America's North Shore Journal

We had a chance to talk with Col. Benjamin D. Lukefahr, senior advisor, Intelligence Transition Team in a Bloggers’ Roundtable yesterday. It was a discussion that intel wonks would love but was a little over my head.

The Iraqis are working hard on building the capability and capacity of their civilian national intelligence and criminal investigation services. In other words, they’re trying to stand up their versions of the FBI, NSA, etc.

Col. Lukefahr had this to say:

We operate out of operational base, FOB Shield. And my team also has an element at Phoenix Base in the former Green Zone here in Baghdad.

The mission of the NIIA specifically is to conduct criminal intelligence or HUMINT collection and analysis, in support of law enforcement, or better explained as investigation and policing operations for the minister of interior.

In coordination with other intelligence and security elements, their mission is to penetrate major criminal networks and to prevent and defeat domestic criminal activities that threaten Iraqis’ national security and stability.

So, how is the NIIA doing? We’ve seen marked improvement in their capacity and performance; however, they still have a long way to go, and specifically with the areas of trust and information sharing among themselves. We do see a genuine concern to do what is right under the Iraqi rule of law. Leadership is assignments based on capability, not based on personality. Several new capabilities have been created over the past several months. Let me just give you a few.

The new headquarters in Karrada, an 82,000-square-foot facility for their new headquarters and their Baghdad Information Bureau. Four trained polygraphers, who are now doing their own polygraphs on their own Iraqis. Twenty recruiting — we’re now recruiting 20 women to be investigators, which is a first for the NIIA. We have also installed secure communication, like our SIPRNet, to all those 15 provincial headquarters located throughout Iraq, and we’re also working to upgrade their infrastructure at their national training academy.

I asked him about actual criminal investigations as opposed to anti-terror work. He told us:

Chuck, that’s a great question. In fact, we at the coalition are working very hard to separate, and what I would call classify, levels of crime; level one being the most serious crimes affecting national interest and security; level two what I call those crimes that may cross municipal boundaries and are, you know, lower crimes — not counterterrorism, but things like, you know, value thefts, kidnapping, drugs, serial murders; and then level three, which is the lowest level of crime, basically focused on basic law and order.

So exactly what you’re talking about, we are working with the Iraqis’ intelligence structure, focusing on two areas. And I think this is important to distinguish for you. One is law enforcement operations, where you collect information and conduct investigations to bring it through the judicial court system.

The other part of the intelligence organization focuses on criminal intelligence. And that is where I would call it more the covert-like operations, where that information is protected and the individuals working in criminal intelligence organizations as collectors are not brought into the judicial system, much like you would see with investigation.

Col. Lukefahr talked about some basics that his team was working on with the Iraqis. Communications security, and a secure network, is a priority. In addition, the vetting process for personnel and the document classification process were also being addressed.

Lukefahr discussed the Iraqi “feet on the ground” ability to gather intel and react. He was very clear that the Iraqi police have a greater ability to gather human intel, act on it and have a greater success rate with their activities than Coalition forces.

He told us that his team worked in the 15 provinces outside Kurdistan.