U.S. Poised to Take on China Aggressions

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The Pentagon Readies Backup Island in Case of Chinese Missile Onslaught

Threat prompts the U.S. military to prepare a fallback option

WiB: The United States can no longer count on its Pacific air bases to be safe from missile attack during a war with China. On the contrary, a 2015 paper from the influential RAND Corporation noted that in the worst case scenario, “larger and accurate attacks sustained over time against a less hardened posture could be devastating, causing large losses of aircraft and prolonged airfield closures.”

Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, due to its relative proximity, would be hardest hit. To up the stakes, China in September 2015 publicly revealed its DF-26 ballistic missile, which can strike Andersen Air Force Base in Guam — nearly 3,000 miles away — from the Chinese mainland. Andersen and Kadena are among the U.S. military’s largest and most important overseas bases.

Enter Tinian. The lush, small island near Guam is emerging as one of the Air Force’s backup landing bases. On Feb. 10, the flying branch announced that it selected Tinian as a divert airfield “in the event access to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, or other western Pacific locations is limited or denied.”

In the Pentagon’s 2017 budget request, it asked for $9 million to buy 17.5 acres of land “in support of divert activities and exercise intiatives,” the Saipan Tribune reported. In peacetime, the expanded Tinian airfield will host “up to 12 tanker aircraft and associated support personnel for divert operations,” according to the Air Force.

7637127318_661f4e4d60_kAbove — Tinian’s West Field in 1945. At top — Tinian seen from the cockpit of a C-130H. U.S. Air Force photo

Tinian is now a sleepy place.

During World War II, the 4th and 2nd Marine Divisions captured the island, which later based the B-29 Superfortresses Enola Gay and Bockscar which took off from Tinian’s North Field and dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An arsenal during the war, most of its airstrips are now abandoned and unused. The island’s other former air base, West Field, is a small, neglected international airport.

The Air Force first wanted Saipan for its airfield. Very close to Tinian, Saipan has 15 times the population, a larger airport and a harbor. But this proposal met opposition from local activists due to the effect on “coral, potable water, local transportation and socioeconomic factors on surrounding communities,” Stars and Stripes reported.

The opposition even included the pro-business Saipan Chamber of Commerce, which worried that Tinian’s rusty airport would miss out on the flood of Pentagon spending. Saipan’s airport is also overcrowded — with locals not happy about the prospect of hundreds of airmen flying in for military exercises lasting up to eight weeks ever year.

In a way, its a return to the past. The United States dispersed air bases to varying degrees — and in different parts of the world — during the Cold War, but as the threat of a Soviet missile attack evaporated and post-Persian Gulf War budget cuts hit hard in the 1990s, the trend shifted toward larger mega-bases that operate on economies of scale.

But dispersed bases are more survivable, RAND’s Alan Vick noted in his 2015 paper:

Dispersing aircraft across many bases creates redundancy in operating surfaces and facilities. This enhances basic safety of flight by providing bases for weather or inflight-emergency diverts. It also increases the number of airfields that adversary forces must monitor and can greatly complicate their targeting problem (in part by raising the prospect that friendly forces might move among several bases).

 

At the least, dispersal (because it increases the ratio of runways to aircraft) forces an attacker to devote considerably more resources to runway attacks than would be the case for a concentrated force. It also greatly increases construction and operating costs to spread aircraft across many major bases. To mitigate these costs, dispersal bases tend to have more-modest facilities and, at times, might be nothing more than airstrips.

Terror Incubation in Europe and U.S.

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Israel says Iran building terror network in Europe, US

AP ~ NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Israel’s defense minister on Wednesday accused Iran of building an international terror network that includes “sleeper cells” that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives in order to strike on command in places including Europe and the U.S.

Moshe Yaalon said Iran aims to destabilize the Middle East and other parts of the world and is training, funding and arming “emissaries” to spread a revolution. He said Tehran is the anchor of a “dangerous axis” that includes Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Sanaa and other cities in the region.

“The Iranian regime through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps is building a complex terror infrastructure including sleeping cells that are stockpiling arms, intelligence and operatives and are ready to act on order including in Europe and America,” Yaalon said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart.

Israel considers Iran the biggest threat to the region, citing its support for anti-Israel militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and has been an outspoken critic of the international nuclear deal with Iran.

