Who is Michael J. Sulick and Does al Qaeda Have a Mole Inside the CIA?
10.31.2007 - 5:52 PMMichael J. Sulick is the man CIA Director General Michael Hayden has put in charge of gathering HUMINT, i.e., human intelligence, i.e., old fashioned man-on-man, man-on-woman, and woman-on-man espionage.
According to Newsweek, “Sulick learned his tradecraft—the James Bond side of spying—in the old Soviet Union. Like other Western spies, he learned to follow ‘Moscow Rules,’ the rigorous countersurveillance measures used to avoid detection by the ubiquitous KGB.”
Sulick quit the agency in September 2004 in a highly public row with Porter Goss, the CIA director who ended getting chewed up by the agency’s permanent bureaucracy, readily helped along in the chewing by his own staff, one member of whom had an old shoplifting charge on his résumé.
The CIA has been repeatedly castigated for weakness in collecting HUMINT. And one root cause of its perpetual weakness is undoubtedly our national fascination with technology, which has led us to invest in hugely expensive satellite-reconnaissance systems while neglecting the relatively cheap art of recruiting spies in enemy ranks.
In the war on terrorism, HUMINT is essential. Satellites are good for tracking tanks and other masses of mobile metal, but communications-interception aside, they are far less valuable for finding out the whereabouts of an Osama bin Laden or a Genghis Khan.
But at the same time, not all HUMINT targets are the same. Soviet diplomats and KGB agents were one kind of target–many of them liked to drink, have sex, and spend money, and some even admired America—all of which made them susceptible to recruitment. Al-Qaeda cell members are something else. They do not like to drink or to admire America; whatever they might do in private with their multiple wives, they are far more puritanical in their attitude toward sex, and among suicide bombers money is seen as having little value in the world to come.
All of this makes them a hard target. And all of this raises a question: if Sulick cut his teeth playing by the “Moscow Rules,” is he the best man for the job?
To Sulick’s credit, as evidenced by the talk he gave last month at the Harvard Seminar on Intelligence, Command, and Control, he has an acute understanding of what he is up against:
Unlike the Soviet Union—one large land mass—the terrorists operate in very small cells. They cross borders easily. They’re very compartmented. They screen their recruits probably better than the U.S. government does. They can work in a bank, in the real-estate industry, or for an Islamic relief organization. Basically they are less vulnerable as targets to all the other means of intelligence collection the United States has at its disposal. In the cold war, the satellites in the sky could see if Russian missiles were moving between silos or if troops were moving. The NSA was even able to intercept conversations between members of the Politburo as they traveled around Moscow in their cars. You can’t do that with terrorists. You don’t know where to point those eyes and ears in the sky unless you have a human agent—a spy—who tells you where to direct those things.
Unfortunately, though, Sulick didn’t offer much in the way of a solution beyond having the CIA and FBI work more closely with local police departments in tracking suspects in places like New York City. That’s a great idea, but it’s not the same thing as working to recruit operatives in Londonistan or Waziristan.
In part, the CIA, and Sulick himself, might be hamstrung, and traumatized, by our cold-war past. Key counterintelligence officials—Aldrich Ames in the CIA, Robert Hanssen in the FBI—were working for the other side. Could this happen again?
Sulick not only believes it’s a possibility, he’s actively troubled by it, and believes that the implications would be far graver than they were in the cold war:
What if you had somebody like Robert Hanssen working for al Qaeda? Try to imagine that! All the stuff that Hanssen and other spies gave away was in the cold war. Nobody was locked in combat. There was time to compensate, take countermeasures, for what those spies gave away. You’re not going to have that time in the war on terrorism. Imagine that you hire somebody, because you need a speaker of Farsi or Arabic, and that person is a spy. That allows the terrorists to launch attacks a lot more easily when they know what the intelligence community’s capabilities are and who their assets are. That’s my big bugaboo: the terrorist spy.
In short, we’re engaged in an intelligence war and we’re on the defensive, worried about an al-Qaeda mole in our ranks even as we are unable to place a mole in theirs.
This is not exactly an encouraging indicator of our progress in the war on terrorism. But it is difficult, for one simple reason, to be harshly critical of Sulick and the CIA: I know that I don’t know what I don’t know.
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November 1st, 2007 at 1:20 AM
Although Hanssen was not an AQ mole, some of the secrets he stole did end up in the hands of AQ. At least according to Robert Vise
http://www.courttv.com/talk/chat_transcripts/2003/1021hanssen-vise.html
November 1st, 2007 at 7:20 AM
See here too.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:08 PM
The left’s crazed jihad on political incorrectness has probably left American bureaucracies without the official permission to properly screen anyone. The possibility that al Qaeda has a mole (or moles) in the CIA or any other US Intel Agency is of grave significance, but in such an absurd political environment, is anyone surprised that this could happen?
