believe that the recent “election” of Premier Karzai was massively fraudulent makes agreement on our current activities problematical at best.

Third, we must deal with the Taliban sanctuary in Pakistan.  As long as that  exists, we will never “win”.  The Pashtun people who basically comprise the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, straddle the border between the two nations.  That is one of our most difficult problems. If we are to “win” over the Taliban in Afghanistan, we will have to deny them sanctuary in Pakistan.

Unfortunately, The Pakistan military establishment has long supported the Taliban, seeing it as a potential counterbalance in its endless conflict with India.  They are reluctant to do much against the Taliban in Pakistan because of its perceived role in any future battle with India.

Finally, we must be prepared to commit American resources to Afghanistan for a protracted period.  When we invaded Iraq in 2003, the US Army Chief of Staff told us that we would need half a million troops to successfully occupy that country.  The post-invasion period in Iraq showed clearly that he had a point.  We are now dealing with our Afghan problems with just over 100,000 troops.  A look at a topographical map of Afghanistan will tell even the dullest among us that Afghanistan is a far more geographically complicated and challenging country than Iraq and that if we are to “win” there, we will probably need many more troops than we ultimately employed in Iraq.

To deal successfully with this, we will have to back off the 2011 withdrawal deadline given by President Obama and be prepared to extend our involvement there for years.  The most optimistic estimates from General Petraeus now range around a military commitment of at least seven additional years.

In conclusion, we are faced with unavoidable Afghan historical, cultural, tribal and political realities as well as waning world support and Pakistani ambivalence.  Then consider our own realities of growing fatigue and discontent with the longest war in our history and severe economic and fiscal problems at home.  It seems doubtful we will be inclined to continue our Afghan military involvement sufficiently long to achieve any sort of “successful” conclusion, even if we knew what that meant.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.  A longtime former resident of Brookfield, he now lives in Williston.

Posted in Afghanistan |

Why we lack intelligence

June 20, 2010 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

The director of National Intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, resigned from his post in late May. The miracle is first, that given the endemic structural and political issues in the intelligence community he accepted the job at all and, second, that he lasted as long as he did.

The intelligence structure of the United States is broken. It started with Bill Clinton’s “peace dividend” after the fall of the Soviet Union, when many of the most substantively and linguistically talented CIA officers opted for early retirement simply because their ship was rudderless under a White House that should have been at the helm.

It was that rudderless CIA ship that limped into 9/11 and ultimately took the fall for the overall ineptitude of the entire intelligence community.

When the federal government is faced with a crisis and really doesn’t know what to do, it reorganizes. It was inevitable that 9/11 would bring us a “Patriot Act,” a piece of legislation that bears testimony to the fact that its authors and supporters had no idea what they were doing.

The Patriot Act inserted yet another layer of bureaucracy on top of an already dysfunctional, uncoordinated and stratified intelligence community. It created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence when it already had a position with essentially the same coordinating authorities and responsibilities, the director of Central Intelligence.

Because of the way Washington usually functions, a succession of DCIs either was not permitted by the White House to carry out their intelligence community oversight responsibilities, or felt insufficiently secure to try. None of the other myriad organizations in the intelligence community ever had any intention of allowing the DCI, or today’s DNI, to oversee its operations. And it was often politically difficult for any given White House to establish or support the primacy of the DCI, as is clearly the case today with the DNI.

The problems that confront this country in the intelligence arena are many and complex. They start with the totally irrational expectations of the American people who, fed by Jason Bourne, 007 and “24,” really think that they can be protected from evil-doers by the wondrous workings of the intelligence community.

In a world of increasingly self-motivated self-trained singleton terrorists, it is irrational to think that we will somehow escape this period unscathed. The underwear bomber and Times Square were lucky breaks for us, but that sort of thing will happen again and we won’t be so lucky. What we need to avoid at all costs is the real WMD.

We need to keep terrorists from detonating a nuclear device, the only true WMD, on our soil. That is where we need to concentrate our real counterrorism operations – on the potential sources of such weapons and the networks that would be expected to move them should they become available. In relative terms, however unsettling, a car bomb in Manhattan is peanuts!

