[Infowarrior] - DOD Intelligence Unit Comes Off Like M*A*S*H in New Book

[Richard Forno]

 CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
Feb. 8, 2008 ­ 8:15 p.m.
Pentagon Intelligence Unit Comes Off Like M*A*S*H in New Book
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000002668466

Anyone who¹s spent time in uniform will recognize the stories that A.J.
Rossmiller tells in ³Still Broken: A Recruit¹s Inside Account of
Intelligence Failures, From Baghdad to the Pentagon.²

Like the Army field hospital so authentically portrayed in M*A*S*H,
Rossmiller¹s memoir of two years as a Defense Intelligence Agency Iraq
analyst is darkly funny, with its own versions of Hawkeye, B.J., Colonel
Potter, and of course, Frank Burns.

Unfortunately, it¹s all too true. And frightening, from the viewpoint of
national security.

In M*A*S*H, the good guys usually win.

But at the DIA, in Rossmiller¹s telling, victories were rare. The
intelligence analysts¹ carefully researched and sourced reports on Iraq were
usually at odds with the rosy pronouncements of Bush administration hawks,
and regularly quashed or re-written. No matter how often their forecasts
proved to be accurate, or how little evidence their bosses marshalled to
contradict them, the analysts were constantly browbeat and berated for being
³too negative.²

Rossmiller joined the DIA in 2004, fresh from Middlebury College with a
degree in political science and a concentration in Middle East Studies. A
bright future lay ahead, with a multitude of possibilities. But ³infuriated²
by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he writes, ³it felt wrong not to
contribute in such a time of national need.²

The training at Fort Benning, Ga., ³was mostly tedious but occasionally
entertaining,² he says. ³The sections on the region were like Middle East
for morons.² The one-page summary of the ³Culture Guide to Iraq,² for
example, included such gems as ³Arabs are an emotional people who use the
power of emotion in forceful and appealing rhetoric that tends toward
exaggeration² ‹ a description that just as well fits Bush officials railing
about ³mushroom clouds² to build support for invading Iraq.

But it¹s his six-month tour at the Combined Intelligence Operations Center,
or CIOC, situated at the Baghdad airport, where the M*A*S*H analogy really
seems apt.

For starters, his team¹s arrival was a surprise, ³and nobody knew what to do
with us.² The counterinsurgency intelligence operation they were supposed to
set up was already in place.

His leaders came up with another mission ³on the fly,² the creation of a
HUMINT (human intelligence) Support Team, which would sort out information
from spies (as opposed to, say, electronic intercepts) and reel it back out
to military units.

³Virtually none of our extensive preparation was useful for this mission,²
Rossmiller writes, but they settled in and went to work.

The teams¹ senior intelligence officer ³looked like Burl Ives on human
growth hormone,² with ³an attention span as limited as his patience,² who
was ³always volunteering the group for work that had nothing to do with our
assigned duties.²

The captain commanding the unit was infuriated by the analysts¹ practice of
rolling over to each others¹ desk on their chairs. They ignored his requests
to stop it.

One day he bellowed, ³I order you to get up out of your chair when you want
to talk to somebody!²

³The entire aisle erupted in laughter,² Rossmiller writes.

Analysts jumped up and began mocking the captain, yelling, ³I order you!² at
each other.

But the CIOC¹s real problem was that it was ³a self licking ice cream cone,²
Rossmiller writes.

³Products were written . . . and then read by other people in the CIOC. Good
analysis was done . . . and never seen by anybody who could do anything
about it. We rarely received feedback, and we never had a solid conception
of who our customers were or what missions we were serving.²

That would change when Rossmiller, a lowly GS-9, was eventually transferred
to the Direct Action team, whose unofficial motto was ³track ¹em and whack
¹em.² There he was an uncomfortable witness to U.S. soldiers screaming in
English at Iraqis they¹d rounded up. When they didn¹t get satisfactory
answers ‹ there never seemed to be one ‹ they dispatched their bewildered,
hooded and quite possibly innocent captives to the soon-to-be infamous Abu
Ghraib prison for interrogation.

After six months, Rossmiller left Baghdad with an assignment to the Pentagon
to analyze intelligence and prognosticate on the chaotic Iraqi government.
His entire time there, he and many other analysts never had their own desks
or computers. Many of the computers weren¹t equipped with the proper
software to allow access to both top secret and unclassified materials.

To Rossmiller, the DIA¹s Iraq intelligence teams, located in temporary,
cramped offices along a hard-to-find hallway off a corridor, seemed like a
nuisance or afterthought.

Unfortunately, one of his worst Baghdad bosses landed there, too, a
right-wing war booster who was ³running around the office and asking people
what they were working on so he could add his opinion (that is, inject his
ideology)² into their intelligence reports.

³He would launch tirades over minor analytical disagreements,² Rossmiller
writes, ³once telling an analyst, in all seriousness, ŒWell, it¹s clear I
have to do more micromanaging here!¹ ² There were already layers upon layers
of supervisors who could, and would, edit, rewrite or boil down the
analysts¹ reports.

On another occasion the boss sauntered up to a U.S.-born Hispanic on the
team and asked, ³So, Jose, what do you think of these immigration
protesters?² He clearly disapproved.

Jose, of Puerto Rican heritage, demurred.

³Look at you,² the boss added, ³You¹ve clearly adapted and assimilated. . .
. And you speak English so well!²

Such ignorant buffoons and bullies are all too common in Rossmiller¹s
devastating account.

Intelligence officials constantly berated and insulted the analysts¹ sober
reports on the growing chaos of Baghdad, the hopelessly splintered Iraqi
government and the fighting among Sunnis and Shiites that had spun into a
civil war.

The J-2, or top intelligence officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fell back
on rank to intimidate them into changing, or completely repudiating, their
reports.

²You¹re digging yourself a hole, Mr. junior analyst,² the (unnamed) J-2
would bark, or ³I quit reading when I see stupidity in reporting.²

How ironic, in hindsight. It was the Joint Chiefs and other military brass
who dug themselves into a big hole in Iraq by suppressing the intelligence.

After a year of that, Rossmiller quit, but not before ³speaking truth,² as
he puts it, ³to power.²

It was a rare practice at DIA.

And a recent one, according to W. Patrick Lang, the DIA¹s top Middle East
analyst during the administration of President George Bush, which ousted
Iraqi troops from Kuwait in the ³100 Hour War.²

Hearing about Rossmiller¹s account, Lang said it reminded him of ³the old
joke about there being a real U.S. intelligence community somewhere for
which the existing agencies provided cover.²

We can only hope.