Obama’s Pentagon and C.I.A. Picks Show Shift in How U.S. Fights

Obama's Pentagon and C.I.A. Picks Show Shift in How U.S. Fights   By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT   WASHINGTON — President Obama's decision to send an intelligence chief to the Pentagon and a four-star general to the Central Intelligence Agency is the latest evidence of a significant shift over the past decade in how the United States fights its battles — the blurring of lines between soldiers and spies in secret American missions abroad.   On Thursday, Mr. Obama is expected to announce that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, will become secretary of defense, replacing Robert M. Gates, and that Gen. David H. Petraeus will return from Afghanistan to take Mr. Panetta's job at the C.I.A., a move that is likely to continue this trend.   As C.I.A. director, Mr. Panetta hastened the transformation of the spy agency into a paramilitary organization, overseeing a sharp escalation of the C.I.A.'s bombing campaign in Pakistan using armed drone aircraft, and an increase in the number of secret bases and covert operatives in remote parts of Afghanistan.    General Petraeus, meanwhile, has aggressively pushed the military deeper into the C.I.A.'s turf, using Special Operations troops and private security contractors to conduct secret intelligence missions. As commander of the United States Central Command in September 2009, he also signed a classified order authorizing American Special Operations troops to collect intelligence in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran and other places outside of traditional war zones.    The result is that American military and intelligence operatives are at times virtually indistinguishable from each other as they carry out classified operations in the Middle East and Central Asia. Some members of Congress have complained that this new way of war allows for scant debate about the scope and scale of military operations. In fact, the American spy and military agencies operate in such secrecy now that it is often hard to come by specific information about the American role in major missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and now Libya and Yemen.   The operations have also created tension with important allies like Pakistan, while raising fresh questions about whether spies and soldiers deserve the same legal protections.  Officials acknowledge that the lines between soldiering and spying have blurred. "It's really irrelevant whether you call it a covert action or a military special operation," said Dennis C. Blair, a retired four-star admiral and a former director of national intelligence.  "I don't really think there is any distinction."    The phenomenon of the C.I.A. becoming more like the Pentagon, and vice versa, has critics inside both organizations.  Some inside the C.I.A.'s clandestine service believe that its bombing campaign in Pakistan, which has become a cornerstone of the Obama administration's counterterrorism strategy, has distorted the agency's historic mission as a civilian espionage agency and turned it into an arm of the Defense Department.    Henry A. Crumpton, a career C.I.A. officer and formerly the State Department's top counterterrorism official, praised General Petraeus as "one of the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence." But Mr. Crumpton warned more broadly of the "militarization of intelligence" as current or former uniformed officers assume senior jobs in the sprawling American intelligence apparatus.   For example, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired Air Force general, is director of national intelligence, Mr. Obama's top intelligence adviser. Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, formerly the senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan, is soon expected to become one of Mr. Clapper's top deputies. "If the intelligence community is populated by military officers, they understandably are going to reflect their experiences," Mr. Crumpton said.   At the Pentagon, the new roles raise legal concerns. The more that soldiers are used for espionage operations overseas, the more they are at risk of being thrown in jail and denied Geneva Convention protections if they are captured by hostile governments.  And yet few believe that the trend is likely to be reversed. A succession of wars has strained the ranks of both the Pentagon and the C.I.A., and the United States has come to believe that many of its current enemies are best fought with timely intelligence rather than overwhelming military firepower.     These factors have pushed military and intelligence operatives more closely together in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "In the field, there is a blurring of the mission," said Senator Jack Reed, a senior Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee who served as an officer in the 82nd Airborne Division.  "Military operations can buy time to build up local security forces, but intelligence is the key to operations and for anticipating your adversary."  American officials said that, for the most part, the tensions and resentments were greatly reduced from the days when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld expanded Pentagon intelligence-gathering operations to become less dependent on the C.I.A.     The secret "Execute Order" signed by General Petraeus in September 2009 authorized American Special Operations troops to carry out reconnaissance missions and build up intelligence networks throughout the Middle East and Central Asia in order to "penetrate, disrupt, defeat and destroy" militant groups and "prepare the environment" for future American military attacks.  But that order greatly expanding the role of the military in spying was drafted in consultation with the C.I.A., administration officials said.    General Petraeus has worked closely with the C.I.A. since the Bosnia mission in the 1990s, a relationship that grew during his command tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, some of the missions he has overseen seem to have been more like clandestine operations than traditional military missions.    Even before General Petraeus took over as the leader of the military's Central Command overseeing Middle East operations nearly three years ago, he ordered a study of the threat posed by militants in a country few American policy makers had focused on — Yemen. Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen is now considered the most immediate threat to the United States.   The general's relationship with Yemen's mercurial president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was well documented in the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks last year.  And the military's operations there, beginning with airstrikes in December 2009, are shrouded in even more secrecy than the C.I.A.'s drone attacks in Pakistan.   