[News] Afghanistan - Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/asia/15contractors.html?pagewanted=all

March 14, 2010

Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants

By 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/dexter_filkins/index.html?inline=nyt-per>DEXTER 
FILKINS and 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mazzetti/index.html?inline=nyt-per>MARK 
MAZZETTI

KABUL, Afghanistan ­ Under the cover of a benign 
government information-gathering program, a 
Defense Department official set up a network of 
private contractors in 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>Afghanistan 
and 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/pakistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>Pakistan 
to help track and kill suspected militants, 
according to military officials and businessmen 
in Afghanistan and the United States.

The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired 
contractors from private security companies that 
employed former 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>C.I.A. 
and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, 
in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts 
of suspected militants and the location of 
insurgent camps, and the information was then 
sent to military units and intelligence officials 
for possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the officials said.

While it has been widely reported that the C.I.A. 
and the military are attacking operatives of 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Al 
Qaeda and others through unmanned, 
remote-controlled 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/unmanned_aerial_vehicles/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>drone 
strikes, some American officials say they became 
troubled that Mr. Furlong seemed to be running an 
off-the-books spy operation. The officials say 
they are not sure who condoned and supervised his work.

It is generally considered illegal for the 
military to hire contractors to act as covert 
spies. Officials said Mr. Furlong’s secret 
network might have been improperly financed by 
diverting money from a program designed to merely 
gather information about the region.

Moreover, in Pakistan, where Qaeda and 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/taliban/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Taliban 
leaders are believed to be hiding, the secret use 
of private contractors may be seen as an attempt 
to get around the Pakistani government’s 
prohibition of American military personnel’s operating in the country.

Officials say Mr. Furlong’s operation seems to 
have been shut down, and he is now is the subject 
of a criminal investigation by the Defense 
Department for a number of possible offenses, including contract fraud.

Even in a region of the world known for intrigue, 
Mr. Furlong’s story stands out. At times, his 
operation featured a mysterious American company 
run by retired Special Operations officers and an 
iconic C.I.A. figure who had a role in some of 
the agency’s most famous episodes, including the Iran-Contra affair.

The allegations that he ran this network come as 
the American intelligence community confronts 
other instances in which private contractors may 
have been improperly used on delicate and 
questionable operations, including secret raids 
in Iraq and an assassinations program that was 
halted before it got off the ground.

“While no legitimate intelligence operations got 
screwed up, it’s generally a bad idea to have 
freelancers running around a war zone pretending 
to be James Bond,” one American government 
official said. But it is still murky whether Mr. 
Furlong had approval from top commanders or 
whether he might have been running a rogue operation.

This account of his activities is based on 
interviews with American military and 
intelligence officials and businessmen in the 
region. They insisted on anonymity in discussing 
a delicate case that is under investigation.

Col. Kathleen Cook, a spokeswoman for United 
States Strategic Command, which oversees Mr. 
Furlong’s work, declined to make him available 
for an interview. Military officials said Mr. 
Furlong, a retired 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/us_army/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Army 
officer, is now a senior civilian employee in the 
military, a full-time Defense Department employee 
based at Lackland 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/us_air_force/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Air 
Force Base in San Antonio.

Network of Informants

Mr. Furlong has extensive experience in 
“psychological operations” ­ the military term 
for the use of information in warfare ­ and he 
plied his trade in a number of places, including 
Iraq and the Balkans. It is unclear exactly when 
Mr. Furlong’s operations began. But officials 
said they seemed to accelerate in the summer of 
2009, and by the time they ended, he and his 
colleagues had established a network of 
informants in Afghanistan and Pakistan whose job 
it was to help locate people believed to be insurgents.

Government officials said they believed that Mr. 
Furlong might have channeled money away from a 
program intended to provide American commanders 
with information about Afghanistan’s social and 
tribal landscape, and toward secret efforts to 
hunt militants on both sides of the country’s porous border with Pakistan.

Some officials said it was unclear whether these 
operations actually resulted in the deaths of 
militants, though others involved in the operation said that they did.

Military officials said that Mr. Furlong would 
often boast about his network of informants in 
Afghanistan and Pakistan to senior military 
officers, and in one instance said a group of 
suspected militants carrying rockets by mule over 
the border had been singled out and killed as a result of his efforts.

