shotbanner.jpeg

February 28, 2006

Deutsch Für "Karma"

The upper ranks of the Analysis wing of the Central Intelligence Agency, according to agency critics, are occupied by people who graduated from universities in the late sixties through the mid-seventies, the height of the counterculture. Many were "inspired" to careers in "public service" by the likes of John F. Kennedy. Following the template set by Bill Donovan, father of the CIA (leader of the OSS during WWII), most were recruited from Ivy League campuses - never accused of excessive conservative hotbed-idity.

They cut their teeth in the intelligence analysis and leadership business in a Washington, DC run by people scarcely a generation removed from Donovan, but vastly descended from him; people who played the bureaucratic game for keeps.

Of course, they grew to preside over an intelligence agency that muffed the North Vietnamese 1975 Offensive, fall of the Shah, the spread of communism through Africa and Latin America, the fall of Nicaragua, the deployment of Soviet combat troops to Cuba, the rise of Khomeini, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of Marcos (Reagan had to field that fumble - and fortunately ran it back for a touchdown), the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR (it appears that Reagan, Thatcher and the Pope may have bypassed the CIA for their destabilization missions), the onset and denouement of the Russian Coup, the deterioration of post-Tito Yugoslavia, Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Iraqi WMD production, and the growth and planning of Al Quaeda. But they certainly got the tactics of bureaucratic turf war down cold.

And then there's Germany.

This Guardian article follows up on a recent NYT story tracing German Intelligence's involvement in the liberation of Iraq.

I have a theory.

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (the BND, Federal Intelligence Service) cut its teeth in the Cold War; West Germany, the Bundesrepublik, was the front line in more than just metaphor. Warsaw Pact intelligence services criscrossed the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany, the anglicization of Bundesrepublic Deutschland, West Germany's official name), gathering information on their next potential enemy, and funding pro-communist groups to weaken the nation's resolve either politically (the German Communist Party, the Social Democrats, and the Greens were all accused of getting funding from the USSR in one degree or another) or otherwise (so were the Baader-Meinhof gang).

German governments whipsawed all over the place during the Cold War, from leftists (Willi Brandt) to relative conservatives (Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl); German policy occasionally wobbled all over the place (selling submarines to Israel but coddling the PLO; decrying proliferation and dictatorship but selling technology to the likes of Iraq; building one of the West's best armies in the sixties and seventies, but unable to respond to a civil war practically on their doorstep in the nineties; standing firm against the USSR, but trading with Cuba). But through it all, one thing stayed steady (from what I've read, and heard from friends familiar with the situation); the BND, like the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces), remembered their friends in the US.

I'm not sure if that's what's behind this story - but I would not be surprised if residual back-channel loyalties to old ideological and practical friends is as much a factor in the BND as it is in the CIA:

The US military study is explicit about Germany's role. It says: "The US obtained the sketch on Feb 03. The overlay [plastic sheet] was provided in February to the German Intel LNO [liaison officer] in Qatar, who provided it to DIA's [the Defence Intelligence Agency's] rep in Centcom Forward... DIA forwarded it to Centcom J2 [the intelligence division] in Feb."
Note: The DIA. Not the CIA. They (if my thesis is correct) know who their friends are.
The revelation undermines a German official report last week intended to end the controversy. That report said German agents had provided some intelligence, but suggested that it was very limited and dealt mainly with humanitarian and religious sites at risk from US air raids.

Parliamentary opposition parties - Communists, Greens and the centre-right Free Democrats - held talks yesterday on whether to launch a joint investigation of the New York Times report.

Joerg Van Essen, the Free Democrats' chief whip, said: "We have the impression that they helped the Americans and the English more than they told us, and more than their official policy was."

Wow. An intelligence service that ideologically opposes their leadership?

Who'da thunk it?

Elmar Brok, a German Christian Democrat who chairs the European parliament's foreign affairs committee, said that if the report turned out to be true, questions would have to be raised about the German secret services' honesty. He said: "I hope it's not true because then the credibility of Schröder and [Joschka] Fischer [the foreign minister at the time of the war] would be totally destroyed."
This is an interesting quote.

The CDU is the party of current Bundeskanzler Angela Merkel. They are, by German standards, conservative, and certainly more pro-American than the SDP (Sozialdemokraten, Gerhard Schröder's left-wing Social Democrats) or the Grüne (Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's Greens). One might suspect Herr Brok is crying crocodile tears over the damage the revelations might cause Schröder and Fischer.

What does this mean? I'm theorizing here: It means that at least a part of Europe is pushing back against the dark night, against the soothing oblivion that is swallowing the continent as we speak. It means that a part of the German bureaucracy remembers who brung 'em to the dance (and kept that smelly Russian from raping them in the parking lot).

I could be wrong. It happens.

But if I'm right, I'm officially tickled pink.

Posted by Mitch at February 28, 2006 08:01 AM | TrackBack
Comments

I had heard that the upper ranks of the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc., were/are filled with graduates of Jesuit universities - Georgetown, Fordham, Boston College, Xavier, etc.

Posted by: Kevin at February 28, 2006 11:58 AM

Reading the history of Donovan, the OSS and the CIA, the key roots were in the Ivy League.

Posted by: mitch at February 28, 2006 12:11 PM

Isn't Xavier a black college? I didn't know there were that many black Jesuits.

I also wonder if the thing with German intelligence "going behind the politician's backs" is an effect from the post-war mentality, which emphasis action or non-action from moral principles? I'm sure I'm muffing this, I'm referring to the "only following orders" backlash.

Slight off-topic: the thing about Germans selling Israel subs - I've been wondering for a couple years now, how things would be affected in the mid-east if Israel got their hands on a nuke sub to ensure a 2nd strike capability. I'd really like to see comment on this.

Posted by: Bill Haverberg at February 28, 2006 12:36 PM

The Germans supplied the Israeli's with 3 Dolphin-class diesel-fueled submarines after the first Iraq War. The Germans gave them to the Israelis gratis as an apology for assisting Sadam with certain weapons programs. Dolphin class subs are not considered ICBM-capable but there are persistent rumors that the Israeli's have modified the subs to launch missiles through their torpedo tubes (!).
I think Mitch is being too hard on the bundeswehr. Until the 90's, and to some extent even today, it is more of an adjunct to NATO rather than a fully independent military force. Nevertheless it has units operating in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Sudan. On our side :)

Posted by: Terry at February 28, 2006 08:21 PM

There's a Xavier in Ohio, and a Xavier in New Orleans.

Posted by: Douglas at February 28, 2006 10:50 PM

"...the credibility of Schröder and Fischer would be totally destroyed."

How would anyone be able to tell?

Posted by: Doug Sundseth at March 1, 2006 10:44 AM

Hehe! Good work! -ipod nano
ipod nano

Posted by: ipod nano at April 5, 2006 03:55 PM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?
hi