Intelligence collection and analysis are imperfect arts. Critical analysis is not possible without excellent collection because, by and large, only clandestine collection has the potential to obtain critical information on the capabilities and intentions of our enemies (strategic intelligence).

There has always been a conflict between the collection of tactical military intelligence and strategic intelligence, particularly in time of war. It is safe to conclude that, as in the case of Viet Nam, since our 2003 invasion of Iraq, CIA has been increasingly tasked with the collection of tactical military intelligence in support of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s hard to imagine that the hundreds of CIA officers who have probably been committed to the region for political reasons, have been working on terrorism and WMD. Certainly since 2006, terrorists have become increasingly scarce and it’s clear that the WMD never have existed there.

Rivalries and jealousies exist throughout the IC. Sharing operational information is unusual and IC member management is interested In using the intelligence they gather or protect their relative positions in the IC. Thus the intelligence process, the primary purpose of which is to speak truth to power, always has been used by Washington’s politically ambitious to forward their organizational interests and careers.

Washington could well do away entirely with the DNI structure. It could be replaced by returning the authorities, responsibilities and the DCI title to the CIA Director, where they resided from 1946 until 2001. If they had the political guts, which seems unlikely, they could put enough real teeth into the DCI’s authorities to enable him to really oversee the IC and thus measurably strengthen it.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.

Posted in CIA, intelligence |

Conundrum: Iran isn’t crazy, but attacking it certainly would be

June 6, 2010 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and Rutland Herald.]

The Soviet Union joined the “nuclear club” in 1949. From that point until the demise of the Soviet Union some 40 years later, America and the Soviets, at the height of their international rivalry, managed to avoid nuclear annihilation.

During the Cold War, the U.S. policy used to counter Soviet geographic expansionism was called containment. It was our policy to “contain” the Soviet Union within the boundaries of what later became the Warsaw Pact nations.

Part of that containment policy was called MAD. They had the bomb, we had the bomb. Each side knew that if it used its bomb, it would be annihilated in retribution — mutual assured destruction. As power-hungry, brutal and paranoid as the Soviet leadership was, they were not suicidal, and MAD probably saved the planet from nuclear devastation.

What, then, makes Iran such a different problem? We coped successfully with a far more dangerous situation with the Soviet Union for four decades. It really did have the military wherewithal to be an existential threat.

An effort has been made to portray Iran as an existential threat to the United States. How can that be when it has no bomb today and, even if it did, has no way to deliver it to the United States? One day we are told that Iran has given up its nuclear weapons development program. Then, days later, we are told that it is going full-tilt. What is the truth and why does it matter?

In the interest of a real examination of the subject, let’s stipulate that Iran is developing the bomb. In fact, in that dangerous part of the world, given the historical animosities between Iranians and Arabs and Shia and Sunnis, and under constant threat of military action from the United States and Israel, it is not hard to understand why the Iranians would want it. With the bomb already in the hands of neighbors Pakistan, India and China, they have even more motivation.

So, they are going ahead with the bomb. Why are they doing that? They are doing that because having a bomb is the ultimate lever of power, and staying in power is what today’s Iran is all about. Whether it is the ayatollahs, the Revolutionary Guard or the current political leadership, their obsessive aim is to maintain their grip on power. Given the hostile realities of their neighborhood, they correctly see the bomb as a critical component in that quest.

At 77 percent, Iranians are highly literate. They have a long and distinguished history. They know who they are, and they believe they should have more influence in their neighborhood than has been granted them since the inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979. But remember, they are not suicidal.

Iran was a player in the Cold War and understands how the West dealt with the Soviet threat. The Iranians understand MAD. They know that if they were to acquire the bomb, any use they might make of it — say, against Israel or some other American friend in the region — would result in the obliteration of their country.

In short, like all other members of the nuclear club, they know that the bomb is useful only as a threat. It is essentially useless as a weapon because its use leads inevitably to annihilation.

That is the knowledge that makes MAD feasible: Iran is a nation run by intelligent people who do not want to lose power, but who also do not want to be destroyed. Having the bomb is one thing, using it is another.

