Senior US lawmakers have begun probing possible intelligence lapses over Moscow’s intervention in Syria, concerned that American spy agencies were slow to grasp the scope and intention of Russia’s dramatic military offensive there, US congressional sources and other officials confirmed.
A week after Russia plunged directly into Syria’s civil war by launching a campaign of air strikes, the intelligence committees of the US Senate and House of Representatives want to examine the extent to which the spy community overlooked or misjudged critical warning signs, the sources said.
Findings of major blind spots would mark the latest of several US intelligence misses in recent years, including Moscow’s surprise takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea region last year and China’s rapid expansion of island-building activities in the South China Sea.
Though spy agencies have sought to ramp up intelligence gathering on Russia since the crisis over Ukraine, they continue to struggle with inadequate resources because of the emphasis on counter-terrorism in the Middle East and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, according to current and former US officials.
A senior administration official, who also asked not to be identified, insisted that there were “no surprises” and that policymakers were “comfortable” with the intelligence they received in the lead-up to the Russian offensive.
Spy agencies had carefully tracked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s build-up of military assets and personnel in Syria in recent weeks, prompting White House criticism and demands for Moscow to explain itself.
But intelligence officers - and the US administration they serve - were caught mostly off-guard by the speed and aggressiveness of Putin’s use of air power as well as a Russian target list that included US-backed rebels, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Behind the curve?
It is unclear how Barack Obama’s administration could have reacted differently with better intelligence, though advance word of Putin’s attack plans might have allowed US officials to warn the moderate Syrian opposition that they could end up in Russia’s line of fire.
Obama, who is reluctant to see America drawn deeper into another Middle East conflict, has shown no desire to directly confront Russia over its Syria offensive - something Moscow may have taken as a green light to escalate its operations.
Russia’s military build-up now includes a growing naval presence, long-range rockets and a battalion of troops backed by Moscow’s most modern tanks, the US ambassador to Nato said.
The US administration believes it now has a better understanding at least of Putin’s main motive - to do whatever it takes to prop up Bashar al-Assad. But Washington remains uncertain exactly how much further Putin is willing to go in terms of deployment of advanced military assets, a US officials said.
The lack of clarity stems in part from the limited ability of US intelligence agencies to discern what Putin and a tightly knit circle of advisers are thinking and planning.
In a tense meeting with Putin at the UN early last week, Obama was not given any advance notice of Russia’s attack plans, aides said. Russian air strikes began two days later, including the targeting of CIA-trained “moderate” anti-Assad rebels, though Moscow insisted it only hit Islamic State insurgents.
Several other officials said US agencies were behind the curve in assessing how far the Russians intended to go and how quickly they intended to launch operations.
Confusion over Russian intent
One source suggested that US experts initially thought the Russian build-up might have been more for a military “snap exercise” or a temporary show of force than preparations for sustained, large-scale attacks on Assad’s enemies.
Another official said that after initial review, congressional oversight investigators believe that “information on this was not moving quickly enough through channels” to policymakers.
And another source said there had been a “lag of a week” before agencies began voicing full-throated alarm about imminent Russian military operations.
The senior administration official said, however, that “I don’t think anybody here perceived a gap” in intelligence.
In their reviews of how US intelligence handled the Syria build-up, officials said congressional intelligence committees would examine reports issued by the agencies and question officers involved in the process, according to congressional and national security sources. At the moment, no public hearings are planned, the officials said.