Intel 'failures' destined to repeat?

from G2 BULLETIN

'There's no mystery ... Get the information the president needs'

President George W. Bush has expressed as his "greatest regret" the intelligence failure through which the CIA assessed that stockpiles of WMDs existed in Iraq, leading to the March 2003 U.S. military intervention, which revealed that if any stockpiles existed, they had vanished by the time coalition forces arrived, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

But unless there are dramatic changes, the administration of President Barack Obama likely is to be condemned to relive this experience.

The deficiencies in U.S. intelligence gathering date back at least four administrations. One of the most serious failures came from the inability of the Central Intelligence Agency to pursue contacts in Hamburg where the hijackers who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, made their plans.

But even if there's the intent to place an emphasis on such human intelligence, or HUMINT, the results will take time, since the development of human sources takes from 2-10 years.

At this point, there has been no indication from the Obama administration as to what emphasis HUMINT will receive.

Until now, the emphasis on intelligence gathering has been built on development of technical intelligence of various descriptions.

Concerns already have been raised that U.S. intelligence agencies have been unsuccessful in penetrating the various terrorist groups of national security concern.

Among other things, part of this problem is due to the lack of emphasis on language and cultural training or recruiting from people who are familiar with the two.

Another reason is the inability of U.S. agents to assimilate into the culture from which they intend to extract such information.

Some of these concerns are underscored by a recently published book, "The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture," by former CIA officer "Ishmael Jones," who writes under a pseudonym.

Jones, who was involved in developing human sources with access to intelligence on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, believes CIA isn't getting the job done.

"Espionage is not hard to understand. … There's no mystery about what needs to be done at the CIA," he said. "Get officers overseas into target countries, reduce fraud and corruption. Get the intelligence the president needs to defend America and our allies."