This is precisely the kind of situation that is made to order for a successful containment policy in which the salient feature is mutual assured destruction. The difference is that in the case of Iran, there is no “mutual.” We have all the hardware on our side and even if Iran chose to do so, which is highly unlikely, it would take it endless decades to get to the point where it could even effectively challenge, let alone destroy, us.

Finally, Iran knows full well that any unprovoked attack against Israel would amount to an attack against us, with all its horrendous consequences for Iran.

There simply is no reason for us to attack Iran and endless reasons, like our vulnerable presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, for us not to.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff.

Posted in foreign policy, Iran |

U.S. Dilemma: How Can We Court Muslim Moderates?

May 27, 2010 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in The Herald Of Randolph.]

In late March, a little noticed, almost unreported event took place in the Middle East. The government of Qatar forced out the moderate leadership of one of Islam’s most popular, moderate websites and is reshaping it into a religiously more conservative media outlet. They have started by running news releases instead of the moderate and diverse content that the site, IslamOnline, was known for.

The outcome of our ongoing struggle with fundamentalist Muslim terrorism lies with the moderates of Islam. They are the swing vote in the fundamentalist conflict with western advocates of liberal democracy. Unfortunately, as a result of our own policies, the Muslim world is now becoming more hostile to us.

The Koran stipulates that “The only reward for those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land….”

Moderate Muslims today are faced with a real dilemma. The Koran explicitly forbids the murder of Muslims. Thus, killing a believing Muslim in a terrorist attack would constitute “corruption on earth and war against Allah”. Al Qaida members could be penalized under the Koran for making war on Allah.

One of the main reasons Al Qaida’s reputation has declined in the eyes of moderate Muslims is that they have killed Muslims both purposefully and indiscriminately, in violation of the Koran. The perfect example of this decline is the Sunni Awakening movement, which began in Iraq’s western Anbar Province in 2006. One of the main motivating influences behind that movement was Sunni revulsion against the Muslim-murdering activities of Al Qaida in Iraq.

We Americans should hope that this fact would turn moderate Muslims throughout Islam against Al Qaida. Unfortunately, that has not been the case, simply because it is clear to those moderates that American forces have also been killing Muslims since they invaded Iraq in 2003, a practice equally condemned by the Koran.

Add in the permanent grievances of most moderate Muslims against us—the military invasion and occupation of a Muslim country, American support of corrupt and brutal Muslim regimes, and their perception that we are biased against them in favor of Israel, and the Muslims are in a quandary. Whom should they condemn? If we could mitigate or remove those grievances against us, the moderates would be free to turn completely against the Al Qaidas of the world. And they almost certainly would.

The real problem right now is that almost everything we are doing in the Middle East increases moderate Muslim anger and resentment against us.

We are occupying Iraq and trying to do the same in Afghanistan. Our primary tool for these activities is our military establishment, which, however mightily our military leaders try, and they are trying mightily, is a very blunt instrument in those two countries. There is nothing rapier-like about a 19-yearold marine who is being shot at! Artillery and drone aircraft are indiscriminate weapons. They kill non-combatants, which has a particularly provocative effect on Muslims.

We are trying to “export democracy” to countries where there are already functioning systems of governance, very different from ours, that are reflections of the belief structure provided by Islam. We continue to insist that “free elections” as in Iraq and Afghanistan are somehow evidence of the inexorable march of democracy across the world. That is self-delusional.

At the same time, in direct and observable contrast to our lofty pronouncements about the spread of democracy, we support regimes across Islam that are repressive, brutal and exploitative of their people. How can we look anything other than hypocritical to Muslims, particularly those moderate Muslims who, under more benign American policy, could be in our corner?

Finally, America has pursued a foreign policy that has supported Israel to Israel’s own detriment. We have provided an impermeable umbrella to Israel with cash, armaments and UN vetoes that have permitted Israel to develop its own policies without any consideration of the realities that exist in her neighborhood.

The result has been an Israeli population, reinforced by emigrants from the former Soviet Union, that has grown increasingly distant from the democratic, Jewish state envisaged by Israel’s Zionist founders and closer and closer to a demographic reality that, without a two-state solution, will eliminate either Jewishness or democracy.

