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Sat 19 Jun, 2004 12:25 am
Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands
Al-Qaida may 'reward' American president with strike aimed at keeping him in office, senior intelligence man says
Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday June 19, 2004
The Guardian
A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands.
Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, due out next month, dismisses two of the most frequent boasts of the Bush administration: that Bin Laden and al-Qaida are "on the run" and that the Iraq invasion has made America safer.
In an interview with the Guardian the official, who writes as "Anonymous", described al-Qaida as a much more proficient and focused organisation than it was in 2001, and predicted that it would "inevitably" acquire weapons of mass destruction and try to use them.
He said Bin Laden was probably "comfortable" commanding his organisation from the mountainous tribal lands along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Pakistani army claimed a big success in the "war against terror" yesterday with the killing of a tribal leader, Nek Mohammed, who was one of al-Qaida's protectors in Waziristan.
But Anonymous, who has been centrally involved in the hunt for Bin Laden, said: "Nek Mohammed is one guy in one small area. We sometimes forget how big the tribal areas are." He believes President Pervez Musharraf cannot advance much further into the tribal areas without endangering his rule by provoking a Pashtun revolt. "He walks a very fine line," he said yesterday.
Imperial Hubris is the latest in a relentless stream of books attacking the administration in election year. Most of the earlier ones, however, were written by embittered former officials. This one is unprecedented in being the work of a serving official with nearly 20 years experience in counter-terrorism who is still part of the intelligence establishment.
The fact that he has been allowed to publish, albeit anonymously and without naming which agency he works for, may reflect the increasing frustration of senior intelligence officials at the course the administration has taken.
Peter Bergen, the author of two books on Bin Laden and al-Qaida, said: "His views represent an amped-up version of what is emerging as a consensus among intelligence counter-terrorist professionals."
Anonymous does not try to veil his contempt for the Bush White House and its policies. His book describes the Iraq invasion as "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage.
"Our choice of timing, moreover, shows an abject, even wilful failure to recognise the ideological power, lethality and growth potential of the threat personified by Bin Laden, as well as the impetus that threat has been given by the US-led invasion and occupation of Muslim Iraq."
In his view, the US missed its biggest chance to capture the al-Qaida leader at Tora Bora in the Afghan mountains in December 2001. Instead of sending large numbers of his own troops, General Tommy Franks relied on surrogates who proved to be unreliable.
Yesterday President Bush repeated his assertion that Bin Laden was cornered and that there was "no hole or cave deep enough to hide from American justice".
Anonymous said: "I think we overestimate significantly the stress [Bin Laden's] under. Our media and sometimes our policymakers suggest he's hiding from rock to rock and hill to hill and cave to cave. My own hunch is that he's fairly comfortable where he is."
The death and arrest of experienced operatives might have set back Bin Laden's plans to some degree but when it came to his long-term capacity to threaten the US, he said, "I don't think we've laid a glove on him".
"What I think we're seeing in al-Qaida is a change of generation," he said."The people who are leading al-Qaida now seem a lot more professional group.
"They are more bureaucratic, more management competent, certainly more literate. Certainly, this generation is more computer literate, more comfortable with the tools of modernity. I also think they're much less prone to being the Errol Flynns of al-Qaida. They're just much more careful across the board in the way they operate."
As for weapons of mass destruction, he thinks that if al-Qaida does not have them already, it will inevitably acquire them.
The most likely source of a nuclear device would be the former Soviet Union, he believes. Dirty bombs, chemical and biological weapons, could be home-made by al-Qaida's own experts, many of them trained in the US and Britain.
Anonymous, who published an analysis of al-Qaida last year called Through Our Enemies' Eyes, thinks it quite possible that another devastating strike against the US could come during the election campaign, not with the intention of changing the administration, as was the case in the Madrid bombing, but of keeping the same one in place. (BBB: see post below)
"I'm very sure they can't have a better administration for them than the one they have now," he said.
"One way to keep the Republicans in power is to mount an attack that would rally the country around the president."
The White House has yet to comment publicly on Imperial Hubris, which is due to be published on July 4, but intelligence experts say it may try to portray him as a professionally embittered maverick.
The tone of Imperial Hubris is certainly angry and urgent, and the stridency of his warnings about al-Qaida led him to be moved from a highly sensitive job in the late 90s.
But Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations at the CIA counter-terrorism centre, said he had been vindicated by events. "He is very well respected, and looked on as a serious student of the subject."
Anonymous believes Mr Bush is taking the US in exactly the direction Bin Laden wants, towards all-out confrontation with Islam under the banner of spreading democracy.
He said: "It's going to take 10,000-15,000 dead Americans before we say to ourselves: 'What is going on'?"
Yes, Bin Ladin is the gun and Bush is the trigger.
So, the point is, that if we fight Bin Laden or his cronies they will attack us, and if we don't fight them, they will attack us?
