The most striking thing about this book is the large amount of text blacked out – “redacted” – on the orders of the US Department of Defence. Oddly, the US Army previously approved the unredacted first edition with few changes. Perhaps the original censors had not been sufficiently paranoid. In a hindsight panic, the Pentagon scrambled to buy up and destroy most of the 10,000 copies of the original print run – but not the 100 or so review copies already sent out. Once again, as with WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, the US military firmly and angrily slammed the stable door. Meanwhile, the secret gee-gees had not just bolted, but been processed into pet food and glue readily available on the open market.
If you want to find the original version, you need look no further than the New York Times – and even the Army Times – which have both published parallel texts of the two editions. The uncensored version published by the New York Times divulges that one of the largest redactions revealed that Anthony Shaffer’s cover name, Chris Stryker, was based on a character played by John Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima. Surely this is a pointless secret, for hadn’t the author already blown his cover by writing the book? In any case, the Pentagon’s own Captain Mainwaring waddled up: “Don’t tell them your name, Shaffer!”
But, despite the sitcom absurdity, the debacle also reveals a sinister aspect of the secret state. The misuse of secret classifications, particularly those which are utterly unnecessary, is a means of controlling and threatening those who work for the state as well as the public. The label “security risk” can be used to bar people from employment as well as essential information.
I suspect the real reason behind the DoD redactions is a desire by Shaffer’s former bosses to punish him for writing a book that reveals their own failures. Shaffer’s most remarkable claim is that Able Danger, an undercover operation run by the Defense Intelligence Agency, discovered two of the three al Qaida cells – “including Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker” – two years before they carried out the attacks on 9/11. The op began by examining every individual involved in the original attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. The method used was akin to spotting Facebook friendship networks. They created an algorithm of basic data points based on “the year they were born, tribal affiliation, mosque memberships, and so on.”
You can see, by the way, what a gift Facebook must be to intelligence services. They then focused on identifying individuals from that data who matched the profiles of the 1993 attackers. And, hey presto, Mohamed Atta.Shaffer blames 9/11 on two factors. One is that intelligence organisations do not share their information with other agencies, especially those responsible for carrying out preventative operations. The other he calls “cold feet.” Shaffer claims the army’s lawyers “feared controversy if Able Danger were portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States” and that, consequently, Able Danger was ordered to terminate its activities nine months before 9/11. Shaffer’s claim has an ominous ring: civil liberties must be sacrificed for security. It’s also a convenient excuse for any security service to embrace more power or scapegoat past failures.
The title, Operation Dark Heart, was inspired by a top secret operation that planned to take out High Value Targets at a residence, nicknamed “the al Qaida Hotel” near Wana in Pakistan. The operation was cancelled at an advanced stage because it was deemed a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. Shaffer’s anger about the cancellation was fuelled by his belief that the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence colludes with al Qaida and the Taliban to provide safe havens in Pakistan.
In the final chapter, however, Shaffer observes perceptively that Pakistan’s tightrope walking “has nothing to do with Afghanistan” and everything to do with the “Pakistani-Indian cold war” and the primary focus of US policy should be to “reduce tensions between India and Pakistan”. Sometimes I feel there are two Tony Shaffers: one gung-ho and full of testosterone, the other an insightful intellectual. But, for most of the book, and I suspect this is a marketing decision, Testosterone Tony is in charge. The cover and the first chapter are shamelessly designed to attract armchair war junkies. The narrative begins with the usual clichés. An MH-47 Chinook “thumps through the thin air of the Afghan mountains headed for trouble.” As the rear ramp lowers, the author intones: “I put my rifle on semiauto and moved out at two o’clock.” And then…well, not much.
This book isn’t an action thriller, but I often detect the hand of an editor trying to make it one. Instead of a thriller, we get action film pastiche: “If you weren’t the best damned intelligence officer, I’d fire you.” The cast have names like Hank and Randy and are of the “gaunt face, deep set eyes” variety. But, despite the tough guy posing, the “F” word is almost always bowdlerised to “freakin’” – only a single desolate “fuck” eluded the proof-reader’s eye.
Shaffer admits there are “a growing number of parallels between the Vietnam War and our efforts in Afghanistan”, but he doesn’t realise the extent to which bad and stupid policy decisions led to a tragedy that killed more than four million Vietnamese. With a few exceptions, such as Daniel Ellsberg, intelligence officers in Vietnam put career before integrity. The Vietnam experience should have made intelligence agencies reassess their roles. Intelligence officers have a valuable role in conflict resolution. Spies should be used to identify who to talk to instead of just who to kill. The effective spy should be a back channel diplomat as well as a collector of intelligence. Headline grabbing swoops with guns blazing may up a President’s ratings, but do little to change the situation on the ground. The intelligent Afghan option is to turn the Taliban against al Qaida – just as the intelligent Vietnam option would have been to allow Ho Chi Minh to become an Asian Tito, certainly a Marxist Leninist, but one as opposed to Soviet or Chinese as Western domination.
One final note. In my day, it was the Golden Triangle and now it’s Afghanistan. Is it just a coincidence that the CIA always gets heavily involved in places which are the world’s leading producers of heroin and opium?
