SOURCE: HAARETZ.COM

In a highly unusual practice, the CIA does not spy on the UAE, three former CIA officials familiar with the matter told Reuters, creating what some critics call a dangerous blind spot in U.S. intelligence

The United Arab Emirates finances the military leader trying to topple a United Nations-recognized government in Libya. It helps lead a coalition of nations imposing an economic blockade of Qatar, despite U.S. calls to resolve the dispute. It hired former staffers of the U.S. National Security Agency as elite hackers to spy in a program that included Americans as surveillance targets, a Reuters investigation found this year.

And yet, in a highly unusual practice, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) does not spy on the UAE’s government, three former CIA officials familiar with the matter told Reuters, creating what some critics call a dangerous blind spot in U.S. intelligence.

The CIA’s posture isn’t new. What’s changed is the nature of the tiny but influential OPEC nation’s intervention across the Middle East and Africa – fighting wars, running covert operations and using its financial clout to reshape regional politics in ways that often run counter to U.S. interests, according to the sources and foreign policy experts.

The CIA’s failure to adapt to the UAE’s growing military and political ambitions amounts to a “dereliction of duty,” said a fourth former CIA official.

The U.S. intelligence community doesn’t completely ignore the UAE. Another branch, the National Security Agency (NSA), conducts electronic surveillance – a lower-risk, lower-reward kind of intelligence-gathering – inside the UAE, two sources with knowledge of NSA operations told Reuters. And the CIA works with UAE intelligence in a “liaison” relationship that involves intelligence sharing on common enemies, such as Iran or al-Qaeda.

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