CNN.com: Yemen plot exposes new world of U.S. spying

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By Pam Benson

CNN.com - 11 May 2012

As details of the foiled al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airline became public, the world learned not only about a daring operation to stop terrorists, but also about the new reality of how U.S. intelligence works.

American and foreign intelligence partners working hand in hand to rid the world of the scourge of terror. You didn't see much of that 10 years ago, but it's exactly what happened recently.

The Saudis infiltrate an al Qaeda terrorist group in Yemen with their own mole, and the CIA and others are brought into the mix to help run an operation that eventually foils a possible bomb attack against an airliner destined for America.

"I'm not at all surprised that the press accounts of this have liaison services, particularly the Saudis, playing such a prominent role," said former CIA Director Michael Hayden. "That's the way I would have expected it to go."

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, changed everything in the American intelligence community. It drove home the point that the Cold War was over. The battlefield looked quite different and the United States wasn't quite prepared.

It no longer sufficed to have satellites stare down at a static enemy behind the Iron Curtain, with tens of thousands of troops separating the Soviet Union from Western Europe.

The enemy became terrorist groups that for the most part hid in safe havens and operated from ungoverned territories seemingly out of the reach of traditional intelligence and military responses.

"The ability to penetrate a terrorist organization is an incredibly difficult task that we were poorly positioned to do in the 1990s and even a few years after 9/11," said Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and an expert on the intelligence community.

It has been an arduous task and it is far from complete, but Zegart believes U.S. efforts to bolster human intelligence capability and work much more closely with foreign intelligence counterparts are paying off.

Former FBI agent Ali Soufan told CNN the joint intelligence operation was as good as it gets.

"You have a place like Yemen. You have al Qaeda, CIA, you have other friendly intelligence agencies. You have a source inside. It doesn't get any better than that," he said.

And the operation turned out to be a twofer - that is, the mole not only secured the new generation bomb and helped get it out of Yemen, but he also helped identify the location of a senior al Qaeda operative in Yemen, enabling the CIA to use one of its other more recent tools, the armed drone.

Just about everyone CNN has spoken with within the intelligence community touts the value of the drone missile strikes. The program began in the Bush administration to target al Qaeda leaders in the tribal regions of Pakistan and has expanded extensively under President Obama. Terrorism experts including CNN's Peter Bergen agree the program has been extremely effective.

"The drone strikes are not just important in terms of eliminating the leadership of al Qaeda," Bergen said. "They are also important in terms of preventing people from training in the tribal region and making that very difficult because you are always looking over your shoulder for a drone attack."

Now drone strikes are being used far more extensively in Yemen, particularly in southern areas of the country where al Qaeda forces have taken control.

Setting aside the debate over whether the attacks represent extrajudicial killing, Zegart said opportunities to learn about al Qaeda's strategies are lost when the military simply kills terrorists rather than take them captive.

"That's a challenge," she said, "finding the right balance of using these drones and actually harvesting intelligence from people who are caught."

Cooperation and coordination between the intelligence community and the military has become a critical component of the counterterrorism campaign. While he was CIA director, Hayden said, the intelligence community worked closely with Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.

"All things Stan McChrystal did - for example, the night raids, the sensitive site exploitation and the follow-on raids within hours and so on - that was based on intimate teamwork between JSOC and the American intelligence community."

The crown jewel of that type of cooperation was the successful Navy SEALs raid last year on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which lead to the death of the al Qaeda founder.

But Zegart maintains that operation was the "poster child" for the influence of a greatly enhanced analytic community.

"The real breakthrough there was thinking through a different lens," she said. "It's not how can we find bin Laden. It's what are the threads that could lead us to him. So you start to think about who are the couriers. That's then the critical piece in putting information together to track him down ultimately. We tend to focus on the operational success of the mission, but this was an analytical success first."

And those analysts came from a wide range of agencies within the intelligence community.

Inside the CIA command center the day of the bin Laden raid, it wasn't just Director Leon Panetta and his support staff anxiously monitoring developments during the operation. Senior officials from the Defense Department, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and others were in the room. All played a unique role in what was a community-wide effort.

NGA Director Tish Long, whose agency analyzes imagery and who was in the ops center that day, said, "We were working very closely with NSA and CIA ,with the SIGINT and the HUMINT, our GEOINT - (it) truly was an integrated operation to understand what was happening at that Abbottabad complex."

