Pentagon Battles Politics Over New Spy Teams

Defense Department officials acknowledged Monday that the Pentagon planned to deploy new clandestine military intelligence teams with U.S. troops on counter-terrorism missions worldwide, but denied that the department had kept lawmakers in the dark about the existence and purpose of these units.

Defense officials said that the intelligence units, known as Strategic Support Teams, were created to improve human intelligence for U.S. conventional and special operations troops, not to grab power from the CIA, which historically has been the Pentagon’s main source of battlefield intelligence.

On Capitol Hill, senior lawmakers responding to a Washington Post article Sunday said they had not been told about the program and threatened congressional hearings to determine whether the Pentagon was improperly entering a cloak-and-dagger realm once reserved for the CIA.

Yet two senior officials said Monday that members of Congress had been briefed last year on the plans for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Strategic Support Branch, which oversees the teams. They said money for the intelligence gathering was approved for the 2005 budget year, which began in October.

The two officials, speaking on condition that their identities not be revealed, said a name change could be one reason for the confusion. When lawmakers were first briefed, the Pentagon called the groups Human Augmentation Teams.

The officials said that unlike CIA operatives, members of the Strategic Support Teams would not be engaged in “covert” actions -- missions that the U.S. government denies knowledge of and that require presidential approval.

The officials would not reveal how much money was directed toward the new program, which they said was paid for with Defense Department funds in the National Foreign Intelligence program, which is controlled by the CIA director.

On Monday, the Pentagon dispatched its two senior intelligence officials, Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone and DIA head Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, to speak with top lawmakers about the program. At least one powerful senator was satisfied after the meetings.

“In my opinion, these intelligence programs are vital to our national security interests, and I am satisfied that they are being coordinated with the appropriate agencies of the federal government,” said Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) in a statement.

Nevertheless, the teams are likely to face renewed scrutiny from lawmakers concerned that the Pentagon has ventured too far into the clandestine world.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s push to exert greater Pentagon control over battlefield intelligence is well-documented. Several articles in The Times and elsewhere in recent months have described efforts by the Pentagon to become less dependent on the CIA.

As the Pentagon drew up plans to invade Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, Rumsfeld was angry that the CIA was able to suggest so few targets for U.S. bombers to strike. He also bemoaned the fact that CIA paramilitary units were the first U.S. operatives inside the country, arriving ahead of special operations troops.

After assessing events in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon decided to create the Strategic Support Branch under the Defense Intelligence Agency to form intelligence-gathering teams from the ranks of DIA employees.

Instead of continuing to dispatch what a senior military official called ad hoc “pick-up teams” of DIA intelligence operatives to be deployed with troops, the Strategic Support Teams are composed of civilian and military operatives with various skills, such as analysts, interpreters and interrogators.

The move is being made with the full knowledge and participation of the CIA, the senior military official said. The CIA will still deploy operatives overseas. It wasn’t clear how they would work with the Pentagon teams.

None of the new teams has yet been sent abroad, the officials said. Denying one aspect of the Post report, they said the units in the field would report directly to theater commanders, not Rumsfeld.