OPINION: Why Benghazi Keeps Me Up At Night

I got to thinking again about Benghazi.  Actually, that damn city has been on my mind for months.  I digress.  I kept thinking tonight about why the intelligence community (IC) would redact its knowledge of the attackers being terrorists.  It's a common question among many "Benghazi-gate" - as I like to call them - "DIY investigators".

Here's my take:

• The IC allegedly received an intelligence report via email that Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility via Facebook.  We now know that post was either removed, never existed, or was posted by someone only familiar with the group, according to various "senior Administration sources" used by the media.  Why post something and then remove it?  Logic would dictate if you were bad enough to do the deed and then brag about it, why take it down.
• If in fact the Facebook post were from the group, it's quite simple why they would remove it.  Terrorists aren't all that dumb and are certainly tech savvy enough to understand how IP addresses work.  If true, it is my supposition they realized that within minutes the IC would be running traces on the IP associated with that post and would be ramming a Hellfire missile down the author's throat not too soon afterwards.
• I know what you're thinking - But that doesn't explain why the Director of National Intelligence would remove it from Ambassador Rice's statement.  Au contraire!  It does.  My guess is the IC was close to running that trace but hadn't acted on it for various reasons - one of which I'll explain in a bit.  In these types of dynamic situations, it can be difficult to ascertain fact from fiction.  When coordinating retribution attacks, you need to be accurate.  Supposing the Facebook post did exist, the IC presumably asked that Ambassador Rice not blow their cover by disclosing in fact that they knew who the bad guys were.  I see you over there making that face.  
• Before this alleged posting by Ansar al-Sharia, we had no concrete evidence they were the culprit.  Had Ambassador Rice said this was terrorism too prematurely, we may have lost the tactical advantage of surprise and could have made things extremely problematic for our Libyan allies and our special operations units who undoubtedly would have/could have/should have been tasked with hunting down the culprits.  To give the situation some additional much-need perspective, it would do us all well to remember there wasn't a single capture from this attack.  With the absence of a significant amount of actionable chatter, the US government would have been flying blindly with a reprisal attack.
• Oh. Did I forget to mention how unreliable the source that email cited was?  Yeah. About that.  CNN contacted a guy, Aaron Azelin who monitors jihadist sites for a living.  You'll love what he said.

"However, an examination of the known Facebook and Twitter accounts of Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi reveals no such claim of responsibility. Aaron Zelin, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, tracks dozens of jihadist websites and archives much of what they say. He told CNN he was unaware of any such claim having been posted on the official Facebook page or Twitter feed of Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi.
Zelin, who said his RSS feed sends him any new statement from the group, provided CNN with a copy of that feed. It shows no Facebook update between September 8 and September 12, when a posting late that afternoon first referenced the attack. Zelin notes that the posting referred to a news conference the group had held earlier that day in Benghazi in which it denied any role in the assault on the consulate, while sympathizing with the attackers.

Accompanying a posting of the news conference on YouTube, a commentary says that the attack on the consulate was "a wave of rage for Allah and his Prophet, it came from the Muslim youths."

The posting continues: "Ansar al-Sharia brigade did not officially participate as a military body, nor received any orders directed from the brigade."

The group's Twitter feed tells the same story. The account, @anssarelshariea, bears the group's logo and a tweet on September 8 - and then nothing until four days later. And at no point is there a claim of involvement in or responsibility for the attack on the U.S. Consulate compound."

All of this makes me wonder, "How is that we had a CIA station in Benghazi but the only intelligence we had to verify this group was responsible came from a single Facebook post?"  I know getting a hold of sources during a crisis can be difficult and the intel may not be very credible but I can't help but wonder why we haven't heard more about the human intelligence that should have been available.  You would naturally assume the CIA would have been working its assets into this group and would have had some indication this was coming.  Maybe it did but that hasn't come out of any of the testimony, as far as I know.  Instead of asking this and other questions relating to what happened on the ground, we've been stuck with an oversight committee more obsessed with talking points and adulterous 4-star generals.  I firmly believe in order to properly secure any resource in a hostile environment, you have to be procuring actionable intelligence.  This did not happen in Benghazi.  Until we address this shortcoming, it may continue to happen.

Could Israel's "Iron Dome" Make the Case for a Missile Defense Shield?

The last few days have been extraordinary in the Middle East to say the least.  Israel was attacked by a barrage of missiles fired from Gaza.  However, nearly all of those missiles were defeated by Israel's missile defense shield known as "Iron Dome".  Missile defense systems are nothing new and we've seen them work in a variety of theaters of operation.  Most recently, they were highly effective during the United States' invasion of Iraq where Patriot missile batteries went toe-to-toe with Scud missile launchers.

A recent article from Slate.com explains the breadth of that success:

Israeli officials are claiming that the shield is destroying 90 percent of missiles and rockets it aims at that have been fired into southern Israel by Hamas. This level of success is unprecedented compared with older missile defense systems such as the American-made Patriot model used during the 1991 Gulf War. Israelis have almost always suffered far fewer casualties than Palestinians have, but Iron Dome has made that disparity even larger. As of Monday, Israel has reported three casualties, all of which occurred during a temporary malfunction in the missile-defense system.

