Officials: CIA struggled to build effective hit teams

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — In movies, the CIA has so many prolifically lethal assassins roaming the world that the main problem often seems to be reining them in.

But details that spilled out this week about a real CIA assassination program indicate that when the plotting is being done by spies instead of screenwriters, the obstacles are not so easy to surmount.

According to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, the CIA spent seven years trying to assemble teams capable of killing the world’s most-wanted terrorists but could never find a formula that worked.

The struggles came during a period in which the agency had been given unprecedented authorities and resources, and a cause — responding to the Sept. 11 attacks — with broad public support.

But officials could not solve daunting logistical problems, including how to get teams close to their targets while keeping U.S. involvement secret and being able to extract them safely if they succeeded in killing a terrorist.

In interviews, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the aim of the effort was broader than has been described in newspaper accounts this week.

In particular, officials said, ambitions for the program expanded to include creating teams that were composed not only of CIA personnel but counterparts from other countries, presumably Pakistan; and to be capable not just of killing high-value targets but also executing raids and other operations to gather evidence and intelligence that might lead to elusive al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Former officials said support for the program persisted in recent years largely because it could compensate for a crucial shortcoming of the ongoing campaign of Predator strikes. The drones had emerged as a potent weapon against al-Qaida in Pakistan but had failed to bring the agency closer to bin Laden.

“The bottom line is that you’ve still got No. 1 and No. 2 out there,” one former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official said. “If all you do is blow stuff up and burn stuff up, you never get information that could lead you to the prize.”