The Salvador Option’
The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Updated: 5:33 p.m. ET Jan. 8, 2005


Jan. 8 - What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon’s latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"—and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are," one senior military officer told NEWSWEEK. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November’s operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency—as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time—than in spreading it out.

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.

Also being debated is which agency within the U.S. government—the Defense department or CIA—would take responsibility for such an operation. Rumsfeld’s Pentagon has aggressively sought to build up its own intelligence-gathering and clandestine capability with an operation run by Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone. But since the Abu Ghraib interrogations scandal, some military officials are ultra-wary of any operations that could run afoul of the ethics codified in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That, they argue, is the reason why such covert operations have always been run by the CIA and authorized by a special presidential finding. (In "covert" activity, U.S. personnel operate under cover and the U.S. government will not confirm that it instigated or ordered them into action if they are captured or killed.)

Meanwhile, intensive discussions are taking place inside the Senate Intelligence Committee over the Defense department’s efforts to expand the involvement of U.S. Special Forces personnel in intelligence-gathering missions. Historically, Special Forces’ intelligence gathering has been limited to objectives directly related to upcoming military operations—"preparation of the battlefield," in military lingo. But, according to intelligence and defense officials, some Pentagon civilians for years have sought to expand the use of Special Forces for other intelligence missions.

Pentagon civilians and some Special Forces personnel believe CIA civilian managers have traditionally been too conservative in planning and executing the kind of undercover missions that Special Forces soldiers believe they can effectively conduct. CIA traditionalists are believed to be adamantly opposed to ceding any authority to the Pentagon. Until now, Pentagon proposals for a capability to send soldiers out on intelligence missions without direct CIA approval or participation have been shot down. But counter-terrorist strike squads, even operating covertly, could be deemed to fall within the Defense department’s orbit.

The interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is said to be among the most forthright proponents of the Salvador option. Maj. Gen.Muhammad Abdallah al-Shahwani, director of Iraq’s National Intelligence Service, may have been laying the groundwork for the idea with a series of interviews during the past ten days. Shahwani told the London-based Arabic daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat that the insurgent leadership—he named three former senior figures in the Saddam regime, including Saddam Hussein’s half-brother—were essentially safe across the border in a Syrian sanctuary. "We are certain that they are in Syria and move easily between Syrian and Iraqi territories," he said, adding that efforts to extradite them "have not borne fruit so far."

Shahwani also said that the U.S. occupation has failed to crack the problem of broad support for the insurgency. The insurgents, he said, "are mostly in the Sunni areas where the population there, almost 200,000, is sympathetic to them." He said most Iraqi people do not actively support the insurgents or provide them with material or logistical help, but at the same time they won’t turn them in. One military source involved in the Pentagon debate agrees that this is the crux of the problem, and he suggests that new offensive operations are needed that would create a fear of aiding the insurgency. "The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists," he said. "From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation."

Pentagon sources emphasize there has been decision yet to launch the Salvador option. Last week, Rumsfeld decided to send a retired four-star general, Gary Luck, to Iraq on an open-ended mission to review the entire military strategy there. But with the U.S. Army strained to the breaking point, military strategists note that a dramatic new approach might be needed—perhaps one as potentially explosive as the Salvador option.

With Mark Hosenball

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek/

Ooh, I like where this is going...

--PunkDavid

The U.S. Government fucking sucks. Not in my name they sure as fuck aren't.

I know the news source is usually credible but I'd like to know where they got their facts and why its a "web exclusive" that I have not seen reported from any other agency, this should be HUGE news.

Well considering the Salvadorian mass murder was largely covered up at the time, I'm surprised that this even warranted the attention of Newsweek. Don't expect the mainstream newsmedia to devote much attention to this, if any. I'm shocked George Stephanopolis brought it up to Colin Powell today even. Lets face it, they don't even tell the full story of what happened 20 years ago. You have to go to independent news for that.

