by BLACK HOUNSHELL
That’s the charge the National Journal’s Marc Ambinder makes in his very interesting new book on Joint Special Operations Command, coauthored with D.B. Grady.
They write:
“The U.S. intelligence community took advantage of the chaos to spread resources of its own into the country. Using valid U.S. passports and posing as construction and aid workers, dozens of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives and contractors flooded in without the requisite background checks from the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Al-Qaeda had reconstituted itself in the country’s tribal areas, largely because of the ISI’s benign neglect. In Afghanistan, the ISI was actively undermining the U.S.-backed government of Hamid Karzai, training and recuiting for the Taliban, which it viewed as the more reliable partner. The political system was in chaos. The Pakistani army was focused on the threat from India and had redeployed away from the Afghanistan border region, the Durand line, making it porous once again. To some extent, the Bush administration had been focused on Iraq for the previous two years, content with the ISI’s cooperation in capturing senior al-Qaeda leaders, while ignoring its support of other groups tha would later become recruiting grounds for al-Qaeda.”
Foreign Policy for more
(Thanks to Ahmed Iqbalabadi)