“Once a CIA Agent, a CIA Agent Forever”

The U.S. now hires private contractors for covert operations abroad. One of them, a man named Duane Clarridge, has 2000 agents in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The data gathered on the Taliban and its leadership was passed on to the Director of the American National Intelligence. “NG” experts think that Washington resorts to such an outsourcing due to the ineffectiveness of the country’s special services.

Duane Clarridge voluntarily left the CIA 20 years ago. He was one of the organizers of the scandalous deal by which weapons were purchased from Iran and then delivered to “Contras” fighting against the left-wing Government in Nicaragua. Clarridge gave false evidence and legislators decided to bring the spy case to court. However, President George Bush pardoned him and since then the guilty knight of cloak and dagger is on the same road again but, this time, acting privately.

Mr. Clarridge uses technical means to manage a corps of around 200 agents in Afghanistan and the neighboring areas of Pakistan from his house in the city of San Diego. The New York Times says that he has created his own private CIA.

The main objective of the agents is to gather data on Taliban plans to attack the American Army and discover discreditable facts about the regime of the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai. You see, Mr. Clarridge is convinced that Karzai is getting ready for a secret deal with Pakistan or Iran to drive the Americans out of his country.

In order to prevent this collusion, Clarridge attempted, with the help of his people, to obtain hair from Karzai’s beard. The object being, that DNA analysis would confirm Clarridge’s suspicion that the president is a heroin addict. At the same time, conspiracy supporters were given orders to expose connections of the president’s step-brother, who allegedly has control over Kandahar, with drug barons.

Another line of work of the “private CIA” is data collection on the contacts of Taliban leaders with Pakistani officials. In this regard, its only achievement was discovering information about the arrest of the “Taliban” leader in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar. This information was delivered to Dennis Blair, the Director of the U.S. National Intelligence.

Though the messages received by the center were, to put it mildly, doubtful, the Pentagon, enraged by the CIA’s inability to protect American soldiers from subversive activity, signed a contract with the Clarridge firm worth $6 million. The Military Department later canceled the contract. Nevertheless, the “underground defense committee” still operates but now receives financial support from private sources. Dispatches are getting to the desks of influential politicians and journalists as they did before.

During the interview with “NG”, Vitaly Shlikov, colonel GRU in retirement, said that the “outsourcing” is a transfer of some intelligence functions to private services and was invented not by the Americans. It was practiced, for example, in England during the Second World War. Winston Churchill ordered the formation of just such a service in the U.S. to “coordinate security in Britain” (BCS).

This service officially executed consular functions in Manhattan, New York. The number of its agents reached 3,000 people. BCS was supposed to prevent attacks on convoys to England and oppose Nazi propaganda. The service was run by a Canadian businessman, William Stevenson. In Shlkov’s opinion, not only the U.S. but other states will be resorting even more extensively to spying “outsourcing.” Governmental intelligence services are becoming less reliable. Their agents, authors of the dispatches, are concerned not only with the credibility of the messages but, most of all, about the dispatches being to the authorities’ liking. And yes, keeping contracting agencies is cheaper than paying regulars.