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CIAO DATE: 12/03
Losing the Intelligence War Overseas
On The Issues
June 2002
If Washington is going to win the war on terrorism, it will have to focus on thwarting al Qaeda overseas rather than on boosting security measures at home. In particular, the Bush administration must force the Central Intelligence Agency to become more innovative and aggressive in its undercover operations abroad.
The controversy over who knew what when before September 11 reveals at least one thing clearly-it is very easy to get lost in a side debate. While it is important to know whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation mishandled information, that inquiry should not keep us from having the far more important public inquiry into whether the Central Intelligence Agency has learned through failure how to collect information on Islamic terrorist groups. If Washington is going to win the war on terrorism, it will have to do so overseas.
This is true, first, because neither al Qaeda nor the Middle Eastern states that sponsor terrorism have yet shown that they have moved their primary bases of operations into the West. If America doesn't take the war to them, we will always be playing catch-up. Second, liberal democracies, even those with ample security services, always operate at a crippling disadvantage against terrorists, particularly those willing to die in suicide missions. Things can be done to improve security, but vastly less than the billions of dollars to be spent for homeland defense would suggest.
Consider the memo written by Kenneth Williams, an FBI agent in Phoenix, which discussed the threat coming from Middle Eastern men training at flight schools in the United States. Mr. Williams's conjecture was surely astute. But to counterterrorist officials in the FBI, it may not have appeared novel. After all, air piracy has been used in Middle Eastern terrorism for more than thirty years. The bombing in 1988 of Pan Am 103—let alone the activities of Ramzi Yousef, who was a key player in the first bombing of the World Trade Center and the audacious, aborted plot in the mid-1990's to blow up a dozen American airplanes in midair-should have permanently implanted the idea of terrorists' sneaking bombs on planes into the minds of American counterterrorist officials.
And there is little difference in the safeguards that ought to be used against hijackers, Yousef-like bombers, and the September 11 holy warriors. Obviously air marshals on planes and secure cockpit doors should have been routine in American craft before September 11. Such precautions have been in place in Israeli aircraft for decades, and yet even these relatively easy steps were not taken. Why? Because the American political leaders and the public have not been comfortable with acknowledging our vulnerability and the need to take defensive action that would change civilian life.
This is particularly true if there is any risk that our liberties may be compromised. It is very hard to imagine that any kind of pre-September 11 intelligence could have been analyzed with precision sufficient to provoke Washington to act in a manner at odds with its moral temperament. Only after September 11 was it even conceivable for the federal government to seek to question thousands of Muslim males in this country and to scrutinize men of Middle Eastern background in flight schools. Taking this course of action even after September 11 raises troubling moral issues, yet it is doubtful that any other method would have given the FBI any chance of thwarting the al Qaeda teams. While Congress and the administration hope the FBI can become more adept in preempting terrorism on American soil, enhancing that ability would probably mean using extensive ethnic and religious profiling that could come to dominate numerous aspects of American life. It is a decent bet that many, if not most, Americans would have little stomach for a real war on terrorism on the home front.
The CIA's Crucial Role
The terrorists' tactics aside, American values will require that the war be fought and won overseas, and hence the CIA's crucial role. September 11, like the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa and the bombing of the destroyer Cole, revealed that the agency has been unable to penetrate Osama bin Laden's world. While this job is extremely difficult, it is not impossible. Radical Islamic groups like al Qaeda are ecumenical by nature, enlisting Muslims not by family or tribe but through ideology.
The administration is now pouring money into the CIA. Under George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, the clandestine service has expanded considerably. Yet there is no assurance that the agency will conduct counterterrorism more effectively. During the cold war the CIA became addicted to using diplomatic cover for most of its operatives. This was simple, inexpensive, and safe. According to active duty case officers, the agency is still posting the vast majority of its operatives overseas under embassy and consular cover. It seems very unlikely that simply putting more spooks-cum-diplomats overseas would significantly enhance our intelligence about radical Islamic terrorist cells. Washington-based officers jet-setting out to the Middle East aren't likely to cross paths with Muslim militants, either.
The CIA needs to abandon its cold war structure. The enemy now operates out of religious schools, Muslim fraternal associations, and import-export businesses. To deal with this threat, the agency has to have a majority, not just a small fraction, of its operatives abroad, operating under nonofficial cover. We need Arabic-speaking officers and foreign agents able to penetrate Muslim communities in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia where terrorists are finding shelter and recruits. For example, the CIA should have tried to place more sophisticated and varied versions of John Walker Lindh everywhere years ago.
Unfortunately, it is doubtful that any real change will happen in the CIA without outside pressure. After all, the agency should have foreseen that its mission needed to change well before September 11. An independent investigation of intelligence lapses before the attacks might provide the necessary heat for reform. But much now depends on President Bush's willingness to take on the intelligence establishment and force the CIA to become more clever, more aggressive, and much less comfortable. That is likely to give us greater security than spending vast sums on homeland defense and having the government track thousands of Muslims in America.
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow at AEI and a former officer in the Central Intelligence Agency.
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