The surge's 'secret weapon': Lessons of interagency high-value targeting teams

While Tom Ricks is away from
his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be
posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on March 25, 2011.

There's a good new study out of interagency high value target teams and the
role they played in Iraq in 2007. Secret
Weapon: High-value Target Teams as an Organizational Innovation, by
Christopher Lamb and Evan Munsing, argues that the interagency targeting teams
are neither well understood nor much liked inside the national security
establishment. It also is one of the most interesting monographs I've read in
some time.

The study's core conclusion is that, in Iraq in 2007, "the interagency teams
used to target enemy clandestine networks were a major, even indispensable,
catalyst for success" (6) Even so, the authors note, the bureaucracies in
Washington were not much interested in supporting them. "Cajoling parent
organizations for support was a major preoccupation of senior leaders in Iraq."
(58)

The most compelling part of the study is the discussion of interviews with
former members of the high-value targeting teams about what worked and why. Some
highlights:

--The single greatest variable of success was "access to the most senior
decision makers...because it allowed the interagency teams to bypass multiple
layers of mid level approval and obtain cooperation that otherwise would not
have been forthcoming " (40)

--Middle management at the home headquarters and agencies of team members
proved to be an impediment to information sharing, which was not the case with
top management. The way to get around this, the study says, was to recruit
personnel with enough seniority and experience to enjoy direct access to top
level officials.    

--Smaller teams generally worked better than large ones. "Team members we
interviewed ...agreed that smaller teams, usually 8 to 15 people, were more
effective and allowed greater cohesion and trust."

--The safer the area in which a team was based, the more pronounced
bureaucratic differences became, with the Green Zone being the obvious example
of a bad environment in which the sense of a common purpose was undermined.

--Teams that tried to operate "virtually" were far less effective than those
that were physically co-located, eating and living together.

--One area that required constant attention resulted from the different view
points of SOF and intelligence analysts. "There was a constant tension between
the desire of the intelligence organizations to develop sources and targets and
the desire of ... operators to take out targets even at the expense of
compromising sources." (45)

--The SOF general overseeing the joint targeting teams found that in order to
get cooperation from CIA, FBI and other officials, SOF culture had to change to
become more transparent. "SOF Task Force personnel were directed to set the
example by being first to give more information. They were told to ‘share until
it hurts.' As one commander explained it, ‘If you are sharing information to the
degree where you think, "Holy cow, I am going to go to jail," then you are in
the right area of sharing.' The point was to build trust, and
information-sharing was the icebreaker." (46)

--The leadership of the teams was hand-picked by the SOF general. He knew
that the team leaders had only limited authority over their team members and so
could not order, but only ask, their members to do things, so he chose officers
he thought were hyper active Type As who could pull back to Type B as needed.

It took several years for the teams to become effective, but "By 2007, the
interagency high-value target teams were a high-volume, awe-inspiring machine
that had to be carefully directed." (50) As it happened, there was a new top
American commander who came, Gen. Petraeus, who embraced the teams and used them
effectively.

Unfortunately, they conclude, once the crisis passed, the bureaucracies back
in Washington who were contributing to the teams began to lose interest in
supporting them. They also began to re-assert their own priorities. "By 2008,
other departments and agencies, particularly one unidentified intelligence
agency, began pulling back people and cooperation, believing information-sharing
and collaboration had gone too far." (54)    

It reminds me of something I once read about the British defense against the
Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain, that the real trick was not radar but
the organization that was able to combine radar, radio and aircraft to get the
right planes to the right places at the right times, and keep doing it for
months.