U.S. officials and experts consistently point to the creation of the National Counterterrorism Center as a success story in the effort to remove the roadblocks within the intelligence community that inhibited the sharing of information. Hayden said the establishment of NCTC has led to deeper integration and cooperation among the 16 members of the intelligence community. That help NCTC analysts run down leads and connect the dots.

But the center faces hurdles. One of the reforms implemented at NCTC, after a failed attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines commercial flight to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, was to create pursuit teams to follow up on leads. The center was criticized at the time for not putting together a variety of clues that might have prevented suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab from getting on the plane. People with specialized expertise are now brought in to analyze the data.

One of the pre-9/11 weaknesses the U.S. intelligence community has tried to address is increasing its pool of officers who are native speakers and have lived in cultures around the world. Although the numbers are significantly up, it's no match for what a foreign intelligence partner brings to the table.

"A partner brings focus, a partner brings linguistic agility, a partner brings cultural agility, which is very hard for us to come by," Hayden said.

But in the dangerous, unpredictable spy world, relying on a foreign partner can be risky. That was nowhere more evident than when a group of CIA officers planned a meeting with a trusted asset of the Jordanian intelligence service. The asset was, in fact, a double agent who came to the 2009 meeting in Khost, Afghanistan, wearing a suicide bomb vest that he detonated, killing seven CIA employees.

There could also be a downside to focusing almost exclusively on terrorism issues with some foreign partners. A former U.S. intelligence officer wondered if it comes at the expense of other issues.

"Would we have known more about the coming Arab awakening if our relationship with the Egyptian intelligence service had not been so much defined by our (counterterrorism) problem?" the official asked.

And even with the apparent success of the recent joint effort to stop the potential airline bombing, the one thing the intelligence community did not anticipate was that details of the operation would leak to the press.

The revelation might have al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula scrambling to find other infiltrators, and administration and congressional officials maintain this will make it more difficult to infiltrate AQAP. That would be a problem.

As Zegart put it, "There is no substitute for that human intelligence on the ground."

Post by: CNN Senior National Security Producer Pam Benson Filed under: 9/11 • Afghanistan • Al Qaeda • AQAP • Arab Spring • C.I.A. • Egypt • Intelligence • Military • Navy SEALs • NCTC • ODNI • Pakistan • Terrorism • Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab • Yemen http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/11/yemen-plot-exposes-new-world-of-us-spying/

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

 

BKNT--US Pastor, on Al Qaeda ‘Hit List’ for Burning Koran, Alleged Victim of Hit-and-Run Assault

- OPEN SOURCE  US/1; MemberCONTRIBUTIONS
 

By: Anthony Kimery and W. Scott Malone

BlackNET EXCLUSIVE

: Al Qaeda Drone HIT-LIST, Names NAMED...

Controversial Florida Pastor Terry Jones, who achieved notoriety earlier this year when he enraged Muslims by burning a copy of the Koran following a mock trial by his church that found the Islamic holy book quilty of crimes against humanity, says he was the victim of a mysterious hit-and-run assault Saturday afternoon.

Jones received scores of death threats in response to his burning of the Koran, and more recently his name appeared on a so-called "hit list" of infidels who should be killed that was drawn up by members of an Al Qaeda-linked Internet chat room for jihadists.

The alleged hit-and-run of Jones was announced in a press release issued by Stand Up America Now, a group Jones helped found. Local law enforcement confirmed that the alleged incident had been reported, and that they were taking it seriously.

Jones' problems began when he burned the Koran in March. He told ABC News on April 4 that "right now, we have a little over 300 threats; today, ten threats have come in."

ABC News also reported that the FBI had learned that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed international terrorist organization, had offered $2.4 million for Jones’ murder.

An FBI intelligence bulletin further stressed that "the FBI assesses with high confidence that, as with past incidents perceived as acts of desecration against Islam, extremist actors will continue to threaten or attempt to harm the leaders, organizers, or attendees" of the event at which Jones' burned the Koran.

Within months of his burning of the Koran, Jones’ name appeared on an Al Qaeda-inspired “hit list” of 58 persons that included top military and corporate leaders who members of Al Qaeda-linked jihadist forums deemed to be enemies of Islam who must be killed.

