A Counterintelligence Failure in Afghanistan

"The Taliban's penetration of the former Afghan government played a key role in the lightning collapse of the former regime ("Covert Taliban Agents Hastened the Takeover," Page One, Nov. 29). Our intelligence services were either ignorant of these facts or failed to draw obvious conclusions from them. This is what a counterintelligence failure looks like.

 

Counterintelligence is about uncovering and disrupting the other side's penetration of our side rather than penetrating them. Being reminded of operational risk is annoying and penetrations of our side are embarrassing. Counterintelligence officials tell you what you don't want to hear. Paul Wolfowitz famously called it the skunk at the garden party. But underfeeding the skunk or disinviting it from the party is risky, as our blindness to the Taliban infestation demonstrated.

 

Intelligence agencies aren't responsible for our policy choices or their poor execution in Afghanistan. But the intelligence community needs to take a hard look at the scope and effectiveness of its counterintelligence operations. Like most intelligence failures, this one was probably more the result of a lack of imagination than of operational difficulties.

The bedrock fact is that none of our agencies were aware that termites had infested the structures they had told the president would last at least six to 12 months after we left. This is even more astonishing because the Taliban's strategy was taken right out of the old KGB playbook.

Joel Brenner

MIT Center for International Studies

South Dartmouth, Mass.

Mr. Brenner was national counterintelligence executive (2006-09) and inspector general of the National Security Agency (2002-06)." [1]

1. A Counterintelligence Failure in Afghanistan
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 10 Dec 2021: A.16.