Gates to Cut Pentagon's Intelligence Activities?

Is this story by Shane Harris in the National Journal a sign that DoD Secretary Robert Gates is winning the war with Vice President Dick “Darth” Cheney for the heart and mind~~lessness~~ of President Bush?

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is considering a plan to curtail the Pentagon’s clandestine spying activities, which were expanded by his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, after the 9/11 attacks. The undercover work allowed military personnel to collect intelligence about terrorists and to recruit spies in foreign countries independently of the CIA and without much congressional oversight.

Former military and intelligence officials, including those involved in an ongoing and largely informal debate about the military’s forays into espionage, said that Gates, a former CIA director, is likely to “roll back” several of Rumsfeld’s controversial initiatives. This could include changing the mission of the Pentagon’s Strategic Support Branch, an intelligence-gathering unit comprising Special Forces, military linguists, and interrogators that Rumsfeld set up to report directly to him. The unit’s teams work in many of the same countries where CIA case officers are trying to recruit spies, and the military and civilian sides have clashed as a result. CIA officers serving abroad have been roiled by what they see as the Pentagon’s encroachment on their dominance in the world of human intelligence-gathering.

Harris isn’t the only one reporting that Gates plans to dismantle much of the vast Pentagon Intelligence infrastructure put in place by during the reign of former DoD Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, with the able assistance of Cheney’s Merry Band of Necon Pranksters. Steve Clemons at The Washington Note has also posted a story that Gates is ready to put blinders on Cheney’s ability to obtain ready made intelligence (made to suit Cheney’s own policy proposals, that is) out of the Pentagon:

(Cont.)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has told a number of senior national security officials — current and former — that he is shutting down (or at least significantly shrinking) the Rumsfeld-Cambone-Feith-Boykin intelligence operation.

Rumsfeld encouraged a massive expansion of the Department of Defense’s intelligence operations just at the time that the 9/11 Commission, Congressional enabling legislation, and the White House had worked together to reorganize the vast bulk of America’s intelligence machine under the Director of National Intelligence — who was then John Negroponte.

Rumsfeld’s colonization of much of the intelligence operations of government was in direct defiance of the legal operational and budgetary authority that the DNI position theoretically held.

Gates’ move is a sign that he is making what are possibly an important set of moves to try and get the government’s national security decision-making process back in better shape. DoD’s misbehavior in intelligence has generated constant battles and significant mistrust among key players in defense policy. […]

…[T]he Rumsfeld-Cambone-Feith-Boykin intel machine included the staff of Vice President Cheney who were key beneficiaries of intel activities and information passed on to the Vice President’s Office by DoD. Instructions also flowed from Cheney’s office to DoD regarding intelligence initiatives and work that should be done. This entire interaction existed beyond what was legally prescribed and appropriate between the White House and this subcabinet intelligence activity controlled by Rumsfeld and his minions.

Bob Gates is about to shut down a signficant chunk of Vice President Cheney’s intelligence eyes and ears — and to some degree, an inappropriate ability to help drive covert actions.

Let me add that what Harris and Clemons are reporting is in its early stages. There may yet be time for Cheney to outmaneuver Gates and retain his control of the Pentagon’s covert and clandestine activities. What is more, neither Harris not Clemons report that Gates has any plans to eliminate the Pentagon’s Iranian Directorate, which is essentially the Pentagon office established to analyze intelligence regarding Iran’s activities.

As I have previously written about here at Booman Tribune, the Iranian Directorate is a direct descendant of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) which provided Cheney’s office, during the run up to the Iraq war with “cherry picked” raw intel from the CIA and other intelligence agencies to be used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq to the Congress and the American people. The Iranian Directorate even employs many of the same people who previously worked for the OSP before it was disbanded.

These reports don’t indicate if Gates plans to shut down the Iranian Directorate. One can only hope that he has it in his sights, and that Cheney no longer has sufficient power to forestall or reverse the changes Gates is planning to make. Obviously, Cheney’s influence with President Bush has been weakened recently, as evidenced by the success Condoleezza Rice has had in obtaining the President’s approval for the North Korean nuclear agreement, and for US attendance at the Baghdad summit which begins tomorrow, a summit at which both Iran and Syria will also be in attendance.

Nonetheless, it would be foolish to write off Cheney just yet. He may have lost much of his influence with Bush because of Plamegate, the Scooter Libby conviction and (most importantly) the Republican losses in the 2006 election. However, we also know that Bush’s own gut instincts favor military action whenever possible over diplomacy. And no one has pushed for the use of American military might more than Dick Cheney.

He may be a wounded animal, and Gates may have a window of opportunity to reverse some of the more disastrous “achievements” of the Rumsfeld era, including rolling back the expanded intelligence apparatus at the Defense Department, but we are not out of the woods yet. Any setback on the diplomatic front involving the Iranians is likely to be seized upon by Cheney as grounds for attacking Iran at Bush’s earliest convenience. Who’s to say Bush won’t roll the military dice given to him by his Svengali-like Vice President one more time?

CIA