Jones is Senior Pastor of the Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center. The church describes itself as a "New Testament, charismatic, non-denominational church that believes in the whole Bible and that we are to act in response to the word of God in order to change the times we are living in."

Jones orginally inflamed Muslims worldwide and provoked the scorn of President Barack Obama and top members of his administration when he announced last fall that he planned to burn hundreds of copies of the Muslim holy book on the 9th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack in an event he called "International Burn-a-Koran Day."

In Afghanistan, at least one Muslim protester was killed and several others wounded during a demonstration by an estimated 10,000 persons outside a NATO base in Faizabad where protestors burned an effigy of Jones and the American flag. Protestors in other parts of the country beat an effigy of Jones with their shoes.

Eventually, demonstrations by thousands of angry Muslims erupted across the country, including in the capital of Kabul, and some threatened to attack US bases.

Signs displayed by some of the protestors in Afghanistan read, "America Don't Test Our Patience," and, "America Beware."

In the wake of the widespread condemnation of his plan, though, Jones stepped back from the mass burning and declared that his church would never incinerate any copies of the Koran.

But Jones did eventually burn a copy of the Koran in March during a mock trial that in part was streamed live on the Internet and broadcast via satellite.

 

"The Koran was found guilty and a copy was burned inside the [church] building," the church's blog stated.

At the conclusion of the trial, the church declared "the Koran has been accused of four different crimes against humanity:

• "The Koran is charged with the training and promoting of terrorist activities around the world. To that charge the Koran has been found guilty;
•  
• "The Koran is charged with the death, rape, and torture of people worldwide whose only crime is ‘not being of Islamic faith.’ To this charge the Koran has been found guilty; and
•  
• "The Koran is charged with crimes against women, against minorities, against Christians, and with the promoting of prejudice and racism against anyone who is not a Moslem. To this charge, the Koran has been found guilty.

“So, in accordance with our courtroom law, and having the example of American law, the Koran must be punished," Jones declared.

The burning of the Koran immediately provoked violent protests in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where an attack on the United Nations Assistance Mission in Mazar-i-Sharif reportedly killed 12 people, including seven UN employees.

Obama had said when Jones announced his International Burn-a-Koran Day on 9/11 that "you could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan," and "could increase the recruitment of individuals who'd be willing to blow themselves up in American cities, or European cities."

Counterterrorism officials told Homeland Security Today they weren't at all surprised that Jones' name appeared on the Al Qaeda-linked “hit list" that was the subject of numerous state and federal bulletins circulated in June to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

Homeland Security Today first reported in detail on the so-called “hit-list” in its June 23 report, Dozens of Top US Military, Corporate Leaders on AQ ‘Hit List.’ CT Officials Debate Seriousness of Threat.

Other non-corporate, non-military persons on the hit list are executives of the Washington, DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute – a mostly Muslim media monitoring organization that was co-founded by a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence - and the conservative leaning think tank, Middle East Forum.

Although law enforcement authorities said there's no evidence to indicate Jones' alleged hit-and-run is related to any of the death threats that have been made against him, plots by jihadists linked to Al Qaeda to kill infidels they believe blasphemed Islam aren't uncommon, and have been on the rise in recent years.

For example, Dutch filmaker Theodoor "Theo" van Gogh was killed in November 2004 by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim in retaliation for defaming Islam in a movie that criticized the treatment of women in Islam. The movie, Submission, outraged Muslims.

There also have been attempted assassinations of Dutch cartoonist Kurt Westergaard for having depicted Prophet Mohammed in 12 editorial cartoons published in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in September 2005. One of the cartoons (shown at right), unflatteringly depicted Mohammed as a terrorist.

Under Islamic law, it is illegal to depict the Prophet Mohammed in any image, and is a crime punishable by death. It's especially egregious for infidels to depict Mohammed or to otherwise blasphemy him.

According to Stand Up America Now’s press release, Jones suffered only minor injuries from the alleged hit-and-run, which the group said was reported to the Florida Highway Patrol and FBI.

Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) spokesman Capt. Mark Welch told Homeland Security Today on Monday the department "couldn't find anything in any of our records for anyone named Jones regarding an incident that occurred on Saturday."

