The war on terrorism, like I've said plenty of times before, has to be
fought on 2 fronts, the military front and the diplomatic front. We are
presently losing on both ends.
Our military capabilities are 2nd to none and unquestionable. But our
diplomatic skills are, under the present leadership, unfortunatley,
leaves a LOT to be desired.
I agree with this Mike guy. He's right on the button on the need to
develop those unmanned weaponized drone aircrafts, and on the need to
make a major shift in U.S. policy, such as to sharply decrease our
dependence on Middle East oil, to maintain a smaller military presence
on the Arabian Peninsula, and to make a greater efforts to resolve the
Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
And I epecially agree with Mike who said, that the war on Iraq has been
a "Christmas gift to bin Laden", because it has inflamed Arab opinion.
His book, "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror",
should make interesting reading.
Abel
__________
Mysterious CIA officer objects to revamp plan
'Mike' urges military strikes rather than bureaucracy change
By James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 3, 2004
Amid the rush to embrace the Sept. 11 commission's proposals, such as
creating a new intelligence overseer, a career CIA officer who spent
years leading the pursuit of Osama bin Laden has become a furious
dissenter, arguing that bureaucratic changes will not make the United
States safer.
The answer, this intelligence veteran says, is not a restructured
bureaucracy -- which is a prescription for inaction, he argues -- but a
re- energized organization that launches more aggressive military-style
operations to kill the terrorists.
Both President Bush and the Democratic presidential contender, John
Kerry, endorsed on Monday the idea of a national intelligence director
and the creation of a counterterrorism center. But this single-minded
CIA officer, known publicly only as Mike at the insistence of senior
agency officials, rejects such ideas as a formula for timidity, which
would leave the United States badly outmatched by a resourceful enemy.
"That's a recipe for having 9/11s forever," Mike said in an interview
with The Chronicle.
"There just seems to be something immoral about not taking risks to
protect your country. That's what having an intelligence community is
all about. We squandered so many chances to get Osama bin Laden. ...
It's hard for me to figure out why there has not been more of an outcry
on this."
Mike's aggressive efforts to assassinate or kidnap bin Laden are
discussed in the Sept. 11 commission report and several other accounts
of the war against al Qaeda. He has plenty of critics, but he argues
his points forcefully, having written two scathing books about
intelligence agency failures. He also has given a series of interviews,
all in the shadows to satisfy orders from the CIA that he protect his
real identity.
He is injecting anew element into the debate over reform by arguing that
the primary U.S. weakness was not a "failure of imagination" within the
intelligence agencies, as the Sept. 11 commission put it, but a failure
of nerve to launch potentially risky strikes to kill bin Laden when that
was still possible.
He speaks from experience. In explaining his views, he goes back to a
moment of opportunity three years before the devastating strikes of
Sept. 11, 2001, when he thought he had his man.
It was spring 1998, and Mike -- then the senior officer in the CIA's
"bin Laden unit" -- had located the al Qaeda leader at a place called
Tarnak Farm, near Kandahar, Afghanistan. His unit had lined up a team
of about 30 Afghan fighters to kidnap bin Laden and deliver him to an
American team. The Americans already had conducted practice runs at a
secret location in the American West, landing a large military transport
plane, without lights, in the dead of night and then spiriting away
their dangerous human cargo.
Everything was prepared, Mike said, when senior officials in Washington
pulled the plug. They said the attempt might result in the death of bin
Laden, or his guards, or even some of the American agents, which was too
much risk given they were not absolutely certain of bin Laden's presence
at the farm.
"I was incensed because I'd ordered my officers to do the practices,
putting their lives at risk," Mike said. "I was sick to death. No one
ever said, 'Let's err on the side of protecting Americans.' "
The Sept. 11 commission, as well as a Senate report released several
weeks ago, were damning in analyzing American intelligence failures, and
both reports offer some support for Mike's conclusions.
For instance, the Sept. 11 commission report quotes Richard Clarke, the
senior counterterrorism official under President Bill Clinton and
President Bush, as also losing patience after the CIA dragged its feet
on funding a plot to kill bin Laden with missiles fired from unmanned
drone aircraft.
The commission's report also cites Clarke opposing the Tarnak Farm raid
as too dangerous, but he is quoted as complaining, "Either al Qaeda is a
threat worth acting against or it is not. ... CIA leadership has to
decide which it is and cease these bipolar mood swings."
The commission concluded that U.S. agents never imagined the
capabilities of al Qaeda and were averse to the risks needed to deter
the terrorists.
Mike insists the report shows the opposite is true -- that agents at the
operational level understood the threat al Qaeda posed and fashioned
tough measures to stop the organization.
