The advantage of having a CIA officer pose as an embassy employee, usually a member of the State Department or a military attache, is that they enjoy diplomatic immunity, which means that they operate with a good degree of protection. It’s much riskier to operate overseas as a NOC with “no official cover.” In that case, you may be posing as a businessman, professor, student, journalist or something else, and if you are caught you may be arrested, imprisoned, or worse.
After 9/11, the intelligence community was directed to “get out of their cubicles” and put people in place who could do a better job of penetrating terrorist organizations. Apparently, this effort has been a colossal failure and the budget for it is being dramatically curtailed. It turns out that you can’t recruit people to spy for the United States very well if you are not fluent in their language. Who could have predicted that?
The CIA’s model for foreign officers is designed to recruit people in government or the military, so it makes sense to use the embassies because diplomatic work and military programs give you a ready excuse to interact with potential recruits. To penetrate terror networks, however, it’s better to use contract agents and foreign nationals who can fit in. The problem is in figuring out how to assign case officers to those contract agents. How do they meet? How do they communicate? How is the agent recruited in the first place?
It doesn’t appear that the intelligence community has figured out adequate answers to those questions.
The CIA spent at least $3 billion on the program, and the number of specially trained spies grew from dozens to hundreds. The entire clandestine service is believed to total about 5,000 people.
But because of inexperience, bureaucratic hurdles, lack of language skills and other problems, only a few of the deep-cover officers recruited useful intelligence sources, several former officers said.
Some of the most ambitious efforts were aimed at Iran, former officers said. The CIA created front companies and elaborate fake identities for operatives trying to recruit sources inside Iran’s nuclear and missile procurement networks.But Iranian authorities were able to expose American operatives, said two former senior CIA officials. They were transferred back to CIA headquarters in Virginia or other U.S. posts.
It seems to work better in the movies and on cable television. Don’t you think?
There is a reason the CIA has the nickname Christians in Action.
Yes, indeed, no better place to focus increased post-9/11 efforts on “terrorist organizations” than Iran! I guess no one thought to revise the Cheney memo after 2008…
What a circus of clownery. I have to wonder if the CIA harms our national security more than they help it over the decades…
Overthrowing the Iranian regime was at the top of Cheney’s “to do list.” Iraq was but a path towards Iran. Afghanistan was theater for American rubes.
If I remember correctly, Valerie Plame was running an operation in Iran when Iron Dick blew her cover.
Too bad. That might have come in handy these days.
But looking at the bright side, $3 billion is only the cost of thirty F-22 air superiority fighters. A drop in the bucket.
Whatever Plame did at the CIA remains classified; so, nothing has been confirmed about her covert work.
Huh. I thought it was common knowledge, but this wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong, har har har.
If the CIA spent $5B recruiting monoglot christianist Young Republicans to send them to penetrate terror networks, I’d say it’s money well spent.
Worth double if they never come back.
I wonder if they specifically recruited Mormons. From what I saw in Salt Lake City they tend to be Republican, physically fit, comfortable living in an oppressive theocracy, and at home in the mountains and the desert.
Perfect for infiltration into Iran.
You mean like Valerie Plame?
Yet James Bond is always successful despite flaunting his much-feared presence in a tuxedo and Aston Martin.
He did even better with his tuxedo off!
Have been collecting notes on this issue (which I seem to have misplaced) and it seemed worse than the LATimes article suggests. iirc There was recruiting of foreign born individuals living in the US for desk NOC jobs in the US.
They were able to expose American operatives because they did three-degrees-of-separation from Valerie Plame after Dick Cheney order her exposed as political punishment.
The language issue not only applies to the intelligence community, it also applies to the military. “Raghead” is not a standard Arabic word; someone should have informed our “liberators” in Iraq of that fact.
Also, it is much easier to gather intelligence by having embassies and consulates in the country, which is not the case in Iran, North Korea, or Cuba. In two of those cases, the US logic is they are somehow punishing the other country by not recognizing them with normal diplomatic relations. Shortsighted political grandstanding is all it has been.
Americans stand out like sore thumbs overseas. I bet CIA desk types have “spook” written all over them. It is style of operation, attitude, and not just language fluency that differentiates cultures. Hanging out at the American expat places tends to give one away. Or grabbing something at the Mickey D’s.
The mission of “penetrating terrorist networks” sounds typical Bush-Cheney “create your own reality” sort of tasking. My image is of Dilbert in Peshawar.
The intelligence community is another institution that is high on its own supply. And we are sixty-six years overdue for a serious conversation about national security and the intelligence community and state secrets. Have I mentioned that recently?
Priceless! With Cheney as the pointed haired boss.
I can hear the Top level meetings in the CIA now under a Republican President
” why can’t others talk like us ‘mericans so we can spy on them” Says one highly placed CIA exec.
“yer Dumbass muslins” agreed another. The rest nodded in agreement.
I know said what to do ! cried an VIP enthusiastically “we can send them humanitarian aid to teach them English…. they’ll never and realise that it’s a rouse ” finished Sarah