Our policy in the region is not working for us or anyone else. It never has because we see the world as we would like it to be, not as it really is. As long as that continues, we will never get it right.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He is a former longtime resident of Brookfield.

Posted in foreign policy, Middle East |

To Survive, Israel Must Face reality

May 23, 2010 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and Rutland Herald.]

The two-state solution is dead. The Palestinians and the Israelis have both become paralyzed by the most extreme elements in their respective societies and apparently are incapable of compromise, even in their own interest, on virtually any issue. And America has done nothing to help.

On the one hand, with strong support and influence from Syria and Iran and from individual supporters throughout Islam, militant Palestinians have managed to wrest control of their national movement from the more moderate Palestine Authority. They continue the decades-old battle for the “right to return” and the final destruction of Israel, through their support of Hamas and Hezbollah.

On the other, Israeli fundamentalists, eyes fixed on the re-creation of Biblical Israel, have plunged ahead with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. They thus destroy the last hope for peace. They are fueled by support from hard-core Americans who automatically and uncritically support Israel on any and all issues and from American Christian fundamentalists who seek the second coming and, paradoxically, the ultimate conversion of Jews to Christianity.

America always has been Israel’s most staunch supporter. According to the U.S. State Department, between 1972 and 2006, the United States vetoed every single UN Security Council resolution that was critical of Israel. That totaled more than 40 vetoes and it was rare that any other country even abstained on those votes. This practice has brought neither Israel or America any real friends.

In the first 50 years of Israel’s existence, the United States contributed almost $135 billion in direct aid to that country and in interest on loans to procure it. The result is that Israel has survived as an island in an essentially hostile sea. Is that a success? Certainly not when you look at their options for the future.

America has done Israel no favors. Over the years, we have protected her so completely that Israel has never had to face the realities of either living in her own neighborhood, or of developing appropriate policies to do so. Israel right or wrong.

Israel was established as a “democratic, Jewish state.” Without a two-state solution, Israel will either become a non-democratic, apartheid Jewish state or a majority (Palestinian)-ruled democracy. Because of demographic realities, Israel will become either democratic or Jewish, but not both.

Because of our smothering protection, Israel has passed the point of no return on a two-state solution. We have enabled her to sow the seeds of her own destruction and we did this largely because of our idealistic national will to protect a young democratic Jewish state.

What went wrong? Why has Israel today chosen this self-destructive path when the Zionists were so totally committed to democracy and Jewishness?

Israel is about 50 percent secular. Recent polls in Israel show her youth to be far more secular and less interested in the philosophies of liberal democracy and Zionism than their parents or her founders. Sixty years after Israel’s birth few original Zionists remain; emigrants from the former Soviet Union have replaced their numbers.

The USSR was not a country that tolerated organized religion, Jewishness, Zionism or democracy. The emigrants who were raised in that repressive environment, whether secular or believers, are generally far more prone to accept non-democratic ideas and activities than the original Zionists.

It’s hard to judge the true impact of those former Soviet citizens on Israel, but it seems fairly clear, given the nature of their significant current involvement in the settlement movement and broader Israeli politics, that they think and behave very differently from Israel’s founding fathers.

The emotional attachment of the American people to the idea of Israel is constant, but is the same true of our feelings about today’s reality of Israel? Do we support its treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza? Israel’s bellicose policy toward Iran with its implications for America? The settlement movement that slowly takes over the West Bank? Their manipulation of U.S. public opinion and politics? The list goes on.

Ultimately, Israel must be allowed to pursue her chosen policies without the pervasive international political cover now provided by the United States. Only then will Israeli policies be influenced by realities in her neighborhood, and only then will Israel find broad support in the international community, support that has diminished over the past few years.

Right now, under America’s political umbrella, there are no viable alternatives for Israel. Only through modifying our policies can we help her learn to deal with her own realities and find new policies that guarantee her survival as a democratic Jewish state.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff.

Posted in Israel/Palestine |

Is this the best we can do?

May 9, 2010 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and Rutland Herald.]

In late December 2009 at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan’s Khost province, a suicide bomber, who was offered to the CIA by the Jordanians as an agent who could penetrate al-Qaida but who was really working for al-Qaida, killed four CIA officers and three contract security guards on the base.

