Page 116 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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90———Central Intelligence Agency

Concurrently, terrorism in the Middle East was According to some estimates, as much as 60 percent
becoming a top concern. The early 1980s saw a great of the DO’s contacts were lost as a direct result of this
number of bombings, hijackings, and kidnappings. “scrub” policy.
War-torn Lebanon became a center of terrorist activity. The Guatemalan incident followed close on the
In 1983, the entire staff of a CIA station—six opera- heels of other blunders, including the Aldrich Ames
tives in total—was killed, along with 57 others, when spy scandal in 1994, reports of the endemic “malaise”
a suicide bomber targeted the U.S. embassy in Beirut. at the Paris CIA station in the mid-1990s, and a failed
The Beirut station chief was replaced by William attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein of Iraq in 1995.
Buckley, who was kidnapped by Islamic militants in Key resignations, including Baer, William Lofgren,
1984 and died in captivity. former chief of the Central Eurasia Division, and
These terrorist incidents led CIA director William David Manners, station chief in Amman, Jordan,
Casey to develop the Counterterrorism Center (CTC) added to the intelligence blackout in the Middle East.
in 1986, with the mission to “preempt, disrupt and By 1996, the CTC and FBI had begun to exchange
defeat” terrorists and to coordinate the intelligence high-level officers to manage counterterrorism efforts
community’s counterterrorist activities. Although in both agencies. This marked a change from previous
staffed with approximately 200 officers, the CTC was eras, when the distinctions between FBI and CIA were
considered by many to be a paper-pushing outfit. The kept clear—domestic and foreign, law enforcement
CIA’s clandestine operations wing, the Directorate of and national security, peacetime and wartime—now all
Operations (DO), still controlled espionage activities were blurred with respect to acts of terrorism. The joint
overseas. effort included a special taskforce dedicated solely
to Osama bin Laden. Nevertheless, the September 11,
2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York
DOWNFALL DECADE
City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., proved
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the CIA, the failure of U.S. intelligence.
long used to functioning under the Soviet threat, began Since October 2001, the CIA has undergone the
to downsize operations in the Middle East, even as six most massive overhaul in its 55-year history. New
new Islamic states emerged in Central Asia. By the military personnel have been rushed through a four-
mid-1990s, eight CIA stations in the area known as the week crash training courses to become part of the
“South Group” were closed, leaving a gaping hole in CIA’s paramilitary division. Dozens of retired CIA
Middle Eastern intelligence, even as rumblings of fun- operatives from the Clandestine Service Reserve have
damentalist dissent grew louder throughout the region. reactivated, including some who have taken charge of
Robert Baer, considered one of the best CIA operatives abandoned CIA stations throughout the Middle East.
in the Middle East, complained that “the CIA closed The CTC has more than tripled its staff since 1997.
down in the ’90s.” Baer left the agency in 1997. George Tenet, appointed head of the CIA in 1997,
Like many other agencies, the CIA had begun to enjoys one of the strongest relationships between a
rely more heavily on technology, such as satellites, CIA director and a president, Tenet briefing President
computers, and encryption devices. The lack of first- Bush almost daily. In the aftermath of September 11,
hand information from observers on the scene was efforts have been made to increase cooperation
compounded by an element of “careerism”—opera- between the CIA and the FBI and to improve the col-
tives were rewarded as much for analysis done at lection and sharing of intelligence between the agen-
headquarters in Langley, Virginia, as for field-based cies. On the ground in Afghanistan in 2001, the CIA
operations abroad. was the first significant U.S. combat force to enter
In 1995, the potential for gathering first-hand intel- the country; the CIA has also fired missiles from
ligence (human intelligence [HUMINT]) was further unmanned Predator drone planes and is helping the
hampered by CIA blunders that involved a paid military to identify targets.
Guatemalan informant who was connected to the In hindsight, it has become abundantly clear that
murders of two Americans. In response, CIA director HUMINT is required in the age of global terror net-
John Deutch established a policy requiring the DO to works, but such assets are slow to foster and groups
approve the recruitment of sources believed to have such as Al Qaeda can be exceedingly difficult to
serious criminal or abusive human rights records. penetrate. Among other imperatives, the CIA must