Just some context on El Salvador:

On October 15, 1979, a group of military officers and civilian leaders ousted the right-wing government of Gen. Carlos Humberto Romero (1977-79) and formed a revolutionary junta. PDC leader Duarte joined the junta in March 1980, leading the provisional government until the elections of March 1982. In an effort to project a more moderate image, the junta initiated a land reform program and nationalized the banks and the marketing of coffee and sugar. At the same time, however, the junta allowed members of the "death squads", paramilitary groups with close ties to the military, to carry out a campaign of terror against political dissidents. The death squads carried out several high profile profile murders at this time; archbishop Óscar Romero was assassinated in 1980 after publicly urging the U.S. government not to provide military support to the El Salvadoran government, and four US nuns were also raped and murdered by members of Salvadoran death squads. In all, thousands of Salvadorans were murdered by the death squads.

During this period, political parties were allowed to function again, and on March 28, 1982, Salvadorans elected a new constituent assembly. Following that election, authority was transferred to Álvaro Alfredo Magaña Borja, the provisional president selected by the assembly. The 1983 constitution, drafted by the assembly, ostensibly strengthened individual rights, established safeguards against excessive provisional detention and unreasonable searches, established a republican, pluralistic form of government, strengthened the legislative branch, and enhanced judicial independence. It also codified labor rights, particularly for agricultural workers. However, despite these nominal reforms, in practice the human rights record in El Salvador continued to be plagued by a terror campaign instituted by the death squads, though, and thus these changes did not satisfy the guerrilla movements, which had unified as the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN). Duarte won the 1984 presidential election against rightist Roberto D'Aubuisson of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) with 54% of the vote and became the first freely elected president of El Salvador in more than 50 years. Fearful of a D'Aubuisson victory, the CIA had used approximately $2 million to support Duarte's candidacy. D'Aubuisson and his ARENA party had close ties to the death squads, and was described as a "pathological killer" by former U.S. Ambassador Robert White. In 1989, ARENA's Alfredo Cristiani won the presidential election with 54% of the vote. His inauguration on June 1, 1989, marked the first time that power had passed peacefully from one freely elected civilian leader to another.

In 1986, the Human Rights Commission of El Salvador published a 165-page report on the Mariona men's prison. The report documented the routine use of at least 40 kinds of torture on political prisoners, and that U.S. servicemen often acted as supervisors. On October 26, 1987, Herbert Ernesto Anaya, head of the Salvadoran Human Rights Commission was assassinated.

Despite the controversies regarding repression and brutality from the Salvadoran Armed Forces, the U.S. continued to give aid to El Salvador.

lol... death squads.

You guys need to read Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden, great book. The CIA was such a clusterfuck... and the Colombian government didn't help much either.

It's an interesting concept. But let's make something clear, as far as my position goes... Rumsfeld needs to be taken out of office. I don't care if we send in Chuck E. Cheese in a Rambo mask and methamphetamine coated latex suit to get the job done... Rumsfeld has got to go.

His days of impressing me are over. The CIA will fuck this up, and so long as Rummie is on board at the DoD, so will they.

If there's one thing we've learned about Bush, it's that he can't admit mistakes. This is why Rumsfeld will continue to be Sec. of Defense, and things will continue to worsen in Iraq.

It's more an issue of employment. Bushes don't fire people, period.

Would you allow me to quote that for my sig? Ingenious.

Go for it.

While that may be true, you can't deny he doesn't admit mistakes. That was made pretty clear during the town hall debate, when he was asked point blank, and all he could come up with after a minute of stammering was "maybe some appointments." And let's not forget

You admit mistakes when you fuck a fat intern. You keep it inside when someone disagrees with your foreign policy. Not everyone sees Iraq as a mistake. I also imagine those in office who perpetrated those things you see as mistakes would not readily admit them to be mistakes.

I doubt Kennedy would call NASA a mistake, but, policy wise, it's a vaccuous pork monster that has yielded little more than pretty pictures, stamp collections, a Tom Hanks movie and several new ways to take a shit. See... that's my opinion. The Space Program should be privatized.