CIA’s focus shifted from traditional espionage to ‘capture or kill’ targets since 9/11

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) continues to gather intelligence and furnish analysis on a vast array of subjects, but its focus and resources are now increasingly centred on the counterterrorism objective of finding targets to capture or kill, a US media report has said.

In the decade since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the CIA has undergone a fundamental transformation, The Washington Post reports.

The shift has been gradual enough that its magnitude can be difficult to grasp, the report said, adding that drone strikes, which once seemed impossibly futuristic, are so routine that they rarely attract public attention unless a high-ranking al-Qaeda figure is killed.

Critics- including some in the US intelligence community- contend that the CIA’s embrace of “kinetic” operations, as they are known, has diverted the intelligence agency from its traditional espionage mission and undermined its ability to make sense of global developments such as the Arab Spring, the report said.

Human rights groups go further, saying that the CIA now functions as a military force beyond the accountability that the United States has historically demanded of its armed services, the report added.

“We’re seeing the CIA turn into more of a paramilitary organization without the oversight and accountability that we traditionally expect of the military,” said Hina Shamsi, the director of the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

CIA officials, however, defend all aspects of the agency’s counterterrorism efforts and argue that the agency’s attention to other subjects has not been diminished, the report said.

Fran Moore, head of the CIA’s analytic branch, said that intelligence work on a vast range of issues- including weapons proliferation and energy resources- has been expanded and improved.

“The vast majority of analysts would not identify themselves as supporting military objectives,” Moore said in an interview at CIA headquarters. Counterterrorism “is clearly a significant, growing and vibrant part of our mission. But it’s not the defining mission.”

Nevertheless, those directly involved in building the CIA’s lethal capacity say that the changes to the agency since the 9/11 attacks are so profound that they sometimes marvel at the result, the report said.

According to the report, a former senior US intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters, described the CIA’s paramilitary transformation as “nothing short of a wonderment.”

“You’ve taken an agency that was chugging along and turned it into one hell of a killing machine,” the former official said. Blanching at his choice of words, he quickly offered a revision: “Instead, say ‘one hell of an operational tool’.”