A Few Thoughts On Terrorism and Disinformation

September 13, 2001

I have not worked on the terrorism problem in several years, and I am hardly an expert on the groups and subgroups lurking in the shadows in the Middle East and elsewhere. Nonetheless, facts are stubborn things, as Ronald Reagan once put it, and it is with the central facts that we must begin serious thinking with respect to the issue of assigning blame, directing retribution, and creating conditions and incentives yielding effective deterrence.

At the simplest level, the facts of this week can be summarized as follows. Notwithstanding a budget of $30 billion or more, our intelligence services, using incredible technological tools of signals intelligence, were able to intercept every false electronic transmission issued by the Iraqis and others, while remaining utterly oblivious to the real plot that actually unfolded. That suggests that disinformation---the use of false information for purposes of deception---remains a critical problem for our intelligence agencies, a point to which I will return shortly. Within minutes, and certainly hours, of the events of Tuesday, our learned intelligence officials began to assure us that Usama Bin Laden is the most likely culprit; but it is wholly unclear as to precisely how this conclusion has emerged, since little or nothing could have been learned in those minutes and hours that was not known before and that could have been examined for veracity.

What is clear is that this was a highly sophisticated operation, requiring coordinated timing within tight constraints, and trained pilots able to fly not crop dusters, but 757s, and willing or forced to undertake suicide missions. It required knowledge of the kinds of planes that would be scheduled on the chosen flights. That means that flight simulators and months of preparation were needed. It required the coordinated hijacking of not just any planes, but ones full of fuel from different airports, and sophisticated knowledge of flight operations so as to fly over Manhattan in such a way as to avoid stalling the planes and avoid breaking the planes up, while missing 60-story buildings but hitting 1 OO-story ones. It required coordination of targeting within tight time limits, passports, safe houses, and all of the other ancillary needs of individuals undertaking covert operations.

What this means is that the events of this week were orchestrated by a modern state intelligence service, with substantial resources, bureaucratic, expert, and financial, and with the requisite political will and internal controls necessary to prevent infiltration, moles, leaks, and other sources of compromise. It is clear to me that it is the Iraqi regime that has the ability, the resources, the motive, and the clear opportunity for this operation. The argument that the central responsibility lies instead with an amorphous "network" run by a bitter Moslem living in the mountains of Afghanistan IS, to be blunt, simply not plausible. Indeed, the established record of the 1998 embassy bombings suggests that Bin Laden's network resembles nothing so much as a group of poorly educated, bumbling, backward fanatics, as Laurie Mylroie has demonstrated in her book "Study of Revenge." Nonetheless, the argument that Bin Laden is the villain, however dubious, will be encouraged in the coming days---mark my words---by the "discovery" of an amazing series of false clues pointing to him. I am convinced that these will be planted by the Iraqis. And a substantial part of our intelligence services and public officials will believe them.

And that is the core of the problem. Our intelligence services underwent a dramatic change in the late 1970s when William Colby---a man combining great confidence and abysmal judgment---decided that disinformation efforts on the part of our adversaries were a problem no more because our myriad electronic toys were on the job. Satellites. Sensors. Listening devices. Ubiquitous electronic surveillance. All would create clear pictures out of what always has been the forest of mirrors of covert operations. As appalling as it is, our intelligence services have evolved intellectually to a point at which they really believe that they cannot be fooled.

Well, please allow me to differ. The interpretation of intelligence requires dispassionate objectivity rather than a bureaucratic need to justify past and future budgets and bureaucratic turf. Disinformation always has been and remains a huge problem to be dealt with through serious analysis rather than assumed away; and the plain reality is that our intelligence services have been so thoroughly corrupted by various forces that they cannot simply be "reformed." The most recent example was the decision by the Clinton Administration to give the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, a policymaking role, which inevitably meant that his policy preferences would color the intelligence reporting given decision makers. More generally, an intelligence service that genuinely believes that it cannot be fooled, that finds it excruciating bureaucratically and politically ever to admit that it has been fooled, that does not bear adverse consequences when it is fooled, and whose budget rises when abject failure occurs, in reality will be fooled again and again, with horrendous consequences for our people.

And that is why Michael Ledeen is quite correct The Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, must be fired immediately. The head of the CIA counterterrorism bureau must be fired. The same is true for the head of the Federal Aviation Administration security service, and the head of the FBI counterterrorism unit. Were it not for the fact that the new FBI director was just sworn in, it would be mandatory that he be fired as well.

The plain reality is that the events of this week have Iraqi fingerprints allover them. Again It is Saddam Hussein with the means, motive, opportunity, and will. Perhaps the Sudanese were involved; and possibly the Iranians and the Syrians as well, although I doubt it; I know only what I read in the papers. But the approach of the last 15 years---a search for "those responsible" using courtroom standards as the evidentiary basis for policy decisions---combined with a decided dismissal of the disinformation problem means that the governments waging war through terror will not face serious penalties. We simply cannot fight bombs with subpoenas and lawyers and investigators; the terrorism war is fundamentally a problem of national security rather than law enforcement, and the central questions are political and military rather than legal and procedural.

There may be reason for hope. George W. Bush, for all his poor rhetorical skills, and not by any means the intellectual that Ronald Reagan was, nonetheless is a man of intelligence and for the most part has good instincts and solid judgment. He will receive sound advice from several people, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld foremost among them. There will be great political pressure to do far more than merely lob a few cruise missiles at some overseas warehouses. But whispering in his other ear will be Colin Powell, a man of honor, a man of courage, and a man who for years has exhibited such incredibly bad political and policy judgment in so uninterrupted a fashion as to be unfathomable. There will be Brent Scrowcroft, the former national security adviser, who has not been right on a single issue---indeed, who has not had an original thought---in four decades. And there will be former President George Herbert Walker Bush, whose tenure in office exhibited consistently poor policy judgment both domestic and foreign. Whether this combination of pressures and advice will yield the correct policy---the use of overwhelming military force to remove Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Baathist regime from power and to install Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress in their place---simply remains to be seen."