CIA STEPS UP ROLE IN SYRIA
CIA’s role shifting from ‘finishing’ to ‘fixing’ targets for strikes
The CIA and U.S. special operations forces have launched a secret campaign to hunt terrorism suspects in Syria as part of a targeted killing program that is run separately from the broader U.S. military offensive against ISIL, U.S. officials said.
The CIA and the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command are both flying armed drones over Syria in a collaboration responsible for several recent strikes against senior ISIL operatives, the officials said. Among those killed was a British militant believed to be an architect of the terror group’s effort to use social media to incite attacks in the United States, the officials said.
The clandestine program represents a significant escalation of the CIA’s involvement in the war in Syria, enlisting the agency’s powerful Counterterrorism Center against a militant group that many officials believe has eclipsed al-Qaida as a threat.
But while the CTC has been given an expanded role in identifying and locating senior ISIL figures, U.S. officials said that the strikes are being carried out exclusively by JSOC. The officials said the program is aimed at terrorism suspects deemed “high value targets.”
“These people are being identified and targeted through a separate effort,” said a senior U.S. official familiar with the operation, referring to the British militant, Junaid Hussain, and others killed in a recent weeks. Spokesmen for the CIA and U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees JSOC, declined to comment. Other officials would only discuss the program on condition of anonymity.
The decision to enlist the CIA and JSOC reflects rising anxiety among U.S. counterterrorism officials about the danger posed by ISIL, as well as frustration with the failure so far of conventional strikes to degrade the group’s strength.
Against that backdrop, the Obama administration has turned again to two of its preferred weapons against terror groups: the CTC, which pioneered the use of armed drones and led the search for Osama bin Laden, and JSOC, which includes the elite commando unit that carried out the raid that killed the al-Qaida chief.
Their new adversary, however, poses different challenges. Unlike al-Qaida, ISIL has extensive territory, a seemingly endless stream of recruits, and a deep roster of senior operatives, many of whom served in the military of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
The U.S. move complicates one of Obama’s remaining counterterrorism policy goals of gradually reversing the CIA’s evolution from spy service to paramilitary force. U.S. President Barack Obama last year signalled his intent to have the agency cede control of drone strikes to the U.S. Department of Defense, and return the spy service’s focus to more traditional categories of espionage.
Instead, Syria is a new front in a spreading campaign of secret operations and drone strikes that already encompasses Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and parts of North Africa.
Peter Boogaard, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said that Obama remains committed to increasing the transparency of counter-terrorism operations by “turning to the U.S. military to take the lead and to provide information to the public.” But he said the effort would be “carried out in a manner that does not degrade our ability to leverage the full range of counterterrorism capabilities.”
He declined to comment on operations in Syria.
The White House had sought in recent months to revive its plan to shift control of drone operations to the Pentagon, but encountered renewed opposition on Capitol Hill. Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee responded with a classified letter warning against any effort to reduce the CIA’s role in tracking terrorists.
Senior members of the House intelligence and armed services panels — concerned about preserving their jurisdictions over strikes and right to be notified — also wrote to express reservations.
Faced with those obstacles, administration officials now see the hybrid approach in Syria as a possible way to salvage at least part of Obama’s plan. The agency will remain deeply involved in “finding and fixing” terrorism targets in collaboration with JSOC but will leave the “finish” to the military, at least in Syria, officials said, using insider terms for the strike sequence.
U.S. officials said there is no plan to impose that template in Pakistan or Yemen, where the agency operates fleets of armed drones largely autonomously. But officials said that the cooperation between the CIA and JSOC in Syria is increasingly seen as a model that could be employed in future conflicts.
The officials said that the program accounts for only a handful of strikes so far, a tiny fraction of the more than 2,450 conducted in Iraq and Syria over the past year. That broader U.S.-led assault has relied on conventional bombs to dislodge ISIL from territory it has seized.
The CIA and JSOC program is more narrow in scope, officials said, aimed primarily at leadership figures in ISIL as well as operatives suspected of being involved in efforts to build a terror network beyond the borders of its declared caliphate. Al-Qaida militants are also approved targets.
Hussain, the 21-year-old British militant killed last month, was moved toward the top of the target list after being linked to one of two gunmen killed in Garland, Texas, this year after opening fire at a cartoon contest that invited participants to draw pictures of the prophet Muhammad.
Hussain is not known to have been directly involved in ISIL’s gruesome beheadings of Western hostages or other violence. The decision to kill him makes clear that even militants only involved in ISIL’s media efforts are regarded as legitimate U.S. military targets.
In the past, the Obama administration has stressed that it was not targeting terrorist suspects only involved in propaganda. When Anwar al-Awlaki, an American cleric, was killed in Yemen in 2011, officials emphasized that he had become directly involved in terrorist operations.
A U.S. official said that Hussain “was at the forefront of the effort to inspire and direct attacks, especially through social media, in the United States.” Hussain was tracked in part by monitoring his online activities, according to officials who said that the British government had been consulted on the decision to make him a target.
The clandestine program represents a significant escalation of the CIA’s involvement in the war in Syria.