WASHINGTON � Less than one week into the US-led war in Iraq, it is already
clear that the campaign involves an unprecedented level of involvement by
the CIA.
The shift was clear from the get-go.
President Bush launched the campaign's first airstrikes ahead of schedule
after Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, in a now-famous rush
to the Pentagon and White House, alerted the president about a fortified
bunker where Saddam Hussein and two of his sons were believed to be sleeping.
The results of the airstrikes are still not fully known. But one thing is
certain: Since Mr. Tenet was the first to come up with a concrete plan for
routing the Taliban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, he and his CIA
operatives have been playing a much larger role in both shaping American
war plans and working together with military Special Operations Forces to
implement them than ever before
"The fact that the CIA got into Afghanistan very early and was apparently
very helpful is extremely significant," says Stansfield Turner, former
director of the CIA. "Now again, we seem to have CIA agents on the ground
[in Iraq]. Just to know where Saddam Hussein is in that city is one thing.
But to have the confidence that this intelligence wasn't perishable for
several hours [in order to recalibrate missile strikes] is quite remarkable."
It may take some time to clarify how successful intelligence-gathering
efforts have been in targeting the Iraqi leadership and locating weapons of
mass destruction - two main war goals of the Bush administration.
The fighting is still extremely fluid, with daily ups and downs for
advancing ground troops engaging enemy forces. The role of intelligence
gathering - crucial in all wars - is not only vital in this case, but much
more prominent and public. "Those 72 strikes targeting the leadership in
the Baghdad area may have impacted tremendously the ability of the
leadership group to sustain operations once the war did begin," says
retired Brig. Gen. John Reppert, a military-strategy expert at Harvard
University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "But the other thing I
think they deserve a lot of credit for, combined with the military, is what
has not happened."
Containing the conflict
For one thing, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the day
after the attacks on Hussein's headquarters that only one civilian had been
killed. The person had gone into one targeted building at the last minute
to make a phone call.
Another is that the war has not spread beyond Iraq's borders. One of the
biggest fears in the execution of this war is that it could have caused
retaliatory strikes - especially against Israel and Kuwait. A few Iraqi
missiles have been launched toward Kuwait, but none has caused lethal or
destructive damage to date.
Still, the status of Hussein and his leadership is not known. Monday, a
videotape was released showing Hussein. He mentioned ground troops - but in
an opaque enough way that the tape could have been made prior to the
attacks, based on leaked war plans, as intelligence officials have
asserted. "In these decisive days, the enemy tried not using missiles and
fighter jets as they did before," Hussein said. "This time, they sent their
infantry troops. This time, they have come to invade and occupy your land."
Some experts - including Pentagon and senior government officials - say the
government's efforts to separate the leadership from the rest of the
military and government is going according to plan. They say that Iraqi
military units are acting separately, and are not being issued direct
orders from Baghdad.
Iraqi generals on the phone
Moreover, they say, US military leaders and intelligence operatives are in
direct contact with both Iraqi generals and unit leaders about potential
plans to surrender. "We are in contact with a number of Iraqi unit leaders
as we speak," Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the operation, said in a
briefing Monday.
Nor have WMD been used or located, as of this writing. "We are continuing
to look for weapons of mass destruction," Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, a deputy
to General Franks, said on Sunday. "We have received reports from various
prisoners that have given us leads. Suffice it to say that we continue to
look.... We are confident that we will find it."
Small numbers of CIA paramilitary teams have reportedly been inside Iraq
since June 2002. They are said to have broken into the highly secretive
phone lines leading into Hussein's headquarters. Moreover, they've
collected the e-mail addresses and personal phone numbers for Iraq's top
military generals. And last Wednesday afternoon, two hours prior to Tenet's
meeting at the White House, Special Forces teams were dropped into Iraq to
join the CIA paramilitary teams already there.
This would repeat a pattern set in Afghanistan a year before. They would
help fighter pilots with ground targets, search out and disable WMD, and
secure the oil fields.
Shortly after Sept. 11, when the president pulled what became known as his
"war council" together, the only one with a viable strategy for confronting
Al Qaeda and the Taliban was Tenet, say two senior government officials.
The CIA already had assets on the ground, Tenet said, and he had a plan for
removing Osama bin Laden's support network and disrupting Al Qaeda activity.
"When President George Bush decided to strip both Osama bin Laden and Al
Qaeda of their Afghan sanctuary - a decision that moved the war on terror
to an entirely different level - the contribution of intelligence was very
plain to see," according to a January speech by James Pavitt, the CIA's
deputy director for operations. "The first American team on the ground out
there was CIA - for a reason."
"As we saw in Afghanistan, there is a growing and unprecedented
relationship between the CIA and Pentagon," says a senior White House official.
� Staff writer Linda Feldmann contributed to this report.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0325/p04s01-woiq.html
