My opinion was formed, surprisingly, not by domestic law enforcement or even spies and the intelligence community, but by my experiences researching the United States military. At some point before now, I found myself in Africa interviewing what most people would refer to as "warlords." The reality is far more nuanced, and far more fascinating, and I personally despise the title, because of its connotations, but I digress. Anyway, over a period of time I interviewed several of these warlords, all of them having been at one point aligned with the United States in one way or another. When I asked how interacting with the US was, almost uniformly they told me the same thing, that they had no idea. See, the common perception is like a Lord of War situation, where a conspicuously light skinned man dressed in a nice suit, wearing expensive sunglasses whispers something into the ear of someone and things just happen. This isn't how it works. Anyway, what I was told is that while they knew their money, their weapons, and their information was coming from the United States, and they knew their objectives were directly beneficial to the United States, none of them had actually ever spoken to an American. Nobody that worked for them had spoken to an American. None of their contacts had ever spoken to an American. How they explained it, some local but not too local dude would just show up one day and ask if they wanted a job, and to show that they were serious, they'd have a stack of US dollars. They accepted, naturally, and suddenly other dudes they didn't know would just show up with crates of weapons. Sometimes they'd show up with more wads of cash. Often times, when they were fighting some other insurgent group, their enemies would just get blown up by American or French jets. Sometimes after a battle with one of these groups, the entire enemy encampment would get hit by an air strike, and they'd suddenly find themselves unopposed. In return, when American or French or British contractors moved into an area, they knew to not fuck with them. See, there were no set rules. There was never an explicit agreement of "I will provide you X and Y, and you will in return burn down this village of people standing in the way of this oil pipeline and then protect my contractors." That's all too obvious, it can be tracked, and it would obviously be a nightmare if anyone found any of this out. Moreover, just having these discussions with these warlords would inherently give them leverage. "Hey, I want 15% more money or I'll go to the press." That kind of shit. These warlords aren't dumb. They may not be able to do third grade math, but they didn't become leaders of their own personal armies by being gullible and naive. So that's how it works. These guys do America's dirty work. They know it, America knows it, everyone involved knows it, but there's absolutely no evidence, and it's filtered through so many shell companies and intermediaries that it's completely impossible to prove.
