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Study Is Said to Find Overlap in U.S. Counterterror Effort
By THOM SHANKER
Published: March 18, 2006
WASHINGTON, March 17 — A classified Pentagon study analyzing the effectiveness of Special Operations forces has found that the military's counterterrorism effort is hampered by bureaucratic duplication, officials said, citing in particular an overlap between new government centers.
The study also found evidence of broad resistance to the Special Operations Command's new counterterrorism role, from regional military commands and from other parts of the government's sprawling defense and intelligence apparatus.
The findings were viewed as so provocative that the classified report has not been distributed widely, even among officials with the security clearance needed to read such internal reviews, Pentagon and military officials said. The study was initially ordered by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Pentagon and military officials who have read the study say that the mission of the new Center for Special Operations, a large military headquarters created in Florida in 2003, mirrors the work of the new National Counterterrorism Center, established by executive order in 2004. The military center is intended to bring together elements of the armed services under a three-star general; the intelligence center answers to John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.
The officials were granted anonymity to discuss the classified report's contents because they were not authorized to speak about it.
The review, conducted by a retired four-star officer, Gen. Wayne A. Downing Jr., grew out of a budget and strategy briefing last October during which Mr. Rumsfeld expressed grave concerns over the readiness of the troops and the effectiveness of the Special Operations Command's counterterrorist operations.
"The Rumsfeld family crest probably says something like, 'More, and faster,' " said a senior Pentagon official involved in the policy debate over the role of the command, known as Socom in military circles. "So what he thinks about Socom is, 'With all this new money and all these extra people and all this wider latitude to maneuver, why haven't you won the war on terror for me yet?' "
The Special Operations Command reports to Mr. Rumsfeld, and falls outside those organizations that report to Mr. Negroponte. The command's new global role in counterterrorism has rankled some officers at the Pentagon and in regional war-fighting commands who previously took charge of that mission.
Some of the command's new efforts, in particular the placement of small teams in American embassies to gather intelligence on terrorists and to prepare for potential missions, has outraged some intelligence officers and career diplomats.
According to Pentagon civilians and military officers who have read the Downing study, the review found "a tremendous duplication of effort" in the government and military that overlaps with assignments given the Special Operations Command.
More broadly, the review found that the government-wide national security bureaucracy still does not respond rapidly and effectively to the new requirements of the counterterrorism campaign. The report said more streamlining was necessary across a broad swath of the civilian bureaucracy and military, including civilians in the policy office that reports to Mr. Rumsfeld and the office of the secretary of defense, the military organization that reports to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the regional combatant commanders and even the National Security Council staff at the White House.
One Pentagon official who read the review said it criticized the Defense Department and National Security Council bureaucracy for not creating ways to answer Socom's real-time needs, forcing the command to navigate plodding bureaucratic channels whenever it wanted to adjust course. The official said this made it difficult to mount the quick action required to single out insurgents or terrorist leaders whose locations may become known only for brief periods of time.
Seeking answers to his concerns, Mr. Rumsfeld asked General Downing, who is known for his blunt, independent style, to conduct the classified review. General Downing, a former Socom commander, led the inquiry into the 1996 bombing at the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia and served as counterterrorism adviser for the first President Bush.
Contacted by telephone and e-mail, General Downing declined to discuss the review, citing the secrecy of the project. But when asked to summarize his personal views of the debate, he said: "Over the years, the inter-agency system has become so lethargic and dysfunctional that it materially inhibits the ability to apply the vast power of the U.S. government on problems. You see this inability to synchronize in our operations in Iraq and in Afghanistan, across our foreign policy and in our response to Katrina."
The Downing study criticizes Pentagon civilians, the military's Joint Staff, the regional war-fighting commanders and the National Security Council staff for not readjusting their organizations to expedite the Special Operations Command's new counterterrorism missions.
Another official who read the review said it took to task senior civilian and military leaders who demanded "responsive, flexible, agile operations around the world, yet tolerate a staff system that gives you exactly the opposite."
Under a Unified Command Plan signed by President Bush, the Special Operations Command now "leads, plans, synchronizes, and as directed, executes global operations against terrorist networks." But the Special Operations Command, based in Tampa, Fla., "does not have the power to do what it has been assigned," said yet another official in paraphrasing the report.
The report included one radical proposal: It advocated relocating to Washington the headquarters of the Joint Special Operations Command, which runs all of the "special-mission units" that carry out the most secret attacks against terrorists and work to halt the proliferation of unconventional weapons. It proposed that these highly trained units then be put under Mr. Rumsfeld's direct, personal control.
Several readers of the Downing review said they believed the proposal was intended to call the bluff of those at the Pentagon who say these elite counterterrorism teams are not doing enough to find and capture or kill terrorist leaders. The implicit message, the readers said, was that if Pentagon leaders were dissatisfied, then they should try being in charge of planning and executing counterterrorism missions.
That proposal was rejected.
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