01 June 2010
 
Intelligence Failures


(The usual Suspects Protest Israeli Naval Interdiction. Photo Washington Post.)

I was an active intelligence officer in four decades. With my comrades, men and women, we were charged with divining the intentions of our opponents. They were legion, and often we had no idea what they were up to. It was more accurate to say that we were much better at reporting what happened fifteen minutes ago than divining the fifteen ahead of us.
 
The spectrum of bad guys ranged from Iranian dissidents who heralded the beginning of the great Islamic resurgence against the perceived Western hegemony. The Jolly Soviets were there, teetering to the ash-heap of history, along with assorted Cubans, Sandinistas, Somalis, Kampucheans and implacable North Koreans.
 
I sigh and note this morning that only Pol Pot and the Politbureau are things I no longer worry about. I doubt if you have been following what that little creep Daniel Ortega has been up to; this Administration has no grit to complain about the highly irregular conduct of the satrap of Hugo Chavez.
 
I do not blame the President on that score. There is only so much attention to pay, and there are other issues that are more immediate in scope.
 
I rubbed the smooth surface of Dan’s tombstone yesterday and mouthed a wordless apology, and did the same thing a few stones down where Vince lies. A woman knelt before the stone of a Light Colonel who died with them in the Pentagon attack, when our collective failings became glaringly evident.
 
On our Memorial Day, al Qaida confessed that they had another martyr, an Egyptian named Mustafa Abu al-Yazid. He had been, by some accounts, chief financial officer for the murderers, and third in rank behind the elusive Mr. bin Laden and fiery former physician and fellow Egyptian Ayman al Zawahri.
 
Mr. al-Yazid was said to be a founding member of the conspiracy, and thus had a direct role in the murder of my friends. I feel only grim satisfaction in his demise, no joy. Predictably, the human rights extremists who exist under the protection of western jurisprudence are complaining that he was killed without due process, or the ability to defend his sorry ass in court.
 
I know that many of us were aware in that languid summer of 2001 that something was afoot. Dan and Vince probably were too, but they were just foot-soldiers in the system like me. Our leaders did not take the decisive action to foil what was to come.
 
I am glad that somewhere an anonymous drone operator had secured “permission to arm, permission to fire” for the hellfire missiles slung on the Reaper drone.
 
But contained within this success is another failure. The fellow-travelers with the militants will gain more fuel for their struggle to stop the program, or encumber it with so many restrictions that murderers will escape the only rough justice we can offer for their crimes.
 
There was another intelligence failure on Monday. It is not mine. While I was at Arlington, the smartest people in the Mid-East were making a major miscalculation.
 
Not many of us took much note of the flotilla of relief ships that set sail from Turkey to bring relief supplies to the embattled Palestinians of Gaza.
 
The Free Gaza Movement has grown from a handful of activists to an international jihadi umbrella group in the last four years, and if we have not paid much attention, Jerusalem had.
 
There was a cool plan devised. The Israeli government chartered their naval commandos- equivalents of our SEALS- to seize the ships and take them into the port of Ashdod for inspection and unloading. It appeared to be a prudent step to ensure that the humanitarian supplied did not also contain Katusha rockets or worse to be lobbed indiscriminately across the border.
 
Instead of the passive resistance they expected, the commandos were greeted with violence, and nine died on the decks.
 
None of them Israelis, of course, mostly Turks. The howls of indignation were as loud as they were predictable. The deaths were unfortunate and lacked proportion, since the commandos were armed for lethal combat and the public narrative is that they were attacked with clubs and knives.
 
Maybe there were shots fired as well, but it doesn’t matter. Intelligence failed to prepare them for what they were walking into, and the Turks have done what they must, recalling their ambassador and forcing the Jewish state further into embattled isolation.
 
Not good. A triumph for more trouble, and a brilliant operation for the provocateurs.
 
For some reason I am reminded of a similar operation conducted against some stiff-necked people. It was Abraham Lincoln who dispatched a relief ship to the garrison at Fort Sumpter, surrounded by secessionist guns in Charleston harbor.

(Fort Sumpter under attack. Image courtesy American Public University)

The rebels had to fire on the unarmed ship, didn’t they? They could not permit a hostile fort to sit in their midst and be reinforced.
 
Mr. Lincoln got his act of aggression, and a justification to save the Union, though of course the garrison fell.
 
That is the way these things work, and you would think smart people could figure it out.
 
But I suppose that is why they call them intelligence failures.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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