Amusing CIA hit team story (Cheney's assassination program)

[Simon_Jester]

Surely though they would go through some language training since they're going to be operating behind the lines? I seem to recall one of their missions is deep recon. And even if they don't, wouldn't you want to assign guys who had been pulled from the Green Berets and thus did speak a foreign language like this? Or are we assuming someone would not have thought of that? Although to be fair they didn't necessarily have someone available for deployment who could do that. One more strike against the practical implementation.

Possibly, someone didn't think of that, or was reading the wrong spy novel and going "Hruh! Delta Force!" rather than "Hruh! Green Berets!"

Another possibility is that the Green Berets looked at this concept and, based on their own experience with broadly similar missions, decided not to touch it with a ten foot pole.

Well even the real spies stand out like a sore thumb. A real spy recruits a local dude to do things for him while he hangs out at the embassy or whatever.

Spy work, like police work, is all about the quality of the informants you can recruit.

There are probably some people who can act like the classic fictional spy, in the sense of being able to blend in in a wide variety of cultures. But they are going to be rare and difficult to recruit.

[Thanas]

They didn't even manage that - any cover ID where a random journalist can just look at you and go "Yeah, right" is a sucky one.

Which makes me wonder just who was running things above the tactical level. Surely someone in all this fiasco would understand how to create a fake background for someone that's convincing enough.

The USA had overall command of the mission, but it was the germans who wanted to do it in the first place.

[The Spartan]

Which makes me wonder just who was running things above the tactical level. Surely someone in all this fiasco would understand how to create a fake background for someone that's convincing enough.

The USA had overall command of the mission, but it was the germans who wanted to do it in the first place.

The GSG-9 op? I was actually thinking of the busted up Delta-Kenyan operation; presuming it's true.

[Thanas]

^Yes, I was talking about the joint US forces/GSG-9 op - it was supposed to be a takedown of somali pirates. Called off by the US when the risk got too high.

[The Spartan]

Well in that case we were talking past each other without actually doing so and still arriving at much the same conclusion.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Yeah, that's a good point. I forget sometimes that they only have that level, typically. (Just for background, I have a buddy that just got out of the Air Force who speaks fluent Russian, which he learned in the same place that SF operators would, except that that was his job so he would have had a great deal more practice and exposure)

Even people who are really fluent have trouble passing as a native speaker because they might have bad accents. If you're going somewhere the locals have little exposure to that language then you could get away with it, but if they know what its supposed to sound like you could get made instantly. Like if you had an American operative of Mexican extraction; since he speaks fluent Spanish you have him pretend to be a Spanish businessman--but whoops, he's not fooling anybody, because that's like having a Texan pretend to be British.

[Intio]

Afaik that Mossad assassination pretty much singlehandedly turned the general consensus in Norway from massively-in-support-of-Israel to Pro-Palestine, literally overnight. A pretty good reason why this whole charade was idiotic from the get go.

Indeed, it also changed the way Mossad allocates missions. The team which assassinated the innocent guy was still 'wet behind the ears' when it came to these kind of missions, yet was still considered good enough to get the job done. Only when they arrived did they realise that they were in a country where the preponderance of people were pale and blonde-haired, compared to their sun-kissed skin and dark hair. Like other missions mentioned above - they stood out like sore thumbs.

This kind of ethnic naivety extended to their identification of the target. They found an arab guy who appeared similar to the target photograph, and therefore assumed they had their man. The team did not follow him around on his normal routes, as was standard practice for a fully-trained team, where it would have become obvious that their false target seemed to negotiate around the town with great ease (using shortcuts etc.) which did not match the profile of the real target who had apparently recently arrived. This was highlighted by the team's leader, back in Israel, as a basic mistake that should have prevented the killing of the innocent man.

[Intio]

Only when they arrived did they realise that they were in a country where the preponderance of people were pale and blonde-haired, compared to their sun-kissed skin and dark hair.

I should mention: this was also according to the Mossad guy discussing the mission. I have no idea whether or not that's an accurate reflection of the average Norwegien appearence.

[The Spartan]

Even people who are really fluent have trouble passing as a native speaker because they might have bad accents. If you're going somewhere the locals have little exposure to that language then you could get away with it, but if they know what its supposed to sound like you could get made instantly. Like if you had an American operative of Mexican extraction; since he speaks fluent Spanish you have him pretend to be a Spanish businessman--but whoops, he's not fooling anybody, because that's like having a Texan pretend to be British.