Not at all. What Bush has done by the unprovoked attack on Iraq is to create an atmosphere and breeding ground for terrorists. It is as if he opened up recruiting stations for Al Qaeda
This sort of discussion has been on Canadian radio for at least the last 12 months. Apparently the terrrorist 'chatter' is that it will be to Al-quaeda's benefit to keep Bush in power, as he will keep putting Americans "out there" - easier for the terrorists to get at. Interesting view of things.
Al Qaeda has done more than just chatter about it, they have endorsed the Bush presidency publically, saying that it was not possible to find a leader "more foolish than you (Bush), who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom."
"Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization. Because of this we desire you to be elected."
I read this piece in my morning reading today and didn't quite know what to make of it because I distrust the anonimity of the author but I also believe that al Qaeda would be very pleased to see Bush re-elected.
But from your second quote, we have the followin sentence...
Quote:the author argues that American complacence in the face of such violent threats stems from the increasing secularization and moral relativism of American society and culture.
In this context, that notion is
really weird. How the hell does one draw that causal link? The sentiment/opinion is one we might expect from Falwell. Or this administration. It's definitely not typical of the sort of dry and evidentiary tone we might expect from someone long in intelligence work (there's nothing like that in Clarke, for example).
This seems pretty certain to be either a bogus story or an attempted setup of some sort.
For confirming info re the book by anonymous
For confirming info re the book by anonymous:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27222&highlight=
BBB
'Boston Phoenix' IDs 'Anonymous' CIA Officer
'Boston Phoenix' IDs 'Anonymous' CIA Officer
By Editors & Publishers Staff
Published: June 30, 2004
NEW YORK The active U.S. intelligence officer known only as "Anonymous," who has gained world renown this month as author of an upcoming book called "Imperial Hubris," is actually named Michael Scheuer, according to an article in the Boston Phoenix today by Jason Vest.
Speculation about his identity has run rampant since a June 23 article in The New York Times discussed the book and the background of the author. The book, "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," asserts, among other things, that Osama bin Laden is not on the run and that the invasion of Iraq has not made the United States safer.
In that June 23 piece, the Times identified Anonymous as a 22-year CIA veteran who ran the Counterterrorist Center's bin Laden station from 1996 to 1999, adding that a "senior intelligence official" held that revealing the man's full name "could make him a target of Al Qaeda." Anonymous has appeared in brief television interviews always in silhouette.
According to Vest, "Nearly a dozen intelligence-community sources, however, say Anonymous is Michael Scheuer -- and that his forced anonymity is both unprecedented and telling in the context of CIA history and modern politics."
Vest in his article notes that "at issue here is not just the book's content, but why Anonymous is anonymous. After all, as the Times and others have reported, his situation is nothing like that of Valerie Plame, a covert operative whose ability to work active overseas cases was undermined when someone in the White House blew her cover to journalist Robert Novak in an apparent payback for an inconvenient weapons-of-mass-destruction intelligence report by her husband, Joseph Wilson. Anonymous, on the other hand, is, by the CIA's own admission, a Langley, Va.-bound analyst whose identity has never required secrecy.
"A Phoenix investigation has discovered that Anonymous does not, in fact, want to be anonymous at all -- and that his anonymity is neither enforced nor voluntarily assumed out of fear for his safety, but rather compelled by an arcane set of classified regulations that are arguably being abused in an attempt to spare the CIA possible political inconvenience. In the Phoenix's view, continued deference by the press to a bogus and unwanted standard of secrecy essentially amounts to colluding with the CIA in muzzling a civil servant -- a standard made more ridiculous by the ubiquity of Anonymous's name in both intelligence and journalistic circles."
When asked to confirm or deny his identity in an interview with the Phoenix, Anonymous declined to do either, explaining, "I've given my word I'm not going to tell anyone who I am, as the organization that employs me has bound me by my word."
Jonathan Turley, a national-security-law expert at George Washington University Law School, told Vest, "The requirement that someone publish anonymously is rare, almost unheard-of, particularly if the person is not in a covert position. It seems pretty obvious that the requirement he remain anonymous is motivated solely by political concerns, and ones that have more to do with the CIA."
The CIA did not respond to a call from the Phoenix, and declined to comment on the book or the author to the Associated Press last Friday.
Vest says that the man he identifies as Scheuer told him, "I suppose there might be a knucklehead out there somewhere who might take offense and do something, but anonymity isn't something I asked for, and not for that reason; it makes me sound like I'm hiding behind something, and I personally dislike thinking that anyone thinks I'm a coward."
Top CIA analyst says United States is losing the war on terr
Posted on Sat, Jul. 03, 2004
Top CIA analyst says United States is losing the war on terror
By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The number of CIA experts devoted to fighting Osama bin Laden and preventing new attacks by his network remains about the same nearly three years after the Sept. 11 strikes, according to a senior CIA analyst who has written a new book arguing that bin Laden is winning his struggle against the United States.
Moreover, the analyst warned in an interview with Knight Ridder, CIA specialists who have devoted years to studying and targeting bin Laden are worn out, and many are being shifted to other duties, moves that will dilute the agency's pool of knowledge about the Saudi extremist and his violent following.