However, Gainesville Police Department Public Information Officer, Cpl. Tscharna Senn, told Homeland Security Today that after having inquired with the department's liaison to DHS, FBI and other agencies charged with counterterrorism coordination and information-sharing, she'd confirmed that Jones had reported the incident to FHP, but that because his injuries didn't require hospitalization, FHP did not "take a report."

[Following Homeland Security Today's report, the Gainesville Sun reported the FHP said it had declined to file a report because the investigating Trooper was unable to find any evidence to indicate that a hit-and-run had occurred]

Senn said the Gainesville Police Department did not investigate the incident because "it took place in the county and wasn't in our jurisdiction."

Senn added, however, that the Gainesville Police Department is very aware of the threats that have been made against Jones, as well as his inclusion on the so-called jihadi "hit list," and that "they take all threats seriously" regardless of who is threatened.

"We have a responsibility to protect all of the citizens of Gainesville," Senn said, adding, "we can't let our guard down, because you never know what it may be that is an indication of an attack."

Senn said the Gainesville Police Department works closely with federal and state agencies to ensure there is timely cross-sharing of vital intelligence.

Senn pointed out that intelligence that could expose a terrorist plot or some other organized criminal activtiy often originates with something that a citizen has witnessed and reported [see the recent Homeland Security Today report, Most Terror Plot Dot Connecting is Local, Study Finds], adding incidents like the one Jones alleged happened to him need to be reported to the police.

FBI officials were unable to be reached for comment by press time.

According to the Stand Up America Now press release, “a black SUV sped around [Jones] hitting his leg and running over his foot as he was stopped at an intersection while on his motorcycle. The SUV, with Georgia plates, then sped away quickly. Dr. Jones noticed the SUV following him for a few miles before the attack.”

In a statement published on the group’s website, Jones said “as we left the church, we turned right and came straight down as we went through the wooded area and came to the stop sign where you must turn left or right. I noticed that there was a black SUV behind us. Of course, because of our situation, we always are aware of things and people who are following us."

Continuing, Jones stated "as we turned left, they turned left. They were a little bit suspicious as they kept speeding up and backing off, speeding up and backing off. We continued on down the road a few miles. As we approached the next intersection, the next stop light, and as I was slowing down, they passed me slowly on the right-hand side literally only inches away from my motorcycle. I kept it straight and yelled at them. This was done on purpose as there was absolutely no need for this. It was a black SUV with a Georgia license plate.”

Jones claimed that “as I stopped, they ran over my leg, my foot. I yelled out at them. They gave it absolutely no attention. Although no window was down, they knew very well that they had hit me. They proceeded to turn to the right and to speed up very, very fast. It was a definite attempt of some form on my life, either to give us a warning, a scare, or to actually do bodily harm which they did by running over my leg. We reported this to the Florida Highway Patrol and to the FBI.”

Despite the death threats that have been made against him, Jones is an undaunted true believer. In addition to having burned the Koran, he continues to support controversial signs his church erected that proclaim "Islam is of the Devil."

According to the church's website FAQ, the signs were put up "to expose Islam for what it is. It is a violent and oppressive religion that is trying to mascarade itself as a religion of peace, seeking to deceive our society." 

http://www.hstoday.us/industry-news/general/single-article/us-pastor-put-on-al-qaeda-hit-list-for-burning-qur-an-alleged-victim-of-hit-and-run/419b4862d3513d684eb61b3367bb3b04.html

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

FLASH--Bodyguard who killed Karzai's brother was trusted CIA contact--OS

- flash- OPEN SOURCE

VS/2; US/1; ATTN: NSNS/1; HST/2; TSP/2

By Julius Cavendish in Kabul

Saturday, 16 July 2011

The bodyguard who assassinated President Hamid Karzai's brother had been working closely with US Special Forces and the CIA before he was recruited by the Taliban, raising fears over the Islamist movement's increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus which has managed to threaten the inner circles of power in Afghanistan.

Sardar Mohammad, who shot Ahmed Wali Karzai at his home in Kandahar City on Tuesday, also held regular meetings with British officials, and had two brothers-in-law serving in a CIA-run paramilitary unit, the Kandahar Strike Force, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

Yet evidence is emerging that the Taliban recruited Mohammad – who was believed to be a friend, confidant and trusted lieutenant of Ahmed Wali Karzai – in an infiltration of the Afghan government's security apparatus.

