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By Andre Gerolymatos Unlike the Cold War environment, the world of terrorism is unpredictable, scattered and almost universal in terms of location. In most cases the terrorist is an enemy without a face, an opponent without form who strikes from any direction using any guise. The American intelligence agencies, essentially designed for the Cold War, are at a tremendous disadvantage with this agile and lethal enemy. In fact, the Chinese military historian Sun Tsu, wrote two and one half thousand years ago that ?All warfare is based on deception?. Evidently, this lesson is clearly understood by international terrorists and sadly has been recently overlooked by the American intelligence community as well as the agencies of other Western powers. Sun Tsu?s maxim played out about six months ago prior to attacks on Tuesday 11 September 2001 against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The US intelligence organizations assumed that Osama bin Laden was planning an imminent attack against American interests somewhere in the world, possibly in Europe, the Middle East or even Asia, but not in the United States. Unfortunately, they did not have a clue that America itself had actually become the target. Indeed, the repeated warnings of threats from around the world, more than likely, were part of a clever deception operation orchestrated by bin Laden to divert attention from New York and Washington, D.C. The result was carnage in two major American cities and the greatest intelligence failure since the surprise attack against the US fleet at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The magnitude of this failure is compounded by the overwhelming strength of America's intelligence arsenal. In point of fact, the United States employs thirteen agencies, and thirty billion dollars per year to gather information on individuals, organizations and countries that could or would pose a threat to American security. These financial resources are primarily committed to exploiting America's lead in electronic intelligence, however, such efforts proved impotent on Tuesday 11 September 2001. Basically, electronic intelligence enables the CIA, the NSA, FBI and the other overt or semi-covert organizations to break just about every code and to eaves drop on friends and enemies alike. In practical terms, it means they can listen to just about any telephone conversation in the world, read electronic mail, use satellite imagining (to track the military movements of hostile states) and combined with sophisticated cameras can even read the license plates of automobiles parked on streets in Moscow or Kabul. High-speed computers also track any unusual activity on the Internet by accessing billions of pieces of information, whether business transactions, medical data or credit card purchases. During the Cold War, electronic capabilities gave the Americans considerable advantage over the limited and technologically less sophisticated Soviet Union and its allies. Mountains of data generated information that could be rendered useful in the context of the Cold War - a context that had a considerable degree of familiarity, consistency and focus. The period between 1947 and 1989 had its crises such as Cuba in 1962, but generally there was a behavioral pattern that characterized the activities of the super powers on both sides of the Iron Curtain. This state of affairs helped to direct the tidal wave of information churned out by the American intelligence machine and trained a generation of analysts to think in a certain way. It was relatively obvious where to aim the satellites and in which direction to concentrate the eaves dropping equipment. Furthermore electronic intelligence has the additional advantage of providing instant gratification to its customers. The cost, however, is high, and in order to sustain the electronic appetite of Washington?s bureaucracy, America?s intelligence community has been forced to lay off large numbers of analysts and many individuals with linguistic skills. Networks of well-place agents have also been sacrificed and the spies have never been missed. Ultimately, American intelligence agencies were restricted as to whom they hired and whether such people had criminal records or had been members of terrorist organizations. In addition, there was the problem of the ?Blow Back? phenomenon, a situation where agents in the field turn against their employers. In the post-Cold War the ?Blow Backs? proved extremely embarrassing for the United States. This included links between the CIA and high profile disreputable agents such as Manuel Noriega. Further contributing to the negative image of maintaining agents or networks in the field, were secret contacts with Suddam Hussein and even the use of Islamic extremists such as bin Laden, who proved useful in combating the Soviets in Afghanistan. Electronic intelligence, on the other hand, has the advantage of being ?clean?, instant and a symbol of American technical expertise. Indeed, technological hubris has not only created a false sense of security but it may also have enabled bin Laden to manipulate the very sophisticated electronic intelligence techniques to his advantage. Data concerning terrorists or terrorist organizations is either overwhelming or negligible. For example, the ability to listen on telephone conversations or track down items purchased by credit cards, more often than not, creates information overload. Even if there were enough people working for the US intelligence community who could process such vast amounts of information, it is ultimately of little use unless there are sufficient translators and analysts who collate and interpret the information after it is collected. Another problem is that the flow of intelligence can suddenly cease. The terrorist, who is also aware of America?s electronic gathering capability, may choose not to use a telephone and only to make cash purchases. Furthermore, the terrorist avoids using computers without encoding communications. Unless, of course, the terrorist intends to disseminate false information; in that case our electronic world provides a convenient transmitter. Terrorists, such as bin Laden, have kept up with the technological revolution and use very sophisticated communications tools. According to some reports, bin Laden has on occasion employed complex digital masking technology (steganography) to transmit photos over the Internet where hidden messages appear within the pictures. Remarkably, it is possible