{"id":2997,"date":"2020-12-19T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2020-12-19T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=141285"},"modified":"2020-12-19T11:00:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T11:00:21","slug":"trump-to-cia-say-goodbye-to-your-war-on-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/19\/trump-to-cia-say-goodbye-to-your-war-on-terror\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump to CIA: Say Goodbye to Your War on Terror"},"content":{"rendered":"
Years from now,<\/u> we will forgive historians who, when documenting the Donald Trump presidency \u2014 its cold indifference<\/a> to hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 deaths, its pandemic denialism<\/a>, its migrant family separations<\/a>, its use of the Justice Department as a political cudgel<\/a> and the attorney general<\/a> as a Mafia lawyer<\/a>, the president\u2019s genuine attempt to subvert the 2020 election results, and his impeachment<\/a> \u2014 fail to note a bureaucratic dust-up between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon in the waning days of the administration.<\/p>\n Last week, news broke that Trump\u2019s acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, sent a letter to the CIA notifying the agency that the Pentagon would review the terms of its military support to CIA operations. News reports suggested that the Pentagon was planning to strip the CIA of its support for counterterrorism missions around the world almost immediately. Drones, elite soldiers, fuel, and medical evacuation of casualties, for example, would disappear almost overnight. CNN reported<\/a> that the Pentagon was \u201cplanning to withdraw most support for CIA counter-terror missions by the beginning of next year.\u201d The New York Times suggested<\/a> that the purpose was to \u201cmake it difficult\u201d for the CIA to conduct its covert war in Afghanistan as Trump reduces the number of U.S. troops there. ABC News described<\/a> the decision as \u201cunprecedented.\u201d The cuts would leave CIA paramilitary officers to die should they suffer casualties, former officers told the press.<\/p>\n But interviews with six current and former national security officials, including some directly involved in the Pentagon\u2019s review, suggest it is neither immediate nor controversial. Instead, the review serves as a coda for the Trump administration\u2019s chaos \u2014 and as an unintentional gift to the incoming Biden administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Miller\u2019s letter to CIA Director Gina Haspel informed her that the Pentagon would update a classified 2005 memorandum of understanding outlining the terms of Defense Department support to CIA missions. The Donald Rumsfeld-led Pentagon wrote the memo in the early years of what the George W. Bush administration called the global war on terror. In the immediate weeks and months after the September 11 attacks, the Pentagon discovered that it had neither the intelligence capability nor the nimbleness that the CIA showed in their quick deployment to Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda conceived of and trained for the attacks; the CIA needed special operations forces to buttress their tiny paramilitary division.<\/p>\n As the Pentagon and CIA footprints grew in war zones, defense officials grew concerned about how soldiers and resources slipped into CIA operations without the department\u2019s notification. The two sides struck a deal and the memorandum of understanding was born.<\/strong> The memorandum was spearheaded by Stephen Cambone, then the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and one of his top deputies, Lt. Gen. William \u201cJerry\u201d Boykin, who coordinated their secret programs with the CIA, and then established an agreement where the Defense Department would share personnel and other military support to the agency. The purpose was to expedite and delegate the authority to pass Defense Department personnel and resources over to the agency. As part of the new framework, the Pentagon also outlined the terms of how special forces soldiers, for example, might be loaned to the CIA\u2019s paramilitary division and deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, where they would operate under the intelligence agency\u2019s authorities. In the ensuing years, the CIA and the Pentagon developed a close working relationship on and off foreign battlefields as two consecutive administrations spent at least tens of <\/strong>billions of dollars<\/a> on a secret ecosystem \u2014 tools, weapons, and people \u2014 for killing.<\/p>\n Fast forward to Donald Trump. He campaigned in 2016 on pulling out U.S. troops from the wars which began after 9\/11 and later, as president, declared victory over the Islamic State. In 2018, the Pentagon, led by Defense Secretary James Mattis, published a new national defense strategy as a blueprint for a new era. Counterterrorism was no longer the country\u2019s \u201cprimary concern.\u201d The new strategy called long-term strategic competition with China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran the top priorities.<\/p>\n But as with all things in the Trump administration, chaos reigned, and the tension between Trump\u2019s policy-by-tweet and his national security officials, including those he once fawned over, caused constant confusion and internal conflict. Mattis resigned after Trump announced in December 2018 that the United States would unilaterally remove its forces from Syria, leaving America\u2019s allies, the Kurds, vulnerable to slaughter by Turkish forces. Trump withdrew some troops but not for almost another year and under a new defense secretary, Mark Esper. The forces in Syria only moved to neighboring Iraq. By then, it was clear that Trump wanted to end America\u2019s forever wars, not out of some secret humanitarianism or morality, but rather to save money and make U.S. foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, much more transactional.<\/p>\n