"Our investigation shows that for the last three months he was acting out of character, not normal, erratic," said Mahmoud Karzai, another Karzai brother. "He wasn't sleeping, he was nervous, he was getting phone calls in the middle of the night, and our information shows he made a trip to Quetta [in Pakistan] and met with some Taliban. His father was a mullah. So all these things combined, plus the Taliban claim of responsibility... but our preliminary investigation indicates this was the work of the Taliban."

Security analysts say that, if true, it shows not only the problems facing the Afghan army and police as they start taking control of the country from Nato, but also how sophisticated Taliban intelligence operations have become.

The immediate assumption after Ahmed Karzai's death was that Mohammad was pursuing a personal vendetta, largely because the notion of defection to the Taliban was so hard to credit. But that seems to be what happened. The insurgents "get these very big victories quite often and I think probably we underestimate the [Taliban's] intelligence components," said one Western analyst.

"They do have dedicated intelligence officers. And that's not just about gathering information but also about infiltration, using whatever combination of blackmail or ideological levers [they need to ... The killing] is a really excellent indication of the sophistication of Taliban intelligence networks. It's something we don't know enough about – how it breaks down," the analyst said.

There has been a string of high-profile attacks by the Taliban against Afghan government officials, and a number of instances of agents infiltrating the Afghan security forces and killing Afghan or Nato troops.

On 28 May, General Daud, the top police commander in northern Afghanistan, was killed by a bomb as he met Nato officials. In Kandahar, the deputy governor and the chief of police were assassinated earlier this year.

But what makes Mohammad's defection so remarkable is just how close he was to Ahmed Wali Karzai. The Washington Post says he met the Kandahar strongman six days a week.

Ahmed Wali Karzai would pay the salaries of his policemen if the government was in arrears, and had taken his mother to Mohammad's house.

CONTINUE READING Full Story HERE...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bodyguard-who-killed-karzais-brother-was-trusted-cia-contact-2314580.html

[Information contained in BKNT E-mail is considered Attorney-Client and Attorney Work Product privileged, copyrighted and confidential. Views that may be expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of any government, agency, or news organization.]

W. Scott Malone: Did the U.S. Teach Iraq To Hide Its Terror Arms?

W. Scott Malone on how Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz, Gates, and Bush Screwed up Iraq Intelligence...in 1991.

BlackVAULT - OPEN SOURCE

DS/1; US/60a; NA/2; GRAYFOX/1; SCI/2; RT/66; YQ/1; CIC/2 - MEMBER CONTRIBUTIONS

[ed.note: For the initiated, as well as the noveau and even the naive, the below article was the original broadside about the glaring and deadly INTELLIGENCE FAILURE of the CIA, the NSA and the military intelligence agencies over WMD in Iraq that were uncovered only after the war had ended, circa 1991.

Those WMD 'terror weapons' had been employed to ghastly effect by Saddam--first against the Iranians during their 8-year war--then again against his own Iraqi Kurdish population beginning in 1988.

Dick Cheney was the SECDEF at the time, and his two key deputies were Scooter Libby and Paul Wolfowitz. They were apparently deeply chagrined over this failure--their failure.

And after they had personally effected the delivery of a collective 90,000 ton payload of bombs rained down on Iraq.

After UN Inspectors uncovered murdered artillery designer Gerald Bull's 200-foot-long SuperGun sitting placidly, if firmly, on a hillside pointing at Israel, even Jay Leno had a little fun at Cheney and Libby's expense:

"The Iraqi Branch of the National Rifle Association put out a statement today saying that the Supergun was intended for sporting purposes only..."

And their collective fear was of a chemical or biological attack. Libby later became known around the Bush 43 White House as 'Mr. Bug,' over his abiding concern over possible Anthrax attacks. Feeble attempts from 1991 to 2001 to achieve a reliable anthrax vaccine had also met with failure, and increasing trepidations of many 1991 war vets that their first generation vaccine injections were the mysterious cause the dreaded 'Gulf War Syndrome.' (SEE: previous blog post below of my review of the 2004 Gary Matsumoto book on the troubled anthrax vaccine program.) 

The leading US Army researcher on the troubled vaccine program was Dr. Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008 as the FBI closed in on him as the sole cause of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks. In the Spring of 2001, both Wolfowitz and Karl Rove exchanged memos on shutting down the Defense Department's failing anthrax vaccine program.

