Military

DATE=10/10/2001

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01000

TITLE=ON THE LINE: THE WAR WE ARE IN

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY -- 619-0037

CONTENT=THIS IS CORRECT VERSION. EARLIER VERSION WITH MINOR COPY ERRORS PUT ON WIRE BY MISTAKE.

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Anncr: On the Line -- a discussion of United States policy and contemporary issues. This week, "The War We Are In" Here is your host, David Aikman.

Host: Hello and Welcome to On the Line.

"We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail." With those words, President George W. Bush announced the beginning of the global war against terrorism. The United States and Britain have launched air strikes against military positions of Afghanistan's ruling Taleban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, the group responsible for the September eleventh terrorist attack on the U.S.

As President Bush has said, the military campaign is just one part of the war on terrorism. "Given the nature and reach of our enemies," he declared, "we will win this conflict by the patient accumulation of successes." Many of those successes will emerge from the gathering of counter-terrorism intelligence, which will be used to detect and disrupt terrorist organizations around the globe.

Joining me today are three counter-terrorism experts. Ed Badolato is Executive Director of the Counter-terrorism and Security Foundation. Douglas Streusand is an author and professor at the American Military University. And David Isby is a specialist/correspondent for Jane's Intelligence Review. Welcome to the program, gentlemen. Thank you for joining us.

Douglas, let me ask you, what do you mean, what does anybody mean by terrorism? How do you define terrorism?

Streusand: Terrorism is the use of violence against non-combatants for the purpose of terror, for the purpose of spreading fear, and also getting attention. Successful terrorism is a form of political theater. It requires an audience.

Host: Is terrorism by definition something organized by a state, David, or can it be organized by any group of people?

Isby: Terrorism can be state-supported, but indeed it's often associated with non-state actors. The issue is there that they are not seen as responsible. A state exists, may be subject to treaties, is subject to the laws of nations; whereas a group of individuals, however motivated, may not be.

Host: Ed, you've traveled extensively around the world and given your constant consultations to leaders and political factions in different parts of the globe. Is there a general consensus amongst different governments around the world on what terrorism is?

Badolato: To be frank, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. There is a big problem in specifically defining terrorism in legal terms. And we're seeing now, when we're trying to install a rule of law and a means with which we can bring terrorists to justice, some real problems in this area.

Host: Do you agree with that idea that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter?

Isby: No, I don't think that's necessarily the case. It is not certainly a purely subjective -- indeed, if we concede this purely subjective rule, it's very much that of bin Laden and his supporters. We can see for example in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, where the Afghans were fighting very bitterly within Afghanistan. They did not attack targets outside Afghanistan, they did not attack Soviet diplomats or unarmed targets. So I think there we can distinguish what international [terrorism] does, a legitimate armed resistance inside Afghanistan and there was not terrorism outside.

Streusand: Terrorism is a strategy, not a cause. It's true that one man's rebel, one man's dissident, is another's freedom fighter. But I think that it's possible to say that a certain individual is a terrorist or isn't, or that a certain tactic is terrorism. There are some organizations or institutions which argue that terrorism in certain circumstances is a justifiable tactic. And I would emphatically disagree with that. But it's a strategy or a tactic; it's not a cause. One may oppose the cause or support it, but if what we're dealing with is terrorism, in and of itself, we're fighting anyone who adopts the tactic.

Host: So counter-terrorism in a sense is efforts to disrupt the activities of groups who engage in violence against civilians or non-combatants, in your understanding of the term. Would you agree with that, gentlemen?

Guests: Yes.

Host: What can counter-terrorist organizations, including the United States government and governments with which the United States is allied in this effort to suppress Osama bin Laden and his ilk, what can they do most effectively to limit terrorism?

Isby: The most effective thing is good intelligence. If intelligence is the primary counter to the terrorist, with good intelligence, the cop on the corner can arrest even the greatest terrorist mastermind. If you don't know it's coming, then all the police, all the security apparatus in the world, can't prevent things like Eleven September.

Host: What does good intelligence mean, Ed?

Badolato: Good intelligence is the mechanism by which you perform your counter-terrorism activities. It fits into a format where it plays an important role along with your organizational structure, your budget, and your strategy to combat terrorism, all of which must work together to be effective.

Host: In the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency has been the primary overseas intelligence gathering organization or agency. Is the CIA the American institution that is best equipped to engage in counter-terrorist intelligence gathering?

