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TESTIMONY
TO THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HOUSE
OF REPRESENTATIVES By
AMBASSADOR FRANCIS X.TAYLOR COORDINATOR
FOR COUNTERTERRORISM UNITED
STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE September
25, 2001 Mr.
Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I appreciate the
opportunity to meet with you and discuss the terrorist threats facing the United
States and the world. We need to
work together in the task of confronting the heightened terrorist challenge and
deterring terrorists and their supporters in the future. Your
Committee's support for our programs in the fight against terrorism has been
very helpful in the past and I look forward to working closely with you as we
begin our campaign to rid the world of the terrorist menace that threatens all
the world’s nations.
Before we begin, I
want to express my condolences to the families of the thousands of Americans and
citizens from more than 80 other nations who were killed, injured, or terrorized
by these horrific acts against humanity. I
also want to thank the thousands of police officers, firefighters, emergency
service and medical personnel and many others who responded so magnificently and
have worked tirelessly to save lives and avert greater tragedy.
Their efforts during in these extraordinary circumstances demonstrate the
indomitable American spirit. We are
proud of them all and what they represent.
The
events in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 were not just an attack
on America and Americans. The World Trade Center bombing claimed victims from at least
80 nations -— from our close neighbors Canada and Mexico to countries as far
away as Australia and Zimbabwe, and large numbers from Britain, India, and
Pakistan. For many countries,
including ours, this attack claimed the lives of the largest numbers of their
citizens in a terrorist incident. These
terrorist attacks may have been conceived as a blow against America but in
reality they were attacks against all civilized people. There
is no excuse, no justification, no rationalization for these acts of mass murder
against innocent people. Those who try to excuse, condone and support groups involved
in this activity are no better than the terrorist as their support encourages
even more horrific acts such as these. Our
campaign will go after terrorist groups and their supports and eliminate them as
a threat to civilization. President
Bush said bluntly in his address to Congress last Thursday: "Every nation,
in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are
with the terrorists." This
Administration is mobilizing an international coalition against the terrorists
and those who support them. From around the world, countries have come forward, both
individually and through their multilateral associations to condemn these acts
and to offer support for our campaign. While
the ability of countries to contribute may vary, each recognizes that the attack
against the World Trade Center is an attack against all nations and future
attacks must be deterred. TRENDS Mr.
Chairman, a brief understanding of history and context are important in
mobilizing for this effort. In your
letter of invitation to testify today, you asked me to comment on what this new
terrorist trend means. To
summarize, in some ways the September 11 attacks do not reflect a brand new
trend as much as a quantitative increase in the terrorists' sophistication,
planning and willingness to cause large scale destruction and loss of life.
During much of the 1970's most of the terrorism directed against the U.S.
and our allies was supported and funded by State sponsors — such as Libya,
Syria, Iran and Iraq. In
the early 1990's, we saw the emergence of radical fundamentalist terrorist
groups that relied not on state sponsors but primarily on funds raised
independently through front companies and so-called charitable contributions. Unlike their predecessors of the 70’s and 80’s, these
groups were distinguished by the fact that they were loosely knit international
networks. Some had ties stemming
from their involvement in the successful effort by the Afghan people to throw
out the occupying forces of the former Soviet Union.
It was from this group that Islamic extremist “Afghan Alumni” formed
the group we now call al Qaida, which means “The Base” in Arabic.
Al Qaida is essentially a holding company comprised of many terrorist
groups and independent cells. The
President and CEO of this holding company is Usama Bin Laden, the 17th
son of a wealthy Saudi business man and veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Bin
Ladin’s goal is to remove the American presence from Saudi Arabia and other
Islamic Nations and to create an Islamic utopia in what is now the Islamic
world. He sees the United States as the major impediment to his goal and has
vowed to attack America and Americans to undermine our influence on the world
stage. While
some attacks associated with al-Qaida were aimed against specific U.S. military
targets, such as the Khobar Towers facility in Saudi Arabia and the USS Cole in
Yemen, others were aimed at civilians, such as the bombing of the World Trade
Center in 1993 and the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya
that killed over 200 Africans, as well as 12 Americans.
Other major plots to kill large numbers of people were foiled, such as
attempts at the end of 1999 to attack a hotel and Christian other plots involved
blowing up civilian airliners in the Philippines, religious site in Jordan and
to attack Los Angeles airport. CHALLENGES The
challenges in meeting this threat are immense.
The September 11 terrorists apparently had enough money to make their
preparations many months, if not years in advance.
They developed a network of cells; it will be a real effort to root out
those that remain. These groups and
perhaps others do not operate in a traditional top-down structure but are
loosely knit. We will meet the
challenges. As
President Bush told Congress last Thursday night, "We will direct every
resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence,
every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every
necessary weapon of war -- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global
terror network." Our
efforts include encouraging the gathering and increased sharing of good
intelligence, rooting out terrorist cells, identifying and disrupting terrorist
money flows, and assisting countries to tighten their border security, law
enforcement and intelligence capability. The
global coalition I mentioned earlier in my testimony is a key element.
