U.S. Spy Effort in Afghanistan "Ignorant": U.S. Report

In a report issued by the Center for New American Security think tank, Major General Michael Flynn, deputy chief of staff for intelligence in Afghanistan for the U.S. military and its NATO allies, offered a bleak assessment of the intelligence community's role in the 8-year-old war.

He described U.S. intelligence officials there as "ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced ... and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers.

An operations officer was quoted in the report as calling the United States "clueless" because of a lack of needed intelligence about the country. The report, which highlighted tensions between military and intelligence agencies, urged changes such as a focus on gathering more information on a wider range of issues at a grassroots level. Release of the report came less than a week after a suicide bomber killed seven CIA officers at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan, the second-most deadly attack in agency history.

NBC News reported on Monday the bomber was an al Qaeda double-agent from Jordan, citing unnamed Western intelligence officials.

The security breach was a major blow to the CIA, which has expanded operations hunting down and killing Taliban and al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan and tribal areas in neighboring Pakistan, partly through the use of unmanned drone aircraft. The drone strikes have fueled public anger and have been sharply criticized by human rights groups.

Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy," Flynn wrote in the report with his chief adviser, Captain Matt Pottinger.

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