The Five Demands

Gi Stati Uniti cercando di migliorare le proprie performances in Iraq, stanno cercando di studiare nuove tattiche e pare abbiano scoperto qualcosa di interessante analizzando le tecniche investigative impiegate dal British Army durante il conflitto nordirlandese.
Durante una conferenza al Counterintelligence Center (CI) di un anno fa al quale è intervenuto anche Tom Ricks, un ex agente del British SAS, di instanza a Belfast per dieci anni, ha parlato di metodi ‘alternativi’ utilizzati per raccogliere prove contro l’IRA, la PIRA, Gerry Adams ed i loro simpatizzanti.
Uno dei metodi dimostratosi più efficace è quello delle ‘lavanderie automatiche’, escogitato per la necessità del British Army di scoprire chi fossero gli addetti all’assemblaggio delle bombe.
Il metodo era piuttosto semplice e così esemplificabile. Le suddette lavanderie automatiche erano concesse in gestione a gente del posto per comunque facilitare un rapporto di fiducia con i clienti. A questi ultimi venivano distribuiti, spesso a carattere promozionale, una gran quantità di coupon di offerte speciali, colorati in maniera diversa a seconda delle strade, in modo da poter individuare con maggiore facilità la zona di provenienza del cliente / sospetto.
A questo punto si concretizzava l’operazione investigativa. Come? Ogni singolo indumento infilato nei cestoni delle macchine lavatrici, ovvero guanti, mutande, pantaloni e quant’altro, passava in uno scanner in grado di rilevare tracce di residui di materiale esplosivo.
In poche settimane si arrivò all’identificazione di numerose sostanze esplosive, a cui seguirono svariate perquisizioni nelle case ed il conseguente arresto di numerose persone responsabili o in qualche modo collegate alla fabbricazione di ordigni esplosivi.
Un altro metodo narrato dall’ex ufficiale del British SAS, è come la British Army seguisse ogni nuova auto in circolazione sulle strade, in quanto era risaputo che Gerry Adams tenesse le sue riunioni ‘in location mobili’, ovvero ogni volta su di un’auto nuova differente da quella precedente.
Questi metodi investigativi vengono definiti dagli Israeliani come “Embracing the Meshugganah”, ovvero ‘che rasentano la follia’ ovvero l’essere  talmente assurdi da non venir nemmeno presi in considerazione dal nemico.

Tom Ricks’s Inbox
In recent years, as it has tried to improve its performance in Iraq, the U.S. military has done a lot of remedial studies of earlier counterinsurgency campaigns. This note, passed along by a Special Operations officer, describes a couple of tricks the British learned battling the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland:
I attended a briefing at the CI [Counterintelligence] Center a year ago and one of the speakers was a former British SAS officer who worked Belfast for 10 years. He provided some fascinating insights into their operations and, specifically, some of the “out-of-the-box” methods they utilized to collect and target the IRA, PIRA [Provisional Irish Republican Army], Gerry Adams and their sympathizers.
One of the most interesting operations was the laundry mat [sic]. Having lost many troops and civilians to bombings, the Brits decided they needed to determine who was making the bombs and where they were being manufactured. One bright fellow recommended they operate a laundry and when asked “what the hell he was talking about,” he explained the plan and it was incorporated — to much success.
The plan was simple: Build a laundry and staff it with locals and a few of their own. The laundry would then send out “color coded” special discount tickets, to the effect of “get two loads for the price of one,” etc. The color coding was matched to specific streets and thus when someone brought in their laundry, it was easy to determine the general location from which a city map was coded.
While the laundry was indeed being washed, pressed and dry cleaned, it had one additional cycle — every garment, sheet, glove, pair of pants, was first sent through an analyzer, located in the basement, that checked for bomb-making residue. The analyzer was disguised as just another piece of the laundry equipment; good OPSEC [operational security]. Within a few weeks, multiple positives had shown up, indicating the ingredients of bomb residue, and intelligence had determined which areas of the city were involved. To narrow their target list, [the laundry] simply sent out more specific coupons [numbered] to all houses in the area, and before long they had good addresses. After confirming addresses, authorities with the SAS teams swooped down on the multiple homes and arrested multiple personnel and confiscated numerous assembled bombs, weapons and ingredients. During the entire operation, no one was injured or killed.
By the way, the gentleman also told the story of how [the British] also bugged every new car going into Northern Ireland, and thus knew everything [Sinn Fein leader] Gerry Adams was discussing. They did this because Adams always conducted mobile meetings and always used new cars.
The Israelis have a term for this type of thinking, “Embracing the Meshugganah,” which literally translated means, embrace the craziness, because the crazier the plan, the less likely the adversary will have thought about it, and thus, not have implemented a counter-measure.