November 1st, 2007 at 8:44 PM
The possibility that the CIA is penetrated by foes is of constant concern within the CIA and AQ is, of course, among the many foes that would like to have a mole in place inside the CIA, FBI or for that matter ICE or even the U.Sl. State Department–these latter agencies being much easier to penetrate and potentially more useful to AQ. However, re penetration of our Intel Agencies, success is much less likely simply because that very possibility is a constant concern and countermeasures are available to both detect such a penetration and to limit the damage should it occur (e.g., compartmentation). In my opinion, the greater threat we face in the war against AQ is from our own liberal politicians who occupy positions of power and yet fail to recognize the seriousness of this war!
November 1st, 2007 at 11:29 PM
The apparently unresolved charges of Sibel Edmonds continue to trouble me.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/25/60minutes/main526954.shtml
Although the problems she alleges occurred at the FBI, similar nonsense is imaginable at CIA. Why? QA procedures and abysmal counterintelligence.
For years the practice at NSA for translations / transcriptions was random review by senior personnel of work done by the rank and file. The primary goal was to see if anything was missed, if transcriber A needed additional training in a particular subject matter or additional language training, etc. There was surely an immediate cost in productivity — the best NSA transcribers could provide verbatim translations or English-language summaries in near-real-time, but over time the overall quality of the product could be trusted. It had the added benefit in discovering if something was overlooked, purposefully or inadvertently.
The FBI never did this, not 30 years ago and not even five years ago, with the result that it’s easy to believe that a lot of the take was pushed aside for a variety of reasons.
Why interfere with the personal affairs of the Royal family? Religious matters are not the US government’s concern. And so forth.
There are also allegations that FBI Arabic language translators / transcribers had exclusive access to a savings plan offered by a benevolence association, run either by the Turks or the Saudis. Who knows?
I’m no conspiracy buff, but after reading Robert Bauer’s works as well as those of others, I’m sure that the CIA gave up after the wall fell down and does not know how to get back on track. Those who had the edge and survived the Turner purges retired in the 1990s when the organization turned to stone. We have no HUMINT capability.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:42 AM
Bush Sr should run the CIA again.
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:36 AM
FYI
CIA Director Hayden gave a major speech 10/30/2007 in Chicago (about ten typewritten pages).
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/chicago-council-on-global-affairs.html
Here are the five points he wanted to deliver in the speech:
1. Today, intelligence is more crucial to the security of our nation than it’s ever been.
2. The war on terrorism is an intelligence war as much as a military one—maybe even more so.
3. CIA is an instrument of national security policy, subject—and responsive—to Congressional oversight.
4. America’s intelligence officers have internalized the decisive value of integration and are putting it to use, with outstanding results for our national security. (i. e. information is actively and cooperatively shared between US and allied agencies and military organizations.)
5. The qualities of our OSS founders—that unique combination of capability, dedication, and spirit—are embodied by the latest generation of CIA officers.
On the value of interrogations:
“. . . . The last six years have shown us that the best sources of information on terrorists and their plans are the terrorists themselves. That intelligence has been simply irreplaceable. And if CIA, with all our expertise as the nation’s human intelligence service, failed to take every lawful measure we could to gain those secrets, the American people would be right to ask why.
The irreplaceable nature of that intelligence is the sole reason we have rendition, detention, and interrogation programs. They are small, carefully run operations. Fewer than 100 hardened terrorists have gone through the interrogation program since it began in 2002 with the capture of Abu Zubaidah. Of those, less than a third have required any special methods of questioning.
Nonetheless, the fewer than 100 detainees have generated thousands of intelligence reports. We’ve shared that information not only with our colleagues in other national security agencies, but with foreign partners as well. More than 70 percent of the human intelligence reporting used in the National Intelligence Estimate I mentioned earlier is based on detainee information.
Our programs are as lawful as they are valuable. They have been subject to multiple legal and policy reviews inside and outside CIA, which brings me to my third proposition: CIA is an instrument of national security policy, subject—and responsive—to Congressional oversight.
In CIA’s early years, the concept of oversight was more or less a work in progress. Today, it’s central to everything we do—but that fact tends to get inexplicably lost in the public debate.
Our Congressional oversight committees have been fully and repeatedly briefed on all our activities. They know what these programs are, and what they aren’t.
I’ll give you some statistics—all of them are for calendar year 2007—that underscore our vigorous support of the oversight process:
CIA officers have testified in 62 congressional hearings and are responding to 30 congressionally-legislated requests for information.
We have answered 1,177 QFRs—that’s “questions for the record”—as well as 297 other letters, questions, and requests.
Our experts have given more than 600 briefings to congressional members and staffs.
And we have issued 121 congressional notifications on our sensitive programs.
Everything is on the table. I personally have briefed the Hill nine times on renditions, detentions, and interrogations, pointing out the great value of these programs to the war on terrorism.
But as I said, the programs themselves are a small part of our overall operations and hardly the centerpiece of our counterterrorism effort. In fact, they tend to overshadow what may be the most important dynamic behind some of our recent successes, which is my fourth point: America’s intelligence officers have internalized the decisive value of integration and are putting it to use, with outstanding results for our national security. . . .”
