By Steve Hynd
David Ignatius, stenographer to the spies and spooks of all nations, has a column today which is essentially a begging letter on behalf of the CIA for more money and resources. His point, already well made elsewhere, is that the CIA failed to observe standard operational precautions in letting the Khost bomber get so close to key personnel unchallenged and that this happened because the Agency is trying to do much with little (unstated - because the military sucks $9 in every $10 allocated for the War Against Some Terror into its voracious maw). Former CIA Robert Grenier treads much the same ground at the NY Times today too.
But Agent Ignatius and his sources at the Agency have gotten over-zealous and released a key bit of information to Al Qaeda and the Taliban:
Within its large Kabul station, the CIA is said to have just two officers working full time on counterintelligence.
That's the kind of detail that shouldn't be in print. It endangers those officers since just knowing how many to look for narrows the options considerably for AQ and the Taliban. Ignatius admits that AQ in particular has a sophisticated counter-intelligence operation of its own, and now here he is handing them key details. What were he and his editor thinking?
Ignatius also has one other key revelation in his article about manpower, resourcing and operations.
There's a similar lack of resources devoted to Pakistani operations against the agency.
Wow. In one simple sentence Ignatius tells the world that counter-intelligence against Pakistani ISI operations directed at the CIA in Afghanistan gets equal resourcing with AQ operations against the Agency, presumably because the threats are about equal, and that there's only a couple of CIA officers doing that work.
Although I'd personally love to hear more detail about those ISI activities that necessitate a couple of full-time counter-intel guys at CIA Kabul, I don't expect anyone who knows a blessed thing about the details to go to print. Unless, of course, Agent Iggie decides to violate op-sec again.
"That's the kind of detail that shouldn't be in print."
ReplyDeleteI doubt that. In all likelihood, that is exactly what the CIA wants printed, or close to it. Ignatius won't know what is really going on, but functions, as we all know, as a CIA funnel, spouting out whatever hemlock they pour in his little ear.