In addition, at least one government contractor 
who worked with Mr. Furlong in Afghanistan last 
year maintains that he saw evidence that the 
information was used for attacking militants.

The contractor, Robert Young Pelton, an author 
who writes extensively about war zones, said that 
the government hired him to gather information 
about Afghanistan and that Mr. Furlong improperly 
used his work. “We were providing information so 
they could better understand the situation in 
Afghanistan, and it was being used to kill people,” Mr. Pelton said.

He said that he and Eason Jordan, a former 
television news executive, had been hired by the 
military to run a public Web site to help the 
government gain a better understanding of a 
region that bedeviled them. Recently, the top 
military intelligence official in Afghanistan 
publicly said that intelligence collection was 
skewed too heavily toward hunting terrorists, at 
the expense of gaining a deeper understanding of the country.

Instead, Mr. Pelton said, millions of dollars 
that were supposed to go to the Web site were 
redirected by Mr. Furlong toward intelligence 
gathering for the purpose of attacking militants.

In one example, Mr. Pelton said he had been told 
by Afghan colleagues that video images that he 
posted on the Web site had been used for an 
American strike in the South Waziristan region of Pakistan.

Among the contractors Mr. Furlong appears to have 
used to conduct intelligence gathering was 
International Media Ventures, a private 
“strategic communication” firm run by several 
former Special Operations officers. Another was 
American International Security Corporation, a 
Boston-based company run by Mike Taylor, a former 
Green Beret. In a phone interview, Mr. Taylor 
said that at one point he had employed Duane 
Clarridge, known as Dewey, a former top C.I.A. 
official who has been linked to a generation of 
C.I.A. adventures, including the Iran-Contra scandal.

In an interview, Mr. Clarridge denied that he had 
worked with Mr. Furlong in any operation in 
Afghanistan or Pakistan. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

Mr. Taylor, who is chief executive of A.I.S.C., 
said his company gathered information on both 
sides of the border to give military officials 
information about possible threats to American 
forces. He said his company was not specifically 
hired to provide information to kill insurgents.

Some American officials contend that Mr. 
Furlong’s efforts amounted to little. 
Nevertheless, they provoked the ire of the C.I.A.

Last fall, the spy agency’s station chief in 
Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, wrote a memorandum 
to the Defense Department’s top intelligence 
official detailing what officials said were 
serious offenses by Mr. Furlong. The officials 
would not specify the offenses, but the officer’s 
cable helped set off the Pentagon investigation.

Afghan Intelligence

In mid-2008, the military put Mr. Furlong in 
charge of a program to use private companies to 
gather information about the political and tribal 
culture of Afghanistan. Some of the approximately 
$22 million in government money allotted to this 
effort went to International Media Ventures, with 
offices in St. Petersburg, Fla., San Antonio and 
elsewhere. On its Web site, the company describes 
itself as a public relations company, “an 
industry leader in creating potent messaging 
content and interactive communications.”

The Web site also shows that several of its 
senior executives are former members of the 
military’s Special Operations forces, including 
former commandos from Delta Force, which has been 
used extensively since the Sept. 11 attacks to 
track and kill suspected terrorists.

Until recently, one of the members of 
International Media’s board of directors was Gen. 
Dell L. Dailey, former head of Joint 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/united_states_special_operations_command/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Special 
Operations Command, which oversees the military’s covert units.

In an e-mail message, General Dailey said that he 
had resigned his post on the company’s board, but 
he did not say when. He did not give details 
about the company’s work with the American 
military, and other company executives declined to comment.

In an interview, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the top 
military spokesman in Afghanistan, said that the 
United States military was currently employing 
nine International Media Ventures civilian 
employees on routine jobs in administration, 
information processing and analysis. Whatever 
else other International Media employees might be 
doing in Afghanistan, he said, he did not know 
and had no responsibility for their actions.

By Mr. Pelton’s account, Mr. Furlong, in 
conversations with him and his colleagues, 
referred to his stable of contractors as “my 
Jason Bournes,” a reference to the fictional 
American assassin created by the novelist 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/robert_ludlum/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Robert 
Ludlum and played in movies by 
<http://movies.nytimes.com/person/16762/Matt-Damon?inline=nyt-per>Matt Damon.