It appears that CIA personnel at Khost Base felt it necessary for four case officers to be present for the debriefing of their Jordanian “agent.” During the Cold War, which was a far less physically dangerous time for CIA officers, it was rare that even a KGB agent was met by more than one case officer. More than that was unprofessional, operationally insecure and unnecessary.

Add on three contract security guards and the situation becomes more confusing. What was their role? If they were needed for their security expertise, the Jordanian would appear not to have been trusted. If that was the case, why had they not already searched him before he came on base?

Or it tells us that the guards had no security or protective role, or for that matter any understandable operational role. In short they were superfluous.

It says that Khost Base officers, probably with CIA headquarters’ concurrence, apparently felt it was too dangerous to meet their Jordanian agent outside the base. Since Jordanians are, prima facie, our friends, does that mean that the operational environment is too dangerous to meet anyone at all off base? If you can’t meet a Jordanian outside, how could you meet a Taliban or al-Qaida agent?

It says that the difficult, time-consuming process of developing and recruiting new agent penetrations of critical targets has become extremely cumbersome, dangerous, perhaps even impossible. Do we run any unilateral operations or do we now rely primarily on friendly intelligence services for new sources?

All in all, it suggests that not much thoughtful, operational expertise was given to this particular meeting.

Twenty years ago, CIA case officers moved easily, even in difficult Middle East environments and could cultivate targets where they lived, worked and played as long as careful consideration was given to appropriate tradecraft. Now, it seems, our case officers had to bring onto American real estate what they obviously believed was a bona fide and important agent, a practice highly dangerous for such a sensitive source.

It is difficult to measure the impact that this event is likely to have on the CIA’s clandestine collection operations in that very difficult part of the world. Risk-taking is the lifeblood of intelligence organizations. Unfortunately, the first reaction will be that field stations will become more cautious. Fear of additional provocations will inhibit them. They will withdraw and shed some additional portion of whatever risk-taking proclivities they may have had before the incident.

The almost inevitable combination of reactions to this unfortunate incident will probably have fairly long-lasting negative impacts on the agency’s ability to get its job done.

More recently, we see a fascinating account of the petty jealousies that exist between the FBI and the New York Police Department as shown during the recent Times Square bombing case. National Public Radio’s Dina Temple-Raskin gives her account of the purposeful leakage of critical information to the press by both the FBI and the NYPD. It is an appalling example of the kinds of incredibly short-sighted practices of employees of the two organizations, prompted by their petty jealousies and rivalries.

In the process of blowing their own horns and trying to denigrate each other’s activities, Temple-Raskin says, FBI special agents and NYPD officers leaked to the press the identity of the suspect, his home address in Shelton, Conn., the address of an additional apartment he had in Bridgeport, sensitive operational details about the VIN number on the suspect’s car, the fact that he was an American citizen of Pakistani descent, and God knows what else.

This was certainly enough to tell the holder of bachelor’s and MBA degrees that he was a suspect and when he was finally arrested on the aircraft heading for the Middle East, after having ditched his FBI surveillance, his first question was whether the arresting officers were FBI or NYPD. It was a miracle he didn’t get away.

The FBI is this nation’s premier law enforcement agency, responsible for domestic counterterrorism. The NYPD is said to be far and away the most effective American police organization on counterterrorism operations. The CIA is this country’s premier foreign counterterrorism intelligence gathering organization.

Is this is the best we can do?

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as chief of the counterterrorism staff.

Posted in CIA |

Untangling the Muslim web

April 25, 2010 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

There really are only three available solutions for our problems with terrorism in the Muslim World: (1) we can respond to all such situations with military power, (2) we can disengage militarily from the Muslim world or (3) we can try to implement a hybrid of the first two. Under the Bush administration, we were totally married to the military solution. Under the Obama administration, it would appear we are flirting with the hybrid. No one has tried disengagement.

What we know is that a decade of military confrontation has created at least as many problems for us as it has solved, largely because it has alienated, infuriated and neutralized moderate Muslims, our major hope and potential ally against fundamentalist terrorism. It seems highly unlikely that the ongoing hybrid Obama approach will be any more successful, as the same issues of alienation and hostility still exists.