Such was 'Dr. Bug's' lingering concern, that in the weeks following the September 11th attacks, before any hint of the coming anthrax attacks of October, Libby was began to advocate strongly that White House officials, from the President on down begin a prophylactic course of the powerful antibiotic Cipro.

Indeed, it was also a deeply ingrained fear of probable Iraqi chemical weapons, that was so palpable in the new post-9/11 world.

Back in '91, Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, in his 'Mother of ALL Briefings,' upon the apparently premature conclusion to ground campaign of Operation DESERT STORM, described his 'nightmare scenario'--that his forces would get caught in a deadly artillery crossfire of chemical shells. Schwartzkopf prolonged the air campaign an additional ten days to take out over 500 of Saddam's American designed, long-range 155 artillery platforms.

The story below was followed up about a month later by late-comer Sy Hersh in the New York Times. Bob Gates, the current SECDEF, was just facing his Senate confirmation as the new CIA Director when the below article was published, and he had privately vowed to take corrective action. (Although the CIA's Operations Director at that time, Tom Tweeten, did call up his predecessor, BlackNET Member Ed Juchniewicz, to rather pedantically, if threateningly, remind him of his security oath over being quoted on the record, in the below Washington Post article.)

Perhaps not so ironically, it is now Gates' problem, again. But it was George Tenet, the then chief aide to the Senate Intelligence Committee's chairman, who went on down to glory as the 9/11 CIA Director with his "slam dunk" (and apparently erroneous) prediction about the extent of extant Iraqi WMD, this time in 2002.

But nobody is innocent. That includes moi, and my friends and fellow BlackNET Members Judy Miller and Gary Matsumoto, to name but few. While America's intelligence, military and political minions were wrong then, and wrong again in 2003, those of us in the media at the time have nothing to be particularly, or collectively, proud about either.

So, do two wrongs make a crybaby right? Go figure. Go to the Washington Post, below...]

November 3, 1991

[Re-posted with Permission and Author's copyright]

Did the U.S. Teach Iraq To Hide Its Terror Arms?

By William Scott Malone

AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE that was shared with Saddam Hussein for six years during the Iran-Iraq War may have helped Iraq hide weapons of mass destruction -- including most of its secret atomic bomb project -- from U.S. forces seeking to destroy the arsenals during the Gulf War.

This possibility has arisen in the aftermath of the recent discoveries in Iraq by United Nations inspectors that Saddam's deadly stockpile was more than 10 times as large as predicted by U.S. intelligence agencies during the Gulf War.

By any analysis, what Operation Desert Storm missed in its Gulf War effort to destroy Saddam's secret arms caches was staggering -- more than 819 Scud missiles, a huge cannon almost 170-feet long resting on a mountainside and aimed at Israel, more than 11,000 chemical shells and three uranium enrichment/hydrogen bomb component factories, according to U.N. reports.

"Our failure to cover the Iraqi weapons programs was clearly a significant intelligence failure," former acting CIA operations chief Edward Juchniewicz recently concluded.

The causes of the U.S. miscalculations are not clear. But numerous former intelligence officials and other specialists in interviews expressed concerns that information given to Iraq -- including photo-reconnnaissance data -- as part of the Reagan administration's "tilt" toward Saddam to prevent an Iranian victory in the 1980-88 war could have been used to shelter Saddam's military might during Operation Desert Storm.

On one occasion, Saddam is said to have personally shown one Soviet defense official a U.S. satellite image, according to two former intelligence officials, and asked for help in concealing things from the spy orbiters. The Soviets responded with training in military deception tactics and communications security. According to one of the former officials, the Soviets later provided the United States with some of the details of the techniques just before the Gulf War.

The long-running U.S. "intelligence liaison" with Iraq was the subject of a recent closed-door debate on the nomination of Robert M. Gates as CIA director.

A majority of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that all intelligence supplied to Iraq was "appropriately sanitized" and thus of little use to Saddam other than helping him in his war with Iran. But not all the senators agreed, and important questions about the scope of the intelligence transfer remain unanswered.

In a report released last week, the panel noted that during the summer of 1986, "CIA staff officers had, on two occasions, shared certain intelligence with the Iraqis which, at the time it was provided, may have exceeded the scope of the sharing arrangement which had been authorized."