True, but if you're going into Kenya pretending to be French or German, or just about anything else for that matter, how many people there would know you're a fake solely because of your "native" language?

[Pablo Sanchez]

True, but if you're going into Kenya pretending to be French or German, or just about anything else for that matter, how many people there would know you're a fake solely because of your "native" language?

You have to remember that for a cover identity to be useful it has to be not only believable but also unremarkable so as to avoid drawing attention. If European businessmen were an uncommon sight in Nairobi then it would not be a good cover to pretend to be one; but at the same time this makes it more important that the operative fit the model for a European businessman, which makes it more likely for him to come into contact with people who know how he ought to act and might make him for not fitting the mold. For example, there might be a hotel in Nairobi that all the French businessmen go to. An operative undercover as a French businessman who merely stays at a different hotel might arouse suspicion just from that abnormal decision, but if he stays at that hotel, the staff will be more familiar with French businessmen and thus more likely to make him.

Anyway, it's just one a spectrum of possible flaws, and it has to be taken together with being extremely fit, abstaining from alcohol (that's a big one, people on business trips often drink a lot to alleviate boredom and loneliness, and IIRC abstention is really rare among Europeans anyway), not actually conducting any visible business activities, not socializing with other businesspeople, and so on.

[The Spartan]

I see where you're going. I'm just not thinking through this enough. It's the unremarkable bit that tripped me up.

[Zixinus]

What really shocked me was that they were getting weapons trough the embassy? Really? Isn't there a local guy who can get an old hunting rifle, no questions asked, and scope right enough to get the job done or something? And then send the very same murder weapon back to the embassy? That was the really stupid bit. Why on Earth would you do that? Would disassembling the weapon, throwing the metal bits into a river/lake/whatever and burning the wood be that difficult? What about deniable assets? Maintaining deniability?

There is a reason why people who do this sort of stuff are highly sought. And apparently, why its not done often.

My guess is that someone, somewhere who just read this article is muttering "I told him this was a bad idea, I told him! But did he listen? Nooooo, we must get those bearded bastards! Never mind that you can't do that and we can kiss goodbye to any friendly relations if the wrong guy gets shot. I told him, I told him and now I'm going to eat this because that idiot didn't listen!"

Because there is no way in hell that this gone past without someone trying to tell Dicky that this is a bad idea but was sushed by his authority one way or another.

[Axis Kast]

Cheney had direct operational control over the program? He decided which Delta operators were chosen, their cover stories, and weaponry? Did I misread the article?

[Edward Yee]

I'm seeing no mention of Dick Cheney being tied to the program nearly that closely, no idea where you were seeing it.

I wouldn't be surprised if whatever went wrong was tied to the love for direct action (both in the military definition thereof and more broadly) that seems "so American," if anyone gets the joke there... the funny thing is, after reading this I actually wish that we had an actual capability (in the sense of having actual, successful "clandestine" assassins in the USG's employ) just to tell someone up higher when their idea wouldn't work!

None of this is meant as a knock on Delta or CIA SAD/SOG, although in Delta's case I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't something that the unit had had much experience with based on the past accounts I've heard of Delta's operations.

[Axis Kast]

I was actually responding to the wave of criticism of Cheney - not for the program itself, but its mismanagement.

[Pablo Sanchez]

I was actually responding to the wave of criticism of Cheney - not for the program itself, but its mismanagement.

I guess when you see a thread full of people talking about how an administration-backed intelligence program was poorly run, you just felt this overwhelming need to come in and point out some nit-pick bullshit about how we're being mean to Dick Cheney because there isn't evidence that he personally planned the whole thing. I mean, it's not like Cheney and his cohorts interfered ham-handed with the intelligence community on multiple occasions, because after all we can't prove in a court of a law that he was involved in the decisions to torture or to put an assassination team in place despite the CIA lacking sufficient personnel. It's totally implausible, really, to think that the CIA might have said "Hey we don't have the men for this" and then an administration figure shouted "We want Jack Bauer not excuses!" They were much to reasonable, fair-minded, and even-tempered to do anything like that.

I mean, you being appointed his chief fucking legal counsel and all, of course I should have expected you to leap to his defense in a thread where people were having a laugh and an armchair amateur discussion of spying. I think I speak for everybody when I say that I'm so fucking glad we keep you around.