Publication:Chattanooga Times Free Press
Date:Thursday, May 26, 2005
Section:Front Page; Page:1

By Edward Lee Pitts Military Affairs

FORWARD OPERATING BASE BERNSTEIN, Iraq — Hoping to catch a suspected financial supporter of insurgents at home, 278th Regimental Combat Team soldiers here left base last week on a rare daylight raid.

With truckloads of Iraqi army soldiers, the 2nd Squadron unit, acting on an informant’s tip, headed outside its assigned sector toward a weapons smuggler who bypasses road checkpoints and transports bomb-making materials across a river near Tikrit by rowboat.

After surrounding the suspect’s home, the joint raid unit ran into rooms empty save for a few piles of trash, upturned oil barrels and graffiti about death on the walls.

"It’s a dry hole," said 278th Maj. James Blevins, of Damascus, Va. "There haven’t been people here in 30 days."

During the long drive back to base, Maj. Blevins said he suspected the man might have fled after his brother was arrested last month in Baghdad.

The sight of U.S. and Iraqi army forces leaving empty-handed highlighted the hit-or-miss nature of military intelligence, one of the driving forces behind every mission the Tennessee-based National Guard regiment conducts "outside the wire" of its three bases here along the Iranian border.

Capt. Tyler Rentz, 37, of Johnson City, Tenn., the squadron’s intelligence officer, said similar informant tips pan out about half the time.

Just two weeks before the raid on the abandoned home, the same informant led 2nd Squadron Troops to six suspected insurgents caught with a bounty of roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, hand grenades, machine guns, sniper rifles and demolition devices.

INTELLIGENCE A PRIORITY

In today’s Iraq, with no enemy army to fight head to head, the intelligence game has taken center stage and drives all U.S. operations in the battle to uproot the diehard insurgency, according to Lt. Col. Darrell Darnbush, 42, the regiment’s operations officer.

"Without intelligence we would be guessing until we got it right," said Lt. Col. Darnbush, a resident of Powell, Tenn.

Capt. Rentz said the key to winning the intelligence game is gathering accurate information in a timely manner.

"You must get information and get it in time to act on it," he said. "But if you act too fast, you may get a lot of innocent people in jail." Intelligence gathering in today’s army involves less science than art and is more tedious than what is seen in a James Bond movie, said Capt. Mark Zumbro, 38, of Mount Juliet, Tenn., the executive officer of the regiment’s military intelligence company.

The job of locating enemy personnel and predicting their next move officially falls to the intelligence sections in each squadron and at regimental headquarters as well as the regiment’s military intelligence company. But 278th intelligence officers insist everyone who puts on a uniform is in the intelligence game. What the common soldiers see or hear while guarding a gate, manning a roadblock or walking on patrol through a town often is crucial for mission planning, they said.

While an intelligence officer can use tools such as satellite images and intercepted electronic or radio communications, the human side of intelligence gathering is a bigger weapon in Iraq than technology.

"Eighty percent of intelligence here is word of mouth," Capt. Zumbro said.

Having troops collect information on the streets of Iraq is no easy task for a regiment of Tennesseans in the Middle East who can find themselves mystified by the local language and culture.

"This is not Europe, where our soldiers can blend in and get information," Capt. Rentz said.

SEEKING IRAQI SUPPORT

The 278th increasingly is relying on the Iraqi army to overcome this ethnic roadblock. Capt. Brad Bowlin, 36, of Greeneville, Tenn., the operations planning officer for 2 nd Squadron, said Iraqi soldiers have been recruited from every city, village and ethnic group. About three out of five accurate pieces of intelligence now come from the Iraqi army, he said.

"They live in the villages and know what’s going on," Capt. Bowlin said.

Letting the Iraqi army behind the normally closed doors of the 278th’s intelligence world comes with certain dangers. Family or tribal bonds often are stronger than military ties, so local Iraqi soldiers, knowing when and where a raid will occur, might be enticed to give or sell information to targeted suspects, according to 278th intelligence officers. Furthermore, some insurgents are enlisting in the Iraqi Army, Lt. Col. Darnbush said.

