Security

Petraeus Keeps McChrystal's Top Intel Officer

Just because General Stanley McChrystal lost his job as commander in Afghanistan doesn’t mean a key member of his team is out as well. Major General Michael Flynn, the head of intelligence operations for the NATO war effort, will stay on, Danger Room has learned. “Major General Flynn is going to stay and be General […]

Just because General Stanley McChrystal lost his job as commander in Afghanistan doesn't mean a key member of his team is out as well. Major General Michael Flynn, the head of intelligence operations for the NATO war effort, will stay on, Danger Room has learned.

"Major General Flynn is going to stay and be General Petraeus's top intel officer," says Colonel Erik Gunhus, Petraeus' spokesman.

Maybe that shouldn't be surprising. Flynn (pictured, above and right) wasn't a factor in the Rolling Stoneprofile that doomed McChrystal's career. And he's challenged military intelligence officers to study the Afghan civilian populace as much as the insurgency. (Though in some cases, that appears to be a low baseline.) That's consistent with Petraeus's perspective that "the human terrain is the decisive terrain," a jargon-y way of saying that the Afghan people will decide who wins the war.

Flynn wrote in January that intelligence operations that don't take into account Afghanistan's unfamiliar cultural, social, political and economic landscape are only "marginally relevant to the overall strategy" in Afghanistan. He recommended studying open-source information about Afghanistan -- not just the secret electronic intercepts and such -- and having intel higher-ups emulate journalists by conducting interviews with "collectors of information at the grassroots level." Unusually, he published this harsh review with a plugged-in D.C. defense think tank -- a very public display of criticism of that mildly irritated Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Flynn also won some praise this week from James Clapper, President Obama's nominee to become the next director of national intelligence, who conceded in his confirmation hearing this week that the intelligence community has been slow to adapt to a counterinsurgency environment. Clapper wasn't happy to learn about Flynn's critique through a think-tank paper as opposed to a briefing, but that appears to be water under the bridge, as he's called the general a "superstar in intelligence." Petraeus clearly agrees.

Photo: DVIDS / 2nd Lt. Karl Wiest

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