The problem was taken care of, the report noted, by having the National Security Council (NSC) grant an expanded "authority" three months after the fact, in October, 1986. But this did not keep the Iraqis from scrutinizing the data for minute clues to U.S. intelligence-gathering methods -- perhaps so that counter-measures could be designed and implemented.

"Generally speaking, it is always a risk when you share intelligence," said Gen. William Odom, director of the super-secret National Security Agency from 1984 to 1987. "When you give people intelligence, however well-sanitized, it is pretty hard to keep the recipient from making certain deductions. And the more you do it, the worse the risk becomes."

"Anytime you give access to photo-reconnaissance," said another former intelligence official and technical consultant, "a good interpreter could devise the countermeasures necessary to counteract the effectiveness of such coverage."

Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), who opposes Gates' nomination, asserted during the confirmation hearings that "there are still important and unanswered questions about [Gates's] management and supervision of the undisclosed ties between Iraq and the United States."

Gates and acting CIA director Richard Kerr maintained in closed session that a still-secret July 1991 CIA inspector general's report cleared them of any "supervisory negligence" in the program, according to sources.

However, a review of declassified testimony, classified documents, academic studies and interviews with more than 40 former officials and analysts adds unsettling details to the story of the "intelligence liaison" between the Reagan administration and Baghdad. It also raises questions about whether the Soviet military may have gained insights into U.S. intelligence-gathering methods because Saddam shared some U.S.-supplied intelligence with the Soviets.

And the episode stands as a cautionary tale for U.S. policymakers contemplating the nation's intelligence activities in the post-Cold War era.

Although the Senate committee said the U.S. intelligence "liaison" with Iraq began in 1984, it actually started two years earlier, when Iran began winning the war that Iraq had initiated. It was then that the Reagan administration decided to secretly "tilt" toward the then "terrorist" regime of Saddam Hussein.

"The theory [was] that the enemy of our enemy [was] our friend," said Juchniewicz.

"The basic decision was made March 15, 1982, when Iraq was taken off the [State Department's] terrorist list," recalled former Reagan NSC staff member Howard Teicher. "The political decision was made to help [the Iraqis] help themselves -- to show them how they were vulnerable."

Said former NSC staffer Geoffrey Kemp, "I don't recall ever seeing a [particular] piece of paper . . . . It was [more of] a hip pocket operation -- there was no formal agreement." Kemp recalled that "from time to time we provided intelligence to Iraq of what the Iranians, in a timely manner, were up to."

During the first two years, the intelligence was delivered by CIA operatives through "third countries," namely Jordan and Saudia Arabia, various officials recalled.

Said Kemp: "The tilt was absolutely justified . . . You have to remember the magnitude of the problem in the spring [of] 1982. The Iraqis had suffered stunning reversals on the battlefield. We were terrified" that vulnerable Kuwait was next. "The intelligence sharing was of tactical importance."

In 1983, the Reagan administration publicly launched "Operation Staunch" to stem the international flow of weapons to Iran only. In November 1984, President Reagan signed a still-secret National Security Decision Directive (NSDD), calling for direct "intelligence liaison" with Baghdad. The United States reopened its Baghdad embassy and intelligence began to flow.

According to recently convicted Iraqi arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian, who was in constant touch with Saddam and his generals in the early 1980s, "Sometimes [the intelligence] was good, and sometimes it was bad. The Iraqis felt that they [the U.S.] were playing both ends against the middle." But, Soghanalian recalled, "the Iraqis took whatever they offered."

The intelligence provided to Iraq, Juchniewicz said, "was short range tactical intelligence. Tactical. To keep Tehran out of Baghdad. To neutralize Iran, not to strengthen Iraq. The only thing the U.S. government did was to stop the collapse of Saddam's military. It was perfectly clear to us, and to the Israelis, that Iran was lusting after the Arab Gulf states. We could not allow that to happen."

But the flow of intelligence increased in 1986 to much higher quality data delivered in "almost real-time," (with very little time lag between the event and the intelligence) according to sources. The material included narrative text reports derived from highly-sensitive electronic intercepts and photo-reconnaissance of Iranian targets, according to several former intelligence officials.

