Intelligence

A French official who conducted investigations in Pakistan adds more weight to charges that Pakistani intelligence officers are in bed with the Taliban and even with al Qaeda.

In a new book, What I Could Not Say, to be published next week in France,  Jean-Louis Bruguiere says that he came away with the impression that some Pakistani officials don't even consider al Qaeda to be a terrorist organization, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. He is quoted as writing, "The central government has lost control of certain elements of the army and the ISI, an intelligence service that no longer has the trust of its foreign partners." French investigators in Pakistan also were physically intimidated, he charges.

Bruguiere now works in Washington on terrorism financing issues, the newspaper said.

(HT to Barnett Rubin)

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Today's good news is that Israeli agents snuck into a London hotel room and planted software in a Syrian official's laptop that enabled them to collect information on Syria's secret nuclear program. This set up the surprise air strike in September 2007 against a nearly completed reactor out in the eastern Syrian desert.

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This New York Times article saying that Afghan President Karzai's brother is on the CIA's payroll strikes me as tantamount to declaring open season on him.

I have a friend who insists that President Obama is actually being very strategic about handling Afghanistan, and points toward the pressures brought on the Karzai family. If so, this story is another brick in the wall. 

Department of Defense

My subway companions Krepninevich and Watts offer up a startling new definition of strategy in their essay about how to regain strategic competence. I am all for a new definition, because I think the ways-means-ends stuff they teach at the war colleges is not helpful. That is just not the way I have seen strategic decision-making occur. Their definition focuses on identifying asymmetrical advantages:

What, then, is strategy? In light of these various observations and insights, a pragmatic characterization is as follows:

Strategy is fundamentally about identifying or creating asymmetric advantages that can be exploited to help achieve one's ultimate objectives despite resource and other constraints, most importantly the opposing efforts of adversaries or competitors and the inherent unpredictability of strategic outcomes.

This is not, of course, the usual definition of strategy. However, it has the considerable merit of applying as readily to chess or a business firm competing against other firms for profits and market share as it does to military competition during peacetime or war. More importantly, it goes beyond the traditional definitions of military strategy by indicating how one actually goes about doing strategy. At its core, strategy is about finding asymmetries in competitive situations that can be exploited to one's advantage.

This definition strikes me as better than the ways-means-ends device, but still a bit narrow, and perhaps too focused on the enemy. I think strategy is more about defining who we are, what we are trying to do, and how we are going to try to do it. But these are smart, insightful writers, so I am going think long and hard about it before rejecting their definition.

David Ignatius, who knows more about intelligence and the Middle East than I ever will, inexplicably chose the dog days of mid-August to run a very good column about the increasing domination of Iraqi intelligence forces by the agents of Tehran. He clearly has had a long talk with an Iraqi intelligence official. My guess, and that is all it is, is that that official with whom Ignatius spoke was none other than Gen. Mohammed Shahwani, who, as Ignatius writes, resigned in August over the issue of Iranian influence:

When pressed about what his country would look like in five years, absent American help, he answered bluntly: "Iraq will be a colony of Iran."

Meanwhile, here is a headline from Aswat al-Iraq that caught my eye in August, some six years into the war: 

Official says only 2 blasts occurred in Baghdad today
          August 19, 2009 - 02:28:46    

It was a famous victory.

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

A young acquaintance of mine due to report to the Army's military intelligence school later this year asked for some reading recommendations to prepare for the classes. Having no idea, I asked some knowledgeable friends. Here are their picks:

Army Reserve Maj. Kyle Teamey, a counterinsurgency expert:

If this is a brand new lieutenant with no previous service experience, he/she should focus first on learning the basics of soldiering, tactics, and leadership .... [and] start with the same books a young infantry or armor officer might read:

• The Defense of Duffer's Drift, Swinton (and the various knock-offs)
• Once an Eagle, Myrer
• The Bear Went Over the Mountain and/or The Other Side of the Mountain, Grau and Jalali
• Infantry Attacks, Rommel

Retired Army Col. John Collins, who enlisted as a private in 1942, served in three wars, and also is author of Military Geography and Military Strategy :

My top candidate is Sherman Kent's classic, a golden oldie titled Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy."

Carson Morris, a career intelligence officer:

Kent's is very good; hence naming the school after him. I would add:

1. Roger George & Jim Bruce's Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations
2. Col. John Hughes-Wilson's MI Blunders and Cover-ups
3. The Army's Recce and Surveillance Handbook
4. Abe Shulsky & Gary Schmitt's Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, latest (think is 3rd) edition
5. Allen Dulles' The Craft of Intelligence
6. John Keegan's Intelligence in War
7. Steve O'Hern's Intelligence Wars: Lessons from Baghdad

Retired Marine Col. T.X. Hammes, author of The Sling and the Stone:

Stuart Herrington's Silence Was a Weapon. Amazon has it used for under $10. Obviously good for COIN. For conventional tactical, the Marine Corps republished a small manual called ‘Intelligence for Frontline Units.' Not sure where he can get that one."

