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CIA ops in Pakistan: Time

Daily Times Monitor

ISLAMABAD: Special Operations Group, the supersecret guerrilla arm of the CIA, has spies operating around the globe including in Pakistan, according to Time magazine last week.

The magazine describes the hundreds-strong SOG as “The CIA’s Secret Army”. Last May, President Bush signed a secret directive authorising pre-emptive strikes against nations that are close to acquiring nuclear weapons and SOG operatives are being trained to attack enemy nuclear facilities.

The guerrilla division of the CIA was reactivated five years ago in order to raise an unconventional military force to battle Al Qaeda. It was in Afghanistan 15 days after the 9/11 attacks and laid the groundwork for US troops. SOG operatives are allowed to join forces with foreign intelligence services and are authorised to “kidnap and kill terrorists”. Many view this as the CIA intervening forcibly in the affairs of foreign states.

But agency director George Tenet and others believe because the CIA is not hamstrung by regulations like its counterparts working for the Pentagon, the SOG can get the job done quickly and efficiently. The agency has, according to the magazine, a “global network of paid snitches”. The agency “deals with everything from bottom feeders around the world to their governments on a routine basis,” a senior US intelligence official told Time. “We have the ability to hide in plain sight, get in and get out before anybody figures out who we are.”

CIA was responsible for last November’s Predator drone attack in Yemen that killed five alleged terrorists, one of whom was a US national. The attack was not specifically sanctioned by Mr Bush, the magazine says, and is indicative of the leeway the president has afforded the agency. The Pentagon is reportedly unhappy about the SOG moving onto its turf. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is “intent on building his own covert force”, the magazine says, and has ordered the Special Operations Command to draw up secret plans to attack Al Qaeda.

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