The issue of Pentagon spies was back in the news this weekend.
Ironically, a famous Pentagon spy—Ahmed Chalabi of Iraqi National Congress—is back, too. The Times suggests today that Ayatollah Sistani’s Shiite fundamentalist party in Iraq has graciously decided not to appoint mullahs to the new Iraqi government, leaving the door open for (surprise!) Chalabi. He’s baa-aa-aack.
More significantly, the burgeoning Department of Defense intelligence apparatus, under the infamous crusader Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the ultra-Christian undersecretary of defense for intelligence, has made news in two ways.
First, according to the Washington Post, and half-denied by the Pentagon, Rummy has set up a secret unit called the Strategic Support Branch to conduct covert operations overseas. This idea has been cooking for several years now, although the Post story is the first time the specific unit has been named. It has been operation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places they declined to name. Operating through the U.S. Special Operations Command—itself a relatively new unit—the apparatus is part of a vast, post-9/11 expansion of Pentagon special ops. Sen. John McCain grumpily responded that he might have to hold hearings on the idea, since apparently he only learned about it from the Post.
The Times reports today the even CIA officials—who see the whole thing as a power grab by DOD—are worried that “an expanded Pentagon role in intelligence-gathering could, by design or effect, escape the strict Congressional oversight imposed by law on such operations when they are carried out by intelligence agencies.”
The second issue, equally scary, is the stepped-up role of the Pentagon in domestic law enforcement and counterterrorism. The Times reported on Sunday that DOD anti-terror commandos were deployed for the inauguration Jan. 20. I’ve written about this issue for Rolling Stone and The Nation (see “Bringing the War Home,” The Nation, May 26, 2003). The Pentagon and its Northern Command—or Northcom—based in Colorado has created units specially designed for both intelligence collection and operations inside the United States, in contravention of the tradition of Posse Comitatus.
