Fmr. CIA Counter-terror head: "Syria in 2003 offered to station US forces on its soil before the Iraq war ..."

Our friend (and still prolific) Richard Sale, in the Washington Times, here

"Syria is reorganizing its foreign intelligence operations and sidelining officials with unsavory pasts in an effort by President Bashar al-Assad to consolidate control and improve Syria's relations with the United States, Middle East specialists and former and current U.S. officials say.

Richard Norton, a Levant specialist at Boston University, former CIA counterterrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro and two serving U.S. intelligence officials who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to talk to the press told The Washington Times that the task of overseeing Syria's foreign intelligence operations has been transferred from the heavy-handed military intelligence agency, known as the Mukhabarat, to Syria's General Intelligence Agency (GI), which formerly handled domestic matters and now oversees relations with the United States and Saudi Arabia. .......headed by Gen. Ali Mamluk, .... the change was made by Syria to avoid "queering its current dialogue with the United States."

In general, the functions of Syrian military intelligence appear to have narrowed to providing assistance to the U.N. special tribunal investigating the Hariri murder and seeking to shield the Assad regime from blame. Gen. Assef Shawkat, Mr. Assad's brother-in-law and the former head of Syrian military intelligence, has been assigned to assist Maj. Gen. Arnine Charabi, chief of the Palestine section, who is working with British law firms to develop a scenario of the crime aimed at exonerating Syria from responsibility, according to the two serving U.S. intelligence officials......

Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist at the University of Oklahoma, said, "Shawkat is not out of the intelligence business." "We're talking about a changing of the guard, being done quite gradually in terms of political consistency," said one of the serving U.S. officials. "It's a transition of power - a slow process of putting people who are loyal to him, walking away from the old military elements of his father and relying on a civilian component instead."......

President Obama, who has assigned a high priority to advancing an Arab-Israeli peace agreement, has sought to improve relations with Syria in order to move the process forward.....

In Lebanon, the administration is disappointed that months have gone by without formation of a new government despite the election victory of a pro-Western alliance. Yet Mr. Norton said he had not detected any "Syrian string-pulling" in the Lebanese elections in which the pro-West coalition beat an alliance led by Hezbollah......

"Hezbollah has obtained a degree of autonomy and is no longer a Syrian client," Mr. Norton said, adding: "Syria is no longer obtrusive in Lebanese politics and no longer is pulling the strings when it comes to Hezbollah."

Many remain skeptical of Syrian good will

David Schenker, a Levant expert at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said, "Syria runs hot and cold. When they are interested in improving relations or pleasing us, they toss us a bone or they look to protect their flank." He said that the day after the Hariri murder, Syrian intelligence delivered a high-value target to U.S. operatives in the hope of deflecting popular outrage at Syria's alleged responsibility for the murder.....

According to Mr. Cannistraro, "Syria has tried to cooperate with the United States in intelligence matters, only to be either snubbed or ignored" on occasion. He said Syria in 2003 offered to station U.S. forces on its soil before the Iraq war, and the Syrians opened their intelligence books, which identify assets in Europe, including front companies, in an attempt to track down al Qaeda members. ......."has given us invaluable help in hunting down members of al Qaeda, and they were instrumental in ex-filtrating some major Iraqi fugitives back to Baghdad after the 2003 war."

Two former U.S. intelligence officials said Syria cooperated with the United States last year in an attack that killed Abu Ghadiyah, a former lieutenant of the infamous Abu Musab Zarqawi, the late al Qaeda leader in Iraq. He was killed along with eight civilians near Abu Kamal about five miles inside Syria, foiling a planned attack on Iraqi civilians, according to the former U.S. officials. They spoke on condition that they not be named because they were discussing sensitive information.........."