Afghanistan: U.S. special forces may become CIA spies after 2014

According to some sources the Pentagon is considering a move to have élite U.S. special forces (JSOC) placed under the control of the CIA in Afghanistan after 2014. This move would allow the government to claim all troops had been removed.

This is apparently just one among several plans being looked at. It has not yet been presented to anyone including the White House, Leon Panetta, or politicians.

Once the special forces were placed under CIA control there would supposedly be less accountability and transparency. I was not aware that there was much transparency about the operations of special forces in any event. We are just finding out that they are operating in places such as Yemen, India, the Maldives etc. when the official line has always been that there are no boots on the ground in those countries.

Certainly Obama has been planning expansion of the role of special forces in Afghanistan. They have been involved in many of the night raids that are so unpopular.. No doubt small special forces will being operating in Afghanistan long after 2014.

A Pentagon spokesperson George Little denied that the CIA idea was even being discussed. He could be right. Special forces themselves work mostly in the shadows and in secret so why bother to put them under the CIA? The Associated Press however insists that their sources are adamant in claiming that the idea is being considered.

A Congressional Research Service report reports that JSOC troops"reportedly conduct highly sensitive combat and supporting operations against terrorists on a world-wide basis." Highly sensitive means that the public are not to know what is happening. As Nick Turse puts it "a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world's countries. This new Pentagon power élite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed." Perhaps now that a little has been revealed the Pentagon wants to make sure that the operations become completely secret again. For more see this article.