Isby: Certainly they are part of it. They are limited by law to looking overseas, whereas in the change in the global economy, global communication, terrorists go from the purview of the CIA overseas to the United States and back again with great speed and ease, whereas our government makes sure that the C-I-A's gaze stays fixed offshore. And of course the C-I-A has to look literally at everything, from the I-C-B-Ms [intercontinental ballistic missiles] in the former Soviet Union to people plotting, planning a bombing tomorrow, in some backwater in Beirut. So it's very hard to focus on all of these, and you need very different methods to do each.

Host: You raised a very important point, David. Obviously, in our struggle with people like al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden's associates, we're dealing with people who do not, as the Soviet Union did, constitute a specific state adversary of the United States during the Cold War. So, what is the most effective way of gathering intelligence on groups that have multinational connections all over the world?

Streusand: The most effective way, although also very difficult, is of course by turning people within the groups, by human intelligence. This has been the greatest weakness of the United States, and there have been obstacles which we have put in our own way, of doing it. But that is -- if the question is the most effective way -- that's the most effective way, certainly.

Host: Why has it been a weakness of the United States?

Streusand: Because of concern about the C-I-A's relationships with various people who were involved in human rights violations in Central America. There was a rule that was promulgated I believe in 1995, that no individual who was guilty of violent acts, I believe was the formulation, could be used as an intelligence asset by the

C-I-A without the case officers having the actual permission of the Director of Central Intelligence -- without actually waking him up at night and saying, may I talk to this man -- which I am told that few case officers wanted to do. And when you are dealing with violent organizations, it is necessary to talk to and listen to and occasionally pay violent people. It's not a game that we can win by keeping our hands lily-white.

Host: Ed, in your dealings with foreign intelligence organizations and security agencies, do you find that some of these agencies overseas are a little bit skeptical about the CIA or perhaps they're not quite willing to trust the Central Intelligence Agency, precisely because of the concerns that Douglas just mentioned?

Badolato: I don't think that that is the case. Having functioned in this area, I have to say that there is a professional trust and understanding, trading of information, trading of various aspects of breaking intelligence and so forth, between United States intelligence officers and other nations that are organized overseas. It is something where unless some overseas intelligence organizations are declared enemies of the United States, it's generally a good working relationship.

Host: Thank you. Let me take a moment to remind our audience that this is On the Line. I'm David Aikman, and we are speaking with counter-terrorism experts Ed Badolato, Douglas Streusand and David Isby.

David Isby, let me ask you a question, since you are with Jane's Intelligence Review and you have looked at this both here in the United States and all over the world. In terms of human intelligence, are there any specific obstacles to getting good human intelligence from within the organizations associated with al-Qaida?

Isby: Very much -- it's very hard to get within any such organization. In fact, we see for example how hard it was for the British, who literally wrote the book on counter-terrorism, to penetrate the cell structure of the provisional

I-R-A [Irish Republican Army]. And that took over twenty years before their army council recommended a cease-fire. Culture is very important in some areas, like for example the Hezbollah of south Lebanon, which comes from little Shi'ite communities. You can't go in, not only if they don't know you, but if their grandfather doesn't know your grandfather. So it's very hard for an outsider to do this. Now al-Qaida has the disadvantage in that it draws from throughout the world, so there are different individuals. But they also have this cell structure which makes it possible for an individual, even if he is turned, to only betray a very few individuals or part of the specific operation. And as long as they keep that cell discipline up, it's going to be many years' work to infiltrate and turn al-Qaida.

Host: Douglas, you're a specialist and you've written on Islam and aspects of Islamic doctrine which relate to things like jihad and so forth. Is it possible, for example, for the United States to work with moderate Muslim intelligence communities that are very antipathetic to what al-Qaida and their associates are doing, to penetrate these cells themselves?

Streusand: It is certainly possible, and I think it's happening. I think that intelligence cooperation is something that we do with many allies or partners, without much public attention going to it. Even when there is no, or very little, overt military relationship, there is often an intelligence relationship. On the other hand, some particular intelligence services may be more antipathetic to the United States than the governments that they are supposed to serve are.

Host: Is that right? So you have difficulties among the intelligence organizations of different countries, independent of the relations at the top of those countries?

Streusand: You certainly may. We've seen in Pakistan the changes in intelligence leadership which President [Pervez] Musharraf has made, in order to ensure that his intelligence services serve him and his policy of supporting the United States, as many of them were deeply involved in establishing the Taleban regime, and are not necessarily inclined to see it destroyed.

