Loose ends in the 9/11 Commission Report

[Adrian II]

**Warning** Recently read several book about these guys hence the overreaction!

I understand. I am far too delighted with the fact that we share some 'exotic' interests to hold such poetic license against you.

The best thing in this vein which I ever read was a 1987 book by French historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse. She had specialised in Russian and Soviet History (she was née Hélène Zourabichvili, nuff said) and wrote very critically of what she perceived as western laxity with regard to Soviet expansion. Her Ni paix, ni guerre: Le nouvel empire sovietique, ou du bon usage de la detente ('Neither peace nor war: The new Soviet Empire, or of the proper uses of detente') described in detail how the Soviet Union - under the guise of detente - was cutting and nibbling away at western influence in Africa, Asia and Latin America, day by day, step by step, minor crisis by minor crisis, in an effort that required major long term planning and subtle, consistent execution. Her book showcased Angola, Mocambique, the Horn of Africa and Afghanistan. The chapter titles are as brilliant as the book's title (chapter 1 is entitled 'Brezhnev the African' ). Anyway, what it demonstrated was that there was a concerted, long-term expansionist effort from the Soviet Union which required much more than secret service activity; in fact the entire Soviet state and the states of its satellites were mobilised and harnessed for it.*

Indeed, compared to that campaign, western imperialism was a silly picnic.


* Leaving same state open to failure in other departments, notably the economy, which contributed to its undoing a few years after the book appeared.

[Vladimir]

Thank you, for the compliments and the author, I've never heard of her before. Reminds me of (yet) another book I have but haven't read yet: The World Was Going Our Way. It's the second book after The Sword and the Shield. We owe so much to that archivist. Both may be somewhat dry and historical but they are considered ground truth.

I've found some of Hélène's works on Amazon but not the one you mentioned. It should be interesting.

To me and most historians however, Soviet expansion was no surprise. Russia expands, that's what Russia does. However it would have been interesting to see what would have happened to her without WW I. The benefits of conflict aside, that war ended up defining the 20th century.

Hopefully we don't get the because of the foray into OT land.


Wha...Just looked up poetic license and it doesn't sound too flattering.

[Adrian II]

I never read any of the Archivist's publications. The book you mention covers roughly the same period as Zourabichvili's, but from what I (hastily) gauge from reviews on the Web (Foreign Affairs, Woodrow Wilson Center) it mainly states two things: that said expansion was basically a KGB-led initiative, and that it was more a failure than a success. The latter claim in particular surprises me.

Andrew said he gained from the Mitrokhin archive not so much new information but a new understanding about the extraordinary gulf between a highly successful collection effort by the KGB – and the abysmal analysis by Soviet policymakers.

Sunil Khilnani granted the KGB a certain lethal efficacy in certain areas but saw its work largely as a failure – in such cases as China, Iran, Pakistan, and India. Several “foreign hands” were at work in India, and while we have always known about the CIA’s role, though not its full extent, the extent of disinformation filtered into India was remarkable. Nonetheless, many of the operations, Khilnani argued, struck him as more comic than menacing. To be sure, in the 1960s the KGB became even more active in India, but the country was a “deceptively easy target”: one could never be sure of the efficacy of a secret channel due to the utterly decentralized Indian political system. Overall, Khilnani felt, the KGB inflated its impact on Indian society and government.
Linky

I take all the blame for any derailing of this, my own, thread. But since we are discussing intelligence services and national security I don't believe we should fear teh lock.
Oh, and poetic license is commendable. Only those who can't deal with it call it hyperbole and involve you in interminable meta-discussions. Gah.

P.S. It struck me to see that M. describes Vietnam as 'virtually a hostile nation' to the Soviet Union, because it fits with what I was told by Vietnamese middle echelon when I stayed in Hanoi for several months in the late 1990's, when communism had been all but scrapped from the books. The going cliche was that Ho had 'always been a nationalist first and only placated the Russians because he needed their military support'. I had the impression they were speaking the truth.

