You may be interested to see the article below....<b?1996!!! from the CIA files..... To even suggest that the present Administration sat on the info doing nothing is totally assinine....Or by that stupid kind of reasoning, you would be suggesting that the Clinton Administration could have prevented Sept 11th.....Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
*************
World Affairs Council
San Antonio, Texas
7 October 1996
Senior Analytical Manager
DCI Counterterrorist Center
Central Intelligence Agency
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
The International Terrorist Threat to US Interests
I am very pleased to be in San Antonio to discuss with you the threat that
modern international terrorism poses to US interests. Terrorism has the
potential to touch any of us, at home or abroad, government official or
private citizen, suddenly and without warning. Moreover, each of us has been
asked increasingly over the last several years to share more of the
counterterrorist burden, not just in tax dollars but also in added
inconveniences in our daily lives, be it additional security procedures that
we face when entering certain public buildings, or additional time we are
told to allow when going to an airport to catch a flight. And so I think it
is particularly appropriate for those of us from Washington, who follow the
topic in order to inform and support US counterterrorist policy, to come to
a forum such as this to share what insights we can on the problem, and to
give you some sense of what Washington is doing about it. I thank the
Council for its invitation.
My topic is international terrorism, which, briefly defined, means
politically motivated violence that is carried out either by subnational
groups or by clandestine agents of a government, and that involves more than
one nationality when one considers who the perpetrator and the victim are,
and where the attack is carried out.
Terrorism is unquestionably one of the major national security issues
currently facing this country. Certain events over the past year have led to
a more widespread recognition that it is such an issue. With the end of the
Cold War and of armed conflicts that stemmed from the Cold War, and with the
progress made in taming the threat from major powers' nuclear arsenals, one
of the more likely ways in which US citizens may be harmed by politically
motivated violence is through terrorism.
Having said that, I don't want to hype the threat. There is good news as
well as bad. If you look simply at the number of incidents worldwide, there
has actually been less international terrorism in the 1990s than through
much of the 1980s. By the US Government's official count, the annual number
of incidents has averaged about 400 or so in the 1990s, down from about 600
incidents annually during the peak-years in the mid-1980s. The number of
incidents recorded so far in 1996 suggest that this year may end up below
even the average for the 90s.
I see two chief reasons for this welcome decline. One is the demise of many
of the leftist, primarily European, groups--such as the Red Brigades in
Italy or the Red Army Faction in Germany--that were responsible for so much
of the terrorism in the 70s and 80s. They fell into the dustbin of history
about the same time that the Berlin Wall and Marxist ideologies that helped
sustain them did. The other reason is intensified counterterrorist efforts
by a number of governments--including our own--and increased
counterterrorist cooperation among those governments. The component I
represent--the DCI's Counterterrorist Center--was established ten years ago,
as part of the US's intensified counterterrorism program.
Now, to move back from the good news to the not so good. The sources of
international terrorism today are more numerous, more varied, and more
lethal than they were just a few years ago. There are still a few of the
leftist groups capable of inflicting harm, especially in parts of Europe and
Latin America. And, the most extreme elements of the secular Palestinian
opposition--elements such as the Abu Nidal Organization--are still in the
terrorist business, even though the mainstream portion of that opposition
got out of that business when it reached an agreement with Israel.
The brand of terrorism that has accounted for most of the new threats over
the past few years is terrorism conducted ostensibly in the name of
religion. I say "ostensibly" because the terrorists' violent methods are
anathema to the values held by the great majority of their co-religionists.
We are dealing here chiefly with terrorism originating in the Middle East
and South Asia, and chiefly but not exclusively with the most violent forms
of radical Islam.
There are several reasons this variety of terrorism has become prominent
over the last few years, and is likely to remain so over the next few. There
are the often difficult social and economic conditions in a number of Middle
Eastern countries, which give little hope for a better life, and breed the
type of individuals--mostly young Muslim males--who are most likely to
gravitate to this kind of extremism. There are the intense emotions that
surround certain political issues and processes in that part of the world,
especially the Arab-Israeli peace process. And in some cases there is
assistance from governments--particularly that of Iran, which is by far the
most active and capable state sponsor of terrorism today, and to a lesser
extent Sudan, which like Iran is controlled by radical Islamist elements
that hope to see like-minded regimes come to power elsewhere in the region.
