Violence, Turnover Blunt CIA Effort in Iraq

[radfringe]

Violence, Turnover Blunt CIA Effort in Iraq
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28562-2004Mar3.html
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 4, 2004; Page A01


The CIA has rushed to Iraq four times as many clandestine officers as it had planned on, but it has had little success penetrating the resistance and identifying foreign terrorists involved in the insurgency, according to senior intelligence officials and intelligence experts recently briefed on Iraq.

The CIA mission in Iraq, originally slated to have 85 officers, has grown to more than 300 full-time case officers and close to 500 personnel in total, including contractors and people on temporary assignment. It is widely known among agency officials to be the largest station in the world, and the biggest since Saigon during the Vietnam War 30 years ago.

Despite the size of the contingent, the agency's efforts to penetrate Iraq's ethnic factions and gain intelligence about the insurgency have been hampered by continued violence, the use of temporary and short-term personnel, and the pressing demands of military commanders for tactical intelligence they can use in daily confrontations with armed insurgents.

---snip---

With the Bush administration's war on terrorism spread over five continents, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden intensifying as spring approaches, the agency "is stretched beyond their limits," even as it makes a historic drive for recruits, one senior CIA veteran said.

The violence is making it far more difficult for the CIA to operate. A CIA directive requires case officers to travel only with armed bodyguards, making it nearly impossible to conduct discreet meetings with Iraqis on their own turf, according to intelligence experts briefed on the Iraq mission. The agency operates from more than half a dozen bases around the country.

"How do you do your job that way? You can't," said one former CIA official who recently returned from Iraq. "They don't know what's going on out there." The agency is training a private security firm that employs former Special Forces troops to teach them to be less conspicuous when they accompany CIA officers.

[Barrett808]

1. kick n/t

n/t

[Mari333]

2. Oh they get armed bodyguards??

and our kid gets to stand like a target in Baghdad with no protection at all except for a vest and helmet in the heat.
When Bremer walks around, does he have armed bodyguards? Does Rummy? sure they do. Its our kids who are the fall guys as the place erupts into civil war.

[SoDesuKa]

3. Collaborators

There's no way to gather intelligence in the middle of a war zone. Iraqis seen talking with Americans are presumed to be collaborating with them.