[Banquo's Ghost]

But since we are discussing intelligence services and national security I don't believe we should fear teh lock.

Some tangents add immeasurably to the Backroom, and this is certainly one of them. Fascinating discussion, gentlemen.

(For the record, derailments are only frowned upon when they drag an interesting topic into silliness, abuse or spam).

[Vladimir]

P.S. It struck me to see that M. describes Vietnam as 'virtually a hostile nation' to the Soviet Union, because it fits with what I was told by Vietnamese middle echelon when I stayed in Hanoi for several months in the late 1990's, when communism had been all but scrapped from the books. The going cliche was that Ho had 'always been a nationalist first and only placated the Russians because he needed their military support'. I had the impression they were speaking the truth.

Here you are incredibly correct. It is also another example of short-sighted American foreign policy. The Truman administration was more concerned with shoring up relations with the French then helping some jungle country escape from colonialism. Hindsight wins again. It seems like there should have been a serious investigation into policy failures leading up to the Vietnam War but I can't recall one.

Two things I've gathered about the KGB regarding your post: They did lead these sort of efforts but their primary concern was the preservation of the party; the sword and the shield. KGB officials were also good at running something akin to information operations against whoever was in charge of the party.

An important thing to note is that Mitrokhin's information comes directly from KGB files...and is yet another example of a stragetic American intelligence failure. The Brits had to pick him up and recover his notes because we turned him away.

[Adrian II]

Oh, the myriad benefits of hindsight. Speaking of which – correct me if Im wrong, but believe there is more than a hint of nostalgia for the ‘great game’ of the Cold War in some of your posts. Am I right?

Anyway, hindsight has great relevance for today. Let me try to demonstrate that with Vietnam and Cuba as ‘case studies’(if that doesn’t sound too presumptuous).

I agree with you that the American-Vietnamese relationship could probably have been a lot better if only certain obsessions hadn’t stood in the way. As late as 1948 the entire American foreign policy establishment regarded Third World nationalism as a huge asset in the confrontation with Communism on the world stage. And it was. The U.S. could and would champion that nationalist upswing. Washington didn't have its hands tied by remnats of empire, dreams of grandeur, dirty little colonial wars, public rancour and infighting over colonial interests. It was the single greatest American trump in international relations at the time, more important than possession of the A-bomb. Yet this trump was never played. Why not?

Because of China.

My favorite source on the Vietnam-episode is Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly. She highlights the fact that the American embroglio was certainly not the result of ignorance. The Americans had excellent intelligence and expertise. At every step of the way they knew the hazards, the obstacles and the possible consequences. Yet they persisted, Tuchman wrotes, despite evidence that 'the goal was unattainable, and the effect disproportionate to the American interest and eventually damaging to American society, reputation and disposable power in the world'.

What caused this dogged pursuit? It was the Communist victory in China in 1949, which had an impact on public opinion that was, as she writes, 'as stunning as Pearl Harbour'. From that moment on, every movement with remotely Communist or Socialist characteristics was seen as part of a single monolithic conspiracy against freedom. The attack on South Korea clinched it. Truman spoke on the radio of ‘a monstrous conspiracy to stamp out freedom all over the world’. Ignoring this conspiracy would amount to the same fatal weakness displayed by the European powers in Munich in 1938.

The Munich comparison became a staple in foreign policy circles in this period. The rise of Third World nationalism was no longer regarded as a phenomenon sui generis, but as a repetition of the previous war, i.e. a joint military onslaught of Communist forces similar to the Japanese attacks on Korea and Manchuria, the German invasions of Poland etcetera, and the Italian invasion in Ethiopia.

Bye-bye Ho Chi Minh.

Of course there was no such conspiracy, the U.S. stood to gain enormously by recognising the legitimacy of the new nationalisms, assisting them in kicking out their old European overlords and welding them into a new coalition. Alas.

