CIA
Approaching Tibet
In western China, the low-grade civil war that has brewed for decades in Tibet has recently expanded. The upcoming 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising of 1959, combined with China’s Olympic games this summer, have created an environment that Tibetan separatists believe to be especially conducive to achieving their goals. The emotional power of the date and the chance to act while China is incapable of closing itself off due to the presence of foreign journalists have emboldened activists both within and outside Tibet. As a result, the protests now threaten to erupt into a full-scale rebellion that could create widespread violence across the four provinces with large populations of ethnic Tibetans.
Revisiting Intelligence Reform
As the Bush administration winds up nearly seven years of intelligence fiascos, a quiet revolution has been going on at the Pentagon, which controls more than 80% of America’s $60 billion intelligence budget. Since taking over from Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense in winter 2006, Robert Gates has greatly scaled down the Pentagon’s footprint on national security policy and intelligence. Working closely with Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Michael McConnell, he has slowly begun to assert civilian control over the key spy agencies funded by the defense budget and halted the Pentagon’s efforts to create its own intelligence apparatus independent of the CIA. The recent intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, in contradicting early administration assertions, is perhaps the most significant sign of this newly won independence.
Those are significant actions. Under Rumsfeld, the Pentagon had become the dominant force in U.S. intelligence, with vast new powers in human intelligence and counterterrorism, both at home and abroad. By 2005, it was deploying secret commando units on clandestine missions in countries as far afield as the Philippines and Ecuador, sometimes without consulting with the local U.S. ambassadors and CIA station chiefs. At some point, President George W. Bush and his national security team apparently decided that the genie had to be put in the bottle, and sent Gates – a former CIA director who had worked closely with Vice President Dick Cheney during the first Bush administration – to put the kibosh on Rumsfeld’s private intelligence army.
Enabling the Indonesian Military
This is a tale about politics, influence, money and murder. It began more than 40 years ago with a bloodletting so massive that no one quite knows how many people died. Half a million? A million? Through four decades, the story of the relationship between the United States and the Indonesian military has left a trail of misery and terror. Last month it claimed four peasants, one of them a 27-year-old mother. Unless Congress puts the brakes on the Bush administration’s plans to increase aid and training for the Indonesian army, there will be innumerable victims in the future as well.
China: What’s the Big Mystery?
The latest recruitment brochure from the Central Intelligence Agency, which beckons the uninitiated to Âbe a part of a mission that’s larger than all of us, opens to reveal an image of the red-roofed entrance to Beijing’s Forbidden City. From an oversized portrait on the ancient wall, Chairman Mao and his Mona Lisa smile behold the vast granite expanse of Tiananmen Square. The Cold War is over, and the Soviet Union is gone. The cloak-and-dagger games of Berlin and Prague have been replaced by business and tourism. But ChinaÂland of ancient secrets, autocratic leaders, and memories of suppressed uprisingsÂstill holds out the promise of world-historical struggle that can help the CIA meet its recruitment goals.
Rumsfeld Out, Gates In?
The change in control of both houses of Congress was not the only bad news for George Bush. The day after the election, he announced the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense and the nomination of Robert Gates as his successor.