At CIA, spying takes a back seat to manhunts
In its relentless pursuit of terror suspects, the CIA now oversees a growing military operation that threatens to sideline its traditional work in espionage and intelligence, former officials and experts say.
The US raid in May that killed Osama bin Laden symbolised the "militarisation" of the leading spy agency since the 9/11 attacks, with Navy SEAL commandos operating under CIA authority.
And yesterday US-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi was killed in an air raid in Yemen hailed by President Barack Obama as a "major blow" to terrorists.
The White House refused to confirm reports that US CIA drone aircraft and other military assets had mounted the raid, keeping a veil of secrecy over US anti-terror operations.
Covert action is nothing new to the Central Intelligence Agency, but the 9/11 attacks triggered an unprecedented expansion of the service's paramilitary arm over the past decade, featuring drone bombing raids and "targeted killings" of militants from Pakistan to Somalia.
The transformation recalls the origins of the CIA during World War II, when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) under "Wild" Bill Donovan championed paramilitary strikes and daring sabotage work behind enemy lines.
"CIA has never looked more like its direct ancestor the OSS than it does at this moment," Michael Hayden, who served as the spy agency's director from 2006 to 2009, told AFP.
Officials see the counter-terror operations, carried out often in tandem with the US military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command, as a stunning success that has severely damaged al-Qaeda.
"We're killing these people faster than they can produce them now," said a former senior official.
For the bin Laden raid and other covert activities, uniformed special operations forces often have tactical control over the "trigger pullers" but ultimate authority remains with the CIA, allowing the US government legal "deniability."
The CIA oversees a 3,000-strong Afghan counter-terrorism contingent and now has a new generation of officers steeped in the craft of targeting.
Other intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency with its eavesdropping technology, also are increasingly focused on supporting troops in Afghanistan or special operations forces elsewhere.
In contrast to the Vietnam era, the deployment of CIA teams working closely with special forces in warzones has fostered the "emergence of a common culture" between soldiers and spies, said Raphael Ramos, a researcher at the Brussels-based European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center.
