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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/372852.htmlWed., December 17, 2003 Kislev 22, 5764 No mention of an intelligence failure - for now By Zvi Bar'el American forces arrested over 10,000 Iraqis before they found the right man - the one who gave them precise information on the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein. The official American version is that the concerted investigation that yielded one piece of information after another helped achieve the successful result. The Kurdish version of events differs. According to Jalal Talabani, the leader of the Kurdish Patriotic Union, it was his men who uncovered Saddam's hiding place and it was a force comprised of his men, together with the American forces, that nabbed Saddam. However, sources in the other Kurdish faction, which is headed by Massoud Barzani, claim that Talabani's men had nothing to do with Saddam's capture and that this is not the first time Talabani's men are taking credit for capturing senior Iraqis without any basis in reality. "If they had let us run our intelligence network in the past eight months, we would have found him first," says one of Barzani's men. It is possible that one of these claims is correct or that a relative of Saddam provided information, which eventually led to his discovery. There is no disputing the shortage of good field intelligence that has marked the war in Iraq since its beginning. American officers interviewed in the press reported that they did not receive information in real time before operational activities, and said that battalion-level commands had to develop their own methods of intelligence gathering and debriefing, wasting time and manpower on activities that are not always standard operating procedures. One of the primary difficulties is the shortage of Arabic-speaking personnel, as well as the fact that the translators assigned to the American forces could not always operate efficiently because they did not have the trust of the American commanders or were not assigned to the forces in time to do so. For example, detainees nabbed on the street were interrogated in English while a passer-by was asked to translate for the American forces without obtaining a verification of the accuracy of the translation. During my visit to Iraq, I was detained by an American patrol with an Iraqi escort, and we had to wait almost two hours until the translator who could brief the Iraqi escort arrived. The translator was not a professional interrogator; he was a Lebanese contractor who happened to be in the area. There were not always troops in the area to arrest women or question them, and the result was scenes of male soldiers detaining Iraqi women and handcuffing them - infuriating images that deterred others from cooperating with the American forces. In addition to the difficulty of obtaining intelligence in Iraq, there was the campaign against collaborators launched by the radical organizations, which in recent months killed people suspected of aiding American efforts. The difficulty in obtaining intelligence resulted in contradictions in senior intelligence assessments and over the information received. Consequently, while the brigade commanders and even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that Saddam's people were the ones carrying out the attacks under the leadership of Saddam himself or his deputy, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, or that infiltrators from Iran and Syria are responsible, the field commanders provided different reports, saying they did not arrest any foreigners who had been involved in attacks. Children paid to attack Now it is possible to assess that Saddam had limited ability to operate his men in the field. The underground hiding place where he was found did not have any maps, communications devices or other equipment that could indicate the presence of an organized command post. Saddam, according to initial reports, roamed from one hiding place to the next, and the time that it took to capture him indicates that only very few people knew his whereabouts. In such a situation, it is hard to see how he could have managed to operate and organize an efficient underground force. There is still no clear picture of the structure and scale of the anti-American organization - is it a nationally organized leadership running the attacks all over the country or a local operation with some criminal aspects to it? Arab sources reported, for example, that children and teenagers received sums from $500-5,000 to perpetrate attacks; but while $750,000 in cash was found in Saddam's hideout, there is no certainty that the money was used to finance attacks. Saddam's interrogation is likely to explain the military preparations the Iraqi army made before the war, although much of the information is already in the hands of American intelligence following the arrest of senior Iraqi officials. But it is doubtful that the interrogation will provide specific information on the methods of the terrorist cells now operating in Iraq. The CIA has several hundred operators and around 50 analysts in Iraq, and their job is to review the information obtained in interrogations. In the coming days, another 100 or so CIA agents will arrive in Iraq to back up the interrogators, but also to relax the criticism of the U.S. administration for the failure of intelligence to uncover the attackers and thwart violence. There are also, alongside the CIA people, Pentagon intelligence