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Special Ops teams put in American embassies

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military command in charge of counterterrorism campaigns is putting small teams of special operations troops in U.S. embassies to support the global war on terror, officials said Wednesday.

The presence of these teams, which began at least two years ago but has not been publicly announced by U.S. Special Operations Command, was first reported in Wednesday's editions of the New York Times.

The special operations troops do not operate under cover. They are present with the knowledge of both the U.S. ambassador and the host government, officials said.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Steve Mavica, a spokesman for Special Operations Command in Tampa, said the teams are known as "military liaison elements" and operate as single individuals or small groups. They work for the U.S. commander responsible for the region in which they are located. That would mean any based in U.S. embassies in the Middle East would report to Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. Central Command.

The teams "play a key role" in coordination and planning in connection with security efforts and counterterrorism, Mavica said. He declined to answer additional questions such as how many countries the teams operate in and whether the Pentagon is expanding their presence globally, as the Times reported.

Mavica also declined to say when the program began.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the program was started "a couple of years ago" but was not more specific. He said these liaisons are the only military personnel inside U.S. embassies who work for the regional military commander rather than for the ambassador.

Whitman described the liaisons' duties as complementary to those of an embassy's defense attache, which is the military officer who works for the ambassador to coordinate with the host country's armed forces.

The Times reported that the move is opposed by some in the Central Intelligence Agency who view it as treading on their turf.

The newspaper said the liaison teams gather intelligence on terrorists. Whitman would say only that they help provide a regional military commander with improved "situational awareness," a term generally synonymous with intelligence.

The Times reported that the liaison teams have been sent to more than a dozen embassies in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America.

MONROVIA, Liberia - A New Jersey teacher is about to become Liberia's first female top cop, charged with rebuilding a police force in a nation ripped apart by a quarter century of war.

Her first act as national police chief, Beatrice Munah Sieh said Wednesday, will be issuing new badges and confiscating the old ones held by rebels, who have used the IDs to impersonate police and commit acts of torture and robbery.

Sieh, who was deputy director of police operations in the late 1990s but fled the West African country fearing for her life, was appointed to the top law and order post last month by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Sieh, who was a special education teacher at a Trenton, N.J., middle school for the past six years, must still be confirmed by the Senate.

[Last modified March 9, 2006, 03:00:34]