Radical Islamist terrorism manifests itself partly in the form of several
large, well-organized and generally well-known groups. These include
Lebanese Hizballah, which was active before most other such groups, was
responsible for the bombings of the Marine barracks and US Embassy in
Lebanon in the 1980s, and still holds the dark distinction of being the
group that has killed more US citizens through terrorism than has any other.
They also include the Palestinian groups HAMAS and Palestine Islamic Jihad,
the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, and the Egyptian al-Gamaat al-Islamiyya
and other, smaller Egyptian terrorist groups.
All of these groups warrant our attention for the threat they could pose to
US interests as well as to the Middle Eastern governments that are their
primary targets. But over the past four years the radical Islamist brand of
terrorism has also manifested itself in a form that is in some ways even
more worrisome and harder to deal with. There has emerged a new breed of
terrorist--one who does not have an organizational pedigree, who is not a
card-carrying member of a known, named group, but who instead comes together
with like-minded individuals to form small, anonymous cells, do their evil
deed, and then perhaps move on to something else.
The archetypes of this new breed of terrorist were those who bombed the
World Trade Center in February 1993. Other examples were those who concocted
the unsuccessful plot to bomb other landmarks in New York City, and the
group led by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef--the alleged mastermind of the World Trade
Center bombing--that planned to blow several US airliners out of the sky in
the Far East in January 1995. It was for this latter crime that Yousef and
two of his colleagues were recently convicted following a trial in New York.
The new terrorists can be of different nationalities; the World Trade Center
and New York City bomb plotters included Egyptians, Palestinians, Sudanese,
and others. Some of them are well-educated. Yousef himself was trained at a
technical institute in Britain, and one of the other World Trade Center
bombers was a chemical engineer. They are cosmopolitan and travel easily
from one country to another. They may be followers of some religious figure,
as many of them in the New York City area were of the so-called blind
shaykh, Omar Abd al-Rahman, who received his own life sentence early this
year for his role in the abortive New York bomb plot.
Another defining characteristic of this breed of terrorist--and one that
distinguishes them from most international terrorism of earlier years--is
their motive. Much past terrorism was designed to acquire leverage, in order
to bargain and to wring some concession from the other side. An airplane was
hijacked, or hostages were taken, and then some specific demand was made--to
release a jailed comrade, to be granted political recognition, or what have
you. What people like Ramzi Yousef and his ilk are out to do is not to
achieve leverage, but rather to inflict pain--to cause damage and to kill
people as an act of hatred and revenge. The bombing of the World Trade
Center did not achieve any particular political objective. Instead, it was
an act of punishment against the United States and against Americans, whom
the bombers hated because of US support to Israel and other perceived
grievances.
There are several other troubling characteristics of modern international
terrorism, exhibited not only by the new breed of terrorist I've just
described, but also by other terrorist groups active today, particularly but
not exclusively those of the radical fundamentalist variety.
One such characteristic is a high level of operational skill and savvy. Many
of these people are real pros; they are very good at what they do. Take, for
example, the plot led by Yousef to blow up the airliners in the Far East--a
story that was told at the trial in New York this summer. Yousef developed a
fiendishly clever method to smuggle on board an aircraft, with little chance
of detection, the components of an explosive device powerful enough to bring
the aircraft down. Those components included such things as explosive liquid
disguised in a plastic bottle normally used for contact lens cleaning
solution, and a digital wristwatch modified to serve as a timer. The
terrorist would assemble these components while on board the
aircraft--probably in the lavatory--hide the device in the plane, and then
get off at an intermediate stop, with the device timed to explode on a
subsequent leg of the flight. Were it not for the good fortune of the Manila
fire deparment in discovering a smoky fire that the conspirators
accidentally set while preparing their materials, there could easily have
been a tragedy of unspeakable proportions.