Indeed, the Sept. 11 report quotes from a briefing document prepared for
the Tarnak Farm operation in early 1998, in which officials wrote,
"Sooner or later, bin Ladin will attack U.S. interests, perhaps using
WMD," referring to weapons of mass destruction.
"My recommendations would have been that before you change the
intelligence community, you drastically change and install new
leadership so that it works like it should work," said Mike. "A bigger
bureaucracy can't solve the problems."
Mike does have his critics. Some with knowledge of these earlier
attempts say Mike's plans probably would not have worked. One book,
"Ghost Wars," by Steve Coll, quotes a senior Clinton administration
official calling the Tarnak Farm plot "a stupid plan."
Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer who directed groups of Afghan
mujahedeen against the Soviets in the 1980s, said he believed the
tribesmen Mike recruited were not capable of pulling off the job.
"There is nobody I know from that time I would trust with those
operations," said Sageman, who is now a professor of forensic psychiatry
at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a recent book,
"Understanding Terror Networks."
Mike's voice is one among many on how the United States should respond
to al Qaeda's deadly challenge. But it is based on real experience with
bin Laden and his ways. Also, his tough, proactive views, though they
have received little public debate so far, may play a more visible role
in the broader struggle if, as he predicts, the terrorists launch
another huge strike.
Mike says his real concern is that Americans may be given a false sense
of security if nothing more is done than altering the organizational
structure of the intelligence apparatus.
"I've never known a dysfunctional bureaucracy fixed by adding more
bureaucracy," Mike said.
Mike has been a CIA case officer for more than 20 years. He operates
out of CIA headquarters in Virginia, not the field. He says little of
himself, in accordance with orders from CIA officials, except that he
was raised a Catholic and grew up in Buffalo, N.Y.
His proposals do go beyond the need for military-style attacks, which he
says can only disrupt al Qaeda, not end the threat. In his books and in
the interview, he also advocates major shifts in U.S. policy --
decreasing sharply America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil,
maintaining a smaller military presence on the Arabian Peninsula, and
making greater efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He is a fierce critic of the war on Iraq, calling it "a Christmas gift
to bin Laden" because it inflamed Arab opinion. He said the United
States underestimates how much American policies have enhanced bin
Laden's status as a farsighted defender of a humiliated Muslim world.
But Mike is angriest about what he regards as the lack of nerve for
bold, risky intelligence operations and the aversion to shedding blood
for important policy goals. One of the subchapters in his just-released
book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," is
headed, "Professional Soldiers are Paid to Die." He wrote the book under
the name "Anonymous."
He says audacious operations are required because more terrorist attacks
are certain. He also insists that U.S. officials need to recognize that
bin Laden himself is not a crazed zealot, but a cautious and charismatic
leader who has far more followers today than before Sept. 11, 2001.
Mike calls bin Laden "this truly remarkable man," who, he writes in his
latest book, "smashed the expected unfolding of universal post-Cold War
peace."
His prognosis for the immediate future is gloomy.
Others who have a background in intelligence share some of Mike's views,
but they find his recommendations extreme.
"Mike is right in terms of his diagnosis," said Sageman. "But I think he
goes too far in his recommendations. He's too aggressive. At an
abstract level his ideas make sense, but in practice I don't think they
would work."
He also said that few CIA officers want to be that aggressive.
"Mike's ideas have little support within the agency," said Sageman, who
added that he doubts the American public would support assassinations or
other missions that could kill civilians.
Mike scoffs at the criticisms, and insists that at least he was trying
to initiate schemes to stop al Qaeda when there was an early chance to
stop it.
He said he became head of the unit pursuing bin Laden in 1996. The
unit's initial mandate was to stop the flow of money to the terrorists.
Even then, he said, every plan his group drew up was stopped by
officials worried about anger among Europeans or bankers.
Later, his unit shifted to operations to help the FBI indict and arrest
bin Laden, and that was when the kidnapping plan and other plots were
hatched.
At one point bin Laden was tracked to an Afghan desert hunting camp
being used by members of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates.
He proposed bombing the site, which could have killed senior members of
the royal family, ostensibly American allies.
The plan was rejected. "They always had reasons," he said.
By 1998, he said, his group had proposed six to 10 different operations,
and all were turned down. He left the unit in 1999 and is now working
at the CIA in another area involved, he says, with confronting Islamic
militancy.
