The Search for Intelligence Continues

German Curveballs and Italian Yellowcake

The EU's intelligence bureau, the Joint Situation Centre, has recently sent people to Libya. But its new director says there is little prospect of turning it into a genuine intelligence-gathering service even in the "long term."

In fact, they seem so harmless, that even the enemy of their member states received and ignored them.

Joint Situation Centre chief Ilkka Salmi confirmed that one of his staff accompanied a European External Action Service (EEAS) fact-finding mission to Tripoli on 6 March and that another one took part in a visit to Benghazi on 5 April.

"We want to avoid the impression that these were spooks of any kind. They were technical specialists who went to help with satellite phones and that type of thing. There was certainly no tasking," he explained. "These are the only missions of this kind that we have carried out since I became director two months ago."

'Tasking' is intelligence jargon for being asked to get information on a given subject.

Outside of obvious comparisons to phone company linemen, who they were there to support goes unexplained: EU diplomats? Member state Diplomats? A extra-special surrender phone to the trailer trash dictator himself? Serious brown-nosing?

A contact familiar with the work of SitCen earlier told this website: "These are fairly normal people who have perhaps in their lives had some experience of being out in the field in a place less comfortable than Washington … They are people who can write reports. Who do not mind not staying in five star hotels. Who know how to take precautions when they go out at night."

FOUR star hotels?!? They’re SO butch!