Pentagon has new espionage unit

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA’s historic bailiwick, has created an espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by the Washington Post.

The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld’s written order to end his “near total dependence on CIA” for what is known as “hum-int,” or “human intelligence operations.” Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary’s direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.

Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on “emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia.” Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.

The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld independent tools for the “full spectrum of humint operations,” according to an internal account of its origin and mission. “Human intelligence operations,” a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include “notorious figures” whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.

Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department’s bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect – activities that have been the province of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they call the department’s predominant role in combating terrorist threats.

The Pentagon has a vast bureaucracy devoted to gathering intelligence, often in concert with the CIA, and news reports over more than a year have described Rumsfeld’s drive for more and better human intelligence. But the creation of the espionage branch, the scope of its clandestine operations and the breadth of Rumsfeld’s asserted legal authority have not been detailed publicly before. Two longtime members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, said they knew no details before being interviewed for this article.

Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using “reprogrammed” funds without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than comparable operations by the CIA.

Rumsfeld’s dissatisfaction with the CIA’s operations directorate and his determination to build what amounts in some respects to a rival service follow struggles with then-CIA Director George Tenet over intelligence-collection priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pentagon officials said the CIA naturally has interests that differ from those of military commanders, but they also criticized its operations directorate as understaffed, slow-moving and risk-averse.

The new unit’s performance in the field and its latest commander, Reserve Army Col. George Waldroup, are controversial among those involved in the program. Pentagon officials acknowledged Waldroup and many of those brought quickly into his service lack experience and training typical of intelligence officers and special operators.

In his civilian career as a federal manager, according to a Justice Department inspector general’s report, Waldroup was at the center of a 1996 probe into alleged deception of Congress concerning staffing problems at Miami International Airport.

Navy Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, expressed “utmost confidence in Col. Waldroup’s capabilities” and said in an interview that Waldroup’s unit has scored “a whole series of successes” that he could not reveal in public. He acknowledged the risks, however, of trying to expand human intelligence too fast: “It’s not something you quickly constitute as a capability. It’s going to take years to do.”

Rumsfeld’s ambitious plans rely principally on the Tampa, Fla.-based U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, and on its clandestine component, the Joint Special Operations Command. Rumsfeld has designated SOCOM’s leader, Army Gen. Bryan Brown, as the military commander in chief in the war on terrorism. He also has given Brown’s subordinates new authority to pay foreign agents.

The Strategic Support Branch is intended to add missing capabilities – such as the skill to establish spy networks and technology for access to national intelligence databases – to the military’s much larger special operations squadrons.

Some Pentagon officials refer to the combined units as the “secret army of Northern Virginia.”

Known as “special mission units,” Brown’s elite forces are not acknowledged publicly. They include two squadrons of an Army unit popularly known as Delta Force, another Army squadron – formerly code-named Gray Fox – that specializes in close-in electronic surveillance, an Air Force human intelligence unit and the Navy unit popularly known as SEAL Team Six.

Rumsfeld’s efforts, launched in October 2001, address two goals: One is to give combat forces, such as those fighting the insurgency in Iraq, better information about their enemy. The other is to find new tools to penetrate and destroy shadowy organizations, such as al Qaeda, that pose global threats to U.S. interests in conflicts with little resemblance to conventional war.

Rumsfeld is laying claim to greater independence as Congress seeks to subordinate the 15 U.S. intelligence departments and agencies – most under Rumsfeld’s control – to the newly created and still unfilled position of national intelligence director. For months, Rumsfeld opposed the intelligence reorganization bill that created the position. He withdrew his objections late last year after House Republican leaders inserted language he interprets as preserving much of the Defense Department’s autonomy.

CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher said the agency would grant no interviews for this article.

Pentagon officials emphasized their intention to remain accountable to Congress, but they asserted defense intelligence missions are subject to fewer legal constraints than Rumsfeld’s predecessors believed. That assertion involves new interpretations of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which governs the armed services, and Title 50, regarding, among other things, foreign intelligence.

Under Title 10, the Defense Department must report to Congress all “deployment orders,” or formal instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to position U.S. forces for combat. But guidelines issued this month by Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone state special operations forces may “conduct clandestine HUMINT operations … before publication” of a deployment order, rendering notification unnecessary. Pentagon lawyers also define the “war on terror” as ongoing, indefinite and global in scope.

Under Title 50, all departments of the executive branch are obliged to keep Congress “fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities.” The law exempts “traditional … military activities” and their “routine support.” Advisers said Rumsfeld, after requesting a fresh legal review by the Pentagon’s general counsel, interprets “traditional” and “routine” more expansively than his predecessors.