January 06, 2010

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Democracy Arsenal's Michael Cohen rips into a recent report by the current top U.S. military intelligence official in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, released through an influential think tank, the Center for New American Security, apparently without Pentagon authorization.

The report slams the intelligence effort in Afghanistan and urges more cultural knowledge for intel officers working in Afghanistan, among other recommendations. No objections there, but cultural knowledge of Afghanistan is not likely to be a requirement for the majority of the 100,000 U.S. troops being deployed to Afghanistan. It was released this week, just days after seven CIA officials were killed in Khost, and seems to disparage civilian intelligence efforts in Afghanistan. Cohen:

The top military intelligence official in Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn has put out afurther militarizing development efforts.

CNAS fellow Tom Ricks writes on his Foreign Policy blog: "As I understand it, the paper was released through CNAS because Gen. Flynn wanted to reach beyond his own chain of command and his own community and talk to people such as commanders of deploying infantry units about what kind of intelligence they should be demanding." In other words — it was released outside the chain of command quite deliberately.

What's more, some sources suggest the possibility that the report might have been authorized by one part of the DoD (if not others). The report's genesis seemed to be a talk Flynn gave at CNAS as part of a series it runs called "Voices from the Field."

Also strongly suggested was the possibility that Flynn was the