We are urging other countries to work with us.
We are willing to exert diplomatic and economic pressures against
countries that do not cooperate in counterterrorism efforts.
International cooperation is essential at all levels and for the long
term. Last
week I traveled with Deputy Secretary Armitage and several other colleagues to
meet with our Russian counterparts. The
trip during these busy times underscores the importance of our efforts to
cooperate with countries with which we have a mutual interest. TERRORIST
FUNDING There
are a number of areas in which we are seeking international cooperation; I would
like to highlight one in particular. We
are encouraging other countries to join in our efforts to clamp down on
terrorist fund raising and money transfers.
Funding is a critical element in these large-scale terrorist operations
and in the recruiting of supporters. We
need to choke it off. The
Executive Order signed by the President yesterday is part of that effort. Another
important tool in countering terrorism fundraising is the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act(AEDPA) of 1996, which you helped steer through
Congress as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
For the benefit of those not familiar with the legislation, it makes it a
criminal offense for persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction to knowingly
contribute funds or other material support to groups that the Secretary of State
has designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
U.S. law also allows freezing of the designated group’s assets and
denial of visas for members as well as leaders of terrorist organizations.
Currently, 31 groups are designated, including al-Qaida. Mr.
Chairman, an important section in the AEDPA is worth repeating for the world at
large. I refer to the FINDING in
section 301: "[F}oreign
terrorist organizations that engage in terrorist activity are so tainted by
their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates
that conduct." This
is a key point. Before they make a
contribution to groups supporting terrorists, people around the world need to
understand that by doing so they are assisting criminal conduct. Using
this and other legislation as a potential model, we have been and will continue
to encourage other countries to tighten up their own laws and regulations in
order to curb terrorist fund raising and money transfers.
Britain already has done so and other countries, such as Greece, have new
counterterrorism laws or proposed legislation in various stages of
consideration. We have met with officials of some of these countries them to
discuss AEDPA and other laws, and to exchange ideas and suggestions. In
particular, we are working with our G-8 partners to encourage international
cooperation in countering money flows to terrorists.
The State Department had already developed a training course in our
Antiterrorism Training Assistance program to help other countries improve their
ability to identify and curb terrorist fund raising and transfers.
We encourage other countries with expertise to make similar efforts.
In addition, the
Administration is making ratification of the International Convention for the
Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism a top priority.
The Administration is now finalizing proposed implementing legislation
for this Convention, and we strongly encourage the Senate to act swiftly and
provide advice and consent to ratification to this treaty.
The Administration
last week began discussing with Congress a major counterterrorism bill, the
“Anti-terrorism Act of 2001.” Although
most of the public attention has centered on criminal code provisions that the
Justice Department put forward, the State Department also offered contributions
for the combined bill. Discussions
have begun with your staff and we look forward to working with the Committee on
provisions of mutual interest. PROGRAMS
Mr.
Chairman, there are a number of tools that we have been using to counter
terrorism and we are sharpening and improving them in this new struggle. Some
of the basic elements are not new. Just
as old-fashioned, painstaking work is important in fighting ordinary crimes, so
fighting terrorism requires a number of unglamorous but proven measures.
On the
program front, we are utilizing training-related programs to help combat
terrorism overseas and thus also help protect Americans living and travelling
abroad. The State Department's Antiterrorism Assistance (ATA) program in which
we train foreign security and law enforcement officials is a pillar of this
effort. The program provides not
only training but also helps promote our policies and improve our contacts with
foreign officials to achieve our counterterrorism goals. Even
before the September 11 attacks, we were providing policy and working level
seminars and training to assist countries in preparing for or responding to
weapons of mass destruction terrorism. We
also have developed a Terrorist Interdiction Program (TIP) which utilizes
sophisticated computer data base systems and improved communications to help
identify potential terrorists who try to cross international borders.
The
Department’s contribution to the interagency counterterrorism research and
development program, the Technical Support Working Group, also helps advance in
explosives detection and other areas and bolster our cooperative R&D efforts
with Britain, Canada and Israel. We
have proposed increasing our terrorism information reward program, including
authority to offer larger rewards. The
current maximum reward is $5 million. We
propose allowing the Secretary to authorize payment of a higher reward if he
determines that doing so would be important to the national interests of the
United States.
The international coalition and our bilateral programs I mentioned are
just some of the measures we are taking to meet this new challenge.
Our response to the horrific events of September 11 will be broad-based
and will not be completed in a short time.
We are committed to a long term strategic campaign, in concert with the
Nations of the World that abhor terrorism, to root out and bring to justice
those that use terrorism. We are in
for a long haul. As President Bush
told the world last week, this will be a lengthy campaign.
There are no easy or quick fixes in fighting this danger posed by
international terrorism. We must be
persistent, and determined. And, we
will. With
the dedication of the American people, your help, and that of our allies
overseas, we will succeed. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy
to take any questions. |
