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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

This is the key strategic issue of the decade, the Sino-American relationship.

FLAME ON! For those readers who lack the time to follow COIN inside baseball, here goes a quick summary…..

Paula Broadwell, a Petraeus-ite COINdinista doing her PhD at King’s College, had a guest post at Thomas Rick’s Best Defense entitled Travels with Paula (I): A time to build on the destruction of Tarok Kolache, a Taliban held village in Afghanistan by Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th under the command of LTC. David Flynn. Boadwell’s post caused the head of Josh Foust to explode and Josh responded en fuego at Registan.net with The Unforgivable Horror of Village Razing. Broadwell responded to Foust’s accusations on Facebook (!) – yes, it is getting weird now – prompting Josh to write Revisiting the Village Razing Policies of ISAF in Kandahar. That sat poorly with Andrew Exum, who had a joint post thingy with Josh at Abu Muqawama/CNAS-Registan called Exum and Foust on Tactics in Afghanistan, though not before arguing about it first on twitter. Meanwhile, Tom Ricks gave LTC. Flynn a chance to weigh in defense of his troops and himself A battalion commander responds to a blogger on how to operate in Afghanistan where he took the opportunity to label Foust an “orator”, which made me inclined to photoshop a picture of Josh’s head on to a statue of Cicero. Ricks gave Foust equal time with The battalion commander debates the blogger (II): Foust responds to Flynn and also at Registan, Josh added Responding to Lt. Col. Flynn.

Whew! I think that is where it stands now, though if anyone has links to posts from other COIN blogs, leave them in the comments and I will add the kibbitzers here later. I think we should acknowledge though that this may have been the first extended, acrimonious debate over COIN without being graced by the presence of Col. Gian Gentile. 🙂

 Dr. Thomas Rid – Kings of War The Origins of Counterinsurgency

Superb post. Highly recommended.

Jason Fritz – Inkspots Is a clear and equal enemy necessary to develop a valid grand strategy? and Grand enemies and grand strategy – Part II

Well worth the time to read. The first post spawned responses from Adam Elkus as well as myself, but Jason has called attention to a critical theme thast I wish was a topic of national discussion.

Dave Anderson, Steve Hynd – Newshoggers  On a progressive grand strategy and Progressive Grand Strategy And Nuremberg

I have to say that, while I do not agree with everything here, I think it is a good thing if progressives turn their attention to grand strategy, a subject they have generally avoided in past decades unless you can count being reflexively against whatever the US is doing as a “strategy”. Actually, this might be very interesting because it will split the Left camp between democratic progressives, who think what the US is doing is the problem and the hard, authoritarian, Left who think the existence of the US is a problem. I count Steve and Dave in the former camp BTW, though I think Steve, who is strongly anti-interventionist, is misreading Nuremburg in the context of International Law if he believes the only legitimate use of military force is self-defense in the face of an attack. That’s not the case.

John Hagel – The Edge Perspective Passion and Plasticity – The Neurobiology of Passion

I consider Hagel to be a “never miss, must read”. Hat tip to Scott Shipman

John Robb is   up to some very cool things.

That’s it!

ADDENDUM:

Clarridge is the story du jour. Also commenting:

SWJ Blog ,  Newshoggers, The Agonist,

ADDENDUM II.

I forgot to include this riff by Joseph Fouche:

Tactics Are From Newton. Strategy Is From Heisenberg.

….Going into the Franco-Prussian War, Prussia was dominated by the almost Clausewitzian trinity of King Wilhelm of Prussia (primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force), Moltke (the play of chance and probability, within which the creative spirit is free to roam), and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck ([war’s] element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to pure reason). In fact, Old Wilhelm (more the people), Old Moltke (more the commander and his army), and the young whippersnapper Bismarck (more the government) are almost a 1 to 1 translation of the secondary trinity as well. Moltke’s philosophy of strategy reflected a role assigned by Clausewitz where the play of courage and talent enjoyed in the realm of probability and chance depended upon his particular character and the particular collective character of Prussian army. As such his strategy was a system of expedients that he systematically shifted as his carefully laid prewar plans collided with the French.

Bismarck had a similar notion of the role of chance in the realm of international politics even without the addition of other (usually violent means):

“Politics is the art of the possible.”

“Politics is not an exact science.”

But perhaps his most famous remark in this spirit was his statement that “A statesman…must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.” Bismarck’s problem was that Moltke was also listening for the footsteps of God through history and Moltke thought those footsteps were heading towards Paris.

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