HOW TO COUNTER TERRORISM Ralph McGehee August, 1997 Herewith is a brief statement re my experiences with the CIA and the intelligence analysis I performed. My experiences teach me the impossibility of countering terrorism, countering narcotics, countering proliferation, and countering intelligence without a major commitment to analysis, especially analysis done in the field. First brief comments. The CIA, once it began to suspect Aldrich Ames, assigned him to the Counter Narcotics Center; and, once Harold Nicholson came under suspicion, assigned him to the Counter Terrorism Center -- both indicative of the lack of priority the Agency applies to these threats. Countering Narcotics -- This is "something," the CIA for decades has had the responsibility for countering narcotics, but whenever its covert priorities dictated, it became the major facilitator of the drug traffic -- from Southeast Asia, to Latin America to Pakistan/Afghanistan. Countering Terrorism (CT) -- its paramilitary operation in Pakistan/Afghanistan in the eighties recruited, armed, trained and activated radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorists from around the globe. The threat is real, the Agency's commitment to CT probably is not. Countering Proliferation (CP) -- a close partner of CT. A major aspect of CP is government to government relations such as buying up the former Soviet Bloc weaponry and expertise; and, pressuring other states not to sell weapons of mass destruction. CP is primarily the responsibility of other government agencies. Counter Intelligence (CI) -- East Germany's Stasi, Cuba's Direccion General de Inteligenica (DGI), the Soviet's KGB and probably many others had little trouble targeting double agents at the CIA -- dozens if not hundreds of DGI and Stasi agents were double agents for their native countries. Soviet double agents fed disinformation to the CIA to such a degree that the Agency missed the downfall of its major target; and, the disinformation they fed the Agency caused the U.S. to spend billions of dollars to counter Soviet weaponry that did not exist. CI demands the best in analysis but that is obviously something the CIA, as yet, is incapable of providing. ANALYSIS The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence noted the inability of CIA analysts and directed it correct this problem. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said the "Intelligence Community has very limited analytical capabilities to meet the myriad challenges, especially strategic and predictive; and, lacks the analytical depth, breath, and expertise to monitor political, military, and economic developments. The IC must improve training and [personnel selection] and "is awash in unexploited open source information"! How can an intelligence agency that cannot monitor political, military and economic developments, hope to penetrate and counter terrorism, narcotics, proliferation and opposition intelligence? Even a CIA study details the intelligence community's lack of analytical ability, "...it is time to stop pretending that the current structure can work....we will need to refocus on the analytic process and establish a structure that actually facilitates analysis rather than impedes it...." A leading former CIA analyst on the USSR reported how the CIA politicized intelligence and totally missed the downfall of its major target, the Soviet Union. I, from 1967 on, protested its intelligence on Vietnam. We have long, nearly endless accounts, of other CIA intelligence failures over its fifty years. Yet it apparently refuses to change. The CIA's new Director, George Tenet, a strong supporter of the Directorate of Operations (DO), said the CIA will continue to use the same basic tools that it accessed throughout the Cold War: a costly array of spy satellites for imagery and eavesdropping intelligence, and an elite, though often criticized, team of operations specialists who run actions directed against foreign governments and entities. This statement by Tenet convinces me that the CIA, under the rubric of countering this or that, will stress covert operations -- overthrowing or supporting other governments -- while paying little more than lip-service to countering terrorism and its other "counters." The Directorate of Operations dominates the CIA. DO operators are activists. Covert Action gets all the attention. Research does not. A CIA study says, "....if the intelligence service is dominated by a group of powerful decision makers, it will become a prisoner of these decision makers....the intelligence service will be no more than a rubber stamp of these preconceptions....nowhere is there a stronger `commitment to a policy or outlook' than by a service that is actively supporting a political faction, movement, or government with funds, advice, equipment, paramilitary resources and propaganda." Below I outline not only research for intelligence, but also research for operations. Essentially and eventually they merge and are the same. My background in research. I have an unusual psychological profile for an ops officer. CIA's Psychological Assessment System rated me as having an extremely flexible mentality whereas most ops officers have a regulated; e.g., rigid mentality. Such rigidity does not favor analysis. I survived the selection process, in spite of my "F+" rating because, in my opinion, I had played football at Notre Dame when the Agency was looking for ex-football players for its paramilitary programs. Initially my diffidence kept me from active operations and I was given a number of file-system types of assignments providing me a familiarity with file systems' pluses and minuses. Gradually I worked into a full time ops officer and in 1966 was assigned to Thailand, targeted against the Communist Party of Thailand. When the Thai authorities arrested over 200 people communist suspects in mid-South Thailand, I was sent to the province to pull together one collated report from the approximately 200 interrogation reports. I tried my best. I read the statements several times. When I tried to write a collated report, I could remember similarities or differences in statement details, but could not locate them again without time-consuming and often fruitless searches. I had failed to process the information, and my final report was of valueless. However, this frustration and failure taught me the necessity of preparation before trying to collate such a mass of details; e.g., analysis. In mid 1967, I put this knowledge to use when I was assigned to work with the 50,000 man Thai National Police to form a counterinsurgency and an intelligence collection program. Through a series of trial and errors we hit upon a workable approach. Our mostly 25-man, officer-grade team, with