An interesting exercise in spin done by columnist Robert Scheer on Salon. Scheer would like to make the point that trusting criminals to do the US government's dirty work for it doesn't work. To illustrate his point, he cites the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations' use of the Mafia to attempt the assination of Castro. He writes in rebuttal to Times columnist Thomas Friedman's suggestion that, "it takes a home-grown network to destroy a home-grown network." I find this to be an astute point given that our intelligence agencies are admittedly far behind in the war against terrorism. Further, Scheer's attempt to compare Friedman's "home-grown terrorists" with the 1950's US Mafia falls short. The US Mafia was not a Cuban organization. They had opened businesses there by cosying up to the very regime that Castro overthrew. Their knowledge of Castro's whereabouts and habits was as useless as the current US intelligence agencies' knowledge of the same about bin Laden. Intelligence experts have come out unanimously in asserting that one of the great failures of the CIA et al. over the past decade has been moving away from using criminals as informants. The criminals are the people that know the whereabouts of other criminals. Scheer makes a good point that the US should not entrust these criminal organizations to kill bin Laden for us, but I don't think that was Friedman's suggestion. "Something tells me Mr. Putin, the Russian president and former K.G.B. spymaster, has the phone number of the guy in the Russian mafia who knows the guy in the Afghan cartels who knows the guy who knows the guy who knows where Mr. bin Laden is hiding."

Friedman also says, "[t]hey know how to operate as a covert network and how to root out a competing network, such as Mr. bin Laden's. They can be bought and know how to buy others. And they understand that when we say we want someone 'dead or alive' we mean 'dead or dead.'" This could be interpreted to mean that Friedman advocates using those groups to do our killing for us. Scheer does not use this quote to back his argument. I think we need to buy off criminals to find bin Laden. We may then have to turn around and arrest our informants, but that's war; it's a dirty business. We may also attempt to buy off the wrong people and get burned a few times. We must accept that eventuality as well. One lesson we must learn from our past in Afghanistan is that we can't achieve our short-term goals and then pull up stakes in the middle east. The US must accept that it's in the region for the long haul and we're going to get dirty while we're there. Concurrently, we must be careful not to cross the line. Where is the line? Ask Kissinger.
- posted by levinson @ 10/04/2001 05:48:00 PM