E-Notes

Five Years After 9/11: What Needs to be Done?

February 2007

by Lowell E. (Jake) Jacoby

Jake Jacoby is executive vice president for Strategic Intelligence Opportunities at CACI International. He is a former Navy Vice Admiral and Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). This enote is based on his keynote address at a conference of the same name hosted by FPRI’s Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security on December 4-5, 2006, in Philadelphia. The Center is supported by grants from the Department of Community and Economic Development and the Department of Education, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Since 9/11, we have been engaged in a war for national survival against a dedicated foe with the stated goals of wrecking our economy and ridding the Muslim world of Western influence. The enemy is resolute in its intent to bring the war to the U.S. homeland. There will be more 9/11s here in the U.S., quite probably of grander scale and greater destruction than 9/11.

This long war will test our national will and resolve, and we are proving inadequate in conveying the magnitude of the threat to the American people and in generating the level of commitment it will take to win this war. This war will need to be won, and it is winnable.

By soon after 9/11, DIA analysts had come to refer to the “2+7.” The “2” was for Al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, and his cohort Ayman al-Zawahiri; the “7” was a small band of senior operational planners, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks). That cadre had a clear war strategy to achieve a defined victory; terrorism was but one of their tactics.

Going after the 2+7 was our tactic to disrupt Al Qaeda, to forestall any major planned 9/11 follow-on attacks, and to diminish the fundraising capabilities of the organization. The tactic had considerable success: many of the seven operational planners are dead, in U.S. custody, or in various levels of detention in other nations. The two leaders are believed to be in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region with limited access and unable to direct operational planning. But this was still only a short-term tactic meant to forestall and disrupt. It was not a strategy for victory.

The fact that there have been no further 9/11s since is not enough to claim victory or the execution of a successful strategy. In fact, the enemy may actually be gaining strength. Absent the tight control of the 2+7, Al Qaeda has transformed into a network of “franchises” that subscribe to the basic bin Laden philosophies and ideals but execute operations without his approval. This may be a more dangerous situation than the centralized model. The centralized model featured patience and meticulous planning and rehearsal. Just think of the time that elapsed from the 1993 World Trade Center attack to the 1998 attacks on our embassies in East Africa, to the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, to 9/11. Franchises operate more broadly in many parts of the world. Multiple operations can be planned and executed simultaneously. And the decentralized model offers opportunities for innovation, trial and error, and multi-axis attacks. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a franchise operation under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and probably still is today. It is instructive that Zarqawi sought to legitimize his brutal techniques, such as beheadings, by swearing allegiance to bin Laden. The 2004 Madrid train bombings were an example of a franchise operation. Franchises operate from the UK and are present in other nations in Europe. We need to question how many may be operating in the U.S.

Bin Laden and his principal spokesperson, Zawahiri, are beacons of near mythic proportions for the Islamic extremists. These leaders retain access to international media to broadcast and reinforce their philosophies and calls to arms. Their themes resonate with a sizeable Muslim population, far more broadly than just with the Al Qaeda organization and its franchises. The U.S. is the Great Satan. Its influence and culture and belief systems are a threat to Islam. It is the duty of righteous Muslims to participate in jihad against these influences to protect the faith. Those who are martyred in jihad will enjoy rich rewards in the afterlife. These are but a few of the themes.

On a more practical level, bin Laden is calling for attacks on the U.S. economy and for attacks on key elements of that economy wherever they exist in the world, for attacks on U.S. friends and allies, for attacks on infidel Islamic regimes, and he especially values attacks in the U.S. homeland because of the psychological, in addition to economic, impact that they will have. The Saudi regime and its oil production are targets. Spain was a target because of its support for the invasion of Iraq (the new government elected shortly after the Madrid bombing pulled Spanish troops out). The UK is a target because of its close alliance with us and participation in Iraq. But, most importantly, we are the target.

The enemy is dedicated. It rallies around a set of central themes; it is patient and persistent. Bin Laden understands us. He is open in saying the war will continue for generations. His goal is not quick victory, but rather to produce a massive movement based upon shared purpose that will unite true believers in jihad and eventual victory. Sitting in a cave or wherever he is, he has to be heartened by various factors and trends that should be sounding alarms for us.

Both he and Zawahiri have survived the five years and their aperiodic statements broadcast on Al Jazeera serve to rally their supporters and demonstrate our inability to kill or capture them. The movement has active training grounds in Iraq and Afghanistan. The generation that refined techniques and established personal bonds fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan are either senior statesmen in the movement, or are dead or captured. But a new generation is replacing them. This new battle-hardened cadre also is applying innovative uses of the Internet, devising new tactics, refining improvised explosive device (IED) techniques, demonstrating successful recruitment capabilities, and influencing the outcome of a major U.S. conventional military campaign in Iraq. For example, at one point we believed that their number of master bomb-makers was limited and that this might be a vulnerability we could exploit. That is no longer the case. Bomb-makers with firsthand experience are no longer in short supply.