officials, intelligence officers from military units as well as hired bodyguards, who have signed contracts with the American command to guard oil and water installations, operating in Iraq. Beyond the American forces, there are also Spanish, Polish, British, Danish and Dutch forces there, each with their own sources of information. "Every such entity gathers information," says a former American intelligence official, "but it is doubtful whether there is anyone who can integrate all the information and turn it into viable intelligence that is usable in operational activities." There is also a particular problem in infiltrating the terrorist organizations in Iraq, especially in dangerous areas such as Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr neighborhood, Shi'ite centers in Najaf and Karbala, and in the northern city of Mosul. At this stage, there is no still no mention of the strategic intelligence failures, such as the inability to find the location, if it exists at all, of any weapons of mass destruction, or the incorrect intelligence analysis of the Iraqi people's preparations prior to the war. These issues were reviewed in CIA and Pentagon reports and as stipulated by the new intelligence law signed this week by President Bush, the CIA will be required to submit a report on the lessons of the war which will surely be fascinating. But these analyses do not help change the nature of the war now being waged. So, for example, regarding Saddam's capture, American intelligence is having trouble explaining why a population that for the most part despised and feared Saddam did not help capture him during this entire period. Similarly, it is having a hard time explaining where his deputy Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri is and who is providing logistical aid to the attackers who continue to set off car bombs even after Saddam's capture. Drafting Iraqi operatives The intelligence gathering that brought about Saddam Hussein's capture was put in place over the last few weeks. The analysts dropped the interrogation of senior officials who had been captured and focused on mapping out Saddam's close relatives. They were told to arrest several dozen of his close relatives, which is how they got to one of Saddam's nephews, who related the location of two possible hideouts. This method was feasible and worthwhile for capturing Saddam, but what about the dozens and hundreds (and some say, thousands) of volunteers and activists, former Ba'ath party members and infiltrators from neighboring countries who continue to carry out attacks? One idea that has been put forward in recent weeks is to re-enlist Iraqi intelligence officials who served under Saddam and train them to work alongside the American forces. The assumption, which is correct for the most part, is that Iraqi intelligence agents will know how to operate among the population. The problem is of course, how to explain to Iraqi citizens the re-enlistment of Saddam's agents specifically after his capture, and whether they can be trusted not to set up their own independent operations networks. Another option is to try to establish ethnic militias of Shi'ites and Kurds, who will receive their own areas of control. But this will also be hard to implement, primarily because of the backdrop of internal disputes between the ethnic groups and their leaders. For example, a sharp dispute has developed between Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and a protege of the Pentagon, and the leader of the Iraqi National Accord, Iyad Alawi, also a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, over the use of private forces. Chalabi asked to sign a security agreement with a South African firm on the binding "advice" of his nephew, Salam Chalabi, who serves as a consultant to the Council; Alawi, however, feels that private forces should not be used and all Iraqi security forces should be united under one command. There are similar disagreements with the Kurds, arguments which may intensify as the date of the transfer of power to a new elected council in June draws near. Ostensibly, these are political decisions that should not affect the continuation of the fight against terrorism in Iraq, but because the decisions are in the hands of the U.S. administration in Iraq, the wrong decision could cause an entire sector to decide to act against the Americans or not cooperate fully with them. Saddam's capture is certainly an important achievement for the Americans and it definitely reassured many Iraqis, who feared his possible return to power. But it is doubtful that it will bring about the turning point the Americans have been waiting for. The intelligence war is only just beginning. -__ ___ _ ___ __ ___ _ _ _ __ /-_|-0-\-V-/-\|-|-__|-|-|-/-_| \_-\--_/\-/|-\\-|-_||-V-V-\_-\ |__/_|--//-|_|\_|___|\_A_/|__/ SPY NEWS is OSINT newsletter and discussion list associated to Mario's Cyberspace Station - The Global Intelligence News Portal http://mprofaca.cro.net ######## CAUTION! ######### Since you are receiving and reading documents, news stories, comments and opinions not only from so called or self-proclaimed "reliable sources", but also a lot of possible misinformation collected by Spy News moderator and subscribers and posted to Spy News for OSINT purposes - it should be a serious reason (particularly to journalists and web publishers) to think twice before using it for their story writing, further publishing or forwarding throughout Cyberspace. 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