Meanwhile Republican Senator John McCain has called for hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee on the recent disclosure that the Pentagon has created a secret new spy unit known as the Strategic Support Branch. The unit was first disclosed by the Washington Post on Sunday. According to news reports, the clandestine teams are drawn from specialists from within the Defense Intelligence Agency and provide the military’s elite Special Ops units with battlefield intelligence. The Washington Post reports that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had to reinterpret US law to allow the military spy unit to operate and that it was created without explicit congressional authority or appropriation. The unit has been operating in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past two years. An early memo on the project indicated the Pentagon would also send spies to nations where no official U.S. military operations are taking place including Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia. The Post reports that the secret unit would recruit outside agents, including notorious figures whose “links to the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed.”