The Israeli defense minister offered no direct evidence of such sleeper cells existing in the U.S. or Europe, but referred indirectly to the case of a Hezbollah member who was jailed in Cyprus last June following the seizure of nine tons of a chemical compound that can be converted into an explosive.

A Cypriot court sentenced Lebanese Canadian Hussein Bassam Abdallah to six years in prison after prosecutors said he admitted that Hezbollah aimed to mount terrorist attacks against Israeli interests in Cyprus using the ammonium nitrate that he had been ordered to guard at the Larnaca home of another official of the Iranian-backed group.

Yaalon said Cypriot authorities had “defeated attempts by Hezbollah and Iran to establish a terror infrastructure” on the island that aimed to expand “throughout Europe.”

Yaalon said that apart from the refugee crisis, the war in Syria has resulted in “widespread infiltration by murderous, merciless terror organizations” that belong to global jihad and are partly funded by Iran.

He said that requires western nations to counter attempts to carry out “massive terror attacks.”

Yaalon’s trip to Cyprus was the first official visit by an Israeli defense minister to the east Mediterranean island.

***

Up To 5,000 Islamic State Trained Jihadists Could Be At Large In Europe — Says U.K. Head Of Europol –‘ Islamic State, And/Or, Other Religious Terror Groups,’ Actively Planning Mass Casualty Attack/s Somewhere In Europe 

FC: Robin Wainwright, the British head of Europol, Europe’s International Crime Agency, in an interview with Germany’s Neue Osnabrucker Zeitung newspaper warned that “up to 5,000 jihadists could be at large in Europe, after training with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”  

Justin Huggler, reporting in the February 19, 2016 edition of London’s The Telegraph, writing from Berlin, writes that “Europol estimates the number of EU citizens who have slipped back [into Europe] after training in the Middle East, is between 3,000 – 5,000..  “Europe is currently facing the highest terror threat in more than ten years,” according to Mr. Wainwright.  “We can expect the Islamic State, or other religious terror groups to stage an attack somewhere in Europe — with the aim of achieving mass casualties among the civilian population.”

For Afghanistan, we Need Charlie Wilson

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Anyone in Congress remember Charlie Wilson without the booze and women of course. Why you ask? Deja Vu for sure….1980.

While Russia has won Syria, could it be they are about to declare victory in Afghanistan as well?

From Russia with Bullets: Moscow Gifts Kabul 10,000 AK-47s

Russia gives Afghanistan 10,000 assault rifles, but abstains from joining American efforts at peace talks.

 

TheDiplomat: Wednesday, Afghanistan accepted a gift of 10,000 AK-47s and millions of rounds of ammunition from Russia. In recent months there has been much discussion about increased Russian engagement with Afghanistan, although Moscow’s cooperation with Washington’s initiatives–such as peace talks with the Taliban–remains seemingly out of the question.

Speaking at a ceremony to accept the weapons gift, Afghan National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar said: “This important donation is from an important friend of Afghanistan in a crucial time for Afghanistan and the region.”

Twenty-seven years ago this month, the final Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, where they’d been fighting a war for a decade. The communist government of Muhammad Najibullah, which they left in Kabul held out for three more years until the collapse of the Soviet Union cut off the financial inflow from Moscow, estimated at $3-4 billion annually, and the mujahedin closed in. More here.

Sidebar: The Afghan forces and the United States have pulled back from Helmand Province….

Russia Pulls Back From Cooperating With U.S. on Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — For all the conflicts in the world in which Washington is at odds with Moscow, the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan has been one area where the Obama administration’s interests and Russia’s concerns coincide.

Disputes over the wars in Ukraine and Syria had not stopped the governments from cooperating on counternarcotics and securing military supply lines. But after initial success on those fronts, Russia now seems to be disengaging with both the United States and the American-backed Afghan government.

