As we learn more about the suicide bombing of CIA officers in Afghanistan, it seems that time-honored safety precautions were broken:
[The bomber] fed the agency honest-to-goodness actionable intelligence about jihadis to build up his credibility, to the point where he came to be regarded as their best asset in years. They looked the other way when he posted on jihadist online forums, accepting his assurances at face value that he was only saying what he was saying to fool the enemy ”” even though, of course, he wasn’t. Finally he told them that he had big news about Zawahiri, which drew a phalanx of CIA officers eager to land the biggest of the big fish. So eager, in fact, that he reportedly wasn’t given a polygraph before being taken to the base and was allowed to skip checkpoints before arriving at the rendezvous point.
This is every bit as shocking as the lapses that allowed the underwear bomber to get as far as he did. Actually, it’s a great deal more shocking, because this is the CIA in the field that we’re talking about, not a group of bureaucrats at computers in DC and a bunch of underpaid screeners at an airport.
It is axiomatic—even to laypeople—that in intelligence work, even if you’ve gotten some low-level information from an informant, that person might be setting you up and lulling you into a false sense of security, the better to betray you in the end. Yes, there has to be some sort of trust developed, but it must always be hedged with reservations. In other words, never fail to take the usual precautions and search for weapons. This rule was apparently violated. Another basic rule that was apparently violated is known as “don’t bunch up” (i.e. congregate in groups in the informant’s presence).
So, why might these rules have been broken? Perhaps the great excitement over the idea that the informant had information on a very big fish indeed—Zawahiri—caused the CIA operatives to let down their guard. Maybe there also was something about this particular informant, who was a well-educated Jordanian doctor, that engendered a sense of bonding and therefore trust (of course, Zawahiri is also a doctor, as have been no small number of other terrorists, as the CIA no doubt knows).
Although the Obama justice department has worried the CIA with threats of lawsuits over decisions made during the Bush administration about so-called “torture,” it’s hard to see how that could have impacted on this event, except to lead to a certain amount of demoralization.
But there’s another policy of the Obama administration that might have had an effect. Obama has been pushing the idea that, if we were just kinder and gentler in approaching other cultures and even potential enemies, they are more likely to be won over. This notion might have trickled down and influenced CIA policy in Afghanistan, with the goal of creating an atmosphere that would let this informant know he was trusted by dropping certain elementary security precautions.
When I heard the story, it reminded me somewhat of an event that occurred on September 9, 2001, the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan leader of the anti-Taliban movement. In the aftermath of 9/11, that killing was widely regarded as a preparation for the WTC and Pentagon attacks two days later, and the US retaliation against Afghanistan that was likely to follow.
Why do I say it’s similar? The assassins, North Africans masquerading as journalists and cameramen, spent weeks near Massoud’s camp, pressing for an interview with him and apparently gaining the trust of some of his entourage. Massoud and his staff were veterans of many assassination attempts and were highly aware of the need for tight security. But for some unknown reason the two “journalists” were not subject to the usual measures when the time finally arrived for the interview:
But the security was surprisingly slack. No one searched the men or examined their video camera. Massoud, who had survived assassination attempts, asked the men only where they came from and how they got there.
Massoud paid with his life for this moment of laxness. The country of Afghanistan paid as well, since it is often thought that his presence as a highly respected and admired figure might have helped unite Afghans under his leadership.
We’ll never know. But Massoud’s death, as well as the more recent deaths of the CIA agents, teach us one thing, and that is that anyone in such a position must never let down his/her guard. It has often been said that in order to succeed, “We have to be lucky all the time — but they only need to get lucky once.” It’s true that luck sometimes has something to do with it. But so does skillful execution. In order to prevent them from getting “lucky,” we must follow the security rules stringently, with no exceptions.
[ADDENDUM: See also this (hat tip: Artfldgr).]
