.jpg)
US official 'misled' generals about private spy network
(AFP) – 4 hours ago
WASHINGTON — A senior Pentagon official broke Department of Defense rules and lied to military officials when he set up a network of private contractors to spy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the New York Times reported Friday.
The Times cited an internal investigation stating that the official, Michael Furlong, set up an unauthorized spy network starting in late 2009 and "deliberately misled" top generals about it.
Pentagon rules forbid using contractors as spies.
But some of the information provided by the network was used for strikes against militants, the Times reported.
The results of the Pentagon investigation, ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, are classified, the Times said.
It added that the Air Force inspector general is conducting a separate probe to see if Furlong broke any laws or committed contract fraud.
Furlong?s network was made up of small companies -- including one run by an ex-CIA agent -- that used agents in Afghanistan and Pakistan to gather intelligence on militant groups.
It operated under a 22 million dollar contract run by Lockheed Martin, according to the Times.
The Pentagon probe concluded that "further investigation is warranted of the misleading and incorrect statements the individual made" about the legality of the program, Pentagon spokesman David Lapan told the paper.
Furlong, a senior Air Force civilian official, however told the newspaper that his work had been approved by a number of senior military officers in Afghanistan, and that he misled no one.
old news
Pentagon investigates Jason Bourne spy program (Part 1)
March 18th, 2010 5:42 am ET
Michael Furlong led illegal spy ring in Afghanistan
The Department of Defense is investigating an illegal spy operation in which a Defense Department official by the name of Michael Furlong purportedly diverted $24 Million of government funds to an “off the books” real world Operation Treadstone to kill militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Furlong, who once served as deputy director of the Joint Military Information Support Command and Deputy Commander of the Joint Psychological Operations Support, referred to his stable of contractors as “my Jason Bournes”.
The ruction over the incident is a bit perplexing because, although it does indeed sound like something out of a Robert Ludlum novel, the U.S. government has been outsourcing clandestine and covert activities for years.
Ground truth
It appears that Mr. Furlong and his associates were trying to enhance the quality of the military intelligence apparatus, however, they might have gone a bit too far according to officials in the C.I.A. Ironically, this story breaks not long after the U.S. top spy chief in Afghanistan issued a blistering report of the defense intelligence community that we covered a few months ago in a story entitled U.S. spy chief calls for cultural overhaul of defense intelligence.
Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn had chastised intel agents for gathering the wrong types of information in Afghanistan. He accused them of being incurious of local economics and landowners, ignorant of who the powerbrokers were in the region and thought they were disengaged from those in the best position to find answers, including aid workers and Afghan soldiers. He went so far as to recommend that journalists be used as intelligence agents because they are a better source of information.
What was frustrating for the General is that all of this information is “open source” intelligence which is readily available to anyone willing to do the research. He was also very critical of the fact that U.S. intelligence focused only on gathering intel for “lethal targeting” and hunting terrorists.
Mr. Furlong agreed with the General’s assessment, well at least partially, because he hired journalists to gather “ground truth” information about the cultural landscape in Afghanistan. However, Furlong also used this information for “lethal targeting” anyway, but contract money meant for open source intelligence gathering cannot be used to target individuals, according to military officials. And, according to the New York Times, it is illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies – a shocking revelation considering it seems like common practice.
Privatizing intelligence is nothing new
The reality is that key intelligence operations have been run by private contractors for quite some time. A few years ago, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed that 70% of the intelligence budget goes to contractors. The CIA, who blew the whistle on the latest controversy, doesn’t have much room to talk because they outsource up to 60% of the work done by the National Clandestine Service (NCS), which is responsible for gathering human intelligence. The CIA calls these employees “green badgers” and they provide highly sensitive services that have ranged from covert operations in Iraq to recruiting and running spies.
In 2006, the CIA collaborated with private U.S. military companies, including a firm called ATS Worldwide, and British security firms to run covert operations in Somalia against UN rulings. US firms planned undercover missions to support Somalia’s transitional federal government against a radical Muslim militia which promised national unity under Sharia law. Just last year it was reported that infamous Blackwater operatives gathered intelligence and helped direct a secret U.S. military drone bombing campaign that ran parallel to the CIA predator strikes.