On an old Cold War battlefield where Russia fought a nearly decade-long war against United States-supplied fighters, Moscow has a new strategy: the cold shoulder.
“We won’t join the useless events, and we’ve already told the Americans,” President Vladimir V. Putin’s envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir N. Kabulov, told Russian state news media this month. Russia, he said, would sit out any talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Kabul, backed by the United States, Pakistan and China.
“Honestly speaking, we’re already tired of joining anything Washington starts,” Mr. Kabulov said. The Kremlin, he added, “has no desire to participate in what the Americans organize ‘on the fly’ just for their own pre-election interests and where they give us the role of extras on the set.”
The government of Mr. Putin has instead decided to address on its own what it sees as the immediate security threat from the chaos in Afghanistan and the emergence there of militants other than the Taliban, especially those from the Islamic State.
Russia has reinforced its largest foreign military base in Tajikistan, along the border with Afghanistan, and the Russian military has held regular exercises with Tajik soldiers. The Kremlin has committed $1.2 billion to train and equip the Tajik Army, forming a new bulwark in Central Asia north of Afghanistan.

Mr. Kabulov also recently disclosed that Russia had opened direct channels to the Taliban to exchange information about militants in northern Afghanistan allied with the Islamic State. (The Taliban have denied being in touch with Moscow.)
Afghan officials worry that a breakdown of consensus among the international powers with an interest in Afghanistan, and the establishment of direct contacts with those governments and the insurgent Taliban, would undermine the government in Kabul.
They are also concerned that the Russian government’s recent moves are motivated by forces outside their control, such as a lack of a clear American strategy and Mr. Putin’s tense relationship with the United States.
“Bilaterally, we have struggled to convince the Russians on certain issues because they increasingly see us only as part of this larger game with the United States,” said one senior Afghan official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear his comments would further stoke the mistrust in Moscow.


The Kremlin’s recent moves are seen as a shift from the role Russia played during 14 years of NATO presence in Afghanistan — one of guarded cooperation marked by frequent contradictions.

Even as Moscow was alarmed by the presence of nearly 140,000 Western troops in its backyard, often deriding the mission as a failure, Mr. Putin’s government was happy to let the American-led coalition contain the common threats posed by Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and by drugs, of which Afghanistan produced plenty that are trafficked and consumed in Russia.
In a little more than a year since the end of the NATO combat mission in Afghanistan, the fighting here has intensified, shifting to the north along the 1,250-mile border with three Central Asian states Russia still considers as its underbelly. The Taliban briefly overran the city of Kunduz last fall.
The top American general here offered contradictory statements about the insurgent group. In a hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee this month, the commander of United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, said, “Our country has made a decision that we are not at war with the Taliban.” Just days later in Kabul, he said the Taliban were the enemy.
The Russian government does not fear a direct threat from the Taliban as much as it is worried about Central Asian fighters who could use Afghanistan as a staging ground to penetrate Russia’s borders. One group of particular concern is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, some factions of which have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Afghan officials have also reported the presence of militants from Tajikistan, Chechnya and Chinese Uighurs, many who relocated to Afghanistan from Pakistan’s tribal areas.
Fighting drug trafficking rings that partially fund the Afghan insurgency had been an area of common interest for the Russians and the Americans, said Yuri V. Krupnov, an adviser to the head of Russia’s antidrug agency, Viktor P. Ivanov. But that stopped when the United States Treasury Department in 2014 imposed sanctions on Mr. Ivanov, a close associate of Mr. Putin’s.
“Washington had no dialogue with us, and just asserted its interests and sovereignty, and was uninterested in the views of Russia or anybody else,” Mr. Krupnov said, adding, “The Obama administration buried this promising line of cooperation. All room for cooperation is exhausted.”
The alliance between the foreign militants in Afghanistan may not be as threatening as Russia fears. In Badakhshan Province, the number of foreign fighters is estimated to be about 500, some traveling with their families, Taliban commanders there say. The largest group is Tajik fighters, followed by Uzbeks from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Chechens and Uighurs have a smaller presence.
The militants from Central Asia have been problematic to their Afghan Taliban guests, the local commanders say, because they use harsher methods, and, somewhat scandalously, are more relaxed in how they observe Islam. On top of all of that, the local Taliban have grown furious that some of their guests have recently warmed toward the Islamic State, which they see as intruding on their turf.
“The Quetta Shura insisted that we treat them nicely, that they need our cooperation, but they have a lot of shortcomings,” said Malawi Amanuddin, the Taliban’s shadow governor in Badakhshan. “They say they are waging jihad, but their women here walk around not covering themselves according to Islamic hijab.”
It is these internal rifts, perhaps, that have encouraged Russian officials to explore their channels directly with the Taliban and drive a wedge deeper between the militants who threaten Russia and their Afghan hosts.
“The official position, and this is from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is that Russia is risking a lot and has nothing to gain” from cooperating with the United States, Aleksei V. Malashenko, a researcher at the Carnegie center in Moscow, said in a telephone interview. “We couldn’t agree on Georgia, on Ukraine and on Syria; why get involved in another conflict where we cannot agree?” he said, describing the Russian position as “let the Americans boil.”

