Black Ops: The Rise of Special Forces in the CIA, the SAS, and Mossad by Tony Geraghty

Author:Tony Geraghty
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 1605980978
Publisher: Pegasus
Published: 2010-06-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

PLAUSIBLY DENIABLE (AND OTHER WAYS INTO TROUBLE)

The darkest, most sensitive Special Forces operations are linked to official, or quasi-official, intelligence agencies while remaining plausibly deniable. The relationship between freelance soldier and government is akin to that of the ventriloquist and his dummy. It is also sometimes competitive, sometimes symbiotic. While the CIA has its own direct action team, the Special Activities Division/Special Operations Group, it also depends for many of its operations on the multi-service Special Operations Command. Neither of those sources might be armed with sufficient deniability to make them plausible comrades in arms on black operations. In any case, critics of the CIA such as the espionage historian David Wise argue: “The CIA would be much better serviced by getting out of the paramilitary business altogether and strengthening its clandestine intelligence gathering. It was, after all, created to avoid another Pearl Harbor. It should concern itself now with preventing another 9/11.”165 Even some former insiders argue that the Agency should stick to its main job of running agents and collecting intelligence, leaving it to SOCOM to carry out the derring-do.

The CIA’s problem, of course, is that SOCOM is under Pentagon control. So for the most controversial black operations, such as armed coups and assassinations, the Agency still has a tendency to sub-contract to the paramilitary private sector. In June 2009, Leon Panetta, newly appointed to run the CIA, exposed to Congress a program through which the controversial security company Blackwater—now rebranded as “Xe Services”—would help train CIA assassins to kill al Qaeda leaders. Though the secret program ran for seven years, it seems to have produced a zero body count. Blackwater would have “helped the Agency with planning, training and surveillance.”166 The millionaire boss of Blackwater, Erik Prince, felt betrayed. He told Vanity Fair: “When it became politically expedient…someone threw me under the bus.” It became apparent that Prince, a right-wing patriot, offered more than advice to the Agency. He claimed to have been a vetted CIA asset for five years, developing at his own expense covert means of penetrating hard-target countries and stalking potential targets, including al Qaeda operatives, for assassination. A source close to Prince disclosed: “This program died because of a lack of political will.” And, it might be added, fear of legal trouble in spite of President George W. Bush’s license to the CIA to use “all necessary means” against Islamist terrorists

News of this arrangement was broken by the New York Times almost two months after Panetta informed Congress. The paper conceded that it was unclear whether the CIA had planned to use the contractors to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives in practice or just to help with training and surveillance. Questions about accountability also hung in the air. Robert Baer, a veteran CIA case officer, mid-East expert, and skeptic of misplaced direct action, surmised: “I suspect that if the agreements are ever really looked into—rather than a formal contract, the CIA reportedly brokered individual deals with top company brass—we will find out that Blackwater’s assassination work was more about bilking the U.

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