The Enemy Within by Larry Bond Page A

pattern. Backed by Farrell’s carte Blanche, ossini had recruited mavericks men and women whose skills were undoubted but who were widely viewed as square pegs in round holes inside the existing intelligence bureaucracies. At a time of declining budgets, the CIA , the NSA , and the other agencies were under increasing pressure to cut costs and staff. In those circumstances, the first to go were usually those who didn’t quite fit the button-down, yuppified tone emanating from each organization’s upper floors.
    Those were exactly the kind of people Farrell had said he wanted for the ISOC liaison unit: people who were independent-minded and “just plain ornery enough” to take the analyses generated by the rest of the intelligence community, shake them up, turn them inside out, and basically play holy hell with the conventional wisdom.
    Well, Joe Rossini had taken the general at his word, Thorn realized. The offices outside this room were crawling with men and women who loved nothing better than poking holes in other government agencies’ pet theories. Men and women who were now under his authority. Terrific. He had the sudden, unnerving feeling he’d just stepped out into a bureaucratic minefield.
    He shook off the feeling and asked, “Any problems so far?” ‘
    “You mean besides our wonderful accommodations?”
    Thorn matched Rossini’s wry tone. “Yeah. Besides that.”
    “Frankly, not as many as I expected. The teams I’ve set up are shaking out pretty well. The data’s starting to come in and most of the agencies are cooperating or at least making a good first stab at it.”
    Then Rossini shook his head. “But we need more focus, Pete. More practical input on the kinds of inter Delta, the SEALs, and the rest of the Command really need for planning and conducting operations. Without that we’re just another time-wasting loop in the information cycle.”
    Thorn nodded, starting to understand why Farrell thought he could do some good here.
    Providing the Joint Special Operations Command with highly accurate, up-to-date intelligence on terrorist groups and their foreign backers was the whole rationale for this new unit’s existence. The Special Operations Command already had a Directorate of Intelligence staffed by hundreds of dedicated professionals, but they were mostly sited far away from Washington, D.C. They were also often mired in the kinds of interagency rivalries and lockstep thinking that inevitably developed in large organisations.
    For years Delta Force and the other American commando units had been complaining about the quality of the intelligence support they received. Delta even had its own detachment of covert operatives, nicknamed the Funny Platoon, to provide tactical intelligence just before any strike. The ILU was an effort to build on that to expand JSOC’s storehouse of reliable information to the strategic and operational levels. People outside JSOC saw Major General Farrell’s new unit as simple empire-building. People inside saw it as a matter of survival. Bad intelligence got good soldiers killed.
    Apparently, the general was counting on him to give Rossini and his civilian teams the military and operational insights they lacked. Now, that made sense, Thorn thought, feeling a surge of excitement and satisfaction at the prospect of real, meaningful work work that could save lives. He wasn’t an analyst, and he certainly wasn’t a skilled “fixer” able to navigate the Pentagon’s tangled administrative backwaters. But he did know the kind of data commandos needed to survive and succeed.
    He {caned forward. “Okay. Let’s concentrate on developing that focus first, then. We can’t turn analysts into Delta commandos, but we can give ‘em a clearer idea of just what’s involved in putting a mission together and in pulling it off without getting killed. Here’s what I think we need to do…”
    Rossinilistened intently while he outlined his ideas, interrupting only to