The
adage of killing the bearer of bad news is given a new
twist in the case of the Central Intelligence Agency's
(CIA's) role in reference to the September 11 terrorist
attacks on the United States and on that organization's
role regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The
new twist involves the following questions. Why did the
CIA not bring more accurate bad news, and why did it
fail to disrupt al-Qaeda activities or capture Osama bin
Laden? Needless to say, such criticisms are unfair
because they are aimed at judging the pre-September 11
performance of the spy agency in the post-September 11
environment, when America's willingness to strike back
at transnational terrorist groups is at an all time
high.
Now the push in Washington is to implement
measures of a different variety. These include
redesigning or even dismantling the agency and
recreating it as a National Intelligence Service - or
giving its director more power, or creating an entirely
separate national intelligence director, and giving
him/her more power and control over the intelligence
budget - the mother's milk of creating timely, agile and
actionable intelligence. At the risk of simplification,
it should be noted the panoply of these measures were
driving President George W Bush's decision on August 27
to issue four executive orders, which take effect
immediately.
One of the key findings of the 9-11
Commission regarding the role of the CIA before the
September 11 terrorist attacks stated that no agency did
more to attack al-Qaeda than the CIA. It added, however,
there are limits to what it was able to achieve "by
disrupting terrorist activities abroad and using proxies
to capture Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants in
Afghanistan". The CIA itself was aware of its
limitations. According to the commission's report, one
CIA officer noted, "All we're doing is holding the ring
until the cavalry gets here."
In the
pre-September 11 environment, the US was reluctant to
attack the terrorist target after it missed bin Laden in
August 1999, when president Bill Clinton authorized the
firing of a number of cruise missiles at Afghanistan. So
the failure to carry out further attacks should squarely
and rightly be placed at the doorsteps of the Clinton
White House. By the same token, the decision to topple
Saddam Hussein became one of the top priorities of the
Bush administration as soon as it entered into office.
All other reasons and rationales for that purpose were
sought only to boost its case in the court of world
public opinion. The absence of those reasons and
rationales could not have stopped the US invasion of
Iraq. It perplexes many people why the CIA is being
blamed for not being right about the absence of weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq. Would that fact have
stopped Bush from invading Iraq? Of course not.
Every time a tragedy of the proportion of the
September 11 attacks happens, there is an inexorable
impulse to do something, regardless of whether such
actions really go to the heart of the problem. In this
instance, the brunt of "doing something" revolves around
the CIA, even though necessary actions, inter alia, also
require a major revamping of the entire interagency
process. The interagency process, even though it has
undergone major changes in the aftermath of the
September 11 attacks, is still a work in progress in
terms of establishing inter-organizational coordination,
and synchronization for appropriate and timely actions
in case of another terrorist attack. In fact, a strong
argument can be made that the very creation of the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is of such a
massive proportion - 22 agencies merged under the
umbrella of a new department and 80,000 people united
under a single mission to protect the US from terrorist
attacks - that no one can be certain that the
interagency coordination can be maintained in the wake
of another national crisis, without running into new
problems stemming from the creation of DHS, or the
"usual" interagency problems of the pre-September 11
era.
Another problem is the lack of capability
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct
analysis of the massive amount of intelligence collected
within the US domestic arena that is of the same caliber
as that of the CIA in the realm of foreign intelligence.
Even though the analytical capabilities of the FBI are
being improved, it will be several years before they
will be at par with that of the CIA. Moreover, one can
never be very sure whether the FBI and the CIA will
coordinate their actions, and, more important, exchange
critical information seamlessly from now on, or they
will revert to the old organizational malady of the
pre-September 11 era, when they treated each other,
according to the then running joke, as "enemies" and
refused to share information.
Still another
problem related to the pre-September 11 era was the
failure of policymakers - for which the Clinton White
House should be blamed more than the US Congress - to
enforce counterterrorism strategy. Counterterrorism was
given verbal emphasis, which was not matched by the
gravity to implement it because of the realities of the
pre-September 11strategic environment. Now the question
remains whether counterterrorism will be an important
aspect of US policy, or is it an aberration that will
fizzle away. Considering the fact that fighting
transnational terrorism is a long-term objective, US
policymakers had better develop a consensus on this
question now, and, more to the point, stick to it for at
least during the remainder of this decade.
It
follows from the preceding that the urgent requirement
to close the vulnerability gap is about much more than
finding bureaucratic "remedies", which, more often than
not, are politically motivated and driven, and may not
bring about real change. At the same time, bureaucratic
changes should not be dismissed, for they still have the
potential of creating ample public consciousness and
debate, which, in turn, may lead to real changes in
America's capabilities to fight terrorism effectively
and winning.
Bush's four executive orders of
August 27 should be viewed in the spirit of the
preceding statement. The first order gives the CIA
director additional authority on an interim basis to
perform the functions of a proposed director of national
intelligence (NID). The creation of NID will have to
wait for congressional action, and that office is
expected to have increased powers to oversee all of the
nation's 15 intelligence agencies. In the meantime,
under Bush's directive, the CIA director's
budget-related authority, especially his/her authority
to transfer funds between agencies or halt spending that
is inconsistent with national security priorities, will
increase. This new authority is regarded as a major blow
to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who very much
supported the Pentagon's control of over 85% of the
intelligence funds amounting $40 billion.
The
second executive order establishes a national
counterterrorism center - a key recommendation of the
9-11 Commission. This new center will build on the
analytic work already being done by the Terrorist Threat
Integration Center (TTIC). Bush stated that the new
center will become the "knowledge bank for information
about known and suspected terrorists".
The third
executive order sets guidelines for the sharing of
intelligence among agencies, and the fourth establishes
a presidential board on safeguarding America's
liberties, a topic that has been under considerable
controversy in the wake of increased authority of the
law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism, since the
September 11 attacks.
Even though these
executive orders are steps in the right direction, they
continue to generate controversy because of their
timing. Bush did not show much enthusiasm about taking
immediate action over the recommendations for the 9-11
Commission. It was only in the wake of constant
criticism by Senator John Kerry, the chief contender for
Bush's job, and by other leading Democrats that Bush
finally relented and issued the executive orders.
Critics also question the fact that these orders are
issued barely a week before the Republican convention.
Now Bush and other Republican luminaries will tout them
during the convention as stemming from Bush's concern
for national security.
In the highly charged
environment created by the impending presidential
election, questioning all major political actors'
intentions is par for the course. What is important here
is to question whether those executive orders are indeed
steps in the right direction. Will the nation's
capabilities to get timely and actionable intelligence
indeed increase by implementing the orders? Will the
quality of interagency coordination also improve as a
result of them? And, most important, is the nation
better prepared to guard itself against future terrorist
attacks? The answer to all these questions is a guarded
yes. It should be added in the same breath, however,
that an enormous amount of long-term actions are still
warranted, and warranted soon after the presidential
election.
Institutional complexity remains a
chief source of America's vulnerability, its Achilles'
heel. The sooner equally intricate corrective measures
are taken the better the chances of this nation's
capabilities to deal effectively with the highly
adaptable forces of al-Qaeda are.
Ehsan
Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based
independent strategic analyst.
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2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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