November 6th, 2007 at 11:39 AM
FYI
A major speech by the Director of MI5 (about 9 typewritten pages)
Intelligence, Counterterrorism and Trust
Jonathan Evans, Director General of the Security Service (MI5)
The Society of Editors’ ‘A Matter of Trust’ conference, Radisson Edwardian Hotel, Manchester, 5 November 2007
https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page562.html
Some nuggets:
” . . . .Another development in the last 12 months has been the extent to which the conspiracies here are being driven from an increasing range of overseas countries.
Over the last five years much of the command, control and inspiration for attack planning in the UK has derived from Al Qaida’s remaining core leadership in the tribal areas of Pakistan - often using young British citizens to mount the actual attack. But worryingly, we have more recently seen similar processes emerging elsewhere.
For instance, there is no doubt now that Al Qaida in Iraq aspires to promote terrorist attacks outside Iraq. There is no doubt that there is training activity and terrorist planning in East Africa - particularly in Somalia - which is focused on the UK. And there is no doubt that the extension of what one might call the ‘Al Qaida franchise’ to other groups in other countries - notably in Algeria - has created a significant upsurge in terrorist violence in these countries. It is no coincidence that the first suicide bombing in Algeria followed the creation of the new ‘Al Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb.’
This sort of extension of the Al Qaida brand to new parts of the Middle East and beyond poses a further threat to us in this country because it provides Al Qaida with access to new centres of support which it can motivate and exploit, including in its campaign against the UK.
Since 9/11, there have been a number of examples of serious Al Qaida-related terrorist activity in Europe. But in the last 12 months we have seen an increase in attack planning across the continent. This summer alone we saw many terrorist arrests, including those in Germany, Denmark and Austria. It is too early to assess with confidence what all this means but certainly, we can see that the threat from Al Qaida related terrorism goes well beyond the UK.
Looking at the plots themselves, we now see different levels of sophistication. Yes, we have seen unsophisticated attempts to kill and injure, but we have also seen complex, logistically effective plots, which require a high degree of expertise and accurate targeting. We have to pay equal attention to both the crude and the complex. Because the primitive can be just as deadly as the sophisticated.
And the prognosis for the medium term? I do not think that this problem has yet reached its peak. Speaking after the London and Glasgow attacks earlier this year, the Prime Minister said that: “our country - and all countries - have to confront a generation-long challenge to defeat…terrorist violence.”
He is of course correct. And it means that the work of the intelligence and security agencies will not be enough. We will do our utmost to hold back the physical threat of attacks, but alone, this is merely containment. Long-term resolution requires identifying and addressing the root causes of the problem. This is not a job only for the intelligence agencies and police. It requires a collective effort in which Government, faith communities and wider civil society have an important part to play. And it starts with rejection of the violent extremist ideology across society - although issues of identity, relative deprivation and social integration also form important parts of the backdrop.
This will not, however, happen overnight. I have been directly engaged in work against this violent extremist threat for most of the last decade, and I believe that terrorism inspired by it is likely to dominate the work of my Service well into the future.
And here is an important point. We know that the strategic thinking of our enemies is long-term. But public discourse in the UK works to a much shorter timescale whether the electoral cycle or the media deadline. We cannot view this challenge in such timescales. If we only react tactically while our enemies plan strategically, we shall be hard put to win this. A key part of our strategy must be perseverance. . . . ”
“. . . . .And it is important that we recognise an uncomfortable truth: terrorist attacks we have seen against the UK are not simply random plots by disparate and fragmented groups. The majority of these attacks, successful or otherwise, have taken place because Al Qaida has a clear determination to mount terrorist attacks against the United Kingdom. This remains the case today, and there is no sign of it reducing. So although MI5 and the police are investigating plots, and thwarting them, on a continuing basis, we do not view them in isolation. Al Qaida is conducting a deliberate campaign against us. It is the expression of a hostility towards the UK which existed long before September 11, 2001. It is evident in the wills and letters left behind by actual and would-be bombers. And it regularly forms part of Al Qaida’s broadcast messages.
This campaign is dynamic, and since my predecessor spoke last year, we have seen it evolve even further.
As a country, we are rightly concerned to protect children from exploitation in other areas. We need to do the same in relation to violent extremism. As I speak, terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country. They are radicalising, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism. This year, we have seen individuals as young as 15 and 16 implicated in terrorist-related activity. . . . ”
“. . . . On a different note, this autumn saw an important day for my Service. On the 10th October, we took on the lead responsibility from the Police Service of Northern Ireland for national security work there. And I am pleased to confirm todayd by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. This new building is a regional headquarters concerned with the broad spectrum of MI5’s work. So although we will continue to investigate national security threats to Northern Ireland from there, the capabilities will also provide us with greater capacity in our overall work across the UK. Our Northern Ireland headquarters is now an important part of my Service’s UK counter terrorism network. . . . .”
March 11th, 2008 at 11:17 AM
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