Yet, a careful examination of the realities of the Muslim world and our relationship with it will argue favorably for our complete military disengagement from the region. That act would effectively remove the primary motivation of present and future moderate Muslims who, as a result of our ongoing policies, have come to support, or at least not actively oppose Al Qaida.

To survive, Al Qaida must have an external enemy and we have turned ourselves into Al Qaida’s enemy of choice. If we disengage militarily from their battlefield before the majority of moderate Muslims turn against us, they will have to deal immediately with all those unavoidable, intractable, internal Muslim issues that have made our lives so complicated since the Iraq invasion. Religious, ethnic and national differences, rivalries and conflicts will be Al Qaida’s to deal with in their quest for the Caliphate. They will loose.

There will be major concerns here at home that our military disengagement from both Iraq and Afghanistan will precipitate internal strife in those countries, or worse yet, a general conflagration in the Middle East. Almost all of the disparate ethnic and sectarian components in each of the countries there have external advocates or protectors in the Muslim world. Iraqi Shia have Iran, the Sunnis have Saudi Arabia and Syria, etc.

It does not appear at this time that any of those “protectors” actively seeks to precipitate strife either in the countries involved or in the greater region. Quite the opposite, they have every reason not to seek regional strife. It is far too destabilizing and threatening to governments now in power.

However, if such strife does come on the heels of U.S. military disengagement, it will be the endemic hatreds and rivalries that will precipitate it, whether we leave now or 50 years from now. These divisions and hatreds have existed for millennia. How long are we prepared to stay?

It will be argued that military disengagement will jeopardize the West’s energy supplies, but oil is fungible and only has value when pumped out of the ground and traded. It is also the only major economic asset most of those countries have with which to satisfy the needs of their peoples.

Are we deserting our friends? Who are they and are they really friends, or are they in it simply to get whatever support they can from us for their own narrow national goals, without making more than a minimal commitment to us and to our needs?

Some will say Israel will be jeopardized, but despite the fact that we have been their primary protectors for 40years, they seem recently to have ignored our needs in the region in favor of their own, calling into question their previous contention that our national interests are identical.

The fact is that our recent military-based and spearheaded policies in the Muslim world have exacerbated our problems with terrorism, added endless new terrorists to our enemies’ ranks, filled their coffers, sullied our previously good reputation with Muslim moderates, maintained and encouraged despots in power and accomplished very little positive for us.

If nothing else, it’s time to consider change. In that context, it might be a profitable departure for America to see the world as it really is, not as we would like it to be. Only then will we get policies that are in harmony with the existing facts on the ground.

Military confrontation has rarely successfully been used with insurgencies, it has never succeeded against terrorism. A far better result against terrorism has been achieved with police and intelligence operations.

Within the framework of our national interests, there is no viable military solution for terrorism in any part of the Muslim world. Everything we do militarily is directly contradictory to our national interests. The reason for that lies partly in the fact that Muslim terrorism seems to regularly morph into or become absorbed by insurgencies as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More importantly, it stems from the critical, decades-old complaints that Muslims have had about American policies and activities in their region. What Americans need to understand is that as long as those American policies continue, we will be dealing with terrorism and rejection in the Muslim world. They are the causative factors behind the fact that, “they hate us for what we do, not who we are”.

If, on the other hand, we were to modify those policies, Al Qaida would not last long in an increasingly moderate Muslim world hostile to terrorism’s extreme, un-Muslim philosophies and activities. Without the United States as an intrusive, compliant, external whipping boy, Al Qaida would be forced to deal with the realities of their own diffuse and fragile Muslim world, a world largely hostile to them.

But this is a suggested policy built on the realities on the ground in the Muslim World and we all know that U.S. policy is more often built on the internal political needs of the Administration in power, in this case, the Obama administration.

President Obama is faced with unhappy choices. If he were to see merit in military disengagement from the Muslim world, he would face onslaughts that he is “weak on terrorism” from Republicans and from all those who see advantages in the “long war”. That would include those people and organizations that benefit politically, emotionally and economically from its continuation. Disengagement might just be enough to do him in.

