Hitting the Iranian Nuclear Program – Just Where Would That Intelligence Come From?

Press reports increasingly point to the possibility that the United States, probably in cooperation with Israel, will opt to “take out” Iranian facilities affiliated with its advancing nuclear weapons program. The strikes will likely take place shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration. A move to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is certainly welcome, but it begs one question.

Who will provide the intelligence that will allow us to pinpoint the facilities that need to be hit? If the Israelis do in fact have that intel that is grand. If the Iranians have been so sloppy as to design their nuke facilities so they can be detected from orbit that would be welcome. If someone believes we have the spies in place to provide the needed intel they are ignoring the sad state of our human intelligence collection.

Patrick Leigh Fermor was a British intelligence officer in the Second World War. He operated behind enemy lines on the island of Crete. He and his partner Stanley Moss carried out one of the most brilliant intelligence operations in history. Dressed as German soldiers they set up a fake checkpoint on a road, stopped the car of the commanding general of all German forces on the island, and kidnapped him.

They then evaded capture by thousands of German troops sent into the field to find the general, hiked over a rugged mountain range, and delivered the general to a British vessel which spirited him away to Egypt where he spent the rest of the war in a prisoner of war camp. The op was brilliant, daring, and flawlessly executed.

The chances it would be approved by today’s American intelligence bureaucracy are nil. The chances Fermor would even have been sent to Crete are equally small. The memos requesting approval would probably still be circulating in Washington.

The world of intelligence is one of shades of gray, ambiguity, and thinking “outside the box”. It requires creative, flexible minds operating in a flat, nimble structure capable of moving very quickly and exploiting fleeting moments of opportunity. All of this requires someone who has impeccable gut instincts, can make decisions on the fly very quickly, and can navigate through a maze of mirrors and tolerate extremely high degrees of ambiguity.

We have forgotten all of this. We have done our best to turn the IC into just another federal bureaucracy. We recruit people based on skin color and sexual persuasion. Training has been softened and turned into a glorified “outward bound” experience. Everyone is fungible. Ops are run by committee.

Operations are buried under endless layers of middle management. In many cases, these middle managers will only have left Northern Virginia for a handful of short trips abroad. They have no idea how to run an op or recruit a source. They are bureaucrats. They could just as easily be shuffling paper at the Social Security Administration.

Everything we have done since 9/11 has made the problem worse. We have added new layers of bureaucracy and process. Once the only thing that mattered was mission accomplishment. Now that is largely irrelevant. The entire edifice marinates in a culture of timidity and risk aversion.

Our Intelligence Community is meant to do what everyone else considers impossible. It is supposed to be run by people who want to steal the crown jewels and will if you tell them to. Not anymore. Now it is run by individuals who look for ops with no possible downside and, therefore, by definition have no particular upside either.

We cannot put a source inside a Chinese bio lab or the leadership structure of Al Qaeda or in an Iranian nuclear weapons lab. That requires daring, speed and real-world experience. We have none of those things. We have PowerPoint presentations and endless layers of review.

And, of course, now we have DEI and all that goes with it. Chiefs of Station are chosen based on their adherence to the new dogma of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, not operational accomplishment. Managers and leaders are terrified of taking action against officers who do not produce for fear of being accused of violating someone’s rights or disturbing their “work-life balance”.

An outfit that used to be a brutal meritocracy in which only mission accomplishment mattered has devolved into a soft, inert mass incapable of doing its job. The danger this poses to the republic can hardly be overemphasized. We must act immediately to restore our ability to collect the critical intelligence we need.

End DEI and Reform Recruitment - Recruiting must be completely revamped. Quotas are absurd. Focusing on color, gender or sexual orientation is at best irrelevant. We want the best, and that means those people with that unique blend of skills and abilities to do what everyone else considers impossible.

Toughen Training - Training must be toughened. The world is a dangerous place. It is getting more dangerous by the day. We expect our operational personnel to crawl into the belly of the beast, get the intel we need, and come back alive. They need to be tough enough and well-trained enough to do that.

Demand Results - The records of every single person in a command position in the IC, both at headquarters and in the field should be reviewed. Those individuals who made rank by playing it safe and currying favor with superiors back home should be immediately removed. They should be replaced by individuals with the brains, guts and audacity to do the needful. If they don’t get the job done, they should be replaced in turn.

There can be only one measure of success – results. We are not interested in PowerPoint presentations or wiring diagrams. We are interested in intelligence which gives us a decisive advantage over our adversaries.

All of this needs to happen immediately. There can be no more blue-ribbon panels or interminable outside reviews. We know what the problems are. We know how to fix them. What we have lacked until now is the willingness to do what we must and confront the challenges we face.

Only an effective IC has a prayer of providing the necessary insight into these and many other threats. We have no time to waste in getting back to fighting trim.

You want to hit the Iranian nuclear weapons program? Where do you think the necessary intel is coming from?