Defence & Arms
Afghanistan Spy Contract Goes Sour for Pentagon
By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch 16/3/10
Mar 18, 2010 - 1:13:48 PM

A top Pentagon official ran a covert network of contractors that supplied the U.S. government surveillance information for drone strikes and assassinations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a complaint filed by the Central Intelligence Agency and revealed by the New York Times. The official, Michael D. Furlong, is a civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force with a decade-long record of running psy-ops propaganda programs for the military in Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq.

Officially Furlong worked in strategic communications for Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command. In reality, the former 82nd Airborne Ranger was in charge of "CAPSTONE," a project under which he hired civilians, mostly former CIA and Special Forces operatives, to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of "suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps." The information was then transmitted to high-ranking Pentagon and CIA officials for "possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Furlong funded the project under the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, a Pentagon research organization tasked with reducing the threat from roadside bombs. The $24.6 million stream of money was funneled through two obscure contracting offices: the Cultural Engagement Group at the Special Operations Command Central in Tampa, Florida; and the Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office in Dahlgren, Virginia.

With this money, Furlong hired a newly minted company, International Media Ventures (IMV), of St. Petersburg, Florida, and attempted to sub-contract other individuals and companies to run surveillance operations in South Asia.

One potential sub-contractor was AfPax Insider, a subscription service run by Robert Young Pelton, author of The World's Most Dangerous Places and Eason Jordan, a former chief news executive for CNN. In late 2009 Pelton told CorpWatch that after he learned more about Furlong's real intentions, AfPax opted out of the program: "When we suspected that he was doing ... we protested. That moral stand cost us millions." Pelton said he was concerned that Furlong had set up IMV for clandestine operations, and told Furlong that "kinetic action" (i.e., drone strikes) were incompatible with "the now accepted counter-insurgency strategy."

The allegations remained unsubstantiated until March 15 when a New York Times front-page story documented how Furlong's secret operation was exposed after the CIA filed an official complaint with the Pentagon's inspector general. Furlong boasted to unnamed military officials that "a group of suspected militants carrying rockets by mule over the border had been singled out and killed as a result of his efforts," wrote reporters Mark Mazetti and Dexter Filkins.