We see the same sort of impressive capabilities whenever we gain a glimpse
of the day-to-day operations of certain terrorist groups. The tradecraft
being employed--in communications, security, logistics, and other
matters--is often of a level that would do any intelligence service proud.
Another characteristic of the modern international terrorist is his
extensive geographic reach. Yousef epitomizes the mobility of the newer
breed of terrorist, literally circling the globe and hatching plots in
places as far apart as Manila and New York. As for the larger, more
established terrorist groups, we have seen over the past several years the
development of vast transnational infrastructures, which the terrorist
groups use for logistical, financial, and other forms of support, as well
as--in the case of a group such as the Egyptian Gamaat--keeping most of the
organization out of the reach of government security forces back in the home
country. These infrastructures also provide the terrorists with the means to
strike at times and places of their own choosing--as Hizballah has twice
done by conducting major attacks against Israeli targets in Buenos Aires in
retaliation for Israeli actions in the Middle East.
A willingness to kill third parties--foreigners who are not the terrorists'
primary targets--has been a prominent feature of recent international
terrorism. Sometimes the idea is to scare away foreign tourism or investment
as a way of undermining the regime that is the real target. Egyptian
terrorists used this technique with some success in the early 90s,
inflicting serious damage on the Egyptian tourist industry. A far bloodier
version of this kind of strategy has been practiced by the Algerian Armed
Islamic Group, which three years ago issued an ultimatum to all foreigners
to get out of Algeria, or else risk being killed. The group has made good on
its threat, and at last count had murdered about 120 foreigners of various
nationalities.
The killing of foreigners brings us to the topic of how and why US citizens
may fall victim to international terrorism. Much of the risk to an American
traveling or working overseas may simply come from being in the wrong place
at the wrong time. I would venture to say that the closest that any
Americans doing business in the Far East have come lately to becoming
victims of terrorism may have been to be riding on one of those airplanes
that Ramzi Yousef planned to blow out of the sky. Similarly, the greatest
recent risk that terrorism has posed to Americans in Israel would have been
to be standing on a street corner in Tel Aviv that became the site of a
suicide bombing.
The risk is also in large part a matter of vulnerability, which in turn is a
function of accessibility and security countermeasures. Take the example of
Algeria, which I mentioned a moment ago. Fortunately, none of those 120
foreigners killed have been US citizens. I doubt this has reflected any
decision by the extremists to eschew attacks on Americans; indeed their
rhetoric has been virulently anti-American. Rather, it probably reflects the
fact that there are fewer Americans in Algeria than certain other
nationalities, and that many of the Americans who are there live in work in
remote company compounds, making them less accessible and better protected.
Beyond these general considerations, however, the United States does have a
special place on the terrorists' enemies list. Since the collapse of the
Soviet Union, our country is the only superpower--the only great Satan--left
to hate. We are resented for being what is regarded as a source of
political, economic, and cultural imperialism. Some of the radical Islamists
misperceive--I underline the word "misperceive"--that certain US policy
initiatives, such as in Somalia, or Iraq, or Bosnia, have been anti-Muslim.
For all of these reasons (and others), we are, potentially at least, a prime
target for the terrorists.
The danger of being a target extends not just to US persons and interests
overseas, but also--as the World Trade Center bombing so vividly
demonstrated--to us right here within the United States. International
terrorism within our borders has been rare, with the Trade Center bombing
being the only major attack of its kind. There have been several reasons for
this, including the presumed greater difficulty in operating here rather
than on the terrorists' home turf, and the narrow focus that terrorists have
tended to have on events in such overseas locations as Lebanon.
This situation, I would submit, is changing. The extension in the
terrorists' geographic reach, coupled with crackdowns by security forces in
some of their home countries, has led them to think more about conducting
operations far from home, and that could include the US. The focus of the
new breed of terrorist on the infliction of pain has led them to think about
inflicting pain on Americans where it would hurt the most--right here in the
United States. And, the fact of the Trade Center bombing itself--as well as
Oklahoma City, for that matter, even though the latter attack was the work
of domestic elements--has demonstrated that this kind of major terrorist
attack can in fact be carried out in the United States. We can only
speculate on what lessons foreign terrorists are drawing from those
incidents.