The Core of the Hillary Server Controversy, Revealed

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Once a year, those who handle classified information must attend a refresher class on dealing with classified material and the consequences of violating the rules governing classified material. My guess is Hillary and her circle of aides and protectors waived themselves from attending. Obama approved?

I guess there is a good reason it is called ‘Foggy Bottom’.

Spy agencies say Clinton emails closely matched top secret documents: sources

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. spy agencies have told Congress that Hillary Clinton’s home computer server contained some emails that should have been treated as “top secret” because their wording matched sections of some of the government’s most highly classified documents, four sources familiar with the agency reports said.

    The two reports are the first formal declarations by U.S. spy agencies detailing how they believe Clinton violated government rules when highly classified information in at least 22 email messages passed through her unsecured home server.

    The State Department has already acknowledged that the emails contained top secret intelligence, though it says they were not marked that way. It has not previously been clear if the emails contained full classified documents or only some information from them.

    The agencies did not find any top secret documents that passed through Clinton’s server in their full version, the sources from Congress and the government’s executive branch said.

    However, the agency reports found some emails included passages that closely tracked or mirrored communications marked “top secret,” according to the sources, who all requested anonymity. In some cases, additional classification markings meant access was supposed to be limited to small groups of specially cleared officials.

Under the law and government rules, U.S. officials and contractors may not transmit any classified information – not only documents – outside secure, government-controlled channels. Such information should not be sent even through the government’s .gov email network.

The front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president and former secretary of state has insisted she broke no rules. Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, did not respond to a request for comment. Clinton campaign spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Two sources said some of the top secret material was related to the CIA’s campaign of drone strikes against Islamist militants in the Middle East and South Asia.

That campaign has been widely reported by Reuters and other media outlets, but it officially is classified as a “Top Secret/Special Access Program” (SAP), meaning only a limited number of people whose names are on a special list are allowed to learn details about it.

One source said the reports identified some information in messages on Clinton’s server that came from human sources, such as confidential CIA informants, and some from technical systems, such as spy satellites or electronic eavesdropping.

The Clinton campaign criticized the State Department’s decision last month to withhold the 22 emails containing top secret information from the public, blaming it on “bureaucratic infighting” and “over-classification run amok.”

“As we have previously made clear, we are not going to speak to the content of the emails,” a State Department official said on Wednesday when asked about the intelligence agency reports.

Clinton’s use of a private server in her New York home for her government work is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department’s and spy community’s internal watchdogs and several Republican-controlled congressional committees.

Two of the sources told Reuters that one of the reports on the emails came from the CIA. Three sources said the other report came from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), which analyzes U.S. spy satellite intelligence.

A spokesman for NGA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. CIA spokespeople declined to comment.

The two spy agencies’ reports were sent to Congress in the past few weeks by the intelligence community inspector general, an official government watchdog for multiple spy agencies.

The inspector general’s office has confirmed that it requested the reports from two intelligence agencies, but didn’t identify them.

    It was unclear what the congressional committees that received the classified reports, the House and Senate intelligence and foreign relations panels, will do with them. The contents cannot be discussed publicly. The committees requested intelligence reports in connection with their efforts to ensure that government secrets are appropriately protected.

Sidebar:

Everyone who handles Classified Material signs the SF-312 that outlines handling according to EO 13526 that requires an annual refresher course for originators of Classified Materials. Section 1 outlines handling. Section 4 is agreement to punishment if violation is discovered. Text of SF-312 below:

1. Intending to be legally bound, I hereby accept the obligations contained in this Agreement in consideration of my being granted access to classified information. As used in this Agreement, classified information is marked or unmarked classified information, including oral communications, that is classified under the standards of Executive Order 13526, or under any other Executive order or statute that prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of information in the interest of national security; and unclassified information that meets the standards for classification and is in the process of a classification determination as provided in sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4(e) of Executive Order 13526, or under any other Executive order or statute that requires protection for such information in the interest of national security. I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government.