Military officials said that Mr. Furlong would 
occasionally brag to his superiors about having 
Mr. Clarridge’s services at his disposal. Last 
summer, Mr. Furlong told colleagues that he was 
working with Mr. Clarridge to secure the release 
of Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, a kidnapped soldier who 
American officials believe is being held by militants in Pakistan.

 From December 2008 to mid-June 2009, both Mr. 
Taylor and Mr. Clarridge were hired to assist The 
New York Times in the case of David Rohde, the 
Times reporter who was kidnapped by militants in 
Afghanistan and held for seven months in 
Pakistan’s tribal areas. The reporter ultimately escaped on his own.

The idea for the government information program 
was thought up sometime in 2008 by Mr. Jordan, a 
former CNN news chief, and his partner Mr. 
Pelton, whose books include “The World’s Most 
Dangerous Places” and “Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror.”

Top General Approached

They approached Gen. 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/david_d_mckiernan/index.html?inline=nyt-per>David 
D. McKiernan, soon to become the top American 
commander in Afghanistan. Their proposal was to 
set up a reporting and research network in 
Afghanistan and Pakistan for the American 
military and private clients who were trying to 
understand a complex region that had become vital 
to Western interests. They already had a similar 
operation in Iraq ­ called “Iraq Slogger,” which 
employed local Iraqis to report and write news 
stories for their Web site. Mr. Jordan proposed 
setting up a similar Web site in Afghanistan and 
Pakistan ­ except that the operation would be 
largely financed by the American military. The 
name of the Web site was 
<http://www.afpax.com/index.php/post/7758/Mehsud_Fighters_Prepare_for_Pak_Govt_Assault>Afpax. 


Mr. Jordan said that he had gone to the United 
States military because the business in Iraq was 
not profitable relying solely on private clients. 
He described his proposal as essentially a news 
gathering operation, involving only unclassified 
materials gathered openly by his employees. “It was all open-source,” he said.

When Mr. Jordan made the pitch to General 
McKiernan, Mr. Furlong was also present, 
according to Mr. Jordan. General McKiernan 
endorsed the proposal, and Mr. Furlong said that 
he could find financing for Afpax, both Mr. 
Jordan and Mr. Pelton said. “On that day, they 
told us to get to work,” Mr. Pelton said.

But Mr. Jordan said that the help from Mr. 
Furlong ended up being extremely limited. He said 
he was paid twice ­ once to help the company with 
start-up costs and another time for a report his 
group had written. Mr. Jordan declined to talk 
about exact figures, but said the amount of money 
was a “small fraction” of what he had proposed ­ 
and what it took to run his news gathering operation.

Whenever he asked for financing, Mr. Jordan said, 
Mr. Furlong told him that the money was being 
used for other things, and that the appetite for 
Mr. Jordan’s services was diminishing.

“He told us that there was less and less money 
for what we were doing, and less of an 
appreciation for what we were doing,” he said.

Admiral Smith, the military’s director for 
strategic communications in Afghanistan, said 
that when he arrived in Kabul a year later, in 
June 2009, he opposed financing Afpax. He said 
that he did not need what Mr. Pelton and Mr. 
Jordan were offering and that the service seemed 
uncomfortably close to crossing into intelligence 
gathering ­ which could have meant making targets of individuals.

“I took the air out of the balloon,” he said.

Admiral Smith said that the C.I.A. was against 
the proposal for the same reasons. Mr. Furlong 
persisted in pushing the project, he said.

“I finally had to tell him, ‘Read my lips,’ we’re 
not interested,’ ” Admiral Smith said.

What happened next is unclear.

Admiral Smith said that when he turned down the 
Afpax proposal, Mr. Furlong wanted to spend the 
leftover money elsewhere. That is when Mr. 
Furlong agreed to provide some of International 
Media Ventures’ employees to Admiral Smith’s strategic communications office.

But that still left roughly $15 million unaccounted for, he said.

“I have no idea where the rest of the money is going,” Admiral Smith said.

Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 16, 2010

An article on Monday about a spy network, 
according to military and business officials, 
composed of private contractors in Afghanistan 
and Pakistan established by Michael D. Furlong, a 
Defense Department official based at Lackland Air 
Force Base in San Antonio, misidentified the 
branch of the military in which Mr. Furlong had 
once served as an officer. It is the Army, not the Air Force.






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