a dozen translators and interpreters went for a year to one Northeast province, where the threat appeared greatest. Our team traveled to a tambon (county) within the province. The concept of the operation was to interrogate villagers using integrated, well-prepared, methodology. Before the 25-man team began operations, I and the translators and interpreters carded all prior information on suspect villagers and villages from both the American and Thai file systems and prepared situation reports for the team on the worst villages and villagers. When the police entered a village and began work, the translators and I stayed nearby and daily translated and carded all interrogation reports. We filed the information in file folders by village, with sub-categories for weapons, organizations, training, propaganda themes, danger signals, all-clear signals, and other breakdowns. We opened 3/5 inch cards on every individual by true name and aliases -- these soon, due to their multiple entries, provided detailed information on communist leaders. (This sort of record-keeping now can be accomplished much better and faster with computers.) At the end of a two to three-month operation in a tambon, I wrote a final (survey) report that included summaries of all of those breakdowns. The report was around 40 to 50 pages long, and listed all individuals who had joined the CPT as liberation association or guerrilla members. The report named guerrilla leaders and groups, areas of operations, and all other breakdowns. The survey reports provided an entirely new perspective of the CPT. We found that the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) focused all its efforts on recruiting and motivating poor farmers and forming them into liberation associations. Liberation associations were the initial and largest organizational entity from which all other entities emanated. Prior to our report, the CIA had said the CPT consisted of only Party members and guerrillas, with a total of 2,500 in the entire country. Our survey showed there were that many in only four tambons in this one province alone. The Agency also had reported the CPT had no support of the people in the villages and that villagers were being forced to cooperate. After working for a year in the province, we had confessions from about 2,500 poor farmers who had joined the CPT as liberation association members and who believed wholeheartedly in the CPT. Results: The governor of the province, a native of the province, told me the survey reports gave him the only insight into the communist movement. State's I&R evaluated the survey reports highest in all its rating categories -- an unprecedented rating. The reports received similar ratings from other Thai and American counterinsurgency entities. Due to the detailed and accurate information, the CPT in that area collapsed. But suddenly CIA canceled the program and "forgot" the survey information. Why? Thailand was not the problem, the problem was Vietnam -- the CIA somehow over the years missed the seven-million-person-strong liberation association members of the South Vietnamese Communist movement. The Thai Communists had received training in organizational procedures in Hua Binh in North Vietnam. If the TCP recruited in the villagers using Vietnamese communist organizational methodology, then so had the Viet Cong. If the VC were a popular movement, then we lost all justification for being in Vietnam. (Something I only slowly came to realize). But my experience in Northeast Thailand taught me the tremendous advantage and use of analysis for both operations and intelligence. CIA canceled the survey project over the objections of just about everyone and sent me back to Headquarters. After Tet 1968 in Vietnam, I decided that I had much to offer U.S. efforts in Vietnam. I volunteered and was sent to Vietnam. My efforts in Vietnam to alert the Agency to the existence of a mass-based popular movement in Vietnam, reinforced by my experiences and academic studies, fell on deaf or resistant ears. The Saigon Station assigned me to work in liaison with the Chief of the Vietnamese Special Police (SP). In this position I supervised a small unit of CIA case officers and a translation/interpreter team. I daily traveled to police headquarters to work with the Chief of the service. A long-term SP op targeted more than three dozen South Vietnamese leaders as possible communist spies. The operation over that period had produced safes-full of material. I began pressing the CIA to force the South Vietnamese government to apprehend the group. Two members of the net were President Thieu's Catholic advisor who was a frequent visitor to Palace, the other was the South Vietnamese Foreign Affairs Advisor -- its equivalent of Henry Kissinger. Obviously rolling-up the net would have repercussions. I conducted a six-weeks-long review of all the material. I went through the material document by document and carded on 3/5 cards the names and events surrounding the operation. I concluded, based on the analysis, that this was a genuine Communist intelligence net. The SP rounded up the group and found all sorts of spy paraphernalia and got confessions from all. With these in prison and under interrogation, we received leads allowing us to round up a number of other spies and nets. These successes decided the station to use me to analyze a politically sensitive operation. This took months during which I held down two jobs -- analyst; and, liaison with the SP. The CIA at that time had about 600 staff persons in Vietnam. The Saigon Station had a Counterespionage Section and an office of the Intelligence Directorate -- neither apparently could provide the analyst(s) to handle this job. Later I was sent to Thailand for a six-month TDY (temporary duty) to draw up a list of the leadership of the CPT -- again apparently the only person with adequate analytical abilities. I searched CIA files throughout the country. I had enough Thai language ability to be able to search through the files of some of their security services. Over the six months I produced a list of the ten top leaders of the CPT that was highly praised by the Station's leadership. I do not mean this to be self-congratulatory, but to provide others with examples of the how and why of analysis, operational as well as intelligence. Operational analysis cannot be handled by some distant bureaucrat, it must be performed in the field by competent and trained analysts. If the Agency is serious about its "counters" it will rapidly hire, prepare and assign new analysts. I hope the CIA is serious, but it has a fifty-year history of operational dominance and intellectual rigidity. Ralph McGehee CIABASE ------------------------------ end --------------------------------------