How Did Russian Invasion of Georgia Happen Under Our Noses?

By Colonel Kenneth Allard (US Army, ret.)

Among the shoes yet to be dropped after the Russian invasion of Georgia: What did U.S. intelligence know and when did they know it? After seven years and several waves of organizational “reforms,” are we any better now at connecting the dots than we were before 9/11?

Remember the amicable way in which President Bush chatted up his old buddy Vladimir Putin at the opening of the Olympic Games? Now maybe George W. is a better actor than people ever realized. But he hardly looked like the leader of the Free World transfixed by the awful thought that Russian troops were once again on the march, hell-bent on invading the soil of a brave American ally. His administration as well as most of the NATO alliance seemed equally befuddled, surprised, and caught off-guard. When the Beijing weekend was over, Bush rushed back to the Rose Garden to deliver an impassioned though belated warning. But Generalissimo Putin had already flown directly to the invasion’s jumping-off point, the better to rally his troops for their murderous tasks.

What was especially hard for me, a former intelligence officer, to understand was how our far-flung and hugely expensive espionage establishment could have missed the telltale signs of Russian preparations. The reason: an invasion is one of the most unsubtle animals in the intelligence menagerie. After updating old Soviet practices, the Russians still had to move scores of ships, aircraft, armored and mechanized regiments, even elite paratrooper formations, hundred of miles to their pre-invasion positions. Had they somehow succeeded in imposing strict radio silence (an unlikely feat), there are literally dozens of systems and scores of ways in which those preparations should have been uncovered.

....But a new Congress and a new administration should unravel the growing hodge-podge before enemies past and present clarify its shortcomings beyond all doubt.