On Sunday night the United States prepared for fresh strikes
against new pockets of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. At
almost exactly the same time, American intelligence revealed that they
had uncovered an increase in money being transferred between groups of
al-Qaida fighters. According to my reckoning, this is the 14th handy thing
that American intelligence has discovered since September 11. Think back
over the past six months and it becomes ineluctable: never in the history
of modern warfare has so much been found so opportunely.
It started the day after the attacks on the twin towers, with the discovery
of a flight manual in Arabic and a copy of the Koran in a car hired by
Mohammed Atta and abandoned at Boston airport. In the immediate shocked
aftermath of the attacks, these findings were somehow reassuring: American
intelligence was on the case, the perpetrators were no longer faceless.
In less than a week came another find, two blocks away from the twin towers,
in the shape of Atta's passport. We had all seen the blizzard of paper
rain down from the towers, but the idea that Atta's passport had escaped
from that inferno unsinged would have tested the credulity of the staunchest
supporter of the FBI's crackdown on terrorism.
Yet we were still in the infancy of coincidence. On September 24 the belongings
of alleged terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui threw up a cropdusting manual,
while four days later came Atta's suicide note, the one with the counsel
to shine your shoes before you meet your maker - a piece of advice which
seemed suspiciously Norman Rockwellesque. It was here, too, that the stuff
about 72 virgins awaiting him in heaven first started to circulate.
In December the laughing, boasting video of Osama bin Laden was unearthed
in a house in Jalalabad. The new year saw no let-up in this serendipitous
trove - January turned up an email sent by "shoe bomber" Richard
Reid from a Paris cybercafe (and found on its hard disk) shortly before
boarding the Paris-Miami flight in which he claimed responsibility in advance
for downing the plane. (Luckily or carelessly, depending on your perspective,
Reid had pocketed a business card from the cybercafe.)
And then, last Friday, Major General Frank Hagenbeck revealed that Americans
had found a whole shelf of field manuals on undertaking terrorist activity,
to put beside the instruction manual on how to use light automatic weapons
left in a training camp in January.
Apart from the fact that the al-Qaida network seem to have a catastrophic
way with lost property, isn't it strange that these most demonised and
potent of terrorists seem unable to operate any weapons without a manual?
Dad's Army is nothing - this bunch sounds as if they wouldn't be able to
programme the video. And if the quality of their manuals is anything like
those most of us have come across, they will still be wrestling with them
long after the guarantee has run out.
Of course you could interpret these discoveries differently. You could
detect in them the clear hand of American propaganda. This isn't, of course,
to claim a dirty tricks department somewhere in the heart of Washington.
That would have you immediately accused of peddling conspiracy theories,
though I'm coming to think that conspiracy theories have had a bad press.
What are they, after all, but "joined-up government" by another
name?
All these discoveries can't obscure four things that American intelligence
agencies have notably failed to find. First, even with a bloated expenditure
exceeding Russia's total defence budget, they never managed to find out
about September 11 before the event. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones's new book,
Cloak and Dagger: A History of American Secret Intelligence (Yale), shows
how, almost since their 19th-century inception, American intelligence bureaux
have invented or exaggerated a succession of menaces to defend their spiralling
budgets and demonstrate their own usefulness while failing to tackle effectively
other, more substantial threats.
Second, despite a reward of $2.5m offered at the end of January, the FBI
still hasn't discovered those responsible for last year's anthrax attacks.
Third, American intelligence, tragically, didn't find Daniel Pearl, the
US journalist kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan.
Fourth - and most spectacular - despite having highly sophisticated satellite
tracking equipment, and offering a reward of $25m for information leading
directly to his apprehension or conviction, they still haven't found Bin
Laden.
Is this one reason why the US is talking about an attack on Iraq - a flexing
of the military biceps to distract from flabby intelligence? Whatever the
case, to find one training manual might be regarded as a stroke of luck.
To find a shelf-full looks like desperation.
Origianlly published 3-19-2 Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers
Limited 2002
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