CIAO DATE: 9/01

From CIAO's Board: Commentary on the Terrorist Attacks against the United States

1. Agree completely with Bob Keohane and especially on the need for finding a prominent role for the United Nations as an organization in any global strategy for the containment of terrorism that involves the end of state support to terrorist groups.

2. My background is a bit different than others on our board and the last book that I wrote dealt with what is wrong with the way the United States does intelligence work (Best Truth, Yale Univ Press, 1999). I want to add a comment based on that book and my prior government service, and stress that this comment has nothing to do with the position I now hold or the work that this Institute does (international education and educational exchange).

3. For at least a decade, I have argued that when it comes to dealing with terrorism (ranging from the gathering of information about these organizations and persons, to pre-emption, to punishment), the U.S. has vested the responsibility in the wrong agencies. No existing intelligence or counter-terrorism agency of the U.S. government, in my view, has the culture or expertise to deal effectively with the challenges involved, especially when it comes to collecting information about terrorists and, even more important, actually using such information to pre-empt an attack. This is also a finding last year of the commission headed by former Senator Warren Rudman.

4. Tragically, I think I heard on CNN over the weekend that not a single recommendation of the Rudman Commission has been implemented. A post-facto analysis should be done of whether or not these recommendations could have enabled our government to prevent the attacks on 9/11.

Commentary

Stephen M. Walt
Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs
John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Bruce Jentleson
Professor of Public Policy, Duke University
Director, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy

Response by Etel Solingen
Professor of Political Science
University of California, Irvine

Response by Stephan Haggard
Professor, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies
University of California, San Diego