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Authors: Mark Mazzetti
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Network. Gathering information to protect American troops, Furlong argued to the CIA officers, was perfectly in line with the Pentagon’s authorities under Title 10, no matter where it was taking place.
As the CIA tried to block approval for AfPax Insider, and military lawyers at U.S. Central Command pored over the details of the proposed operation, Furlong decided he didn’t need to wait for Washington’s approval. In late 2008, he arranged for the project to get $1 million in seed money from a military emergency fund and maneuvered around another thorny bureaucratic issue—the fact that neither Eason Jordan nor Robert Young Pelton was an approved government vendor. He devised a simple solution: putting the project under the control of a company he knew well, Jan Obrman’s International Media Ventures , in St. Petersburg, Florida. By April 2009, Furlong had secured another $2.9 million for the project, all of it flowing through the Florida-based business. Furlong, the master at wheeling and dealing with government contracts, was taking advantage of a system that was ripe for exploitation. Congress had approved billions for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there was little congressional oversight about how the money was spent.
But Pelton and Jordan saw little of it and began to suspect that Furlong had other designs for the money that General McKiernan had ordered for AfPax Insider. Regardless, the two continued to work, and Pelton was regularly sent around Afghanistan to gather information from tribal elders, Taliban operatives, and warlords. He traveled with a team of military officers dressed as civilians, driving east for hours over washed-out roads to gather information at the Pakistan border. Pelton also took a plane in the opposite direction, to Afghanistan’s border with Iran, where he met the powerful warlord of the city of Herat, Ismail Khan, to assess his support for America’s war in the country.
All this time, General McKiernan’s attentions were directed elsewhere. Rumors began swirling that President Barack Obama, who came into office in January 2009, was dissatisfied with the strategy in Afghanistan and planned to overhaul the war staff. In May, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates flew to Kabul to break the news to McKiernan: He was out, and President Obama had decided to replace him with Lt. General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of Joint Special Operations Command. The leadership transition turned out to be a boon for Furlong; when he met with top members of McChrystal’s staff he presented the information-gathering project as a fait accompli . During a meeting with Major General Michael Flynn, the senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan, he said that he had teams of contractors operating around Pakistan and Afghanistan, and their information reports were being “pushed” into classified military-intelligence databases .
But Jordan and Pelton’s suspicions that they were being shunted to the side proved to be correct, and as they badgered Furlong for money, he began sending them e-mails about how he had found other contractors with better sources of information. In early July, Furlong returned from a trip outside Afghanistan and fired off an e-mail to Jordan and Pelton:
“The two guys who met me in Dubai last weekend are as close to the real, commercial version of Jason Bourne that I have seen. Both fluent in Dari, Pashtu and Arabic and building the networks on the ground every day,” he wrote. General McKiernan was gone, Furlong said, and the new commanders in Afghanistan had little interest in paying for AfPax Insider. “ Let’s be honest guys ,” Furlong wrote, “you are asking the government to pay to start-up your service. The other guys have already made their investment in establishing their network over the past 4.5 years.”
Who exactly were these mysterious new contractors, these “Jason Bournes”? Furlong didn’t say in the e-mails. He spoke only of a
As the CIA tried to block approval for AfPax Insider, and military lawyers at U.S. Central Command pored over the details of the proposed operation, Furlong decided he didn’t need to wait for Washington’s approval. In late 2008, he arranged for the project to get $1 million in seed money from a military emergency fund and maneuvered around another thorny bureaucratic issue—the fact that neither Eason Jordan nor Robert Young Pelton was an approved government vendor. He devised a simple solution: putting the project under the control of a company he knew well, Jan Obrman’s International Media Ventures , in St. Petersburg, Florida. By April 2009, Furlong had secured another $2.9 million for the project, all of it flowing through the Florida-based business. Furlong, the master at wheeling and dealing with government contracts, was taking advantage of a system that was ripe for exploitation. Congress had approved billions for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there was little congressional oversight about how the money was spent.
But Pelton and Jordan saw little of it and began to suspect that Furlong had other designs for the money that General McKiernan had ordered for AfPax Insider. Regardless, the two continued to work, and Pelton was regularly sent around Afghanistan to gather information from tribal elders, Taliban operatives, and warlords. He traveled with a team of military officers dressed as civilians, driving east for hours over washed-out roads to gather information at the Pakistan border. Pelton also took a plane in the opposite direction, to Afghanistan’s border with Iran, where he met the powerful warlord of the city of Herat, Ismail Khan, to assess his support for America’s war in the country.
All this time, General McKiernan’s attentions were directed elsewhere. Rumors began swirling that President Barack Obama, who came into office in January 2009, was dissatisfied with the strategy in Afghanistan and planned to overhaul the war staff. In May, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates flew to Kabul to break the news to McKiernan: He was out, and President Obama had decided to replace him with Lt. General Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of Joint Special Operations Command. The leadership transition turned out to be a boon for Furlong; when he met with top members of McChrystal’s staff he presented the information-gathering project as a fait accompli . During a meeting with Major General Michael Flynn, the senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan, he said that he had teams of contractors operating around Pakistan and Afghanistan, and their information reports were being “pushed” into classified military-intelligence databases .
But Jordan and Pelton’s suspicions that they were being shunted to the side proved to be correct, and as they badgered Furlong for money, he began sending them e-mails about how he had found other contractors with better sources of information. In early July, Furlong returned from a trip outside Afghanistan and fired off an e-mail to Jordan and Pelton:
“The two guys who met me in Dubai last weekend are as close to the real, commercial version of Jason Bourne that I have seen. Both fluent in Dari, Pashtu and Arabic and building the networks on the ground every day,” he wrote. General McKiernan was gone, Furlong said, and the new commanders in Afghanistan had little interest in paying for AfPax Insider. “ Let’s be honest guys ,” Furlong wrote, “you are asking the government to pay to start-up your service. The other guys have already made their investment in establishing their network over the past 4.5 years.”
Who exactly were these mysterious new contractors, these “Jason Bournes”? Furlong didn’t say in the e-mails. He spoke only of a
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