Spy vs. Spy
03.19.2008 - 10:28 AMCongress’s reshuffling of the intelligence community in the wake of 9/11 was intended to enhance cooperation among the 16 agencies that serve as our country’s eyes and ears. Is it working? It is hard to tell. But there’s continued sniping among the spy agencies. Why else would a high-ranking official at one of the agencies send me an article entitled How Intelligent is the Director of National Intelligence?, the implied — and lighthearted — conclusion of which is: not very.
Meanwhile, there is serious business to be done. Among the open questions of more than passing interest is: who poisoned the Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 using polonium-21 and why? Was the Russian government behind this action? The consequences that would (or should) flow from such a conclusion are dire.
Edward Jay Epstein has long been one of the most interesting writers on intelligence matters, and also one of the most diligent researchers. He hasn’t solved the riddle, but he reports his findings in today’s New York Sun.
After considering all the evidence, my hypothesis is that Litvinenko came in contact with a polonium-210 smuggling operation and was, either wittingly or unwittingly, exposed to it. Litvinenko had been a person of interest to the intelligence services of many countries, including Britain’s MI-6, Russia’s FSB, America’s CIA (which rejected his offer to defect in 2000), and Italy’s SISMI, which was monitoring his phone conversations. His murky operations, whatever their purpose, involved his seeking contacts in one of the most lawless areas in the former Soviet Union, the Pankisi Gorge, which had become a center for arms smuggling. He had also dealt with people accused of everything from money laundering to trafficking in nuclear components. These activities may have brought him, or his associates, in contact with a sample of polonium-210, which then, either by accident or by design, contaminated and killed him.
| »Back to Connecting the Dots | »Back to Commentary |
March 19th, 2008 at 12:01 PM
Well, yeah. Another Naval officer could tell that old joke over and over again and no one would care. But it’s true: if an intelligence officer tells it, and claims it’s a true story from his own life, he’ll be diligently researched. As he should be, of course. McConnell should have known better. (I’ve heard other Naval officers — not intelligence officers — tell this joke before as a “true story,” but most of us know it’s apocryphal. Rhetorical license.)
McConnell is a good intelligence officer and a surprisingly effective bureaucratic manager — in a stovepiped world like that of NSA. What he’s not so much is an effective politician, which is why, in the political arena of the DNI, the public face of his enterprise has essentially been hijacked by the old State INR hands.
Example (from his speech), on the political lines: While it’s true that the frequent personnel cutbacks imposed by Congress affect the ability of the IC to get its job done, as much as they affect other types of agencies, my own view is that that is not “the issue” with the events America regards as intelligence failures over the past several years. It comes off as picking a convenient excuse, to bring it up. You don’t get much opportunity to leave a principal impression on people; “we were undermanned” is not the one I would choose to leave. It’s a bureaucrat’s explanation — when what is POLITICALLY needed is not explanations but a compelling vision for the future.
That said, McConnell is spot on about why “warrantless wiretapping” is needed. The “takeaway” — which he doesn’t properly emphasize — is that we need to wiretap on the INTELLIGENCE basis of “possible association,” rather than on the much more stringent JUDICIAL basis of “probable cause.” Hence the impossibility of getting a warrant, even after the fact, for every instance of listening in.
Finally: what makes you think we DON’T know who killed Litvinenko? The Brits know. They may not have told us. But that doesn’t mean we don’t know.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:43 PM
“Was the Russian government behind this action? The consequences that would (or should) flow from such a conclusion are dire.”
Why would such a murder change our stance toward a country headed by a former KGB man who is clearly setting up an authoritarian system? And, what exactly are we or the British going to do to a country with thousands of nuclear weapons because it’s leader sanctioned the murder of a defector, assuming he did?
March 19th, 2008 at 7:44 PM
I don’t see the particularly dire consequences. Russian skullduggery is no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention over the past 75 years or so.
It’s only dire if we ignore such things or fail to prepare ourselves for that sort of future cold/lukewarm conflict.
ah… never mind.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:14 PM
No comment on the “intelligence” of the DNI, however, on polonium-210, it is rare, difficult to produce and very expensive. I have never seen a reference to it in regards to smuggling or trafficking. Difficult to handle and use, it is so rarely encountered that most medical officials would not recognize its presence internal to the body. Never the less, the people transporting it were sloppy, leaving traces in a number of locations. How many nations are capable of, or do produce polonium? Not many! Was this an individual case of nuclear terrorism? Whatever, it appears that a message was sent and the polonium did not originate from a clandestine laboratory.