U.S. Spying On Iraqi Army

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ANDREA SEABROOK, host:

It's no secret that the U.S. uses satellites to spy on insurgents in Iraq. But the L.A. Times reports that American forces are now snooping on a new target, the Iraqi army; the force the U.S. backs.

Defense analyst John Pike is with us now. He runs GlobalSecurity.org. Welcome to the show, John Pike.

Mr. JOHN PIKE (Defense Analyst, GlobalSecurity.org): Good to be here.

SEABROOK: If the United States recruits, trains, and fights alongside the Iraqi army, why would the U.S. be spying on it?

Mr. PIKE: Well, they have to figure out where all these Iraqi soldiers are. What they have discovered over time is that as the Iraqi army has stood up, that it's starting to operate with a degree of independence that is requiring the use of spy satellites to figure out where some of these units are because they're starting to operate independently.

SEABROOK: So are you saying that they're operating so independently that their partners, U.S. partners, and in some cases, commanders don't even know where they are?

Mr. PIKE: Well, apparently that's the case. The operation some weeks back in Basra took the Americans unawares that the Iraqis were moving down there in such numbers. You know, I mean if it's American forces we have a variety of ways of keeping track of where the Americans are. One of them, obviously, is that we trust the chain of command that they're not going to move without notifying them.

Trust in the Iraqi chain of command has been a problem since the beginning. One of the challenges, of course, is that you don't want a bunch of Iraqi soldiers showing up and we don't know whether they're friendly or enemy. Another challenge is that we supply the Iraqi forces and we need to know where to send the beans and the bullets.

SEABROOK: After the report in the Los Angeles Times, Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was asked whether U.S. satellites were spying on the Iraqi army. Here's how he responded.

Admiral MIKE MULLEN (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): Perhaps another area that we don't talk about publicly is what our satellites are doing. I've seen the report and that's about - that's about all I'd say right now.

SEABROOK: So John Pike, Admiral Mullen won't confirm or deny the surveillance, what's your sense?

Mr. PIKE: Well, I think that it's normal that they neither confirm nor deny when it's a question of intelligence sources and methods. We'll have to wait and see whether it's mainly a good news story or a bad news story.

SEABROOK: The L.A. Times cites unnamed sources within the military. And whenever there is a story like that, I wonder, why would someone inside the military leak a story like that?

Mr. PIKE: Well I think that that might be part of the story here that there might be some people in the U.S. military who are concerned that the Iraqis are getting a bit too frisky on us. And that they need to understand that simply because they're not reporting for the chain of command doesn't mean that we're clueless as to their whereabouts.

SEABROOK: We should say this is speculative here and the L.A. Times may have just managed to break a really good story.

Mr. PIKE: Yeah, I mean I think that the challenge you always have in dealing with unsourced stories like this is that there's some reason that we're reading about it, but somebody somewhere who was in a position to know themselves wanted somebody else, either the American public, the Iraqi military, or somebody we don't even know who they are to get the message that the U.S. knows where the Iraqi army is and we're using spy satellites to do it.

SEABROOK: John Pike is the director of GlobalSecurity.org. He joined me from his offices in Alexandria, Virginia. John Pike, thanks very much.

Mr. PIKE: Thank you.

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