Above the Tearline: Fallout from the bin Laden Operation
Video Transcript:
Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton uses the arrest of five Pakistani nationals for helping the CIA with the bin Laden safe-house surveillance to examine how the CIA operates in foreign countries.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
In this week's Above the Tearline, we would like to take a look at the five Pakistani nationals that were allegedly arrested for helping the CIA with the surveillance and the investigation of the bin Laden compound.
When the CIA operates overseas, they are primarily focused on developing human assets, foreign nationals, in four categories. The first would be the intelligence services; number two would be within the military services; number three would be the diplomatic corps of that respective country; and the fourth being the police or security services. In this case -- the surveillance of the bin Laden safe-house -- I would be looking to try to develop assets within the Pakistani ISI and would have knowledge of internal documents pertaining to their hunt for Osama bin Laden as well as their perceptions of where bin Laden may be hiding. Another example in this specific case would be individuals inside the police services that would have access to data on car registry, who are the tags listed to, what kind of information can be gleaned off internal Pakistani records of automobiles and ownership with an eye toward keeping tabs on those vehicles that are moving in and out of the compound.
In most cases, the CIA develops informants in foreign countries simply by paying them, giving them cash under the table to provide that information to them. I would also think that due to the highly compartmented nature of this case that the individuals that were being used inside the Pakistani government to provide information were used in an unwitting fashion, meaning they would have no idea that bin Laden was the target set. And how you would do that operationally is very simple: you're going to ask for very mundane and routine materials such as, "Tell me all the cars that enter this specific location and I would like to know who they're registered to."
Another aspect to this story would be it is highly probable that the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, conducted their own internal security investigation -- some would call it a witch hunt -- to identify two different things: one, who helped hide bin Laden, if anybody; and the second being who has helped the CIA. It's most probable that you're going to get an answer, as we saw with the arrest of the five Pakistanis to who helped the CIA. It's highly improbable that we'll ever see the light of day as to who helped hide bin Laden for many, many years.
The Above the Tearline aspect is this is what intelligence services do. They develop and recruit foreign intelligence assets. The more assets you have, the better intelligence you're going to be able to glean. It should also come to no surprise that after the internal security investigation was conducted by the Pakistani government, that they identified CIA assets in their midst.
