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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/asia/15contractors.html?pagewanted=all" eudora="autourl">
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/world/asia/15contractors.html?pagewanted=all<br>
<br>
</a>March 14, 2010<br><br>
<b>Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants<br><br>
By
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/dexter_filkins/index.html?inline=nyt-per">
DEXTER FILKINS</a> and
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mazzetti/index.html?inline=nyt-per">
MARK MAZZETTI</a><br><br>
</b>KABUL, Afghanistan Under the cover of a benign government
information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a
network of private contractors in
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/afghanistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo">
Afghanistan</a> and
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/pakistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo">
Pakistan</a> to help track and kill suspected militants, according to
military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States.
<br><br>
The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security
companies that employed former
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org">
C.I.A.</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. <br><br>
While it has been widely reported that the C.I.A. and the military are
attacking operatives of
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org">
Al Qaeda</a> and others through unmanned, remote-controlled
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/unmanned_aerial_vehicles/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">
drone</a> 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.
<br><br>
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. <br><br>
Moreover, in Pakistan, where Qaeda and
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/taliban/index.html?inline=nyt-org">
Taliban</a> 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. <br><br>
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.
<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
“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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/us_army/index.html?inline=nyt-org">
Army</a> officer, is now a senior civilian employee in the military, a
full-time Defense Department employee based at Lackland
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/us_air_force/index.html?inline=nyt-org">
Air Force</a> Base in San Antonio. <br><br>
<b>Network of Informants</b> <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.
<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
Some American officials contend that Mr. Furlong’s efforts amounted to
little. Nevertheless, they provoked the ire of the C.I.A. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
<b>Afghan Intelligence</b> <br><br>
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.” <br><br>
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. <br><br>
Until recently, one of the members of International Media’s board of
directors was Gen. Dell L. Dailey, former head of Joint
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/united_states_special_operations_command/index.html?inline=nyt-org">
Special Operations Command</a>, which oversees the military’s covert
units. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/robert_ludlum/index.html?inline=nyt-per">
Robert Ludlum</a> and played in movies by
<a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/person/16762/Matt-Damon?inline=nyt-per">
Matt Damon</a>. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.” <br><br>
<b>Top General Approached</b> <br><br>
They approached Gen.
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/david_d_mckiernan/index.html?inline=nyt-per">
David D. McKiernan</a>, 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
<a href="http://www.afpax.com/index.php/post/7758/Mehsud_Fighters_Prepare_for_Pak_Govt_Assault">
Afpax</a>. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
“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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
“I took the air out of the balloon,” he said. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
“I finally had to tell him, ‘Read my lips,’ we’re not interested,’ ”
Admiral Smith said. <br><br>
What happened next is unclear. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
But that still left roughly $15 million unaccounted for, he said.
<br><br>
“I have no idea where the rest of the money is going,” Admiral Smith
said. <br><br>
Dexter Filkins reported from Kabul, and Mark Mazzetti from
Washington.<br><br>
This article has been revised to reflect the following
correction:<br><br>
<b>Correction: March 16, 2010<br><br>
</b>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.<br><br>
<br><br>
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