And that's saying quite a lot, considering that since Vietnam the Pentagon has not exactly been dormant in this area.
As well-known military analyst William Arkin pointed out in an October 27 column in the Los Angeles Times, the development of the Pentagon's covert counter-terror capability has its roots in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The army created a highly compartmentalized organization that could collect clandestine intelligence independent of the rest of the US intelligence community, and follow through with covert military action. Today, it operates under the code name Grey Fox. In Afghanistan it operated alongside the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) paramilitary Special Activities Division and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command.
Then there are numerous recent initiatives, such as net assessment capabilities at combatant commands, a new campaign support group at Fort Bragg, a counter-terrorism Technology Support Office, to name just a few.
Full story...