R.J. Hillhouse is an expert in intelligence outsourcing and has a website called The Spy Who Billed Me, which includes a list of private companies that do espionage work on behalf of the U.S. government. She has links to 33 companies under a heading called “Rent a Spy”, which include companies like Abraxas, Booz Allen, CACI, CENTRA, Diligence, ITT AES, Lockheed Martin, ManTech, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, SAIC, and Total Intel.
According to Wired magazine, on Monster.com you can find a job ad for an “all-source intelligence analyst” willing to work for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. Responsibilities include:
Analysis, reporting, data-basing and dissemination of Afghanistan measures of stability which include security, governance and development, Human Terrain Analysis, preparation of Campaign and Mission Analysis briefings and annexes, High Value Individual Targeting products, Extremist and Regional Threat Network Nodal Analysis, Preparation of Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Assessment Metrics which include daily IMINT, SIGINT and HUMINT products to gauge the effectiveness of collection operations, 24/7 Indications & Warning and all-source exploitation of documents and media from detainees.”
One of the firms involved in Furlong’s shadowy program was American International Security Corporation (AISC), which is run by former Green Beret Mike Taylor. On its website they promote themselves as a security risk management firm that does vulnerability assessments and crisis management for both business and governments. Taylor admitted employing Duane “Dewey” Clarridge as part of Furlong’s off the books program, who is an ex-CIA operative involved with the Iran-Contra scandal.
Calnet is another company that provides intel services and on their website they say: “CALNET is proud to continue to serve the United States Intelligence Community.” The website also specifies some of the types of work they do, including human intelligence gathering:
CALNET’s HUMINT experts are involved in a variety of missions from the tactical level to Strategic roles within our national intelligence community. CALNET’s HUMINT specialists have years of experience and uphold the highest professional standards. CALNET's intelligence professionals are involved in all steps of the intelligence cycle, from planning and direction, to collection, processing, production, and dissemination.
A company called CACI markets themselves as an information technology firm, but they sure operated outside of their supposed core competencies in Iraq because CACI personnel acted as interrogators at Abu Grahaib and were accused of some of the well publicized torture of prisoners, along with another government contractor called Titan Corp (now owned by L-3 Communications). During their investigations the Army found that contractors were involved in 36 percent of Abu Ghraib incidents.
======
In Part 2 of Pentagon investigates Jason Bourne spy program we discuss the territorial battle between the CIA and the military over covert activity and the shadowy connections between the New York Times, an ex-CIA officer who was involved in Iran-Contra and a former CNN news executive.
PART TWO
Title 10 vs. Title 50
A major part of the controversy surrounding a Defense Department official by the name of Michael Furlong who diverted government funds to establish an illegal spy ring to assasinate militants in Paksitan and Afghanistan, involves a territorial dispute between the CIA and military intelligence agencies over who can carry out covert versus clandestine operations, which are distinct.
According to Title 50 of the U.S. Code section 413(e) covert action is the sole authority of the CIA. Covert action is defined by federal law as: “an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.”
Whereas clandestine means the operation is concealed but not the sponsor. Putting it simply, to the U.S. government clandestine means “hidden” while covert means “deniable.” It is important to note that federal law requires Presidential approval and significant executive and legislative oversight of covert action, which reduces the risk of “rogue” programs.
Traditional military activities are defined under Title 10 and do not require the same approval and oversight as those categorized as covert. Sometimes the Defense Department will use loopholes to categorize certain operations as traditional versus covert for this reason. An action is not covert, according to one interpretation, if the intelligence gathered or the operation supports ongoing hostilities.
According to David Ignatius in the Washington Post yesterday, Furlong tried to use one of these loopholes:
Under the heading of ‘information operations’ or ‘force protection’ the military has launched intelligence activities that, were they conducted by the CIA, might require a presidential finding and notification of Congress. And by using contractors who operate ‘outside the wire’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the military has gotten information that is sometimes better than what the CIA is offering.”
Ignatius also parses the semantics used by Furlong to categorize the work by Clarridge. Clarridge’s reports were labeled “force protection atmospherics,” not intelligence, and that sources were called “cooperators.” By avoiding using intelligence collection vocabulary, Clarridge’s network evidently tried to avoid crossing the line into Title 50.