Credit: Voice of America; http://www.voanews.com/content/israel-iron-dome-passes-first-major-test-despite-some-weaknesses/1550087.html

To say the least, this is a huge boom for future missile defense deployments. Hamas has launched 1,147 rockets at Israel between 14 November 2012 and 20 November 2012. Israel has claimed to have shot down 90 percent of those missiles. Did I forget what makes this system so unique? With the exception of a minor glitch that occurred at the beginning of the hostilities, Iron Dome is reported to have been 90 percent accurate with 400 kills in its first few days of days of operation.

A typical battery includes a radar and three launchers, each holding 20 Tamir interceptors. It reportedly had a 100% success rate in tests prior to deployment.

 

This graph provides an idea as to the area Iron Dome has to cover and what it is supposed to counter.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/QassamsRange.jpg

Many argue this missile defense shield is a "game changer". There is a lot to say that it has. Hamas and Hezebollah have used these attacks in the past as leverage and to demonstrate their resolve to see the conflicts to the end. By "taking the wind out of their sails", Israel has certainly taken much of the "punch" out of Hamas' most potent psychological weapons.

Most telling is the language and support coming from the United States before the November attacks.  The U.S. House of Representatives stated in its FY-2013 Defense Authorization Act  which not only supported Iron Dome with a $680 million investment.  It went a step further by directing the Director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, to "explore any opportunity to enter into co-production of the Iron Dome system with Israel, in light of the significant U.S. investment in this system." You don't have to be an expert in missile defense technology to know why the US considers this an "investment". We want to develop our own to deploy in the States. Stop rolling your eyes. Given the cost and logistics of coordinating prevention, mitigation, and response to surface-to-air missile threats in the U.S., this has the potential for a lot of "traction" in certain circles.

Will this put an end to rocket attacks? Probably not. I say this because the technology behind these rockets is constantly evolving. Unless Israel can shore up the transportation/smuggling routes arms dealers use, then there will never be an end to such attacks. However, as Israel has convincingly demonstrated, their relative lethality can be greatly reduced by missile defense shields such as Iron Dome.

The Confusion behind Fusion Centers

On October 3, 2012, the United States Senate published some not-so surprising news for many of us familiar with the "results" produced by fusion centers.  It turns out someone decided to look into what many assumed was one of the largest examples of bureaucracy - "fusion centers".  For those of you unfamiliar with fusion centers and what they do, essentially they are intelligence sharing centers created by state governments and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to work in concert with federal efforts to prevent, respond, and mitigate the threat of terrorism in the United States.  There are currently 72 centers nationwide.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations stated, "Department of Homeland Security efforts to engage state and local intelligence “fusion centers” has not yielded significant useful information to support federal counterterrorism intelligence efforts."  This a very damning report to say the least for fusion centers.  It doesn't help their cause that they have been mired by criticism ranging from the infamous Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) 2009 report which labeled supporters of the Ron Paul movement and various right wing organizations and grass roots movements as terrorists and the Virginia fusion center 2009 report which stated universities were potential hubs of terrorist activities and labeled hacktivism as a form of terrorism.  

The Subcommittee stated in their press release

“It’s troubling that the very ‘fusion’ centers that were designed to share information in a post-9/11 world have become part of the problem. Instead of strengthening our counterterrorism efforts, they have too often wasted money and stepped on Americans’ civil liberties,” said Senator Tom Coburn, the Subcommittee’s ranking member who initiated the investigation.

The investigation determined that senior DHS officials were aware of the problems hampering effective counterterrorism work with the fusion centers, but did not always inform Congress of the issues, nor ensure the problems were fixed in a timely manner.

“Unfortunately, DHS has resisted oversight of these centers. The Department opted not to inform Congress or the public of serious problems plaguing its fusion center and broader intelligence efforts. When this Subcommittee requested documents that would help it identify these issues, the Department initially resisted turning them over, arguing that they were protected by privilege, too sensitive to share, were protected by confidentiality agreements, or did not exist at all. The American people deserve better. I hope this report will help generate the reforms that will help keep our country safe,” Dr. Coburn said.

Where it gets particularly disturbing is in their highlighted conclusions about their investigation.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates that it has spent somewhere between $289 million and $1.4 billion in public funds to support state and local fusion centers since 2003, broad estimates that differ by over $1 billion. The investigation raises questions about the value this amount of funding and the nation’s more than 70 fusion centers are providing to federal counterterrorism efforts:

• The investigation found that DHS intelligence officers assigned to state and local fusion centers produced intelligence of “uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”

• DHS officials did not provide evidence to the Subcommittee showing unique contributions that state and local fusion centers made to assist federal counter terrorism intelligence efforts that resulted in the disruption or prevention of a terrorism plot.

• The investigation also found that DHS did not effectively monitor how federal funds provided to state and local fusion centers were used to strengthen federal counterterrorism efforts. A review of the expenditures of five fusion centers found that federal funds were used to purchase dozens of flat screen TVs, two sport utility vehicles, cell phone tracking devices and other surveillance equipment unrelated to the analytical mission of an intelligence center. Their mission is not to do active or covert collection of intelligence. In addition, the fusion centers making these questionable expenditures lacked basic, “must-have” intelligence capabilities, according to DHS assessments.

Here's the report:

http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/download/?id=49139e81-1dd7-4788-a3bb-d6e7d97dde04