Lani Elliott, teaches at the National Defense Intelligence College:

Sandler, Todd, et. al., 'Terrorist Signalling and the Value of Intelligence' (British Journal of Political Science, October 2007), Brian Dunmire's recent article from Military Intelligence, ‘Army Strategic Intelligence,' and Don Hanle's Terrorism: The Newest Face of War, would be my recommendations. The Dunmire article is very helpful on the career field itself and some key issues strategic intelligence faces, especially in the Army. Insightful and informed. Hanle's book provides the most immediately applicable and functional method of analyzing terrorism that I know about. The book is especially valuable when read with T.X. Hammes' The Sling and The Stone."

James Hailer, founder, Hailer Publishing, a specialty house for military classics:

Compton McKenzies' Water on the Brain. a comedy/satire written about rivalry between competing intelligence agencies in England in 1933. It was based on MacKenzies' experience as a MI6 agent during WWI and was his revenge for being prosecuted under the official secrets act for trying to publish his memoir of the war in 1932. He nails the war between bureaucracies better than anyone I have read, and it is one of the few books that I have consistently laughed out loud as I read it. Frankly it should be required reading for any person in a large organization."

Lin Todd, a specialist in counterterrorism in the Middle East:

Richards Heuer's ‘Psychology of Intelligence Analysis' is a classic primer on analysis of intel of all sorts. In addition, Front Line Intelligence by COL Robert Robb and LTC Stedman Chandler, which is an S2 AAR of intelligence from WWII, might be useful."

Shawn Brimley, one of the brains behind the QDR:

Three additional books that have influenced my thinking on this issue are:

1. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy -- by Mark Lowenthal
2. Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning - by Cynthia Grabo
3. Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning -- by Richard Betts."

What would you suggest adding to this list?

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Michele Flournoy, the no. 2 power at the Pentagon, lays down the law in the new issue of Proceedings, along with the shadowy but powerful Shawn Brimley. Wanna know where the QDR is going? Read this and learn, little grasshoppers. And listen up: China and India are where it's at.

Pretty near the top they quote Alfred T. Mahan, which seasoned Pentagoners know is a sign that the Navy is getting teed up to get hit long. (This is like when Gorby would quote Lenin, or Marc Antony would praise Julius Caesar.)

Yeah, they want the State Department to get its act together-but who doesn't?:

The task for the United States is to respond to these challenges with a whole-of-government approach that advances our interests while legitimizing our power in the eyes of others."     

They also want to the Pentagon to help allies keep the global commons free:

Helping to build the capacity of our partners and allies and working toward a common agenda on these increasingly complex issues should be a critical pillar of America's national security and defense strategy."

Okay, sounds good. But this is my question: If the global commons (sea, air, space, cyberspace) really is gonna be contested, why does anyone think conventional aircraft carriers and short-legged fighter aircraft are the answer? I think it is time to commission the UCAV carrier the USS Obama, whose hull and aircraft would both be stealthy. With perhaps a crew of fewer than 500 sailors. (Most controllers of aircraft could fly them from Virginia.)   

You listening, Navy? Your professional magazine has run an article by two of the Pentagon's top civilian thinkers telling you where they think you need to go. You might want to think on this. You too, Air Force.   

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NightWatch excerpts a summary of a congressional report on Chinese hacking of American computers:

The Chinese cyberattackers -- whoever they work for -- sure are busy bees in cyberspace, according to the report of a Congressional hearing held in April by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which was released last week." The report is dated 30 April.

A '... senior fellow at the Technolytics Institute, a cyber think tank, told the hearing that a survey of nonmilitary government outfits that monitor their Internet firewalls reported an average of 128 acts of "cyber aggression" a minute from China in March 2009.'

"That works out to 7,680 aggressive cyber acts an hour or 184,320 a day against non-Defense organizations. The senior fellow said all these attacks came from IP addresses in China but added that he did not know exactly who or what sits behind those IP addresses.'" 

Meanwhile, old Bill Gertz, who has made a full-time job of tracking Chinese misdeeds, passes along a report that a Chinese intrusion recently forced the FBI to shut down one of its computer networks. 

I wonder if the U.S. government has ever delivered a diplomatic note telling the Chinese government to knock it off. It just seems unfriendly to me, and not becoming a great power. Anyone know?

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