I think you can see the ways in which, from a policy point of view, the
modern international terrorist poses some formidable challenges. He is less
well known, less readily contained, and less deterrable than many threats of
the past. The primitive hatred that motivates him makes him impossible to
propitiate, and his lack of dependence on any single state sponsor makes the
threat of military retaliation useless in dissuading him.
There are similar challenges for the US intelligence community. The possible
emergence of Ramzi Yousef-type cells literally anywhere in the world, with
members who do not belong to any larger group that we have known and
tracked, constitutes an enormous intelligence challenge. One can add the
possibility of even a well-established, but seemingly non-terrorist, group
suddenly turning to terrorism. The most alarming recent example of that was
the Aum Shinrikyo's poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway last year. We
don't have the resources to follow every religious cult around the world,
but obviously we do need to detect and track the activity of any group that
could take the murderous turn that Aum did.
Besides these newer, worrisome aspects of international terrorism, there is
the central, basic fact that terrorism is a highly secretive activity,
involving plots hatched in small groups that are very suspicious of
outsiders and ruthless toward anyone suspected of betraying them. That makes
terrorism an extremely difficult intelligence target. In particular, it
makes it hard to get the kind of highly specific information, including
time, date, and place of planned attacks, that would be most useful in
preventing terrorist operations. That is the kind of information that is
usually known only to a small number of plotters, and it is the kind that we
are only rarely able to obtain.
So what can intelligence do? In brief, five things.
First, whenever we do succeed in obtaining information warning of an
impending terrorist operation, we disseminate that information as quickly
and completely as we can to those who are in a position to meet the threat.
That may include not only components within the government but also, acting
through other government intermediaries and with due protection to
intelligence sources and methods, recipients in the private sector.
Second, in the absence of that kind of tactical intelligence, we collect and
analyze strategic intelligence on terrorist groups and states. That is, we
endeavor to know all there is to know about the capabilities of terrorist
elements, their areas and methods of operations, their sources of support,
and their likely targets. Most of the intelligence we produce is of this
type, and it is a type that constitutes a major input to the
counterterrorist policies of our government.
Third, we work closely with regulatory and other agencies that are
developing security countermeasures to foil the terrorist. For example, we
are currently deeply involved in the work of the Vice President's Commission
on Aviation Security, as well as in related work under the auspices of the
FAA and the Department of Transportation.
Fourth, we work very closely with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies
to help them apply the rule of law to individuals who have committed
terrorist crimes. This assistance includes using intelligence resources to
aid in the investigation of terrorist incidents, and to help track down and
capture fugitive terrorists.
And fifth, we endeavor to stay on the offensive against the terrorists, to
use active measures to keep them off balance, to do what we can to nip
terrorist plots in the bud--in short, to use all of our resources and
authorities to preempt, disrupt, and defeat international terrorism.
I alluded earlier to some of the success that our country and others have
had over the past decade as a result of counterterrorist efforts that were
enhanced about ten years ago. I conclude with the optimistic thought that we
may, today, be in another period in which heightened awareness of the
dangers of terrorism has strengthened public resolve to do more to combat
it. The appropriations that Congress approved last week include some
substantial enhancements to US counterterrorism programs, including ones to
be carried out by the intelligence community.
Director of Central Intelligence Deutch, in an address last month, mentioned
some of those enhancements. They include, among other things, the
establishment of a new national-level terrorism warning group, the
deployment of additional CIA case officers overseas working on international
terrorism, augmentation of our analytical capabilities, expansion of direct
intelligence support for the protection of US military forces overseas, and
a number of measures to increase that capability, which I mentioned a moment
ago, to stay on the offensive and keep the terrorist off balance.
I can promise you that my colleagues and I will make the most effective use
we can of the added resources to do our part in protecting American lives
and property from the scourge of terrorism.
Thank you for your attention. I would be happy to respond to your questions.
cia.gov |
