IP: A different slant

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

From "Max Kraus" <krausm () libertynet org
To "\"David Farber\" <"<farber () cis upenn edu


 Dave-

Thought you might be interested in the following taken from a email given 
out today by Prof Waldron in his Strategy, Policy and War course at UPenn.

Regards

Max Kraus

a
" Benjamin Zycher

 Senior Fellow, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy

 bennyz () pacbell net



  September 13, 2001

  A Few Thoughts On Terrorism and Disinformation



  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."



For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/