New York Times, 22 Feb 10: The nation’s main counterterrorism center, created in response to the intelligence failures in the years before Sept. 11, is struggling because of flawed staffing and internal cultural clashes, according to a new study financed by Congress. The result, the study concludes, is a lack of coordination and communication among the agencies that are supposed to take the lead in planning the fight against terrorism, including the C.I.A. and the State Department. . . .
. . . . The new report found that the center’s planning arm did not have enough authority to do its main job of coordinating the White House’s counterterrorism priorities. The center’s planning operation is supposed to be staffed by representatives of various agencies, but not all of them send their best and brightest, the report said. It also cited examples in which the C.I.A. and the State Department did not even participate in some plans developed by the center that were later criticized for lacking important insights those agencies could offer. As a result, the center’s planning arm “has been forced to develop national plans without the expertise of some of the most important players,” the report determined. . . .
PBS NewsHour, 25 Jan 10: Luis Rueda spent 28 years in the CIA, mostly as a case officer and station chief in the field, including in the Middle East and South Asia. His last assignment was deputy director for counterintelligence at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, where he dealt with double agent operations and tradecraft security. He retired on January 1, on the heels of the foiled Christmas Day airliner plot and the deadly double agent attack on a remote CIA outpost in Afghanistan. . . .
. . . . MARGARET WARNER: Now, if we then add the Jordanian double agent suicide bombing in which seven CIA officers, your former colleagues, were killed, what does that tell us about al-Qaida’s capabilities today?
LUIS RUEDA: I think it tells us the same thing. These types of double agent operations tend to be fairly sophisticated. It requires a good degree of planning and mental execution. It shows us that the adversary is growing in its own sophistication, running different types of operations. And, as we hit them in certain areas, as we neutralize their capability, they shift to other things.
MARGARET WARNER: The fact that they were running a counterintelligence operation against the U.S., I mean, is this new for them?
LUIS RUEDA: When al-Qaida started out its terrorist activities, their intelligence operations tended to be tactical collection operation, collecting on a target, trying to find out timings and how to attack a target. These types of double agent operations are a level above that. And what we are seeing now is a growing sophistication, at least in the intelligence realm of the enemy. It also shows, I think, that we are, as a government and as an agency, having an impact on them, because it is forcing them to strike at what they perceive as some of their main enemies.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, have they tried this sort of thing before, sending a false agent or volunteer?
LUIS RUEDA: We have always seen a degree of bad cases, cases that have been sent against us. Hard to tell whether it was bad from the beginning, when they volunteered, or they turned bad. We see the sophistication. But this, I think, is on a level a little bit above that, where there was a very clear plan to take action against that facility. So, I think this is probably a little bit more serious.
MARGARET WARNER: Now, Bruce Riedel, who is also a former CIA officer, said — late last week, he said, “Once you discover the enemy is running counterintelligence against you, you have to ask, how many of our other assets aren’t who we think they are?” Do you think that is a danger?
LUIS RUEDA: That is always a danger. And I think it is a danger that the agency is very well aware of. It does spend a lot of time reviewing the cases, vetting the cases, validating the cases. And I can guarantee you they are doing that right now, reviewing all the cases to see who is good and who is bad, what the signs are. The problem is, we’re engaged in a war. And at no time in anybody’s history have you won every single battle against an adversary. Every now and then, they will win one. They will get one through. We can’t guarantee 100 percent security. We understand that. That is the risk we take.
MARGARET WARNER: So, if you take these two recent attacks, if you take other things they have been doing this past year, do you think al-Qaida is stronger or weaker than it was five years ago?
LUIS RUEDA: I think it is — again, it’s one of these things that it is not a clear-cut answer, and it is one of the unsatisfying answers. But, clearly, al-Qaida is weaker in its command-and-control and sophisticated operations, the types we saw on 9/11, the types we saw where they tried to bomb five airliners coming in from Great Britain. They have been weakened in that area. But they have also adapted and grown in sophistication in things like counterintelligence and intelligence operations. You can see that the biggest threat right now is within Afghanistan. They are feeling the pain. They are feeling the hurt. They are trying to survive. The Christmas bombing, while dangerous, also shows that, you know, one half-assed operation can cause significant damage. But it was an operation that demonstrated a lack of expertise and professionalism that we had become accustomed to with al-Qaida. So, I — the answer is both. . . . .