I suppose the American-Cuban relationship after '59 might have been less adversarial as well, and to the great detriment of the Soviets, too. In hindsight the initial, bungled episode of 1959-1961 is just totally weird.

Basically, I believe there were two mistakes made. The U.S. made the mistake of underestimating Castro's potential and Castro, who's military victory had been relatively easy, made the mistake of overestimating himself. The U.S. leadership thought that one day soon they would just kill the funny little beard like they had killed so many socialists and nationalists in Latin America, install someone with a nice smile in his stead, and that would be that. Even before Fidel took over the U.S. ambassador to Cuba recommended to Eisenhower to 'have Castro killed'. And less then a month after Castro took power in January 1959 the first American hitman with a high-powered sniper rifle was arrested during an attempt to shoot him. Go figure. Why the undue haste? Because the American leadership considered the nationalisation of United Fruit Company to be a personal insult. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was a stockholder and adviser for UFC, his brother Allan, director of the CIA, was a former president of UFC. UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge sat on its board of directors, Allan Dulles' predecessor General Walter Bedell Smith was its President, etcetera.

Castro, in turn, blundered when he alienated American public opinion and business interests with the flurry of executions and nationalisations right after his take-over. After Castro received Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan in February 1960 and struck the sugar-for-oil deal with him, all doors were slammed shut.

Now today -- to finally inject some relevance into my ramblings -- I think a similar 'folly' reigns again in Washington when it comes to the fight against terrorism or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is no lack of intelligence or expertise, but there is an ideological hysteria that sees anti-American conspiracies in every islamic agitation and thinks in terms of military solutions. Once again there are personal considerations at work, in the shape of American oil interests in Saudi Arabia that run right to the top of the U.S. leadership. And once again policy makers are preparing for the previous war and refuse to see islamism for what it is: a phenomenon sui generis. Madame Rice is a fine example. She made a great career studying Communism and the balance of power under Detente. In her mind, there can be no such thing as an ideological struggle within Islam, in which the U.S. is merely a lightning rod for local grievances and political infighting. In her mind, militant Islam must be directed against the U.S. and it must have territorial bases which you can attack and control, if not destroy. This is the mantra repeated throughout the Bush years: take out their bases and they are powerless. We have seen the result: they have more power now than before.

The New York Review of Books carries a review of a handful of books on the lastest wars. One is written by a former U.S. military intelligence analyst, Alex Rossmiller, who describes how Donald Rumsfeldt's state of denial about realities on the ground spread throughout the military intelligence community and stifled the best and the brightest.

There is more than one parallel here with the 'China Hands' who were stifled up until 1949 and then discarded, fired or even jailed as dangerous Communists. Only in 1971 were they invited back to testify before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, when Chariman William Fulbright told them they had 'reported honestly about conditions were so persecuted because [they] were honest. This is a strange thing to occur in what is called a civilized country.'

These are terrible dilemma's. Europeans usually explain them away by blaming American 'stupidity' or lack of 'imperial acumen' or something. But the brains are on the American side, the required intelligence, analysis and expertise are there. What Europeans don't understand (or have 'forgotten') is that the best and the brightest rarely get the chance to make or break policies.

Now listen to what Mr Rossmiller has to say. If the U.S. 'loses' Iraq a couple of years from now, maybe 'loses' Afghanistan or (far worse) 'loses' Pakistan, we may remember that Mr Rossmiller told it like it was:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Rumsfeld was not merely wrong; he was self-replicating. The pattern of denial he established in the Office of the Secretary of Defense spread out and down, eventually reaching into the most remote crevices of the Office of Iraq Analysis of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where the young analyst Alex Rossmiller watched the DOD try to get what it wanted in Iraq by hoping, wishing, and predicting that it would happen. Rossmiller's memoir, Still Broken, describes denial triumphant in both Iraq and the halls of the Pentagon. During his six months with the Combined Intelligence Operations Center (CIOC) based at the Baghdad International Airport, Rossmiller's job was to produce "actionable intelligence" on "bad guys" to be picked up by the Army. The job was frequently interrupted by spasms of bureaucratic reorganization and by VIP visits from congressmen who nodded through long briefings.

