Word: afghanistanism
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Suddenly, every aspect of the intelligence community's work in Afghanistan is being called into question. According to a report, made public--remarkably--by Major General Michael Flynn, military intelligence has been "ignorant" about the local power structures in combat areas, imperiling U.S. troops on the ground. And it is likely that the attack on FOB Chapman will spill over into the efforts to train the Afghan army and police--which was always an iffy proposition and now faces a massive security question: How many of these trainees are actually reporting to Mullah Omar and bin Laden? After eight years...
...reaction to the two terrorist attacks during the last week in December is puzzling. One of the attacks, against a CIA outpost in Afghanistan, succeeded; the other, on an airplane landing in Detroit, failed. The Undiebomber was an amateur who was thwarted, rather neatly, by his fellow passengers on the plane. The Afghanistan operation was quite the opposite - highly sophisticated and devastating, with vast implications for both the war in Afghanistan and future clandestine CIA operations. And yet the Undiebomber has provoked an avalanche of attention in our twittery media - and from Republicans like Dick Cheney who yearn...
...Afghanistan bombing was not the deadliest in CIA history. That sad honor goes to the 1983 truck bomb that ripped off the face of the U.S. embassy in Lebanon, killing eight members of the Beirut station, among many others. But this suicide bomber, a Jordanian doctor named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was the CIA's worst ever security breach. In an era when grandmothers are routinely screened at airports, al-Balawi was whisked into Forward Operating Base Chapman, the CIA headquarters for the drone war against al-Qaeda, without so much as a pat-down. He was then...
...This is a real kick in the teeth," says Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, a former CIA analyst. "You have to understand that the CIA considers Afghanistan its most successful arena. This is where the CIA believes it has won two wars, in 1989 and 2001. So this has to challenge a lot of assumptions." As a result, there will be two immediate and contradictory reactions to the attack. The more overt will be a flash of spook machismo. A published comment from a CIA official included this threat: "Last week's attack will be avenged. Some very...
...Qaeda. This could cripple future operations. "People tend to get very cautious in a hurry when this sort of thing happens," says Bob Baer, a former covert operator. "Remember, [James] Angleton tore the place apart looking for Soviet moles." (See pictures of the U.S. Marines' offensive in Afghanistan...