for anyone with just basic computer skills to easily download from the Internet highly sophisticated encryption software made available free of charge. These further compound the difficulties of the intelligence community since the number of individuals who employ these techniques are in the hundreds of thousands, yet only a minute percentage are involved with terrorist activity. The sheer number of computer users acts as a buffer for the terrorist. Under these circumstances, bin Laden is able to mask his activities, because there is too much electronic intelligence for the US agencies to process, analyze and interpret. Osama bin Laden, as well as his associates; effectively disappear into a sea of information. Shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the names of known terrorists were identified on passenger manifests from the four downed airliners. This is not surprising since once the US intelligence community knew in which direction to point its electronic equipment it was not difficult to identify the terrorists. Sadly, it was too late and merely a cold comfort to the families of the victims. In this respect, the intelligence failure of 11 September 2001 is similar to the Pearl Harbor debacle. Prior to 7 December 1941, the American military and its intelligence branch were confronted with numerous possibilities of potential Japanese attacks and Pearl Harbor was just one out of dozens of possible targets. Then, few thought that the Japanese Navy would strike at the United States directly, just as few last week, could have imagined that New York and Washington would be the scenes of such horror from terrorist attacks. Equally significant is that on both occasions the aggressors miscalculated the reaction of the Americans. To avoid future terrorist catastrophes two conditions must be met. First, the United States must organize networks of agents to infiltrate the major and more dangerous terrorist groups. The conventional argument is that it is almost impossible to plant operatives in extreme Islamic organizations. And even if successful it would take years before the agents were in a position to provide useful information. Good intelligence based on human assets, i.e. spies, does take time but when successful the dividends are high and less costly. A well-placed agent can give warning of impending attacks and is better placed to provide information on the short and long term intentions of terrorists or competing states. Secondly, intelligence operations leftover from Cold War must be effectively dismantled. During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the CIA and other agencies of the United States, using Pakistan?s intelligence organization as a front, trained, armed and deployed Muslims freedom fighters (moujahedeen) against the Soviets. The object of the exercise was to inflict high casualties against the Russians and force the Soviet military to retaliate against the local population, which, in turn, created fresh martyrs and generated more recruits. Undoubtedly the lesson was not lost on those who later transformed from freedom fighters to terrorists. The American training was not only confined to guerrilla warfare tactics, but also included the trade-craft of intelligence techniques in deception, evasion, subversion, terror, assassination and black propaganda. Ironically, one of these moujahedeen was a wealthy young Saudi named Osama bin Laden (most likely he was unaware at the time that he owed his training to the CIA courtesy of Pakistani intelligence). Although the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan meant the end of American covert activities in that country, it was also the last opportunity to dismantle the moujahedeen movement. Even if this failed, it still represented an excellent chance to infiltrate future and current extreme Muslim organizations with operatives from Afghanistan. Instead, the Americans continued to maintain close ties with the freedom fighters and in the 1990s re-deployed some of them to Bosnia. The fundamentalist Muslim movement and the terrorist groups that have sprung from it are not confined to a single country or region, rather they represent a loose network of fanatical clerics, revolutionaries, political extremists and disfranchised peoples. It will be next to impossible to destroy all of them since they are not conveniently located in a single location. In fact, massive military retaliation may prove self-defeating, as it will create more martyrs. It is very difficult to frighten people who have already resolved to die. The challenge facing the United States and its allies is how to combat terrorism without falling into the trap of playing into the hands of the terrorist who expects retaliation; indeed he welcomes any opportunity to be cast in the role of the victim. The key, in fact, is timely information that will assist governments in pre-empting a terrorist attack. That means altering the culture of the Washington bureaucracy with respect to its attitude towards the role of human intelligence. Spies and double agents are not nice or reputable people. To survive and live in the shadow world of espionage they must be liars, cheats, thieves, and may even engage in criminal activity while working under cover. Spies may be unsavory characters but eminently useful. This does not mean that the professional spy will negate the use of electronic intelligence; rather he or she could provide the invaluable service of pointing the listening devices in the right direction. Naturally, it will take time to place such agents within the secret and fragmented world of terrorists - but better late than never, since the alternatives are too harsh to contemplate. The primary aim of the terrorist is to strike fear and de-stabilize society. Failure to undermine and destroy terrorism could force societies to tighten human rights legislation in the name of security. In effect, escalating terrorist activity will result in the curtailing of civil liberties to facilitate the rapid response of police and military authorities against potential attacks. The answer to these tactics is not to adopt similar brutality, and in so doing descend to the cowardly depths of the terrorist, but to destroy the terrorist network from within. Ironically, the disreputable characters that would be employed in espionage and counter-espionage operations may also unwittingly prevent us from drifting towards an authoritarian society organized to fight terrorism. Dr. Andre Gerolymatos Chair, Hellenic Studies Simon Fraser University |
