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Subject:
Why the demise of Strategic vs Tactical Army Intelligence
macawman
12/10/2003 11:27:49 PM
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| "A ghost is haunting Operation Iraqi Freedom ? the ghost of U.S. Army intelligence. Like Hamlet?s father at Elsinore Castle, the ubiquitous MI specter travels across Iraq in a dusty trench coat, trying to warn the Army. The haunting figure delivers the same message every bloody day and every mortar-strewn night: ?You destroyed me years ago, and the heinous effects will continue unless you change MI branch now!?
The death of Army Intelligence actually began in the mid-1970s, but its ultimate demise would take years, forcing the branch to linger in agony like a terminal cancer patient. During 1975-76, congressional hearings chaired by Sen. Frank Church and Rep. Otis Pike dissected alleged intelligence abuses during the Cold War. The country was struggling through the endgame of the Vietnam War and many in Washington were looking for scapegoats. As often happens, the first victim was the intelligence community and its military counterparts.
The Church Committee hearings would become a catalyst for the dismemberment of the CIA?s and Army Intelligence?s human intelligence (HUMINT) operations across the globe. The decisions made in the 1970s would have disastrous implications for the national security of the United States, playing a major role in the success of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and to our problems in Iraq today.
Included on Church?s target list was Army Counter-Intelligence. Highly integrated in domestic surveillance operations with the FBI during the 1960s, Army CI was accused of violating the civil rights of Americans during undercover operations that had penetrated radical groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Weather Underground. CI soon lost much of its power to the newly-formed Defense Investigative Service.
For their own reasons, Army leaders watched the Church and Pike hearings with a gleam on their faces. They finally had their chance to neutralize a branch of the Army that they had long believed was filled with weirdoes and intellectuals.
In a 1974 memorandum from Secretary of the Army Howard Callaway to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Frederick Weyand, Callaway wrote of Army intelligence, ?We maintain considerable information which is of questionable value. It raises serious questions as to the cost effectiveness of our intelligence system.?
Under serious pressure from the top levels of the Pentagon and federal government, a panel called the Intelligence Organization and Stationing Study (IOSS) concluded that Army intelligence was focusing too much of its resources on outdated HUMINT and CI efforts. The IOSS panel also concluded that the Army Security Agency could be scrapped and that the branch?s primary mission would now focus on tactical intelligence. Under charges that MI had not ?supported? commanders in Vietnam, it was believed that a primary concentration on tactical intelligence would ?finally support the commander in the field.?
Army leaders as a whole seem to have been ecstatic about MI?s self-immolation. A press release from USAREUR HQ remarked, ?MI is fighting its way back to acceptance by the Army. Restoring the ?spook? image must be avoided.? What the leaders of MI and the Army had forgotten was the vital role that HUMINT had played in past conflicts. How would we win future wars, particularly guerilla struggles, without the proper amount of human intelligence? Over a decade later, in 1987, Maj. Gen. Julius Parker, the Chief of Military Intelligence, stated, ?Army intelligence has arrived.? In actuality, it had been terminated.
A year later, in the fall of 1988, I would soon have a first-hand look at the MI Frankenstein monster that the Army had created. During my first 24 hours at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., I noticed that the branch was suffering from some type of traumatic identity crisis.
The new buzzword was ?tactical.? Everything and everybody at Huachuca was now tactical. As I drove down a road on the base, I saw a company of ?the new MI? soldiers conducting a grueling road march into the Huachuca Mountains. Nearby, a platoon was scattered across the horizon on a land navigation exercise. I began to wonder if I had taken a wrong turn and ended up at Fort Benning?s Infantry School.
While waiting for my security clearance to be processed, I was detailed on casual duty to the Office of the Chief of Military Intelligence. At that time, the MI Chief was Maj. Gen. Parker. My month-long stay at MI headquarters was an eye-opener to the ?Great Leap Forward? that Army intelligence had taken. MI?s new motto was, ?Always out Front,? a slogan that many soldiers in the combat arms branches thought was absolutely hilarious.
When I finally started MI classes, I realized the terrible truth. As a young 2nd lieutenant, I would be assigned to either a maneuver battalion or a Combat Electronic Warfare Intelligence Battalion (CEWI), which was MI?s new bastardized version of the old Army Security Agency. Our instructors imbued in u |
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