Once again, the U.S. State Department has some explaining to do. Why exactly are State bureaucrats being allowed to block progress in the War on [Islamic] Terror?
The State Department is restricting the roles of some special operations troops who have been assigned secretly to U.S. embassies to gather intelligence on al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups, defense sources say.Posted by Alan at July 9, 2004 06:01 AMThe Pentagon has been placing Green Berets and other special operations forces in embassies, under diplomatic cover, to enhance the United States' ability to locate al Qaeda cells and prepare to attack them. The undercover troops are referred to as operational command elements (OCE).
The mission is generally called "operational preparation of the battle space." It is basic spy work — setting up a network of sources and identifying safe houses and landing zones.
But according to the two defense sources in the special operations community, State Department embassy personnel, in some instances, are placing restrictions on what the undercover commandos can do. In one case, said a source, a Green Beret is not allowed to work outside the embassy.
The source declined to specify the embassy. But another source said the OCE program has run into problems in Africa, where al Qaeda is striving to set up cells and overthrow secular governments.
"There are certain ambassadors who don't want them there," this second source said. The officials described a culture within the State Department's Foreign Service that is opposed to non-State officials working out of embassies.
"It's the 'you're not one of us' kind of thing," the official said.