U.S. intelligence in the wake of September 11: the rise of the spy commando and reorganized operational capabilities.

• Author: Hitz, Frederick P.
• Position: Annual Federalist Society National Student Symposium

As the nation witnesses the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it might be worthwhile to assess the steps the United States has taken since the passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (1) and the USA PATRIOT Act (2)--to combat future acts of terrorism against the United States. Ten years ago I wrote an Essay for this Journal calling for the federal government to unleash one of its under-used resources, the CIA. (3) In the years since that Essay, the CIA has experienced some astonishing successes--spy commandos and drone warfare--and some troubling failures-extraordinary rendition and enhanced interrogation--on an operational level. Bureaucratically the intelligence community has been shuffled and reshuffled, adding new layers of management but not necessarily making the intelligence community more effective. The joint CIA and Navy SEAL operation of May 2, 2011, which resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden, (4) offers an opportunity to examine U.S. intelligence efforts to combat terrorism in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Ten years after September 11, there has not been an attack in the United States on a similar scale since that horrific day. We have experienced near misses, such as the failures of both the underwear bomber on Christmas Day, 2009 (5) and the Times Square bomber in May 2010. (6) We experienced the shootings of twelve soldiers by an Arab-American military psychiatrist at Fort Hood Army base in November 2009, (7) although it is not clear that attack was terrorist-inspired. Nonetheless, there have not been any recurrences of terrorist killing in the United States on a mass scale. Why? A simple answer is that we are no longer the unaware, unprotected country we were in early September 2001. Airport security procedures are more elaborate, and the notion of "if you see something, say something" (8) has become widespread. Nonetheless, it is important to ask if we have just been fortunate or if we are demonstrably better at international counterterrorism.

Ten years after September 11, there are many new players in the world of U.S. counterterrorism. In addition to calling for the creation of a Director of National Intelligence (9) and a National Counterterrorism Center, (10) the 2004 9/11 Commission Report encouraged information sharing among government departments with access to intelligence on terrorism. (11) Indeed, the 9/11 Commission noted that the September 11 attacks were the product of a plot dreamed up in Hamburg, Afghanistan, and Madrid, within the operational jurisdiction of the CIA and the U.S. Department of State, but the action was destined to take place in the United States, where responsibility for stopping it fell largely to the FBI and local law enforcement. (12) In an age of instant communications, the CIA and FBI ought to be in constant contact about matters that relate to national security. But do the relevant elements of the U.S. Government regularly communicate with one another as the 9/11 Commission envisioned, or have bureaucratic setbacks like Wikileaks driven the intelligence community back to old information stovepiping habits?

Thus, the events of September 11 led directly to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, a gigantic agglomeration of domestic law enforcement, immigration, customs, and coastal protection authorities that did not include a domestic intelligence gathering entity separate from the FBI, like the UK's MI5. (13) In addition, the United States has committed $75 billion annually to counterterrorism, (14) including the hiring of hosts of contractors holding an estimated 265,000 top secret clearances. (15) What have we to show for this extraordinary expenditure of resources?

With this background in mind, I turn to the role of the intelligence community, particularly the CIA. The CIA rebounded quickly after the September 11 debacle by inserting a team of civilian special operations case officers into northern Afghanistan three weeks later. (16) Led by Gary Schroen, this six-man team helicoptered over the Hindu Kush Mountains from Uzbekistan to the Panjshir Valley (17) where they linked up with members of the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban who had been shielding Osama bin Laden. (18) Schroen told this fascinating story in First In; (19) Gary Berntsen continued it in his book Jawbreaker. (20) Moving quickly, both Schroen's and Berntsen's teams used relationships built during the CIA-managed covert war against the Soviets from 1979-89 (21) and knowledge of regional languages (22) to direct a second covert war, this time against the Taliban. Using SOFLAM (23) laser targeting mechanisms, the teams guided U.S. bombers against enemy troop concentrations. (24) The CIA exploited a vulnerability that helped drive the Taliban out of Kabul and Osama bin Laden to Tora Bora, where he might have been vulnerable to U.S. troops if they had been deployed on such a mission. (25)

Although the CIA did not effectively warn President George W. Bush and his top policymakers before the September 11 attacks, (26) it picked itself up afterward by exploiting a longstanding CIA special operations capability--"spy commandos." By using these highly trained agents, the CIA was able to get "sneakers" on the ground in Afghanistan weeks before the U.S. military was able to do so. (27) It has continued to use spy commandos in Afghanistan since and recently enjoyed further success when they were teamed with U.S. Navy SEALs to bring down Osama bin Laden. (28) The CIA built a cadre of spy commandos consisting largely of experienced retired or detailed U.S. Special Forces personnel to work against the terrorist target in the Middle East. (29) These former soldiers receive CIA operations and reports training, while retaining their special forces operating skills which allow them to function in the outback where terrorists are active. (30) Because CIA officers will not encounter terrorists in official government offices or embassy cocktail parties but must confront them where they are attacking civilians, (31) it seems to me that training and using spy commandos is an appropriate mission for our nation's clandestine service.

The CIA also has experienced success in the decade since September 11 by combining accurate intelligence and American technology. The emergence of the Predator drone, initially deployed as a reconnaissance vehicle but now fitted with Hellfire missiles, helped coalition efforts immeasurably in finding, chasing down, and eliminating Taliban insurgents in the difficult terrain of Afghanistan and Pakistan. (32) By some estimates, the CIA drone fleet has killed more than 1,500 suspected militants in Pakistan alone. (33) Not that the Predator has been an unmitigated success. Because of its futuristic and relentless non-humanity, the Predator drone has aroused strong opposition among ordinary citizens of Afghanistan and Pakistan, who deplore the collateral casualties that come with the drone's terrorist-killing accomplishments. (34)

But not all changes in the intelligence community's approach to counterterrorism have been for the better. For example, in addition to the positive...