LANGLEY, Va. — Escorted by a half-dozen administrative, public affairs and security personnel, David Cohen walked into a conference room at CIA headquarters and sat down. It was his first anniversary as deputy director.
The occasion was not a celebration, but an accounting of a turbulent year.
“One of the realities of the time we live in is that it’s a very complex world and there are a number of urgent challenges,” Cohen said.
And a number of them appear to be worsening.
Cohen, in an exclusive interview with WTOP, says those challenges include “the threat that is manifest through (the Islamic State) and through al-Qaida and its affiliates. We saw North Korea launch a missile. It conducted a nuclear test not so long ago. We have continuing issues in Syria and Iraq, the Russians in Ukraine, the Chinese and the South China Sea.”
The list goes on, but a key issue for the CIA and every other intelligence agency around the world is figuring out how to keep up with the pace of developments.
The Internet has provided terror groups with a detached, rapid medium to recruit operatives, plan attacks and execute them. “We’ve seen examples of this in San Bernardino, most recently, of the self-radicalized individuals in the U.S. who are looking at and consuming the propaganda that ISIL and other terrorism and extremism organizations are putting out in social media,” said Cohen.
Despite U.S. attempts to construct a narrative to counter terrorist propaganda and deter those considering joining such groups, the heavy flow of recruits continues.
“We’ve seen it. That is a threat. It’s one that we’re focusing on and our partners in the FBI are focused on,” said Cohen.
But during his first year on the job, a significant amount of progress has been made degrading ISIL. Cohen says CIA intelligence has played a key role in that.
“One of the things that the agency is very much involved in is helping to provide the intelligence so that our military and the Iraq military by extension are able to effectively conduct military operations against ISIL.”
The U.S. military has been conducting operations in Iraq and Syria for more than a year. But collecting intelligence against ISIL in Syria is difficult because the U.S. has no official presence there, according to several U.S. intelligence officials WTOP spoke with recently.
The U.S. Embassy in Damascus suspended its operations in February 2012. The government of the Czech Republic, acting through its embassy in Damascus, serves as a protecting power for U.S. interests in Syria.
“The challenge,” according to a former CIA operative, is “collecting intel in a war zone where we have no or very few troops. So the objective becomes classic, tradecraft training of trusted agents that have access to the area and information.”
The former operative said, “I think the [human intelligence] is getting better as ISIL gets ever more paranoid and shrinks into a defensive crouch. Their claim to be a state that’s run openly means they are vulnerable to traditional espionage. They can’t be a clandestine caliphate, and so a lot of their stuff is open to collection.”
Cohen said it’s clear the U.S. collections effort is having an effect.
“The territory that they control is contracting. ISIL has lost momentum within Iraq and Syria. They’ve been pushed back from Ramadi, pushed back from Baiji, pushed back from Sinjar in Iraq and they’ve lost control of Tishrin dam in Syria,” he said.
In a new development, Friday’s airstrikes that killed approximately 40 ISIL operatives in Libya might have opened a new front in the war to stop the expansion of the terror group. A Pentagon spokesman said “the strike may not be the last.”
It also most likely means CIA resources would be called upon for intelligence gathering for military purposes.
Counterterrorism issues are only a part of the CIA’s portfolio at the moment.
Several U.S. intelligence officials WTOP spoke with are most troubled by the impact of technology in the hands of U.S. adversaries. Not only can terrorists plot and plan in secret using end-to-end encryption; so can weapons dealers and transnational criminal gangs. Their biggest fear is unknown actors planning in the “dark.”
The CIA’s mission is to “preempt threats and further U.S. national security objectives by collecting intelligence that matters, producing objective all-source analysis, conducting effective covert action as directed by the President, and safeguarding the secrets that help keep our Nation safe.”
Those secrets involve everything from ideas related to national security to the thinking of policy makers to technology used to protect the nation.
There is also a great deal of consternation regarding nuclear nations: North Korea and Iran. The U.S. has made a deal with Iran to shut down its nuclear program, and Cohen said the CIA will play a significant role in the enforcement of the agreement.
“With respect to Iran, we continue to devote a fair amount of resources on a number of different lines of activities with respect to Iran,” said Cohen. “One, of course, is monitoring and helping others to monitor Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action the nuclear deal.”
But Cohen suggested Iran’s nuclear deal doesn’t mean the country’s leaders get a pass on their other clandestine activities.
“We’re also working with others to continue to focus on Iran’s malicious activity — whether it’s near vicinity or anywhere else in the world — directly through the Quds force or Hezbollah.”
As the pace of change continues to quicken and world events that may have a negative impact on the U.S. continue to develop, Cohen said, “it’s been an extraordinarily rewarding year” for him, but he knows that ahead is more of the difficult “blocking and tackling of what this agency is expected to do.”
