Fanaticism in US Intelligence Gathering Undermines Civilian Decency — Is Wrecking Trust to Save it a Good Idea?

© 2015 Peter Free

 

05 November 2015

 

 

Citations — to pertinent background material

 

Matthew Cole, The Pentagon’s Missionary Spies: U.S. Military Used Christian NGO as Front for North Korea Espionage, The Intercept (26 October 2015)

 

Philip Giraldi, The Pentagon’s Unholy Alliance with Missionaries, American Conservative (03 November 2015) (summarizes the above cited primary source)

 

 

Stab the good guys in the back, why don’t you?

 

An ordinarily non-profane Christian might exclaim “Jesus Christ!” — when informed of American government’s too frequently indulged back-stabbing idiocy.

 

For example, in December 2004, the Pentagon apparently decided that leaving foreign intelligence to the CIA demeaned the military’s already bloated importance. Brass hats embarked on a program to use Christian missionaries as a front for spying in North Korea:

 

 

The secret Pentagon program . . . . was the brainchild of a senior Defense Department intelligence official of the Bush administration, Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin [see here].

 

Boykin, an evangelical Christian who ran into criticism in 2003 for his statements about Islam . . .

 

That’s where HISG [Humanitarian International Services Group] came in.

 

In its first two years, HISG was little more than a fledgling [Christian] faith-based charity.

 

At the time the Pentagon program launched, the NGO [non-governmental organization] had been responsible for many shipments of medical equipment, clothing, and disaster relief supplies around the world.

 

[D]onated clothing was the kind of faith-based donation the North Korean government would occasionally accept to help its population endure the country’s harsh winters.

 

Unbeknownst to the North Korean government, however, underneath the [HISG] clothing was a hidden compartment containing scores of bibles.

 

“We sent the bibles in as a test run,” a former senior Pentagon official told me. “They got through without the North Koreans discovering them.”

 

In 2012, now-retired Adm. William McRaven, the commander of the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida, who oversaw the Osama bin Laden raid, shut down the North Korea spying program.

 

“McRaven told us he shut it down because he was nervous about the flap if it ever got out that the Pentagon had used a bunch of evangelicals and missionaries as spies,” said one former military officer, adding that if the program had produced better intelligence McRaven would have considered keeping it up and running.

 

© 2015 Matthew Cole, The Pentagon’s Missionary Spies: U.S. Military Used Christian NGO as Front for North Korea Espionage, The Intercept (26 October 2015) (resequenced extracts)

 

 

What’s the problem with General Boykin’s ingenuity, Pete?

 

Former CIA and military intelligence officer Philip Giraldi explains the downside attached to trust-destroying duplicity:

 

 

When the Pentagon sought to exploit a religious charity to infiltrate North Korea, all kinds of red flags should have gone up. But they did not because [General] Boykin was relying on his personal relationships and his status as a former head of Delta Force to make the operation untouchable.

 

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who served on the Intelligence Committee at the time, insists that no one in Congress was briefed.

 

She commented astutely on the downside to the operation, observing that

 

“…to use unwitting aid workers on behalf of an intelligence operation, people who genuinely do humanitarian work, to turn their efforts into intel collection is unacceptable.

 

“Now we have people who have been hired to do some good work and become unwitting accomplices to an intelligence mission? They can face all kinds of retaliation. It is completely unacceptable.”

 

Intelligence officers and combat arms soldiers pride themselves on being able to “get the job done” in spite of all obstacles, which often blinds them to the consequences of their actions.

 

Boykin, a product of that tradition . . . inevitably failed to recognize that the eventual exposure of the scheme would produce a reaction among foreigners who are already inclined to be suspicious of proselytizing Christians.

 

Using a Christian charity to spy puts at risk all the employees and volunteers linked to that specific organization while helping propagate the myth that any indigenous Christian is a potential traitor.

 

© 2015 Philip Giraldi, The Pentagon’s Unholy Alliance with Missionaries, American Conservative (03 November 2015) (extracts)

 

Which obviously makes life difficult for good-hearted people. You know, the very folk the planet could use more of.

 

 

An example illustrating my point

 

Fanaticism leads to impenetrable brainlessness from otherwise capable people:

 

 

[T]he risk of using legitimate aid workers as cover for spying has had deadly repercussions.

 

In 2011, the CIA directed a Pakistani doctor to collect DNA samples of the suspected family members of Osama bin Laden under the guise of a hepatitis vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

 

After the raid, the Pakistani doctor was arrested and imprisoned by Pakistani authorities, and the Taliban later killed several medical professionals who were trying to conduct polio eradication campaigns, along with their guards.

 

Cases of polio, which has been eradicated in almost every country in the world, have spiked in Pakistan in recent years.

 

“The reward is almost zero given the risk because using NGOs — especially unwitting [ones] — produces very weak intelligence,” said Robert Baer, the retired CIA officer.

 

© 2015 Matthew Cole, The Pentagon’s Missionary Spies: U.S. Military Used Christian NGO as Front for North Korea Espionage, The Intercept (26 October 2015) (extracts)

 

 

If only we could identify our behinds with both hands

 

Rabidly self-righteous military and intelligence folk do not understand that wrecking social trust destroys free society and its place in an often hostile world.

 

Fear so focuses us on our purported enemies that we obliterate the essence of what we are presumably trying to protect.

 

 

The moral? — We are apparently willingly let these nutcases govern us

 

And we were saying that the United States is a shining light to the world?

 

Our government is (too often) not even a beacon to the goodness in ourselves.