"The question is not finding agents with the physical courage to do the
job," Mike said. "I haven't known more than two people in 20-plus years
who lacked physical courage. It's having the moral courage, the
bureaucratic courage."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/03/MNGDL81RFR1.DTL
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| User: "Abel Malcolm" |
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| Title: Re: Imperial Hubris |
10 Aug 2004 02:31:02 AM |
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Like I've said plenty of times before, these guys just can not stand
the truth. And the truth is that both, Bush's foreign AND domestic
policy, are both disasters. And isn't it just so Nixonian of Bush to
use "national security" as an excuse to silence those who expose the
secret that Bush is a disaster. A secret, which has nothing to do
with national security, but a secret that if known to the public, will
mean that they will be less likely to vote for Bush. The secret is
this, I'll reveal it to everyone, the emperor has no clothes.
Abel
http://www.thousandreasons.org
Agency Curbs War Critic Author
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 - A senior official of the Central Intelligence
Agency who has written a best-selling book critical of the Bush
administration's handling of the war on terror has been ordered to
sharply curtail his interviews with news organizations in connection
with the book, his publisher said on Wednesday.
The author of "Imperial Hubris," who wrote the book anonymously, is a
longtime counterterrorism official at the C.I.A. who previously ran
the agency's unit that concentrated on Osama bin Laden. In his book
and in subsequent interviews, the author has said he believes that the
war in Iraq has been a major distraction from the effort to fight Al
Qaeda and that the war has also inflamed Islamic resentment against
the United States while aiding Al Qaeda's recruitment among Muslims.
Since the book was published on July 15, the anonymous author, known
publicly only as Mike, has granted numerous interviews to discuss his
book and his views.
Christina Davidson, the editor of "Imperial Hubris'' at Brassey's
Inc., the publisher, said Mike was told in a meeting with senior
C.I.A. officials at the agency's headquarters on Wednesday that
effective immediately he was prohibited from taking part in more
interviews without prior written approval.
Ms. Davidson said he was told that he must seek approval for each
interview at least five business days in advance. He also must provide
the agency with a detailed outline of what he plans to say each time.
A C.I.A. official confirmed on Wednesday that senior officials had met
with the author to discuss the ground rules for further interviews.
The official said the agency was now simply enforcing existing
regulations covering the way serving C.I.A. officials were allowed to
make public statements on current events.
The C.I.A. official said no one from the White House or any other
agency had pressured the C.I.A. to curb the author's public
statements.
From: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/politics/05author.html?pagewanted=print&position=
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| User: "Abel Malcolm" |
|
| Title: Re: Imperial Hubris |
10 Aug 2004 02:32:35 AM |
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Like I've said plenty of times before, these guys just can not stand
the truth. And the truth is that both, Bush's foreign AND domestic
policy, are both disasters. And isn't it just so Nixonian of Bush to
use "national security" as an excuse to silence those who expose the
secret that Bush is a disaster. A secret, which has nothing to do
with national security, but a secret that if known to the public, will
mean that they will be less likely to vote for Bush. The secret is
this, I'll reveal it to everyone, the emperor has no clothes.
Abel
http://www.thousandreasons.org
Agency Curbs War Critic Author
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 - A senior official of the Central Intelligence
Agency who has written a best-selling book critical of the Bush
administration's handling of the war on terror has been ordered to
sharply curtail his interviews with news organizations in connection
with the book, his publisher said on Wednesday.
The author of "Imperial Hubris," who wrote the book anonymously, is a
longtime counterterrorism official at the C.I.A. who previously ran
the agency's unit that concentrated on Osama bin Laden. In his book
and in subsequent interviews, the author has said he believes that the
war in Iraq has been a major distraction from the effort to fight Al
Qaeda and that the war has also inflamed Islamic resentment against
the United States while aiding Al Qaeda's recruitment among Muslims.
Since the book was published on July 15, the anonymous author, known
publicly only as Mike, has granted numerous interviews to discuss his
book and his views.
Christina Davidson, the editor of "Imperial Hubris'' at Brassey's
Inc., the publisher, said Mike was told in a meeting with senior
C.I.A. officials at the agency's headquarters on Wednesday that
effective immediately he was prohibited from taking part in more
interviews without prior written approval.
Ms. Davidson said he was told that he must seek approval for each
interview at least five business days in advance. He also must provide
the agency with a detailed outline of what he plans to say each time.
A C.I.A. official confirmed on Wednesday that senior officials had met
with the author to discuss the ground rules for further interviews.
The official said the agency was now simply enforcing existing
regulations covering the way serving C.I.A. officials were allowed to
make public statements on current events.
The C.I.A. official said no one from the White House or any other
agency had pressured the C.I.A. to curb the author's public
statements.
From: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/politics/05author.html?pagewanted=print&position=
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