The liaison proved remarkably resilient, surviving even the scandal that erupted with disclosure of the Reagan administration's secret arms-for-hostages deals with Iran and the May 1987 Iraqi attack on the U.S. warship Stark that killed 37 sailors. Despite these episodes, U.S. intelligence continued to flow to Baghdad "on a sporadic basis until [July] 1988 when the war between Iraq and Iran ended," according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the Gates nomination.

What precisely was provided to Iraq is still highly classified. Whether the material included actual satellite photographs is the subject of some controversy.

According to a retired military intelligence official and consultant familiar with satellite imagery and military matters, the Iraqis' knowledge of U.S. collection devices employed during the Iran-Iraq war could only have helped the Iraqis during the Gulf war three years later. "By knowing how we go about it, the layering of [satellite] passes -- they [probably] were able to work it back so they could employ deception. It gave them an enormous advantage."

After the Iran-Iraq war ended in July 1988, Gates has testified, "ourintelligence assets were shifted away." But when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, U.S spy satellites reappeared over the region. The nature of satellite "orbital parameters" could have easily become clear to the Iraqis, specialists said. "If a physicist in Berkeley with a slide rule can do it, the Iraqis certainly can," said William E. Burrows, author of "Deep Black," a book on satellite espionage..

Part of the worry about the material Iraq obtained relates to whether it was actual imagery from photo-satellites and communications intercepts from eavesdropping apparatus. The more precise the material, the more the Iraqis could glean from it in assessing U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities.

Juchniewicz, who left the CIA before the program was "upgraded" in 1986, said: "I saw one packet and it was all hand-drawn. I think they may have showed them the photos, but they sure wouldn't let them leave with it."

Acting CIA Director Kerr recently testified that the Iraqis were given "some line drawings" and that "imagery was shown."

Former NSC staffer Teicher thinks the question is irrelevant. "What are satellite photos if not computer generated diagrams? You can find out the altitude and figure out the focal length. It's not like they couldn't figure it out once you opened that Pandora's box."

One retired military intelligence official said the Iraqis may have been given an actual overhead photograph, although it was somewhat "sanitized," "I've heard that [the photograph] got down to vehicular size -- 2 meters to 1.5 meters resolution."

A CIA spokesman said the agency does not comment about U.S. intelligence-sharing arrangements. A White House spokesman declined to comment; an NSA spokesman said there would be "no comment" about the Iraq liaison program.

Soghanalian said recently he is certain that the United States supplied photographs. "They provided satellite photographs, not [just] diagrams."

"If somebody gave them actual photos they should be prosecuted," said Juchniewicz.

Some specialists have raised the possibility that Saddam shared his U.S. intelligence with his major arms benefactor, the Soviet Union. This could have benefited Soviet intelligence agencies in the years before the country was overtaken by internal crisis. The Soviets may have aided the Iraqis in finding ways to thwart U.S. espionage collection by analyzing the U.S. data.

"It is only reasonable to conclude, given the level of cooperation between Iraqis and Soviets, that they were privy to what Saddam knew, particularly [U.S.] intelligence," said former Pentagon official Frank Gaffney.

Even more sensitive than satellite reconnaissance is signals intelligence (sigint), interception and decryption of electronic signals and communications, the purview of NSA.

Juchniewicz said that until mid-1986, U.S. intelligence reports that went to the Iraqis usually contained "general numbers of tanks and troops, order of battle scenarios."

But after the liaison upgrade that summer, one source said, "the words [that] went with the diagrams" were a major improvement for the Iraqis. "The extent to which there was information on unit designations . . . . They could see how radio silence and land [telephone] lines worked; they could see the raw product and how it contrasted with what they received from their own intelligence."

"I do know they later received information derived from intercepts," said Teicher. "And then they buried their land lines." Underground lines are much harder to eavesdrop on than radio or landlines. Saddam even laid high-tech European-made fiber optic lines to all major commands, making them virtually surveillance-proof.

Said Neil Livingstone, a terrorism consultant, "The U.S. missed virtually every key element of the Iraqi special weapons and weapons of mass destruction -- much of the nuclear program, underestimated the count of the Scuds, and more importantly, the number of launchers. We missed a lot of targets." 

Scott Malone is an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter for PBS' Frontline, whose documentary, "The Man Who Made the Supergun," will be rebroadcast Nov. 26. [1991]