Shadowy Connections
It is interesting to note that of all the news outlets to break this story, it was the New York Times which, according to Mr. Ignatius, hired the aforementioned American International Security Corp. (AISC) in November of 2008 to help free its reporter David Rohde who had been kidnapped by the Taliban. Who did the firm use to lead the mission? Duane "Dewey" Clarridge. Mr. Clarridge then began establishing a network of informants around the globe.
Clarridge currently has about 10 case officers under his domain from the United States, Britain, South Africa and a few other countries, who run about 20 "principal agents" who are in contact with roughly 40 sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clarridge's contacts with the military deepened last July after he provided detailed intelligence about Bowe Bergdahl, an Army soldier who had also been captured by the Taliban. Ignatius also mentions that Clarridge's network continues to provide fresh intelligence, including his latest report from Paktia province on Monday, the same day the New York Times article appeared.
Furlong hired another controversial figure by the name of Eason Jordan,a former Chief News Executive for CNN, to run a public Web site called AfPax Insider to help the government gain a better understanding of the region, although this intelligence was also used to hunt and kill militants. Mr. Jordan is infamous for revealing in 2003 that CNN knew about human rights abuses committed in Iraq by Saddam Hussein since 1990. In 2005 Mr. Jordan resigned after claiming that it was official U.S. military policy to take out journalists, though he possessed scant evidence to validate his assertions.
Fujrlong also contracted International Media Ventures (IMV), a company describing itself as a public relations company and “an industry leader in creating potent messaging content and interactive communications.” Several of its senior executives are former members of the military’s Special Operations forces, including former commandos from Delta Force.
The company’s President Robert Pack said they provide "information and media atmospherics, research and analysis for good governance and development in Afghanistan, civil society demographics and dynamics, key audience and influence group analysis, and media channel utilization.”
Journalists as spies
It is still unclear who authorized Mr. Furlong’s rogue escapades, but one American government official said: “While no legitimate intelligence operations got screwed up, it’s generally a bad idea to have freelancers running around a war zone pretending to be James Bond.”
Frederick Forsyth, the author of the Day of the Jackal, had an interesting perspective on the matter:
If you want to have journalists on the payroll, a far easier way to go is to insert a professional trained agent as a journalist...if you take an ordinary journalist and say 'hey, become a spy,' he's likely to get up dead.”
CNN news chief starts Iraq blog hub
Dec 14th, 2006 | Media 2.0 | 4 Comments
There’s been no shortage of mainstream or traditional journalists leaving their jobs to join or start online ventures over the last little while (the sign of a new era, or a bubble forming?), including The Politico — which just gained a couple more staffers from Time magazine and Bloomberg, as this article notes. Now the former head of news for CNN has started a media venture focused on Iraq.
According to a piece in Editor & Publisher, Eason Jordan — who quit in 2005 after 23 years with the network — has set up IraqSlogger to focus on the war in Iraq and the Middle East in general. The project is an offshoot of Praedict, a news and information service that Jordan runs which provides briefings on hot spots in the developing world, based on data and analysis by a team of security specialists and journalists.
IraqSlogger has news reports from Iraq, analysis and other coverage, including a tally of attacks and casualties. E&P says that “One of the site’s unique and most valuable services is a daily roundup of news from Iraqi newspapers that few in the U.S. media have ever bothered to translate. Jordan has Arabic speakers here and in Iraq providing this service.”
And a note at the end of the E&P story says that the article produced a lot of commentary from conservative bloggers, who asked Jordan to look into stories from Associated Press (about the burning of six Iraqis) which used as a source a police captain named Jamil Hussein, who the U.S. military claims doesn’t exist. Jordan offered to fly blogger Michelle Malkin to Iraq to check the reports, and she has accepted.
Part of the backstory here is that Jordan resigned from CNN after making comments that allegedly accused the U.S. military of deliberately targeting journalists.
Update:
As has been noted in the comments (by Mr. Pelton himself) the IraqSlogger site was co-created by Robert Young Pelton, the Canadian-born author (The World’s Most Dangerous Places), documentary filmmaker, “adventurer” and security expert. Meanwhile, there’s a great feature on Eason Jordan and IraqSlogger at the New York Observer.
