Throughout the boom years of the 1990s, when stock
markets soared and growth in the American economy seemed unstoppable, every
ambitious young American wanted to be an investment banker. Today, espionage is
the fashionable profession.
Since the terrorist attacks of 11 September,
thousands of young people have rushed to join the CIA and America’s twelve
other intelligence agencies. A
crash recruitment drive is underway. Speakers of Arabic, Turkish, Farsi,
Pushto, Dari and Urdu are in great demand, while a knowledge of Chinese or
Russian is also considered a distinct advantage for any would-be secret agent. Humint
– that is to say intelligence derived from human sources rather than from
satellites or from electronic eavesdropping – is being given top priority.
Intelligence services are not the only ones to be
expanding fast to meet the new ‘asymetrical’ threat from international
terrorism. In most major countries, Special Forces are looking for strong young
men, with a taste for adventure.
In Afghanistan, British and American Special Forces
made a crucial, if largely unpublicized, contribution to this week’s victorious
advance of the Northern Alliance. The reason Kabul was captured virtually
without opposition was because small teams of Special Forces on the ground were
able to direct devastatingly accurate air strikes at Taleban troops, forcing
them to disperse. Unable to concentrate their forces, the Taliban could not
make a stand.
Both the United States and Britain have admitted
that their Special Forces helped
to coordinate the ground attack of the Northern Alliance forces with the air
bombardment of the Taliban.
The capture of airfields inside Afghanistan, such as
the Bagram air base north of Kabul, is further bad news for the Taliban. Once
American ground attack aircraft start operating from these airstrips, they will
be able, with help from Special Forces deep in Afghanistan, to give even more
support to anti-Taliban troops.
Without air cover and unable to concentrate their
forces for a counter-attack, the Taliban must now resort to guerrilla warfare
-- if they decide to fight on. The conventional war in Afghanistan is virtually
over.
See 2/
Where is Bin
Laden?
Intelligence agents and Special Forces still have
plenty of work to do. They need to find answers to some basic questions. Where
is Osama bin Laden? What are his plans? Can Al-Qa’ida hit back? Where is Mullah
Muhammad Omar? If Bin Laden and Mullah Omar are both eliminated, who will
succeed them? Are there more ‘Bin Ladens’ hiding out there in the mountains of
Afghanistan?
More than ever, intelligence is now the essential
ingredient of international politics. George W Bush’s ‘coalition against
terror’ is largely based on the sharing of intelligence about terrorist groups,
with the US benefiting from help from Britain, but also from Russia and
Pakistan, both of whom know Afghanistan well.
Big powers are striking deals over intelligence. It
may be that President Vladimir Putin was persuaded to shut down Russia’s big
electronic interception station in Cuba, targeted at the United States, because
of a new US-Russian agreement to share intelligence about terrorists.
Worried about security and anxious to calm the fears
of the public, political leaders have woken up to the importance of
intelligence. In the US, George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence is
to be given full Cabinet rank – if, that is, he keeps his job. To advise him on
security matters, President Jacques Chirac of France has chosen Philippe
Massoni, a man with a long career in intelligence who served for eight years as
chief of the Paris police. Before siding with the United States against the
Taliban, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan first removed from his post
General Mahmud Ahmad, head of the powerful Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI),
which had been the Taliban’s main external support.
In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Abdallah has replaced
Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Kingdom’s long-serving Intelligence chief, with one
of his own brothers, Prince Nawaf bin Abdulaziz. US Secretary of State Colin
Powell has appointed the former CENTCOM commander, Admiral Anthony Zinni, as
his adviser on security and intelligence matters. General Muhamad Fahim, the
Northern Alliance defence minister who made a triumphal entry into Kabul this
week, was head of intelligence for Ahmad Shah Masood, when Masood was fighting
the Russian occupation in the 1980s.
The pattern is everywhere the same: intelligence has
come into its own and policy makers and political leaders want close personal
ties with the intelligence agencies.
Intelligence is vital to support military operations
abroad, as in the war against the Taliban, but it is also vital to protect the
home front against terrorist attack.
In the United States, the hunt is on – and the
knives are out -- to establish who is to blame for the failure to prevent the
11 September attacks. It has been called the ‘Pearl Harbour of the intelligence
agencies’. Congress has called for an investigation and the various
intelligence agencies are already blaming each other.
America’s giant ‘Intelligence Community’ costs the
taxpayer about $30bn a year – or about 10% of the US defense budget of well
over $300bn. No other country in the world comes anywhere near spending such a
vast amount on intelligence. The American intelligence budget is some 12 to 15
times bigger than the British or French intelligence budgets.
Who are the big spenders?
*** The CIA employs 17,000 people in the collection
and analysis of information and has a budget of $3.5bn. Congress has just given
it another $700m in emergency funds.
*** These sums are dwarfed by the Defense
Intelligence Agency, which has a budget of $14bn, for the collection of both
strategic and tactical intelligence. It has just been given a further $1.2bn.
*** The National Reconnaissance Office develops,
builds and manages intelligence satellite systems with a budget of over $6bn.
*** As its name suggests, The National Imagery and
Mapping Agency handles imagery intelligence systems and mapping.
***The National Security Agency intercepts and
monitors world-wide communications, employs 38,000 people and has a budget of
about $4bn.
*** The
Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is America’s main agency in the war
against organized crime. Its main task is to fight the mafia, drug barons and
other gangsters and criminals. Its traditional concern has been with
law-enforcement. But 7,000 of its agents and other employees have now been
diverted to the investigation of the 11 September attacks and the anthrax
mailings.
A major result of the terrorist attacks is that the
old frontier between foreign intelligence and domestic law-enforcement has
become blurred. The two now need to be closely integrated in the battle against
terrorism – but this involves overcoming ancient feuds between the various
intelligence agencies which often treat each other like rivals, even like
enemies, rather than partners.
This month President Bush will receive a report from
General Brent Scowcroft, chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board, recommending a radical overhaul of the US intelligence
community.
The report has been drafted by a special commission
set up by President Bush last May, but its work has been given new urgency by
the 11 September attacks.
According to press reports, General Scowcroft’s main
proposals are expected to strengthen the role and powers of the Director of
Central Intelligence, the President’s chief intelligence officer and manager of
the intelligence community. The CIA will be given a bigger budget, its Director
will have full Cabinet rank and, to ensure continuity, he is likely to be
appointed for a 10-year term like the FBI director.
As mentioned above, George Tenet is likely to be
replaced by a powerful professional figure of proven ability, who has the
support of both Republicans and Democrats.
A controversial proposal is for the CIA to take over
from the Defense Department control over the National Reconnaissance Office,
the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, and the National Security Agency.
These changes will not be approved without a fight.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is known to oppose them, as do the Senate and
House Armed Services Committees. Where power and multi-billion dollar budgets
are concerned, change in Washington does not come easily.
The FBI also faces sweeping changes. Attorney
General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller have put the Justice
Department and the FBI on a ‘war footing’, switching their prime focus from
domestic crimes to terrorist threats.
One thing is certain. The fight against terrorism is
now America’s top priority. Spies can celebrate. One way or the other, money
and influence are coming their way.