The base from which the movement draws manpower is growing. There is a “youth bulge” in many Muslim nations, with significant portions of the population under 25 years of age. The group of young Muslim men who are trained in madrassas is growing. These schools emphasize rote memorization of the Koran and offer only a very basic education. Young people schooled in madrassas do not have the skills to be successful in the modern world. Their prospects for meaningful employment are dim. Their ability to meet the basic Muslim-dictated ability to care for a family is limited or nonexistent. Countries in Europe have sizeable populations of disenfranchised and unemployed Muslim youth. They are isolated in enclaves, rather than assimilated. The UK has this problem, as demonstrated by the Pakistani youth who conducted the July 2005 London Underground bombings and the group that planned the thwarted airliner suicide bombings in 2006. There is no shortage of suicide bombers drawn from foreign and domestic populations in Iraq and Afghanistan today.

Examination of the group that planned to bomb the commercial aircraft using liquid explosives in 2006 is instructive. It’s a case study with very disturbing implications. Publicly available information confirms that the plot involved dozens of people. The basic cadre was drawn from British citizens of Pakistani extraction. There were ties to Pakistan, including some British nationals who were arrested in Pakistan. Many of those arrested were from lower middle-class families, certainly not from London’s slums, and were at least second generation. However, they came from a neighborhood that was a Pakistani enclave, and the level of their assimilation into British society was low. They devised a plan to blow up airliners using liquid explosives that is believed to have been viable, using an innovative approach that would have circumvented airport inspections. They recruited or infiltrated at least one insider into the Heathrow Airport workforce. They planned carefully to blow up three aircraft per wave in three waves over the space of a few days, with the express intent of not leaving traces, permitting the technique to be used again. What would the economic impact have been? What level of doubt and intimidation would it have fostered in the public? What would the effect have been on U.S./UK relations? While it’s not clear to me that Al Qaeda was involved, it has all of the trappings of a franchise operation.

The final factor that might give bin Laden hope is the opportunities that exist to generate attacks of massive proportions. Al Qaeda experimented with chemical weapons. They had active biological warfare laboratories and know-how prior to the overthrow of the Taliban, when Afghanistan was an Al Qaeda safe haven. Nuclear materials are available for construction of “dirty bombs” that have the capacity to deny contaminated areas for decades. And, there are sources for nuclear materials and nuclear weapons in today’s world that are not adequately secured. Individuals or groups might willingly provide nuclear material or weapons to the extremist movement. High on my list of concerns is the possibility of an overthrow of the Musharraf government in Pakistan by a fundamentalist cadre. Finally, there is the threat to our infrastructure of cyberterrorism and soft kill techniques directed against our dependencies on computers and a networked economy.

A “threat” exists when an actor has both the capability to inflict meaningful damage or destruction and the intent to do so. Five years after 9/11, the Muslim extremist movement personified by Al Qaeda remains a threat. It has demonstrated both capability and intent. Its intent is not wavering; in fact it may be strengthening. Its capability is increasing. It is a viable threat to us and to our way of life.

This is not intended to be a Chicken Little, “the sky is falling” address. The outcome is not preordained. This threat can be defeated and the movement dismantled. The capabilities can be countered, leaving only intent; those with the intent can be isolated and rendered ineffective.

So, what is it going to take to defeat this threat? The American people need to understand the nature and seriousness of a very viable threat to our nation. They understood the threat presented by the Soviet Union and stayed the course over a period of four decades. That threat was more easily characterized and appreciated than the one we face today. The USSR was an atheist state that presented a conventional and nuclear military threat. Today’s threat is difficult to describe and characterize. It has a religious basis, it does not have standing forces, it is not an understood entity such as a nation state, and its tactics such as suicide bombings are incomprehensible to many. The fact that we still don’t have a name for this war five years after 9/11 is instructive.

Washington needs to reach a bipartisan consensus on the threat and formulate a basic U.S. policy to defeat it. One might argue that we won the Cold War through constant pressure on the Soviet Union and its allies by a succession of administrations that were united in principle with regard to the threat, even as they adjusted tactics in pursuit of those common principles. From consensus will come meaningful dialogue and debate, worthwhile reform, effective organizations, focused priorities, constancy of effort and an unmistakable set of signals to friends and foes alike about our resolve and intent.

