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Iraq's spy problems, from the LAT's Borzou Daragahi:
...That's what made Muslah such a valuable intelligence asset. He was quite a catch: a respected member of the Dulaimi tribe, which is thought to be spearheading the insurgency, as well as a man with ties to a shadowy insurgent group called Asadullah, or the Lions of God.
Another source had said he was an open-minded young man who might be willing to betray his clan and the insurgents for the new Iraq. Through intermediaries, Kamal invited Muslah to his offices.
Muslah was broad-shouldered and tall, a tough guy in his late 20s who already had two wives. Kamal appealed to his manhood.
"Look at Saddam," Kamal said with contempt. "Saddam was a coward. Even his sons were more honorable than him. At least they fought and died."
Kamal's aims were obvious; Muslah's were murkier. Perhaps he wanted to believe there was a place for him in the new Iraq.
"When we are stable and able to build our security forces, you'll have a role in fighting real terrorists," Kamal told him. "One day Americans will leave and we will have a country to run."
Muslah began to give in. He started coming through with small tips, on little notes signed with his code name.
But days after the beheading of an American contractor, Muslah came up with a big one — the names and locations of the members of the insurgent cell responsible. What's more, he told Kamal when to grab them all at once.
The operation was doomed almost from the start. Iraqi forces weren't up to the task, and had to call U.S. troops for help. The Americans moved in too quickly.
"We studied this information very well," Kamal recalled. "I told them to attack the place at a specific time because at the time all the terrorist cells would be there. They went and they didn't find the whole group."
Those who escaped suspected an informant in their midst. Days later, they caught up with Muslah on the road to Taji, north of Baghdad, and beheaded him.
"We consider Muslah a martyr," Kamal said in an interview on the seventh floor of the Interior Ministry's mammoth headquarters.
"Though he was a Baathist, he was loyal to us," he said wistfully. "May God have mercy on him. He understood."
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Americans also have struggled to solve Iraq's intelligence puzzle. The U.S. military's efforts, however, have been anything but clandestine.Near Baqubah recently, a battalion attached to the 42nd Infantry Division rumbled into a rural village in armored Humvees to check on reports that three vans had dropped off insurgents there a few days earlier.
The soldiers set up a cordon around the town square in As Sadah and began handing out candy to children, as intelligence officers quizzed shopkeepers about the insurgents.
"There is no insurgency," 30-year-old Ali Iskander told one soldier outside a hut that passes as the hardware store.
"Well, tell us if you see anything," the unit's frustrated intelligence officer said to Iskander and villagers who had gathered.
After less than 20 minutes, the Americans rolled out.
"No one is going to rat out their neighbor in front of the whole village," said the intelligence officer, who asked that his name not be published because of the sensitive nature of his work.
The U.S. military has proved adept, however, at the technology of intelligence. Using computer overlays and databases, for example, the military figured out the patterns insurgents were using for conducting car bombing operations. Locations of known insurgent cells — where their members lived and where they worked — were overlaid on maps showing car bombs and reports of suspicious activity.
They discovered that car bombs afflicting Baghdad were likely being assembled within six miles of where they were being detonated. They came up with 12 hot spots, which they flooded with Iraqi and U.S. soldiers. As a result, U.S. military officials say, the number of car bombings in the capital dropped by half from May to June.
U.S. and Iraqi officials have also accused Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and especially Iran of sending a flood of intelligence assets into Iraq, and of launching clandestine offensives. Iraqis say they're too overwhelmed fighting the insurgency to fend off those efforts...