WASHINGTON – A prominent former Central Intelligence Agency officer claims that release of the recent report by the Democrat majority of the Senate Intelligence Committee criticizing her agency's enhanced interrogation methods on terrorists has caused the United States to lose the psychological operations initiative of getting "inside the enemy's mind and messing with it."
In an exclusive interview with WND, Clare Lopez, vice president for research and analysis at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, said the Obama administration is no longer looking at how to regain the psychological operations, or psyops, advantage against terrorists.
She said that publication of interrogation methods has let terrorists know of techniques "we will never use again, even though manipulating the enemy's mindset is an important element, among others, of warfare."
"By the Senate committee publishing these interrogation methods, we let [the enemy] know everything we did do and everything we will no longer do ever gain," she said. "It took away the element of concern, worry and fear – fear of the unknown."
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She said that now the enemy will know the worst thing that can happen to them is "sleep deprivation or being slammed against the wall – and maybe waterboarding, but now that is unlikely."
"That tool, if you will, the tool of keeping the enemy in doubt, concern and worry, is taken away," she said.
Psyops is a planned effort to influence the emotions, motives and objectives – and ultimately the behavior – of individuals, groups, organizations and governments.
Lopez is not the only former CIA officer critical of the release of a report by the Democrat majority of the Senate Intelligence Committee that condemned interrogation practices of the George W. Bush administration.
Three former CIA directors also were among the intelligence experts and commentators who strongly criticized the committee's 6,000-page review of the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," or EITs, in the post-9/11 era, calling it unfair and unbalanced.
The report, they said, was a "missed opportunity to deliver a serious and balanced study of an important policy question," the former directors said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece.
"The committee has given us instead a one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation – essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks."
The op-ed was written by former CIA Directors George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden along with former CIA Deputy Directors John E. McLaughlin, Albert M. Calland and Stephen R. Kappes.
In view of the report's publication, Lopez said it won't be easy to regain the psychological warfare advantage over the enemy.
"I think for future operations," she said, "it's not going to be with this (Obama) administration but perhaps with a future one. We are going to redeem our credibility with the enemy through a demonstration of resolve."
She tempered that with the observation that it doesn't mean the United States will be going out to commit human rights abuses against the enemy.
Instead, she said, there needs to be a "new national security strategy."
"That new national security strategy should outline just who the enemy is, who we're fighting and name them.
"It is the forces of Islamic jihad and Shariah," Lopez said.
"It has to be made known that we're going to get serious again and not just through drone strikes, although they have their place," she said.
"So, the first thing is," Lopez said, "there needs to be a changing of the guard and then a new national security strategy and then begin carrying out operations that aren't necessarily announced or made public, but once word gets around – as it will in jihadi circles – that America's back."
She said that means increasing special operations missions without notification.
"It means we're not going to be pushed around anymore and that we're going to get serious again," she said. "I'm not suggesting torture or human rights abuses but to let the enemy know that he does have a fear being taken as a detainee and we're not going to let him know what that is. We need to sow fear, doubt and uncertainty in the enemy's mind. That's the goal."
She expressed concern that until there is a change in the administration in two years that the speed at which the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is gaining territory means America "is going to be in worse trouble than it is now."
"We certainly are. There's no question about that," she said.
Lopez said the U.S. needs to stay out of what has become an internal sectarian conflict and that "the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy," referring to Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, both of which are similarly battling ISIS.
She pointed out that the dispute between Shiites and Sunnis goes back almost 1,400 years, and the territory that ISIS has seized to date belongs "primarily to Iran's puppets," such as Syria. She doesn't think "it's in the national security interests of the United States to intervene to help one or the other side of an inter-Islamic, sectarian fight."
"Sunni jihad is every bit a threat to the United States as Shia jihad," she said, also referring to Iran, which, she said, by its constitution is a nation dedicated to jihad.
"These are not people we should be working with for any reason, for any purpose, whatsoever," she said.
She questioned why the U.S. even needs to go after ISIS at this point. The enemy, she said isn't just ISIS or Hezbollah and Iran but anyone who is "an adherent or proponent of the ideology of jihad and of the supremacy of Shariah. Anyone who fits that definition is an enemy of freedom and a sovereign western country like ours," said Lopez.
"I just don't see any reason to intervene in a conflict that is sectarian by nature, and neither side – the Shia or Sunnis – are our friends or allies," she said. "And we should not want to empower either one of them or help either one of them. … That would give one an advantage over the other.
"I don't think that is in our national security interest to do that."
However, she did propose arming and supporting the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds who have been fighting ISIS but also remain estranged from the Shiite governments in Damascus and Baghdad.
"The Kurds should be our friends and allies and we should support them, but what we're not doing is providing them with serious heavy weapons. That's where are assistance should go, obviously humanitarian assistance wherever that's possible and bolstering our friends and allies in the region which include Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."
She pointed out that the Saudi kingdom is the enemy of both Iran and ISIS, "and they want to get to the (Saudi) oil fields."
"It occurs to me that Iran and the Islamic State are not necessarily complete enemies or at opposite poles, certainly where it comes to Saudi Arabia," she said. "With all these things considered, I don't think we have a role over there. I really don't. I have no interest in propping up Iranian puppets in Baghdad or Damascus. They can stay, or they can fall, on their own."