'What's the CIA up to in Syria?'

"Beats me. Hezbollah says Syria is lousy with CIA spies and saboteurs, augmented by “Blackwater” operatives.Far more credible is a report Thursday's Washington Post that the CIA has a dim idea of what’s going on there.“Intelligence on Assad’s regime and its intentions has been fragmentary or out of focus,” the Post’s authoritative Greg Miller reported, citing “senior U.S. officials.”Sigh. One wonders, again, what taxpayers are getting for the $55 billion they hand the CIA each year-- roughly double what it was before 9/11.When Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, says intelligence is “a mixed bag in Syria and probably rates on the low-acuity side,” you know it’s bad.
But all this was buried under the Posts' odd front-page headline for Miller's story: “U.S. tracks Syrian elite’s money transfers," it said, "but picture remains murky”.
Well now.  That's like writing, "Redskins Misplace Gatorade, Fail to Take Field."
It misses the story’s main thrust, which, as Miller put it,  is that “U.S. spy agencies have scoured satellite imagery and signals intercepts to compensate for a shortage of ‘human intelligence’ from inside a country long considered a key crossroads in espionage.” The American embassy's closing has deprived the agency of its nest.That's the story. "CIA Struggling in Damascus."
Miller goes on to write:

“For the CIA, already stretched by the demands of two war zones and the domino-like toppling of Arab governments, Syria poses greater difficulties than other countries swept up in the Arab Spring...”

Oh, it’s a hard target all right. 

“In Syria, where outgunned opposition elements have struggled to claim and hold territory, the CIA has been forced to rely on a network of sources concentrated in Damascus and assistance from the intelligence services of Arab allies.”

"Arab Allies” seems kind of loose talk. “Anybody who’s Sunni,” a former official told Miller, pointing to “Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan in particular.”Oh, not Israel? Must've been an oversight.Anyway, we know the agency works hand-in-glove with our Arab "allies," depending on the day and the issue. But one need not think all the way back to the curious role of the Saudis in 9/11 to be worried about CIA dependence on the King's spies.Astute readers will also remember the fateful role Jordanian intelligence had in serving up an al Qaeda triple agent to a credulous CIA in 2009, resulting in the death of seven CIA operatives at Khost, Afghanistan.For sure, the agency’s spies are stretched thin and worn down by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the brushfires burning in Egypt, Somalia, Libya, Yemen and places in between. There are some hugely dedicated, skilled operatives and analysts out there working hard to prevent another 9/11. God bless 'em.
But then there’s this, according to Miller’s account:

“Even in its core mission of gathering intelligence, the agency has been cautious, according to officials who described Syria as a sophisticated counterintelligence adversary, with substantial assistance from Iran.”

Now that’s another muddy sentence. Does it mean the CIA’s been “cautious” about trying to find out what’s going on inside the Damascus regime because it’s afraid of Syrian counterspies?It doesn’t say. Instead, the story pivots to a distinctly different theater of operations.“No agency teams were sent to meet with opposition elements in Homs before that city became the target of a violent crackdown by Assad’s forces,” reports Miller.
What that has to do with penetrating Assad’s regime is beyond me. The question of identifying, assessing and perhaps even aiding various figures in the Syrian opposition in an entirely different matter from recruiting spies in Damascus.
But the picture on that front is fuzzy at best, too. According to the Al-Manar news agency, a mouthpiece for Hezbollah, Homs has been crawling with U.S. and allied spies.
It said “a coordination office was established in Qatar under American-Gulf sponsorship. The office includes American, French, and Gulf – specifically from Qatar and Saudi Arabia – intelligence agents, as well as CIA, Mossad, and Blackwater agents and members of the Syrian Transitional Council.”
Not us, protested Israeli intelligence, through its unofficial mouthpiece,Debka File.  “Recent reports confirm that British and Qatari Special forces are on the ground in the city of Homs, involved in training rebel forces as well as organizing the supply of weapons in liaison with the Turkish military.”
The Russians, meanwhile, were giving reports of Western intervention;

“A general in the opposition militia known as the Free Syria Army has told journalists that the rebels have received French and American military assistance...” Russia Today reported last week.“We now have weapons and anti-aircraft missiles and, God willing, with all of that we will defeat Bashar [President Assad],” it said.

Now, call me a cynic, but it seems entirely possible that the U.S. officials who talked with Miller were anxious to knock down such reports.Such intervention, after all, is supposed to be secret.But the main thrust of the story, that the CIA is struggling to find out what’s going on behind the regime’s high walls in Damascus, rings all too, sadly, true."