http://blog.wired.com…
Noah Shachtman

The Army’s controversial Human Terrain program, already reeling from a murder investigation, is facing new allegations — that one of its own worked as a spy for Saddam.

Issam Hamama was arrested last week in Bangor, Maine on charges of “conspir[ing] to act as an agent of a foreign government,” and of making false statements to cover up that spying. He’s scheduled to be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Wednesday.

It’s the second federal felony indictment in a month to hit the Human Terrain System, which embeds cultural advisors in combat units. And it raises fresh questions about how the program hires and vets its employees. Earlier in November, Human Terrain Team member and former bodyguard Don Ayala was charged with second-degree murder, for allegedly killing an Afghan native, after he set one of Ayala’s co-workers on fire.

According to an recently-unsealed indictment, Hamama supposedly spent a dozen years working for the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Washington, D.C. under the code name “6129,” collecting information on opposition groups. The goal, Hamama wrote in a letter to the Iraqi minister of the exterior, was to “lessen the size and influence and activity of the traitorous counteracting Iraqi forces.”

But after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, Hamama — like many former employees of the Ba’athist government — looked to change sides. In June of that year, he applied to become a translator for American forces in Iraq. On a form asking whether he had ever had any contact with any foreign government, he answered “no.” Two months later, the FBI began investigating whether Hamama “had acted as an unregistered agent” of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

Nevertheless, Hamama got the translator job, and, later, became an employee for the Army’s Human Terrain System, which combines social scientists and military specialists into teams of cultural advisors, for battlefield commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hamama’s connection to the Human Terrain program was first noted by independent journalist John Stanton, and was confirmed by U.S. Army officials, who did not elaborate on Hamama’s employment.

The Human Terrain project has won praise from American military leaders in Afghanistan to General David Petraeus, the new chief of U.S. Central Command. “The concept is still relatively new, and the contributions of the teams obviously vary based on the quality of the teams’ members,” he told Danger Room, over the summer. “But a good team — and there are many — is invaluable.”

Since the program’s inception in 2006, however, the $130 million Human Terrain System has faced questions about its hiring and screening practices. Originally, the project called for social science PhDs to join its ranks. Now, there are researchers on the Human Terrain payroll  who have never even visited -– much less formally studied –- the areas in which they’re supposed to serve as experts. BAE Systems, the defense contractor responsible for staffing the program, has been repeatedly criticized for hiring people who didn’t have the training or temperament to effectively serve in a war zone. “They’ve completely undermined the program,” a former Human Terrain Team member says. Social scientists have been thrown off of their teams, and even sent home early from Iraq.

In March, 2007, University of Virginia graduate student Zenia Helbig was hired to join the Human Terrain project. Five months later, she was booted off of the program, and her interim security clearance was revoked. The reason: She had made a joke about “switch[ing] sides,” if America invaded Iran. “Her allegiance to the United States and her preference towards the Iraqi government is in question,” a Defense Security Service report said.

Ironically, the military reached a very different conclusion about Issam Hamama.