4. I have been advised that any breach of this Agreement may result in the termination of any security clearances I hold; removal from any position of special confidence and trust requiring such clearances; or termination of my employment or other relationships with the Departments or Agencies that granted my security clearance or clearances. In addition, I have been advised that any unauthorized disclosure of classified information by me may constitute a violation, or violations, of United States criminal laws, including the provisions of sections 641, 793, 794, 798, *952 and 1924, title 18, United States Code; *the provisions of section 783(b}, title 50, United States Code; and the provisions of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I recognize that nothing in this Agreement constitutes a waiver by the United States of the right to prosecute me for any statutory violation.

Russia Win in Syria, now What for Saudi Coalition

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Senate foreign policy chairman: Russia the winner in Syria’s civil war

TheHill: The outcome of Syria’s long-running civil war is effectively settled, according to the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

And Russia won.

“Let’s face it: This is close to over now,” Sen. Bob Corker told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday.

“It is very difficult at present, with Russia having stepped into the vacuum … now it’s a direct conflict with Russia,“ Corker added, “which is why there’s unlikely to be a Plan B.”

American inaction, Corker maintained —particularly following President Obama’s failure to act on the “red line” he imposed in 2013 with regard to the use of chemical weapons —has effectively empowered Russia’s support of embattled leader Bashar Assad.

“Let’s face it: We are empowering Assad,” Corker maintained on Wednesday.

“When we did not hit Assad in September of 2013 and said to the world —said to the world —that we could not be counted on. … Who propped up Assad more than anyone? We did!” Corker exclaimed. “We began by propping up Assad and making these hollow comments about ‘He had to go.’”

Corker’s comments on Wednesday came on the heels of this week’s announcement that the U.S. and Russia had reached a “cessation of hostilities”scheduled to go into effect on Saturday.

The arrangement, which many viewed skeptically, will allow for continued airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other designated terror groups. However, it calls for both sides to stop seeking new territory and allow for humanitarian aide to pass through.

Washington and Moscow have been at odds in the Syrian chaos. While both countries have claimed to be trying to root out terrorists, Russian forces have frequently targeted U.S.-backed rebels trying to unseat Assad from power.

According to Corker, Russia won’t change its calculus until challenges against Assad have been wiped out.

Pentagon, CIA Chiefs Don’t Think Russia Will Abide by Syria Cease-Fire

Emerging alliance of Russia hawks in cabinet exposes disagreement in the administration

WSJ:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama’s top military and intelligence advisers, convinced Russia won’t abide by a cease-fire in Syria, are pushing for ways to increase pressure on Moscow, including expanding covert military assistance for some rebels now taking a pounding from Russian airstrikes.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter; Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan have voiced increasingly tough views in White House meetings, calling for new measures to “inflict real pain on the Russians,” a senior administration official said.

The emerging alliance of Russia hawks exposes discord among defense and diplomatic officials and could put pressure on Mr. Obama to take stronger action against Moscow. But doing so risks pulling the U.S. deeper into a proxy fight in Syria, with Moscow showing little sign of lessening its support for President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian government said Tuesday it accepted the proposed cease-fire, announced a day earlier by the U.S. and Russia. But it said military operations would continue not only against Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front—both designated by the United Nations as terrorist organizations—but against “other terrorist groups connected to them” as well.

Russia and the Assad regime have branded all rebel groups as terrorists—further clouding prospects for any truce.

The opposition’s delegation to U.N.-mediated peace talks in Geneva said late Monday it supported the U.S.-Russia deal, with several conditions related to humanitarian issues.

Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria, launched last fall, has infuriated the CIA in particular because the strikes have aggressively targeted relatively moderate rebels it has backed with military supplies, including antitank missiles, U.S. officials say.

Officials say it was unclear whether stepped-up support would make much difference at this stage, given how much ground the CIA-backed rebels have lost in the recent pro-regime offensive.

Mr. Obama has been reluctant to allow either the U.S. or its regional partners to supply the rebels with advanced ground-to-air antiaircraft weapons to fend off airstrikes. While introducing that sort of system could be a game-changer, any decision to help the rebels directly go after Russian soldiers or destroy Russian airplanes could mark a dramatic escalation.

At the heart of the debate is how much confidence to place in diplomacy at this point in the Syria drama.

On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said there have been discussions within the administration over what strategy to pursue “in the event we don’t succeed” in negotiations. He noted the president has the ability to take additional actions against Moscow.