"So what you do at the end of the day is sap the ability of the one organization, the CIA, which has been the first and most important attacker of al-Qaida," he said. He was allowed to write the book and give interviews on the condition that he uses the pseudonym "Anonymous" and not disclose classified information.
The analyst, who once headed the CIA's bin Laden unit, is the author of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing The War On Terror." In it, he excoriates what he says are U.S. policies that have won bin Laden admiration and fueled anti-U.S. hatred across the Islamic world.
A U.S. intelligence official said that "Anonymous" complied with CIA rules in publishing the book, but that the agency's OK did not imply an endorsement of his views. But the intelligence official sharply contradicted the analyst's statements on the size and capability of the CIA's anti-bin Laden effort.
While the core group remains about the same size, "where they used to be surrounded by a handful of people, they're now surrounded by thousands," the official said, also speaking on condition that he not be identified because he was discussing sensitive information.
Post-9/11 changes are not moving the counter-terrorism effort backwards, the official contended: "Quite the contrary."
The central thesis of "Imperial Hubris" is that many of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims believe that bin Laden is waging a holy war to defend them against U.S. policies and actions designed to destroy their faith and subjugate their lands. President Bush's repeated statements that terrorists hate the United States for its values - rather than for its actions - are wrong, he writes.
Especially harmful have been Bush's support for Israel in its confrontation with the Palestinians and his invasion of Iraq, he says.
"There is nothing bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq," he writes.
The book's official release is July 15, but 10,000 advance copies have already sold out in the Washington area. A second batch of 40,000 is now being printed and a third lot of 50,000 has been ordered, said its editor, Christina Davidson of Brassey's, Inc.
"Anonymous" expressed concern over a sweeping reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community that appears increasingly likely.
Calls for reorganization could be given a further boost by reports this month by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which looked at intelligence failures in Iraq, and by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. Both are expected to be critical.
A reorganization "will be disruptive," he said.
Intelligence analysts produced a "flood" of intelligence on bin Laden prior to the attacks, but senior bureaucrats failed to pass on the full brunt of the bad news to policymakers for fear it could endanger their careers, he charged. He alleged that those same bureaucrats are continuing to hurt the fight against bin Laden by reassigning many veteran CIA bin Laden watchers.
Some experienced CIA experts have been reassigned to the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, or TTIC. The unit, formed after Sept. 11, combines specialists from numerous agencies to fuse domestic and foreign information on terrorist threats. It has no direct role in killing or capturing terrorists overseas.
"You drain all of these experienced officers away from the organization that is doing the most to defend you and put them in the TTIC, which is basically an analytic domestic organization which will not do anything in Pakistan, Afghanistan or anywhere else," he said.
Noting that lawmakers from both parties supported Bush's creation of the TTIC, he said that no senior official was willing "to stand up and tell the bipartisan emperors that they had no clothes. To me, that is moral or bureaucratic cowardice."
Replacing the lost expertise will take years, he said.
Meantime, he said, veterans of the CIA's efforts to track bin Laden and contain the movement he spawned are exhausted, and the stresses are affecting their professional and personal lives.
"The core of the people who are working against Osama bin Laden and what he represents is basically the same core of people who began working against the target since 1996. There have been people who have worked this every day since January 15, 1996," said the CIA senior analyst. "How much can you expect of a person to have gone from 25 to 35? They don't have vacations. You put off operations. You ruin marriages."
The officer, who has previously been identified by the first name "Mike," headed the "bin Laden station" within the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He was replaced in a reshuffling of management, but still holds a position in the Counterterrorist Center.
Current and former U.S. officials who worked with "Anonymous" give him credit for clear-eyed analyses of the threat posed by violent Islamic extremists and for attempting to raise the alarm within the U.S. government. Some also say that he and others in the unit were given to making angry outbursts and proposing unrealistic schemes for killing or capturing bin Laden, hampering their effectiveness.
Even today, "Anonymous" writes, most U.S. politicians and senior intelligence officials do not grasp the full extent of the threat bin Laden poses, nor that the United States is losing the struggle with Islamic extremists.
"U.S. leaders refuse to accept the obvious: We are fighting a worldwide Islamic insurgency-not criminality or terrorism-and our policy and procedures have failed to make more than a modest dent in enemy forces," he writes.
"Imperial Hubris" is highly pessimistic, verging on defeatist, about the U.S. struggle with radical Islam. Its author gives the U.S.-backed interim government in Afghanistan little chance of survival. He says that the invasion of Iraq was a boon for bin Laden because it gave credence to the terrorist leader's charge that the United States wants to occupy Muslim lands.
"Anonymous" is the author of a previous book, "Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America." He is clearly fascinated by the Saudi exile, dismissing portraits of him as a passive or titular leader who leaves al-Qaida's operations to others.
In the interview, he called bin Laden "one of the great men of history," not in the sense that his legacy is positive, but because he has changed the course of world events.
Killing him would cause "some splintering, at least some weakening of the cohesion of al-Qaida," he said. But the effect would be temporary, because the movement has spread and its tenets have "become a mindset in the Muslim world."
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