Waldroup out. "Controversial Pentagon Espionage Unit Loses Its Leader," the WaPo reports. Sub-headline: "Rumsfeld Reportedly Moving Ahead with Plans to Expand Team's Intelligence Work Worldwide." And as Barton Gellman reports, the DIA is openly hiring for the field ops positions:

The DIA has stepped up a recruiting campaign for candidates with "outstanding foreign language skills" and "a background in hard science or special operations." "You are the unseen and hear the unspoken," said one advertisement placed in the Army Times and other newspapers with large military readerships. "You could be anybody, anywhere. You are Intelligence. Be DIA." The accompanying illustration depicts two men in silhouette, conversing at a darkened table with a cityscape featuring an Abrams tank out the window. The job being advertised is "DIA field HUMINT collector," requiring willingness "to fulfill short-term deployments and worldwide assignment."

On the DIA's Web site, an "open continuous" announcement of the same vacancies -- posted Jan. 26 -- called for graduates of the CIA's Field Tradecraft Course or the military's "special mission units," the clandestine squadrons reporting to the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa.

Also in today's Post, Jim Hoagland reports on the disagreement within the administration over who is the typical Iraqi insurgent, e.g. "Kamal the Tailor." The disagreement breaks down across normal ideological lines. Is Kamal the tailor/insurgent primarily motivated by hostility to the American occupation, or is he a committed Ba'athist? Hoagland is voting for the latter interpretation, the CIA, he reports, the former. Most interesting is his conclusion that the administration still doesn't agree on the facts about who it's fighting in Iraq. The insurgents' motivations are still a subject of abstract theorizing and ideological dispute.

Posted by Laura at February 13, 2005 10:17 AM