The Pentagon official who allegedly boasted of running his own private team of "Jason Bournes" is finally speaking out.
Early this week, the New York Times landed a curious scoop about a freelance spy ring in Afghanistan and Pakistan that is reportedly under criminal investigation by the Defense Department. Now the San Antonio Express-News has landed an interview with the man alleged to have been at the center of the operation.
Reporter Guillermo Contreras tracked down Air Force official Michael Furlong at his San Antonio apartment. While the interview does little to clear things up, it offers a few tantalizing details.
For starters, Furlong disputed the wildest claim made by the Times: That the program was actively involved in trying to target and kill militants. What's more, Furlong said it helped avert the assassination of two Afghan government officials.
“I take stuff in open source and throw it in the intelligence pipeline,” Furlong said. “I don't take this information and go directly to a kill."
As the story notes, it's hard to verify this account; whether it crossed a line into intelligence activity; and whether funds were misused. According to Furlong's account, the whole thing grew out of Gen. David McKiernan's frustration after the battle of Wanat, when a U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan came close to being overrun by the Taliban. McKiernan, then top U.S. commander, wanted to hire ex-journalists to get better "atmospherics" (a picture of the situation on the ground).
Getting a fix on "ground truth" is still a major issue for the military. Speaking to reporters yesterday, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, said it was still a challenge for military intelligence.
"We have been conditioned in our careers, in many cases, to focus on the enemy, to ask how many insurgents there are, what kind of weapons they carry, who are their leaders," he said. "And while that's all important, in this war, in fact, we need to recalibrate and refocus our effort so that we really understand the environment in which the insurgents operate."
That approach, he added, is being applied to Kandahar, a traditional Taliban stronghold where U.S. and NATO forces are preparing to step up operations. He said his intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, had undertaken "deep dive" to understand the traditional power structures and tribal history of the area.
"That's just one of the first steps at this level, as we build up an understanding of all the other things that really define this situation," McChrystal said. "And that's -- in this kind of war, that's much of what you've got to deal with. It's much wider than just the enemy."
[PHOTO: U.S. Air Force]
