Taming terrorism
Security experts struggle with priorities, strategies

by John Stark
Reprinted with permission of The Bellingham Herald

June 10, 2007

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Security and terrorism experts inside and outside the government agree on one thing: There is no such thing as an impregnable defense against terror attacks.

“I’m the first person to say we’re not going to protect everyone against everything,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a group of journalists recently.

But there is no consensus on whether Chertoff’s department and the reorganized U.S. intelligence establishment are working as smoothly and sensibly as they could to reduce terror threats.

And some former high-ranking members of the intelligence community argue strenuously that the nation needs to focus on improving its relationship with the Islamic world, instead of relying on security systems and spies to protect public safety.

“We’ve improved the odds, but the odds still favor the terrorists,” said John McLaughlin, the former deputy CIA director who served as the agency’s acting director in 2004.

McLaughlin stressed the difficulty of protecting a nation and its vast, vulnerable web of life-support systems from

people determined to do harm. He said there is no way of knowing if or when another attack will come.

“In truth, no one knows with confidence,” McLaughlin said. “They respond to no rules, and they are willing to die. They do not respond to deterrence. … They know where our vulnerabilities are. They know how to manipulate us. … This is the first time in history when so few people can do so much damage.”

PRIORITIES NOT SET

Homeland Security’s critics say the agency has barely begun the process of setting priorities — putting the cash from its $37 billion annual budget where the risks are greatest.

“We would like to see more of a relationship between the money that’s being spent and the risks involved,” said Norman Rabkin, managing director of the homeland security team of the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Daniel Prieto, senior fellow at the Reform Institute, has done detailed studies outlining the potential threats to transportation, industrial and communications systems. He agrees that the homeland security effort needs to be betterfocused.

“It all depends on who screams loudest and last,” Prieto said. “It all depends on which congressman has what in his backyard.”

BROAD VIEW SUGGESTED

Prieto and others argue that while protecting vulnerable facilities and tracking down terror plots is important, that kind of effort can never provide an invincible shield. The nation needs a broader focus on reducing the international tensions that spawn terrorism.

“It would help to solve the Arab-Israeli problem,” Mc- Laughlin said.

Paul Pillar is a retired career CIA official and Mideast specialist who now lectures at Georgetown University. He said too much attention has been paid to reorganizing the nation’s intelligence agencies. As he sees it, those agencies can never detect and stop all terror plots, and no amount of money or bureaucratic reorganization will change that.

Reducing the risk of terrorism “will depend much more on things like the war in Iraq and the course of the U.S. relationship with the Muslim world generally,” Pillar said.

The Iraq War is now the training ground for a new wave of Islamic terrorists, just as Afghanistan was in the 1980s when jihadists from around the Islamic world gathered there to fight the Soviets, Pillar said.

“We will see for years to come, similar effects in Iraq,” Pillar said. “The bad news is, no matter what happens in Iraq … much of the damage has already been done. To me it’s unmistakably an argument to get out as soon as we can.”

CHALLENGE OF ISLAM

Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman who was vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission and co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, said it was “nuts” to think that the U.S. could reduce the terror threat by its military efforts in Iraq, even if those efforts succeed.

The U.S. needs to take concrete steps to convince the Islamic world that we are not the enemy, Hamilton said. He noted that U.S. tsunami relief efforts in Indonesia helped to change some Muslims’ perception of this country, and he said the U.S. needs to mount a sustained effort to keep that more favorable perception alive.

“I think one of the great challenges to American foreign policy in the generations to come will be how we deal with the radicalization of Islam,” Hamilton said. “We’ve got a long way to go. … We can’t turn that around on a dime, but we can turn it around.”

Copyright © 2007 International Reporting Project. All Rights Reserved.