Coming Wars article confirmed despite efforts of Pentagon attack dogs

Despite the efforts of the Pentagon and its attack dogs and their extraordinary smear campaign against Seymour Hersh for his article last week in The New Yorker, (for example, Richard Perle--who thinks of Hersh as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist"--told Charlie Rose: "It was a typical Sy Hersh piece. That is to say it was full of inaccuracy.") Hersh's allegations have been confirmed this week by the Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN. See excerpts below...


Washington Post: Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain
New Espionage Branch Delving Into CIA Territory

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page A01
(excerpts from the article:)

The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.

Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.

The Strategic Support Branch was created to provide Rumsfeld with independent tools for the "full spectrum of humint operations," according to an internal account of its origin and mission. Human intelligence operations, a term used in counterpoint to technical means such as satellite photography, range from interrogation of prisoners and scouting of targets in wartime to the peacetime recruitment of foreign spies. A recent Pentagon memo states that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.

Perhaps the most significant shift is the Defense Department's bid to conduct surreptitious missions, in friendly and unfriendly states, when conventional war is a distant or unlikely prospect -- activities that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Senior Rumsfeld advisers said those missions are central to what they called the department's predominant role in combating terrorist threats.


NY Times: Pentagon Sends Its Spies to Join Fight on Terror

By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: January 24, 2005
(excerpts from the article:)

ASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The Pentagon has created battlefield intelligence units that for the first time have been assigned to work directly with Special Operations forces on secret counterterrorism missions, tasks that had been largely the province of the Central Intelligence Agency, senior Defense Department officials said Sunday.


CNN: Pentagon runs clandestine intelligence-gathering infrastructure

From Barbara Starr
CNN
Monday, January 24, 2005
Posted: 1:32 PM EST (1832 GMT)
(excerpts from the article:)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency since 2002 has run a beefed-up intelligence-gathering and support unit that has authority to operate clandestinely anywhere in the world where it is ordered to go in support of anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism missions, a senior defense official said Sunday.

The official said the role of the Strategic Support Branch -- described first in Sunday's Washington Post -- "is to provide an intelligence capability for field operation units" including the U.S. military's secretive special forces unit.
The Strategic Support Branch (SSB) got its name in 2004 after operating under a different, undisclosed name before then, said the official, who confirmed the unit's existence and mission to CNN.