"But trying to teach the Iraqi army how to develop their own intelligence operations far outweighs the risk of infiltration," he said.

The 278th soldiers also rely heavily on local residents who, officers said, have been coming forward with information in greater numbers since Iraq’s Jan. 30 elections.

Maj. Blevins said building trust with local residents often is a matter of winning them over through their pocketbooks. Area reconstruction projects and humanitarian aid in the form of soldiers’ frequent visits to bring boxes of donated items not only improves village life but leads to better intelligence, he said.

The location of American military bases in this area is no secret to the Iraqis, and many respond to wanted posters offering rewards by coming directly to 278th forces, Capt. Rentz said. Others call the hot line numbers shown on the posters, he said.

Monetary rewards can range from $125 to $2,500, Capt. Rentz said.

CHECKING OUT TIPS

But, Maj. Blevins said, U.S. soldiers must be able to discern what motivates an Iraqi citizen to come forward with information on criminal activities.

"A lot of times they will just tell you something to gain a favor in return," he said. "Or one tribe wants to get rid of enemies or competition, so they make up stories to tell us."

Often Kurds will turn in Arabs, and Arabs will turn in Kurds, 278th officers said.

To avoid being a pawn in an ethnic, religious or tribal dispute, the 278th soldiers try to get three independent sources before acting on a tip unless it is an immediate threat such as a car bomb. Capt. Zumbro said the military intelligence company often wades through up to 40 intelligence reports a day. When the regiment first arrived in December every bit of information seemed crucial, but officers now say they have learned how to quickly recognize what stands out.

"You look for the odd piece of information, and then you dig," Capt. Rentz said.

Intelligence officers said they try to think like the insurgents, which 278th officers said is not an easy task when the enemy is willing to blow themselves up for their cause.

"In an insurgency, to the people who are fighting you it is basically death or victory," Capt. Rentz said. "There is not always a rational thought process behind what they are going to do."

To help get inside the minds of the insurgents, 278th intelligence officers pore over current and historical documents about the area as well as detailed mission briefings.

An analysis has led the 278th officers to conclude that many insurgents use the area here as a rest-and-recuperation sanctuary before returning to some of Iraq’s hot spots. To avoid detection here they save their spectacular attacks for the larger cities, 278th officers said.

"It is easier to be one (insurgent) out of 2 million people in Baqubah than one bad guy in Jizer Naft or Balad Ruz," Lt. Col. Darnbush said.

Locating and disrupting terrorist cells is hampered by the disconnected structure of the insurgency, where often one group doesn’t know about the existence or identities of another insurgent cell, 278th officers said.

"You can’t chop off the head and kill the body" of the insurgency, Capt. Rentz said.

DISRUPTING INSURGENCY

Military intelligence officers with the 278th said the power of religion and the weak Iraqi economy continue to be powerful arrows in the insurgency’s recruiting quiver. While the regiment has been successful in pressuring insurgents and forcing them to react to the 278th, the insurgents have shown the ability to regenerate their numbers quickly, Capt. Rentz said.

But Maj. Bobby Graves, of Mount Juliet, commander of the 278th Military Intelligence Co., said his unit has been "much more successful than people give us credit for" due to the secret nature of the intelligence soldiers’ duties. Information gathered after the regiment’s April 4 firefight, in which a 278th member was killed, wound up as part of a daily intelligence briefing to President Bush. With at least 17 insurgents killed that day, villagers in the area near the firefight felt more comfortable coming forward and talking to the 278th soldiers, Maj. Graves said.

He said intelligence collected so far by the 278th has influenced operations all over Iraq, disrupting insurgent cells in other areas and leading to dozens of arrests.

"This is not like World War II, where you could measure success by how much ground you covered," Capt. Zumbro said. "It is by how many lives you save."

E-mail Lee Pitts at lpitts@timesfreepress.com

U.S. Army Photo by Staff Sgt. Russell Lee Klika - Maj. James Blevins, right, and another soldier with the 278th Regimental Combat Team investigate an abandoned house during a raid spurred by an informant’s tip.

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