US military stations assassination teams at embassies

IHT: Elite U.S. troops given bigger intelligence role

The U.S. military is placing small teams of Special Operations troops in a growing number of U.S. embassies to gather intelligence on terrorists in unstable parts of the world and to prepare for potential missions to disrupt, capture or kill them.

Senior Pentagon officials and military officers say the effort is part of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's two-year drive to give the military a more active intelligence role in the campaign against terrorism. But it has drawn opposition from traditional intelligence agencies like the CIA, where some officials have viewed it as a provocative expansion into what has historically been their turf. Read more