Well, I can't find what I'm looking for, which is an article about how DoD (aka: Rumsfeld) planned to actually provoke terrorist attacks, presumably to ferret them out in order to deal with them. Anyone? In the meantime, here's what I did find, and it seems likely this group would be the one involved.
Controversial Pentagon Espionage Unit Loses Its Leader
Rumsfeld Reportedly Moving Ahead With Plans to Expand Team's Intelligence Work Worldwide
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 13, 2005; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19785-2005Feb12.html?sub=ARdiscussed here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1233838 The leader of a new Pentagon espionage unit has resigned his position, shortly after public disclosure that the Defense Department is expanding into clandestine operations traditionally undertaken by the CIA.
The Strategic Support Branch and its departing leader are controversial among the elite special operations forces assigned to work with them on high-risk intelligence missions overseas, some of whom aired complaints in a Jan. 23 Washington Post story about deficits in the training and performance of the unit's officers. Defense officials with firsthand knowledge said the unit's leader, reserve Army Col. George Waldroup, surprised his staff in the first week of February with an announcement that he was stepping down immediately.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, subordinates said, is pressing ahead with plans for independent Pentagon intelligence operations around the world. The Post disclosed last month that Rumsfeld has reinterpreted U.S. law to grant him broad authority to dispatch clandestine teams into friendly and unfriendly nations, whether or not conventional war is in prospect. Designed to help cure what Rumsfeld described as his "near total dependence on CIA," the Strategic Support Branch gathers intelligence alongside newly empowered forces from the military's Joint Special Operations Command.
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discussed here:
WP: Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1175199washingtonpost.com
Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain
New Espionage Branch Delving Into CIA Territory
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29414-2005Jan22?language=printerThe Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.
Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.
The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.
Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats.
The Pentagon has a vast bureaucracy devoted to gathering and analyzing intelligence, often in concert with the CIA, and news reports over more than a year have described Rumsfeld's drive for more and better human intelligence. But the creation of the espionage branch, the scope of its clandestine operations and the breadth of Rumsfeld's asserted legal authority have not been detailed publicly before. Two longtime members of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democrat and a Republican, said they knew no details before being interviewed for this article.
Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than comparable operations by the CIA. Rumsfeld's dissatisfaction with the CIA's operations directorate, and his determination to build what amounts in some respects to a rival service, follows struggles with then-CIA Director George J. Tenet over intelligence collection priorities in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pentagon officials said the CIA naturally has interests that differ from those of military commanders, but they also criticized its operations directorate as understaffed, slow-moving and risk-averse. A recurring phrase in internal Pentagon documents is the requirement for a human intelligence branch "directly responsive to tasking from SecDef," or Rumsfeld.
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