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H. Thomas Hayden
recently concluded over 35 years of service,
which included the Agency for International
Development, the Marine Corps, defense industry
and the Pentagon. His specialties are Intelligence,
Counterinsurgency Operations, Counter-terrorism,
and Joint Concepts Development and Experimentation.
His Marine Corps assignments have included
command of two separate battalions; AC/S G-2,
4th MARDIV & AC/S G-2 FMFEurope; Branch Head,
HQMC, Special Operations and Low Intensity
Conflict (SO/LIC); Special Assistant to the
Assistant Secretary of Defense for SO/LIC;
and, Senior Program Analysts at HQMC with
the Joint Staff and DoD at the Pentagon. Overseas
assignments included Vietnam, Japan & Okinawa,
Europe, Central America, Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait, Somalia, Singapore, Philippines, and
Colombia. He has an MBA (Pepperdine) and an
MA in International Relations (University
of Southern California). He has written two
books and is working on a third.
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November 29, 2004
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The idea that the Pentagon should take over all covert CIA military operations is a turf battle by the "neo-cons" who have no realistic idea of what they are planning. This is a plain and simple power grab by political appointees who are interested in their own power rather than strategic, clandestine or covert operations. The Department of Defense has been providing military officers and enlisted men and women to the Agency since its establishment. Most were seconded to the Agency, but many left the military for full time work.
In simple laymen terms, there are many countries that want U.S. military training for their special forces but do NOT want it publicly linked to the U.S. Some countries do not want to be seen as possible lackeys of the Yankees. Additionally, there are clandestine or covert ops that we do not want to advertise. If the Pentagon is involved, they will probably want embedded reporters.
When the U.S. military conducts a training mission or a special operation in a foreign country, the baggage they bring is very large and quite visible to the public. Many casual observers do not miss the transport of troops and equipment by the Military Airlift Command's C-130s, C-141s, and C-5As.
However, when the Agency transports trainers in civilian clothes aboard Southern Airways, one of the successors to Air America, the scene is more like a commercial venture. The men and women check into local hotels, live off the economy and go about their assignment like businessmen from any international conglomerate.
When the Agency is involved in a covert operation, you should not read about it in the New York Times. This would mean that someone screwed up.
The American public and particularly the U.S. News media are mostly aware of the screw-ups but many ignore the successes. The clandestine Contra program provided support for an insurgency, with Congressional approval when the Boland Amendment was repealed. There were many successful counterinsurgencies in Central America and many other parts of the world.
Many CIA guys continue their jobs even after policy makers reverse positions in the middle of the operation. One of my closets friends, who later died in Vietnam, an Army captain in Korea, went ashore with the anti-Castro forces during the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs. He and a former Marine major, another Korean vet, were the only military guys who had the guts to fight with the Cubans they had trained to invade Cuba even though they knew it was a lost cause before they landed. Luckily both escaped capture by Castro's forces.
I can assure our readers, from personal experience while seconded to the Agency on a number of occasions, that when military clandestine or covert operations are planned by the CIA, the military specialists are the men and women who plan and execute the operation, not some Ivy League skull and bonehead.
The debate over the creation of a Director of Central Intelligence with a single focal point for all Intelligence matters has some merit for top level planning and funding; however, the Pentagon needs to keep control of many of its strategic assets. Military satellites are one area that comes to mind. The more layers of bureaucracy that are placed over Top Secret Code Word programs are a sure way to compromise classified information. Civilian oversight is one thing but civilian interference in things they know nothing about is ridiculous.
Now we hear that the Pentagon has drafted orders for U.S. Special Forces to "be prepared" to conduct clandestine operations against terror groups, "many with ties with Al Qaeda."
If they have not been doing that since 9/11, what in tarnation have they been doing?
It is well known that U.S. Special Forces were heavily engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, but were not some assigned to go look for Al Qaeda in other parts of the world. If not -- why not?
The Wall Street Journal reported November 24 that, "Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his top aides want special-operations (sic.) troops to have greater involvement in jobs traditionally handled by the CIA."
The WSJ went on to say that this is a "push driven in part by the military's frustration with spotty intelligence it receives about fugitive Al Qaeda leaders."
The failures of 9/11, the failures on Osama bin Laden, and the failures in Iraq were NOT intelligence failures -- they were policy failures. According to the newly reported information by the Intelligence community, the CIA provided policy makers eight to ten opportunities for the Pentagon to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. True, some of the "policy" decisions were made at the George Tenant level, but he was the Administration's man in the position to make the decisions. George Tenant surely got it wrong when it came to Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.
What needs to be done is to create an organization similar to a Combatant Commander that combines CIA and Special Forces assets under one chain of command. This was done very successfully in Vietnam, but it seems that the old story of the absence of institutional memory in the Rumsfeld Pentagon is working as usual. Can someone tell Rumsfeld, or his aides, to go research the Phoenix Program?
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