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| Experts call for SOCOM, CIA to share personnel |
| 2009-03-06 |
| Special Forces soldiers and Central Intelligence Agency operatives could soon be moving seamlessly between the military and intelligence realms if Congress follows advice it received Tuesday. The special operations community and the CIA each would benefit from a much closer integration of their personnel, Roger Carstens, a recently retired Special Forces lieutenant colonel who is a non-resident fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and Robert Martinage, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee's terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities subcommittee. Martinage, who authored an 82-page report titled "Special Operations Forces -- Future Challenges and Opportunities" that was published in November, argued for "increased institutionalized cooperation between the CIA and SOCOM [i.e. U.S. Special Operations Command], including hybrid career paths, so people could go back and forth between the two." "Ideally, personnel should not only be able to move back and forth from CIA stations and SOF ground units, but also to compete for selected mid- and senior-level leadership positions in either organization," Martinage said. The Defense Department should "migrate Special Forces [units] over to the CIA," suggested Carstens, who conducted a yearlong study of the U.S. special operations community for CNAS in 2008. "I'm not talking about just onesies and twosies," he said. "Why not take a Special Forces company and just plop them down in Virginia and say, 'When you go to that company, you're spending a three year-long tour working for the agency'?" CIA operatives as well as members of other government agencies, could also serve on A-teams, the 12-man units also known as operational detachments-alpha, or ODAs, that are the lowest echelon of command in Special Forces, Carstens said. Such arrangements would have multiple benefits, they said. What Martinage termed "flexible and routine detailing of SOF personnel" to the CIA would allow special operations forces to use the agency's Title 50 foreign intelligence authorities, which permit covert activities in which the U.S. role is hidden, he said. The same would be true if a CIA operative was serving on an A-team, according to Carstens, who noted that adding a State Department representative would give the A-team access to authorities under Title 22, the section of the U.S. Code that covers foreign relations. Seconding a Special Forces company to the ground branch of the CIA's Special Activities Division would give the agency "a resident capability in foreign internal defense, which is not a bad thing," Carstens said. Foreign internal defense is the training of host-nation security forces in counterinsurgency and related techniques. Any special operators detailed to the agency "would also benefit from being exposed to the tradecraft of National Clandestine Service personnel," Martinage said in his prepared remarks. Contacted by Army Times, U.S. SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw declined to answer questions on the relationship between the CIA and special operations forces. "The Central Intelligence Agency is one of U.S. Special Operations Command's key interagency partners," he wrote in an e-mail "It would be inappropriate to discuss the details of that partnership or speculate how the CIA and special operations forces may or may not integrate in the future." Obviously somebody ain't read'n the tea leaves. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #6 But haven't they played together before? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-03-06 23:17 |
| #5 The Carstens-Martinage Plan: Cat. Bell. Some assembly required. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2009-03-06 23:13 |
| #4 Dogs and cats...sleeping together. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-03-06 18:39 |
| #3 They probably want to attach a lawyer to each A team so the terrorists' rights don't get violated. |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2009-03-06 16:11 |
| #2 Need political commissars to watch the guardians of the republic? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-03-06 14:29 |
| #1 And I'm sure most members of Congress consider themselves experts on this subject, as they've watched "The Unit" and "24"... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2009-03-06 13:31 |