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NYT: CIA Sending Paramilitary Officers to Hunt Taliban

HeadlineOct 23, 2017

The violence came as The New York Times reported the CIA is sending teams of paramilitary officers to Afghanistan to help Afghan forces hunt and kill Taliban fighters. The move signals an expansion of the CIA’s role in Afghanistan, where agents previously focused on defeating al-Qaeda and aiding the Afghan intelligence service. Speaking last Thursday at a Washington, D.C., conference, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said that, under President Trump, his agency will become “much more vicious.”

Mike Pompeo: “We’ve now laid out a strategy for how we’re going to execute our mission with incredible vigor. We’re going to become a more—much more vicious agency in ensuring that we are delivering this work. We’re going to go to the hardest places with some of the hardest people in our organization to crush it. And when we do that, the president has promised that he will have our backs and that he will resource us.”

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