U.S. hones intelligence skills

FORT HUACHUCA, Ariz. — One of the most experienced interrogators in the Defense Department looked straight into Ahmed’s eyes and asked him for the third time: “Ahmed, what insurgent organization do you belong to?”

Sitting in the room with no windows, Ahmed refused to answer the interrogator’s questions. He was stoic — similar to many al Qaeda insurgents the interrogator had questioned at the detention center at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But, this time, things were different.

Ahmed, who uses an alias, was practicing as an advanced interrogation student at Fort Huachuca, the nation’s largest intelligence-training facility and the home of the Defense Department’s war on terror.

Photos:Training operatives at Ft. Huachuca

Just 13 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, the heavily guarded Army fort, once the home of the Buffalo Soldiers, is noted today for training some of the U.S. military’s most-talented intelligence operatives and interrogation personnel.

Many buildings at the fort have no windows to protect the classified information and the training that takes place inside. Their central focus is combating the country’s latest threat: terrorism.

“The threat changed. We went from communism to terrorism,” said Steve Norton, chief of the Defense Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Management Office within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). “So we’re not looking at nation states; we’re not looking at armies; we’re not looking at equipment — submarines and ships. We’re dealing with a very diabolical enemy, but within the human dimension kind of threat.”

Mr. Norton and John Antonitis, an intelligence professional and a staff member of the now-defunct Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, said preparing military personnel to go “outside the wire” is essential to winning the war on terror.

In an interview with The Washington Times at the Pentagon, Mr. Norton and Mr. Antonitis explained how the war on terror is like no other in the history of the U.S. military and provided an inside look at the making of a new generation of soldiers.

Maj. Gen. John M. Custer III, commander of the Army Intelligence Center and Fort Huachuca, said the program wants to add 7,000 more “intelligence soldiers” and 350 more interrogators by 2013. Military officials could not provide the total projected cost of the program because they consider it classified information.

Last year, at the Army Intelligence Center, about 1,700 enlisted soldiers, National Guard members, Army Reservists and other military personnel were taught to become 97Es — also known as human intelligence collectors.

On a visit to Washington last year, Gen. Custer described the war on terror as searching for a “needle in a needle stack,” telling The Times it would be much easier to search for a “needle in a haystack” because at least “there’s a visible difference.”

Mr. Norton said that post-Sept. 11, the Defense Department, on the recommendation of the 9/11 commission and other national security experts, realized that developing human intelligence would be essential to gaining ground on al Qaeda. It became more imperative once the war in Afghanistan and Iraq began.

“We can still look, we can still listen, but if we’re looking to see where a human being moves, well, that’s pretty tough,” he said, referring to former Cold War strategies of analyzing the enemy.

Story Continues →