On the other hand, if he can make up his mind to consider what truly is in our national interest and is prepared to suffer the potential negative political consequences of going against the supporters of the “long war,” he could, at minimum, begin the process of solving our most basic problems with the Muslim world and with terrorism.

Haviland Smith is a former counterterrorism expert and station chief for the CIA.

Posted in Middle East, terrorism |

‘Terrorists’ or Insurgents? The difference is important

April 22, 2010 by Haviland Smith

[Originally published in the Herald of Randolph.]

Over the decades, Americans have fought in a wide variety of irregular foreign conflicts.  They have fought in the Russian Revolution, Northern Ireland, the Spanish Civil War, the 1948 Palestine Civil War, Bosnia and Kosovo. Americans were even spontaneously involved in the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the USSR!  The US Government generally prefers to ignore this kind of activity.

John Walker Lindh chose an inopportune moment to sign on with Al Qaida in Afghanistan and is doing hard time for his troubles.  In fact, his conviction can be seen as the moment when the game changed.  In the eyes of the American government, it is perfectly all right to go and fight with a foreign group as long as that group does not actually threaten the Unites States.  And that is as it should be.

“Terrorism” is a universally condemned word. “Insurrection” is very ambivalent. In this context, we have an extraordinarily legacy left us by the Bush administration.  They continuously and probably consciously conflated terrorism with insurgency here at home to  keep us on edge and to make insurgents fair game. They did it abroad for both tactical and strategic reasons:

Tactically, after 9/11, they wished to curry favor and support.  For example, we went along with Russia when they wanted to designate the Chechens as terrorists when the Chechens clearly were an insurrection looking to rid itself of the Russian occupiers.

During the last eight years, it is hard to find an “ally” of any kind that had an internal security issue whom we failed to support by agreeing to call it terrorism.  In short, the Bush Administration was prepared to label any group, specifically including insurgencies, “terrorist” that was threatening to us or our friends.

Strategically, the Bush administration did so to get those countries on our side, first in our “war on terror” and second in what the Neocons referred to as their “fifty year war” – presumably the Neocons’ war against Islam.

Why does any of this arcane argument matter? After all, a killer is a killer whether terrorist or insurgent.  It matters for a number of reasons.  It determines what tactics we use to combat them in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has a strong effect on how we are viewed in the Middle East and it has a judicial impact on Americans.

Are these struggles really terrorism or are they insurgencies fighting for national liberation? This is a very nuanced issue because insurgencies often use terrorism as a tactic. The US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations includes 45 “terrorist” organizations. Many of those organizations deny using terrorism as a military tactic to achieve their goals.  Many of the others do practice terrorism, but they also run municipal governments.  Clearly in this context are Hamas and Hizballah, both of which organizations are fighting to free their land (Palestine) for their people. To further muddle the issue, there is no international consensus on a legal definition of terrorism.  It is, indeed a confusing and confounding landscape.

The measure of any organization should be its goals, not its tactics.  Is it trying to liberate its homeland, or blow up America?

As an example of the dilemma we now face, consider Somalia. A handful of Somali-Americans have recently been indicted for joining Al-Shabaab.  Al-Shabaab began life as a militant Islamic youth movement devoted to the establishment in Somalia of an Islamic Republic under Shariya law.  Since 2004, it has been primarily involved in insurgent activities against the existing Somali government.  Yet, it is designated a terrorist organization by the US Department of State.

The issue here is whether or not Al-Shabaab really is a terrorist organization which is actually threatening to the United States.  That would appear doubtful, as the great preponderance of its activities concern internal Somali affairs.

As our military involvement in the Middle East evolves, with more and more of our “friends” in the area being challenged by local insurgencies, it might be well for America to review all of its past designations of foreign organizations as “terrorist organizations”.  Many of those designations are absolutely accurate, but many of them come from the Bush era when the criteria used were deliberately aimed at calling anyone we didn’t like a “terrorist”.

In addition, our own citizens are now signing up with foreign civil movements.  If they are insurgencies, the Americans probably are not breaking our laws. The least we owe them is to be sure we know just what they really have done and not be swayed by questionable political decisions made in the aftermath of 9/11.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe, the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. A former long term-resident of Brookfield, he now lives in Williston.

Posted in terrorism |

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »