Recommended Reading
Top billing! The New York Times (Mark Mazetti) – Former Spy With Agenda Operates a Private C.I.A.
WASHINGTON – Duane R. Clarridge parted company with the Central Intelligence Agency more than two decades ago, but from poolside at his home near San Diego, he still runs a network of spies.
Over the past two years, he has fielded operatives in the mountains of Pakistan and the desert badlands of Afghanistan. Since the United States military cut off his funding in May, he has relied on like-minded private donors to pay his agents to continue gathering information about militant fighters, Taliban leaders and the secrets of Kabul’s ruling class.
Hatching schemes that are something of a cross between a Graham Greene novel and Mad Magazine‘s “Spy vs. Spy,” Mr. Clarridge has sought to discredit Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Kandahar power broker who has long been on the C.I.A. payroll, and planned to set spies on his half brother, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, in hopes of collecting beard trimmings or other DNA samples that might prove Mr. Clarridge’s suspicions that the Afghan leader was a heroin addict, associates say.
….”Sometimes, unfortunately, things have to be changed in a rather ugly way,” said Mr. Clarridge, his New England accent becoming more pronounced the angrier he became. “We’ll intervene whenever we decide it’s in our national security interests to intervene.”
“Get used to it, world,” he said. “We’re not going to put up with nonsense.”
Good.
Duane “Dewey” Clarridge’s talents as a CIA field operative were held in very high esteem by two CIA directors, Robert Gates and William Casey. It was Casey who put Clarridge, known as results oriented wild man, in charge of the Contra war against the Soviet proxy Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Whatever Clarridge is up to in AfPak, he’s a walking, talking refutation of the politics and policies advanced by the Church-Pike committees against CIA covert operations in the 1970’s. That Clarridge is active and running private networks in parallel to official IC ones – this model may or may not have originally been Casey’s brainchild BTW – must be driving some people inside the Beltway absolutely up the frigging wall.
The Times editors can’t be too pleased either, as this is at least the second time they have tried to draw national attention to Clarridge’s operation, having first gone after another ex-spook, Mike Furlong last fall.
Useless. Private intel networks, like PMCs are here to stay because of the geopolitical environment. The 21st century is their world.
Feng – Information Dissemination –Some thoughts about the growing US/China rivalry
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