How Rumsfeld Plans to Shake Up the Spy Game

By DOUGLAS WALLER

When it comes to spying, Donald Rumsfeld is an impatient man. The Defense Secretary hated having to wait for CIA spooks to make arrangements with Afghanistan's warlords before his special-operations commandos could infiltrate the country ahead of the 2001 U.S. invasion. These days Rumsfeld is even less inclined to depend on the CIA. Instead, he is pushing his generals to field a larger and more aggressive clandestine force to spy on terrorists worldwide and attack them.

Inside the Beltway, Rumsfeld's spying efforts--the Pentagon last week publicly acknowledged that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is sending out special clandestine teams--seem to critics like a power grab. But the Defense Department says its agents can deliver intelligence on military targets that's finer-grained than what the CIA provides--for example, architectural details of a building that commandos must storm.

To carry out that kind of work, the DIA has organized what it calls "strategic support teams," groups of 10 or fewer agents who can be sent anywhere in the world to collect intelligence for commanders in the field. Senior Pentagon officials say that one such agent, an interrogator who was dispatched to Baghdad, managed to glean information in interviews with Iraqis that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Other Pentagon units also field secret agents. Code Names, a new book written by defense analyst William Arkin, identifies more than 100 secret units, intelligence programs and communications networks that the Pentagon has set up to fight terrorists. Many have exotic designations like Aztec Silence and Island Sun. "When you put together all these code names, it shows there's something going on out there and it's complex," says Arkin.

Many of the secret activities are run by the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla., whose 50,000 commandos have the green light to launch missions against terrorists. The command also maintains a clandestine force of several hundred undercover spies, who specialize, for example, in planting electronic sensors or scouting terrorist targets for attack. Nicknamed the Army of Northern Virginia because it is based at Fort Belvoir, outside Washington, the unit is so secretive that it frequently changes its name to throw off outsiders trying to track it. Known in the early 1980s as the Intelligence Support Activity, the outfit over the years has had code names like Capacity Gear and Gray Fox. Its operations include hunting for terrorists as well as for clandestine weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities in the Middle East.

The CIA, uncomfortable with the Pentagon's encroaching on its work, wants its station chiefs overseas to be informed of what Rumsfeld's spies are up to. Some lawmakers fear that the Pentagon's secret activity will escape the strict congressional oversight imposed on the CIA's covert operations.

The Defense Department, in fact, has had a checkered history with cloak-and-dagger work. The Pentagon set up intelligence units in the early 1980s that were kept secret from Congress. They became rogue outfits, using tax dollars for questionable operations, to pay for expensive hotel rooms, first-class airline tickets and, in one instance, a hot-air balloon and a Rolls-Royce.

The Pentagon insists that it has strict controls in place to prevent abuses and that it is briefing Congress on its spy missions. "Applicable laws and regulations are applied to planning and operations conducted by U.S. forces," Stephen Cambone, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, told TIME. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner says he is satisfied for now that his committee is being informed of the secret operations. But Warner and the panel's senior Democrat, Carl Levin, have warned Pentagon officials that they want "no surprises," says a Senate aide. For Rumsfeld, the test will be whether his soldier spies can do better than the CIA overseas--and keep out of trouble at home.