Special Activities Center

But if Bennett can't get the people he wants, at least the new alliances with the warlords means he can put in a second line of attack.

[phone ringing] He turns to a top secret unit in the CIA, purpose-built for penetrating the toughest environments in covert operations and delivering targets and intelligence, the Special Activities Division.

They work with signals specialists called the Intelligence Support Activity.

Under the protection of the warlords, they can operate right on Al-Qaeda's doorstep in the Somali capital.

So Shabaab is in a position now where it captures the flag of anti-Ethiopian sentiment, which is fierce in Somalia.

The CIA knows that Shabaab's power means that it will be increasingly hard to seize their allies Fazul and Nabhan.

Then the CIA's Special Activities Division uncovers intelligence that the terrorists have hit a problem.

A political crisis in Shabaab means they've started to fight amongst themselves.

And maybe we should start bombing Baghdad right now because we need the American people to understand that this war is going to take place over an extended geography and an extended period of time.

And then what did they do? The Delta Force and the CIA Special Activities Division paramilitaries were begging and begging and begging for reinforcements to corner Osama bin Laden and his friends at Tora Bora in the Nangarhar province in December of 2001.

And they had him.

But no matter how much they begged for Rangers, Green Berets, 75th Rangers Division, because there were Rangers at Bagram.

In the pre 9-11 era, outside of a very specific sort of group of professionals and practitioners, you know, surveillance authorities weren't really something that took up a lot of ink in most newspapers.

You know, the average citizen had no idea what JSOC was or, you know, what Special Activities Center or Special Activities Group was or the hostage rescue team.

Like there's all these organizations now or subunits of larger organizations that are part of the national conversation that just nobody knew about beforehand.

Right.

My colleagues Jeff Stein and Karen Greenberg are both away this week, but we've got the perfect guest, the perfect Spy Talk guest to carry the show, James Lawler.

who served for 25 years as a CIA operations officer, including as chief of the Counterproliferation Division's Special Activities Unit.

He was a specialist in the recruitment of foreign spies and spent over half of his CIA career battling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including serving as the chief of the AQ Khan nuclear takedown team.

which resulted in the disruption of the most dangerous nuclear weapons network in history.

They were all prior military.

They were from the Special Activity Center.

So they were kind of like these, you know, special ops slash intelligence officers.

And then I was a detailee from 5th Special Forces Group.

...

some of the guys that I've talked to who've been, I guess, was it Special Activities Division or something like that it's known as?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So, but it, it would've, you know, the, the Russians have, they, they've been killing a number of Americans and a number of Brits over the course of the last two months.

Um, and given that, uh, you, you had CIA special, uh, back in the day I, I knew them as Special Activities Division.

Uh, I think they've got a new name, but it's, it's basically the paramilitary guys.

Uh, th- they were out operating on the front lines and some of them were killed.