Those who worked at the CIOC—the FBI, DIA, and OGA (meaning Other Government Agency, which designated the CIA)—referred to it as "a self-licking ice-cream cone." By this they meant that the reports they wrote were read mainly by people down the hall, who sent back reports of their own. But eventually Rossmiller found himself in a Direct Action Cell putting together target packages which led to operations ending with detentions—actual bad guys taken off the streets. "Going after the bad guys," Rossmiller writes, "was at least doing more good than harm, I thought. But my optimism was misplaced; I was wrong."

The lightbulb went on one night in the field when Rossmiller accompanied US and Iraqi special forces to help process detainees seized during an operation. Few details are provided of time, place, or occasion, but Rossmiller relates a harrowing, sixteen-page narrative of bullying incomprehension. The S-2, an Army officer in charge of intelligence for a brigade, explained the drill:

Okay, we're going to bring in these heads on that pad over there, and then walk them over to this field. We'll put them on the ground and tag them, take pictures, and do a field debrief. Then they're off to Abu G where they belong.

Off to Abu Ghraib prison? At that point Rossmiller began to understand that all his care as an intelligence analyst to separate the good guys from the bad guys was academic. The debrief was a barrage of shouted accusations. What Rossmiller saw among the detainees was confusion, fear, despair, anger, humiliation, and tears. It gradually became apparent that one of the detainees, shouted at repeatedly, was a retarded deaf mute. His brothers tried to explain this but were loudly accused of being insurgents and told they were "going away...for a long time." It was simply a question of paperwork. Two affidavits were enough to put a detainee in prison—one saying he was armed, a second saying he resisted detention. "They get an initial three-month stay," the S-2 explained, "and the debriefers there figure out what happens after that." Rossmiller got the point. There were no good guys. "Anybody who's picked up gets sent to prison."

That was Lesson Number One. Lesson Number Two emerged that autumn back at the Pentagon, where Rossmiller was a rising member of the Office of Iraq Analysis. In the months running up to the Iraqi elections in December 2005, Rossmiller and other DIA analysts all predicted that Iraqis were going to "vote identity" and the winners would be Shiite Islamists, who were already running the government. President Bush and the US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, publicly predicted the opposite—secularists were gaining, the Sunnis were going to vote this time, a genuine "national unity government" would end sectarian strife, the corner would be turned as the war entered its fourth year. Rossmiller soon realized that this was not simply a difference of opinion. Nobody dared to tell the President he was wrong, either to his face or in an official report.

[Vladimir]

Ardian, sir, I don't believe there is a character limit for posts but I'm starting to believe in one!

Here we go, this is something I hate reading but...

Oh, the myriad benefits of hindsight. Speaking of which – correct me if Im wrong, but believe there is more than a hint of nostalgia for the ‘great game’ of the Cold War in some of your posts. Am I right?

The Great Game you say? Which Cold War? Which was the first World War? I can do without nightmares of mushroom clouds thank you. Remember the game never ends and it's one of the few that requires some people die.

As late as 1948 the entire American foreign policy establishment regarded Third World nationalism as a huge asset in the confrontation with Communism on the world stage. And it was. The U.S. could and would champion that nationalist upswing. Washington didn't have its hands tied by remnats of empire, dreams of grandeur, dirty little colonial wars, public rancour and infighting over colonial interests. It was the single greatest American trump in international relations at the time, more important than possession of the A-bomb.

Woah, . As late as 1945 we, as in everybody except Hoover, viewed the Soviets as a valuable and trusted ally. How do you think it was so easy for them to steal our bomb secrets? Look at that lovely lady, Venona,
to get a glimpse on how much we were confronting communism. Thank you for reminding me by the way as I forgot to put it back on the shelf!