Let me give an example to emphasize the point. The Soviet submarine force was a major component of their nuclear strike capability, and the U.S. had a broad variety of very high risk operational and intelligence efforts directed against that force. Every administration for decades reviewed those operations and evaluated the risk. In some cases, they modulated the pace of activities and revised the directives that governed these activities. But, there was a consensus maintained over decades that permitted long-term planning, investment, and a building-block approach to developing an understanding of that force and how it operated that would have permitted us to defeat that force in wartime. (I might add that the key secrets about plans and capabilities were kept for decades.) This same type of constancy of purpose is required if we are to win the present war. We do not have the bipartisan consensus that is required and have not achieved the constancy of purpose that is required to devise and execute a strategy that anticipates and shapes outcomes, rather than reacting to events with short-term tactical responses.

Based upon that bipartisan consensus, we must mobilize all of the instruments of national power behind the war effort. There are political, economic, educational, cultural, and religious aspects to this war. It is important that all instruments at our disposal and at the disposal of our allies be brought to bear to defeat this enemy. This war cannot be won by the military alone. Absent a multi-pronged and orchestrated approach that includes language training, educational programs, cultural awareness through overseas study, etc., we will not deal with the underlying threat. Efforts directed at the symptoms of the conflict will not succeed.

In defending the homeland, we must play offense and defense simultaneously. The enemy intends to bring the fight to our shores. They intend attacks on scales that make 9/11 look like a minor opening salvo. We must recognize the difficulty of this task. We must basically defend everything all the time, while the enemy gets to select the method, time and place for the attack.

This will require a true team effort where federal, state, and local capabilities are brought to bear in a coordinated way. We must move beyond the distrust that exists between various governmental entities today. Laws, rules and regulations that were designed for an earlier time and place must be reexamined and reinterpreted in light of the present age and threat.

It must be a team that includes intelligence, law enforcement and regulatory entities, and those entities must get past the cultural and operational barriers that inhibit coherent operations.

We cannot afford the type of no-risk behavior that ensues when people fear that their every action may be subject to investigation by a Commission or a Congressional Committee. There is a rightful place for investigations and assignment of responsibility in the cases of malfeasance and dereliction of duty. But attempting to assign blame and responsibility for analytical calls based upon incomplete information that proves to be wrong are counterproductive. Intelligence analysis is inherently risky, and we need to have and support people who are willing to take analytical risk.

Finally, the divide between the private and public sectors must be bridged. Corporate America is an instrument of our national power and it must be part of the team. To put it in profit and loss terms, who has more of a vested interest in winning a war where our economic strength is a designated target? Our corporate infrastructure is in the enemy’s crosshairs at home and abroad. Our corporations’ workforces and their families are targets overseas, along with our corporations’ local hires. Virtually every aspect of our corporate well-being is vulnerable in this war. In some cases, such as the airline, petroleum refining, or transportation industry, our corporate assets may in fact become instruments of mass destruction.

In the military we have a process called “net assessment.” It involves a systematic evaluation of an opponent’s or potential opponent’s intentions, capabilities, strategy and tactics. It also involves a parallel assessment of our capabilities, strengths and vulnerabilities. Often a “war game” is conducted as a part of this process where the confrontation between the two sides is played out. The result is a more comprehensive evaluation and the opportunity to adjust capabilities, strategies, or tactics to improve the chance of winning. To evaluate intelligence concerning terrorism threats, we needed just this type of net assessment, but while we had some insight into the enemy, we generally did not possess the information needed to assess our strengths and vulnerabilities, thus precluding the net assessment.

If, for example, we had intelligence that an Al Qaeda element intended to attack an oil refinery in the Houston area using a six-man team and a truck-born vehicle bomb, a net assessment team would need in-depth information about the refinery infrastructure, the transportation network, local law enforcement capabilities, disaster response plans and timelines, corporate security investments, and manning and training levels for security personnel in order to evaluate the threat. Lacking this data and the necessary dialogue among all parties, there is little that can be done except to take a worst-case approach, reduce the risk of being wrong and raise the Terrorism Threat Level. If the data to do a net assessment were available, with the accompanying dialogue with the appropriate parties, it might be determined that the postulated attack would have a very low likelihood of success and would not constitute a threat. In this case, the course of action might be fundamentally different. I do not believe that the necessary dialogue among the parties required by my hypothetical example exists today.

We can and must win this war. But, there is no single panacea or solution. The actions that are required are difficult to achieve. We need to understand that time’s a-wasting and to get on with the tasks at hand with a sense of urgency and dispatch.

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