But Mr. Kerry also said that “this is a moment to try to see whether or not we can make this work, not to find ways to preordain its failure and start talking about all the downsides of what we might do afterward.”

Officials said neither Mr. Carter nor Gen. Dunford had formally submitted recommendations to Mr. Obama.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the CIA director. Navy Capt. Greg Hicks, a spokesman for Gen. Dunford, said the general’s recommendations were private.

A senior administration official said of the White House’s review: “We’ll judge Russia by its actions, not its words.”

The official added: “To be clear: Our actions are not aimed at Russia. Our focus, however, does not change the fact that Russia, by increasingly involving itself in a vicious conflict on the side of a brutal dictator, will become enmeshed in a quagmire. Should it not change course, Russia’s fate will be self-inflicted.”

Aside from expanding the CIA program, other options under discussion include providing intelligence support to moderate rebels to help them better defend themselves against Russian air attacks and to possibly conduct more effective offensive operations, officials said.

Another option with wide support among Mr. Obama’s advisers would impose new economic sanctions against Russia. But senior administration officials said they doubt European powers would go along, given the importance they place on trade with Russia.

The drawn-out negotiations with Moscow this month over a cease-fire agreement in Syria exposed the growing rift within the administration.

Mr. Carter had publicly voiced support for the negotiations led by Mr. Kerry. But while the talks were under way last week, Messrs. Carter and Brennan, and Gen. Dunford, privately warned the White House they risked undermining Washington’s standing with regional partners in the two U.S.-led coalitions—one in support of anti-Assad rebels, the other fighting Islamic State, the senior officials said.

At one point last week, the Pentagon came close to withdrawing its representatives from the cease-fire talks after the Russians claimed military cooperation between the U.S. and Russia was part of the closed-door discussions, according to senior administration officials.

Mr. Carter was upset about the Russian claims because he had explicitly ruled out such discussions, the officials said.

The Pentagon believes Russia was trying to try to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its coalition partners and to make it look like Washington would support Moscow’s military campaign in Syria and accept Mr. Assad.

While Russia was engaged in the cease-fire talks, U.S. officials say its war planes stepped up their attacks on positions held by moderate rebels. Russia maintains its airstrikes are targeting terrorist groups.

Mr. Kerry believes Monday’s agreement has “a viable chance of succeeding,” according to a senior administration official close to the secretary.

In contrast, Mr. Carter told senior officials Monday that it won’t hold. “He thinks it’s a ruse,” a senior administration official said.

Messrs. Carter and Brennan and Gen. Dunford raised many of their concerns in meetings last week involving Mr. Kerry, White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, according to senior administration officials.

The senior administration official close to Mr. Kerry said the secretary recognized the challenge of ensuring Russian compliance. The official added that the agreement was partially intended to test whether Moscow can be trusted. If Russia doesn’t abide by the deal, then “Plan-B thinking needs to occur,” the official said.

Mr. Kerry has supported the CIA program in Syria in the past and has advocated for greater military involvement, such as the creation of a safe zone to protect the moderate opposition. But the Pentagon has been resistant to such ideas, warning they could lead to a conflict with Russia, administration officials have said.

Senior administration officials involved in the discussions said it is unclear whether Mr. Obama would support expanding the CIA program.

Ms. Rice, Mr. McDonough and other senior national security officials at the White House have voiced skepticism in the past about the CIA effort.

White House critics of the program warned that open-ended support for the rebels could pull the U.S. deeper into the conflict over time, with little chance of success as long as Moscow remains willing to increase its support to Mr. Assad, according to former administration officials.

Current and former officials said Mr. Obama was persuaded in 2013 to green-light the covert program in Syria in part because doing so gave the CIA influence over the actions of regional partners, including Saudi and Turkish intelligence, preventing them, for example, from introducing advanced antiaircraft weapons known as Manpads on the battlefield. Washington warned the weapons could fall into terrorist hands and be turned against commercial aircraft.

If the U.S. doesn’t take action to prevent moderate rebel forces from being wiped out by the Russian-backed offensive, then the Saudis or some other group could decide to break ranks with Washington and send large numbers of Manpads into northern Syria to shoot down Russian bombers, U.S. intelligence agencies have warned policy makers, increasing the chances of a wider conflict.