Yes the communist victory in China came as a shock to us. However our "acumen" (entertaining because it is a trait in MTW) was actually quite high but was spent on hysterias like the "bomber gap" and other assorted madness. I'm only starting to get into (modern) policy and can't comment intelligently on most of your case study.

Of course there was no such conspiracy, the U.S. stood to gain enormously by recognising the legitimacy of the new nationalisms, assisting them in kicking out their old European overlords and welding them into a new coalition. Alas.

Of course there was. They would be remiss in their ideology if they didn't stick to their founding principles. Don't forget they were on a post war high. Instead of sending their soldiers home in droves they sought to expand their empire and consolidate their gains like a good empire should.

...Castro bla bla bla

I don't know much of the Great Fruit conspiracy. The State Department bungled at least one of the attempts but they were never very good at intelligence. Speaking of which...

Now today -- to finally inject some relevance into my ramblings -- I think a similar 'folly' reigns again in Washington when it comes to the fight against terrorism or the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 1There is no lack of intelligence or expertise, 2but there is an ideological hysteria that sees anti-American conspiracies in every islamic agitation and thinks in terms of military solutions. 3Once again there are personal considerations at work, in the shape of American oil interests in Saudi Arabia that run right to the top of the U.S. leadership. 4And once again policy makers are preparing for the previous war and refuse to see islamism for what it is: a phenomenon sui generis. Madame Rice is a fine example. She made a great career studying Communism and the balance of power under Detente. In her mind, there can be no such thing as an ideological struggle within Islam, in which the U.S. is merely a lightning rod for local grievances and political infighting. In her mind, militant Islam must be directed against the U.S. and it must have territorial bases which you can attack and control, if not destroy. 5This is the mantra repeated throughout the Bush years: take out their bases and they are powerless. We have seen the result: they have more power now than before.

Lots of words. In summary:

1. Curveball
2. What? When did this happen? If some think this it may have something to do with death to America parties and lots of dead people over the years.
3. Dutch, British, etc. At the top? I don't think so.
4. Uh, yea. We always prepare for the last war. of
5. Throughout the years? I thought he was flouting the magic Democracy pill. More power than ever? Hardly. People like saying that but have a hard time proving it. Emotions don't count.

Castro, in turn, blundered when he alienated American public opinion and business interests with the flurry of executions and nationalisations right after his take-over. After Castro received Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan in February 1960 and struck the sugar-for-oil deal with him, all doors were slammed shut.

Huh? That's what communists do, next question.

The New York Review of Books carries a review of a handful of books on the lastest wars. One is written by a former U.S. military intelligence analyst, Alex Rossmiller, who describes how Donald Rumsfeldt's state of denial about realities on the ground spread throughout the military intelligence community and stifled the best and the brightest.

These are terrible dilemma's. Europeans usually explain them away by blaming American 'stupidity' or lack of 'imperial acumen' or something. But the brains are on the American side, the required intelligence, analysis and expertise are there. What Europeans don't understand (or have 'forgotten') is that the best and the brightest rarely get the chance to make or break policies.

Now listen to what Mr Rossmiller has to say. If the U.S. 'loses' Iraq a couple of years from now, maybe 'loses' Afghanistan or (far worse) 'loses' Pakistan, we may remember that Mr Rossmiller told it like it was:

Ok I'm tired and don't have time to address an anti-Rumsfeldt diatribe. Former intelligence analyst, you don't say. Why, he must be a credible, objective source then . America doesn't do HUMINT very well. It's dirty and beneath us. We'd rather spend 100 million on a satellite and listen into phone conversations. More of that acumen stuff. So before you say that we have the "intelligence" make sure the context is clear. Our most intelligent people are rarely in government, for long. Maybe that's the way it should be.

And when will it stop raining here?!

[Adrian II]

Ardian, sir, I don't believe there is a character limit for posts but I'm starting to believe in one!

Won't happen again. It seems I'll be busy today and we'll have to agree to disagree and all that.