Host: Ed, what would constitute in your view a counter-intelligence success against these terrorist organizations?

Badolato: First, I think bringing the leadership of the al-Qaida for example under control, not only Osama bin Laden but his chief lieutenants as well. We have done a lot of work through the years and we understand how to take control of an organization, even one where it is so difficult as al-Qaida, going after the leadership, the lieutenants, and taking off several levels of management so to speak. This would be a success; this is something that those of us in the community are looking forward to happening eventually in Afghanistan.

Host: But when you say "take control," what do you mean?

Badolato: Well, by one way or another bringing to justice, or in a pitched battle or something of that nature causing casualties.

Host: But if you have a group like al-Qaida, which has very sort of difficult to define relationships with a number of different terrorist or sympathetic groups around the world -- if you chop off the head so to speak, not literally, but if you arrest or disable the leadership of al-Qaida, don't you still have sort of all kinds of other agencies doing their own thing with just as much. . . .

Isby: Yes, it's autonomous networks; it's not a stovepipe like the old K-G-B [Soviet secret police] who had subordinate agents under it. These are autonomous networks. Indeed, this is why many of these same individuals also have links not only to bin Laden, but perhaps to the Iraqis, Hezbollah, Hamas, perhaps even the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. So these links now run in multiple directions, and part of it is identifying where the funding and the support is. And I agree that local allied and friendly agencies are going to have to help there. They have the interest too. You know even after Eleven September certainly more Muslims than Americans have died at the hands of terrorists, even bin Laden -- he has more Arab and Afghan blood on his hands than American blood.

Streusand: That's certainly true, and in fact the most useful way of defining a Muslim extremist is not in his attitude towards the West but in his attitude towards other Muslims. A Muslim extremist is one who believes in the doctrine of taqfeer, that is that he can, as a Muslim, define other Muslims as non-Muslim for failing to do what he thinks that they ought to, and therefore engage, and therefore seek to kill them or overthrow regimes. The network truly is multicephalous -- it has many heads -- and there is a book published, which I'm sure that Ed remembers from some years ago, about terrorism, called "The Hydra of Carnage." And the hydra image is certainly a useful one. And we are going to be cutting off heads for more years than we would like to think.

Isby: And part of it's also not only cutting off heads but trying to reduce feeding the ones that exist. Part of it is identifying fund sources and reducing it. Bin Laden himself is not a fighting man. He is a facilitator. He can identify sources of funding. Much of this funding is the [Persian] Gulf, Saudi Arabia, elsewhere in the Islamic world. We need to identify the spigots, much of which run through legitimate fronts, and with the help of friendly governments turn each one off. It's going to be difficult; it's going to be politically costly. We've seen this again with U.S. support for the I-R-A, where Britain, one of the oldest allies, found it very difficult over the years, but the aim has finally been largely accomplished. So we're going to have to repeat this process.

Host: Ed, do you think that the governments of some of the countries in the Middle East who clearly are against this kind of terrorism that is being directed by al-Qaida and its associates, do you think they are providing sufficient support for America's counter-intelligence effort in this conflict?

Badolato: In the main, we have good relations with the intelligence community, and they provide us better information than in the past. They see it in their own interest and this has been developed over a number of years, particularly starting after Operation Desert Storm, and the increase in activity, both with the military and also with the non-military intelligence in the Middle East and in particular in the Gulf.

Host: In the minute or so we have left, does any of you gentlemen have any recommendation that the United States might pursue in order to encourage moderate Muslims, who clearly are the majority of the world of Islam, to act in a way that would make it possible to catch these particular terrorist organizers?

Streusand: I think that the President has done extremely well in doing so, in making absolutely clear that the American way of life has room for Muslims, that the President has no more difficulty standing next to Muslims and visiting Muslim places of worship than he does visiting churches and synagogues. And I think that this has been extremely positive.

Isby: Bin Laden wants a war of civilizations. We want friendship between all civilization and to end terrorism. His way is terrorism and war. It's being opposed by peace.

Host: It certainly seems to be the case that we are dealing with a conflict with a very long-term unwinding in front of us, but let's hope we can come to resolve this.

I'm sorry that that's all the time we have for this week. I'd like to thank our guests -- Ed Badolato, Executive Director of the Counter-terrorism and Security Foundation; Douglas Streusand, professor at the American Military University; and David Isby, correspondent for Jane's Intelligence Review -- for joining me to discuss the war on terrorism. This is David Aikman for On the Line.