Mr. Saleh, however, drew the line at General Petraeus's request to send American advisers to accompany Yemeni troops on counterterrorism operations. Now, with Mr. Saleh's government teetering on the verge of collapse, General Petraeus is taking over at the C.I.A. — and will once again be part of America's secret war in Yemen.   ================ Washington Post, Wednesday, April 27, 5:51 PM Petraeus would helm an increasingly militarized CIA By Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe Gen. David H. Petraeus has served as commander in two wars launched by the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. If confirmed as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Petraeus would effectively take command of a third — in Pakistan. Petraeus's nomination comes at a time when the CIA functions, more than ever in its history, as an extension of the nation's lethal military force.   CIA teams operate alongside U.S. special operations forces in conflict zones from Afghanistan to Yemen. The agency has also built up a substantial paramilitary capability of its own. But perhaps most significantly, the agency is in the midst of what amounts to a sustained bombing campaign over Pakistan using unmanned Predator and Reaper drones.   Since Obama took office there have been at least 192 drone missile strikes, killing as many as 1,890 militants, suspected terrorists and civilians. Petraeus is seen as a staunch supporter of the drone campaign, even though it has so far failed to eliminate the al-Qaeda threat or turn the tide of the Afghan war.   But if Petraeus is ideally suited to lead an increasingly militarized CIA, it is less clear whether he will be equally adept at managing the political, analytical and even diplomatic dimensions of the job. His nomination coincides with new strains in the CIA's relationship with its counterpart in Pakistan, and a chaotic reshuffling of the political landscape in the Middle East. If confirmed, he would be the CIA's fourth director in seven years.   "I think in a lot of ways Gen. Petraeus is the right guy for the agency given the way in which the operational side of the house has really increased" since the Sept. 11 attacks, said Andrew Exum, a military expert at Center for a New American Security, who has also served as an adviser to Petraeus's staff. "Having said that, I think where Gen. Petraeus will struggle will be looking at the broader global responsibilities of intelligence."   For Petraeus, Pakistan is likely to be a particularly nettlesome trouble spot. A series of recent ruptures — including the arrest of a CIA contractor in Pakistan — have undermined cooperation against al-Qaeda and prompted threats by Pakistan to place new limits on drone strikes. Petraeus has been a frequent visitor in Islamabad with key players, including Army Chief Ashfaq Kayani and intelligence director Ahmed Shuja Pasha. But he has engendered the resentment of Pakistani officials because of his demands that they do more against the Afghan Taliban. Many of them believe he is too transparently ambitious — a criticism that he has at times faced among his peers in the United States.   During an interview late last year in Islamabad, a high-ranking Pakistani intelligence official repeatedly referred to the U.S. commander as "Mr. Petraeus," refusing to acknowledge his military rank. "I call him Mr. Petraeus because he's less of a general and more of a politician," the official said, alluding to rumors that Petraeus might run for president. The Pakistani official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the interview dealt with sensitive intelligence matters between Pakistan and the United States.   Petraeus seems unlikely to encounter significant opposition from Capitol Hill. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which will consider the nomination, signaled support for Petraeus but stopped short of a formal endorsement. "He is clearly a very accomplished officer and familiar with the parts of the world where many of the threats to our security originate," Feinstein said in a statement. But being a military commander "is a different role than leading the top civilian intelligence agency," Feinstein said, adding that she would "look forward to hearing his vision for the CIA."   Petraeus's nomination triggered some grumbling among CIA veterans opposed to putting a career military officer in charge of an agency with a long tradition of civilian leadership. Others voiced concern that Petraeus is too wedded to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — and the troop-heavy, counterinsurgency strategy he designed — to deliver impartial assessments of those wars as head of the CIA.   Indeed, over the past year the CIA has generally presented a more pessimistic view of the war in Afghanistan than Petraeus has while he has pushed for an extended troop buildup. "The question is, what does [the administration] want the intelligence service to be?" said a former senior CIA officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Are they going to have a civilian intelligence service or is it going to be a giant counterterrorism center?"   Obama administration officials said that Petraeus would retire from the military to take the CIA job. Even so, a U.S. official close to the general said he is likely to view running the agency largely through the prism of his experience as a wartime commander. The official said Petraeus would likely make frequent visits to CIA stations around the world, and defer to the Director of National Intelligence on Washington-based issues such as budgets and big-ticket technology programs.   Petraeus has spent relatively little time in Washington over the past decade and doesn't have as much experience with managing budgets or running Washington bureaucracies as CIA predecessors Leon E. Panetta and Michael V. Hayden. But Petraeus has quietly lobbied for the CIA post, drawn in part by the chance for a position that would keep him involved in the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Yemen.   As top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, Petraeus has relied heavily on CIA and special operations forces to capture and kill mid-level and senior insurgent leaders. But he has insisted that the targeted strikes be a part of a broader and more comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign — putting him at odds with advocates of a more surgical approach, including Vice President Biden.   Petraeus, 58, is intensely organized and has relied on a network of trusted advisers, many with biographies similar to his own, with stints in combat units, graduate school and teaching at West Point. CIA veterans said it would be a mistake for Petraeus to arrive with an entourage. "If you look like you're coming in to fix us and show us how to do things," one former official said, "the antibodies start rejecting the transplant."