- The surprise resignation of retired Army General Wayne
A. Downing as deputy national security adviser to the president for combating
terrorism, on Thursday, June 27, is bad news for the road ahead of America's
war on terror, according to DEBKAfile's intelligence sources.
-
- The walkout of the forceful, down to earth Gen. Downing
after 10 months on the job has been variously explained as a reaction to
the preoccupation with terrorism at the top White House level - the president,
the vice president and the national security adviser - on a day to day
basis leaving him little to do, or discomfort with his role as a "coordinated"
member of the White House staff.
-
- According to DEBKAfile's Washington sources, however,
the general left because he strongly disapproved of the way the Bush administration
is handling the anti-terror offensive, and more particularly its intelligence
side.
-
- In the beginning he got his way. He won the battle against
the intelligence bureaucracy over the creation of a new data fusion center
capable of keeping a 24-hour watch on terrorist activities and tracking
all related interagency intelligence. Downing had begun assigning staff
to the new center when word came down that it was to be swallowed up in
the proposed Homeland Security Department, which the president finally
approved.
-
- As this veteran general saw it, the center's function
should have been to bring together all the incoming data on terror and
make it instantly available for operational uses. For instance, US Special
Forces encountering al Qaeda activity out in the field in Afghanistan,
Pakistan or the Persian Gulf would be able to access the identities of
its leader and participants by hitting a few keys on their mobile computers.
By the same process, they would file back to the center any new data garnered
by surveillance in the field.
-
- Damascus international airport would have been a perfect
example, since it has become the primary transit hub for al Qaeda operatives
traveling back and forth through the Middle East and on to the Balkans.
Certain Damascus hotels are the secure haunts of these travelers while
they wait for outgoing flights. Watchers at these hotels would be in a
position to find out how many terrorists were staying at the hotel at any
given time, what flights they are booked on and their destinations, passing
it on to the center with running updates.
-
- Damascus is but one extreme example of a source concentration
of live data.
-
- At present, raw intelligence of this caliber reaches
US intelligence in the form of fragments scattered among the 6 - 8 different
US intelligence bodies engaged in tracking and fighting terrorism. Instead
of converging in a central information pool, the scraps move sluggishly
and randomly from agency to agency, depending on clearance from relevant
department heads, who may be guided more by turf battles and budgetary
considerations than by the task at hand.
-
- The raw intelligence then passes to analysts and evaluators
who come to diverse conclusions. Someone in high authority has to put them
all together and decide how to act on the final result. Downing proposed
cutting through this bureaucratic blockage in the intelligence flow with
his centralized data pool.
-
- He tendered his resignation significantly on the day
that CIA director George Tenet and FBI director Robert Mueller 3rd made
a rare joint appearance before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee
to refute the criticism often heard in congress of the two services' inability
to work together and share information. Better coordination, it is often
said, might have prevented or disrupted the al Qaeda attacks in New York
and Washington.
-
- Both directors made an effort to demonstrate that their
traditionally rival intelligence-security agencies could work together
in the new Homeland Security Department. Yet their cautiously worded statements
showed there is still a long way to go for real cooperation in fighting
terror.
-
- Mueller promised that new information-sharing capabilities
inside the FBI - and with the CIA -would support the new department. But
Tenet noted the separate ways in which the CIA, FBI and new homeland security
agency would have individual but complementary roles in dealing with terror.
He also said: "I am committed to assuring that the new department
receives all of the relevant terrorist-related intelligence available",
implying that raw intelligence would not be handed over before processing
and selection.
-
- Mueller opposed congressional proposals to relocate the
FBI's counter-terrorism functions in the new department.
-
- Without mentioning the World Trade Center attacks in
1993 and 2001, the CIA director obliquely responded to charges against
his agency (leveled in a seriesDEBKAfile ran in May "How Much Do US
Presidents Know about Terror?"), when he told the Senate committee
that America could not move from threat to threat in the future without
putting in place "security procedures that prevent terrorists from
returning to the same target years later."
-
- He added that "just because a specific attack does
not occur does not mean that a category of targets is no longer of interest
to the terrorists."
-
- The central charge in that series was that the incumbent
US President and the CIA deliberately ignored the writing left on the wall
of the World Trade Center by al Qaeda terrorists in 1993, the first time
they tried to bring the towers down - and failed. This disregard left the
site defenseless against the second calamitous strike.
-
- General Downing, after his White House experience, was
evidently unimpressed by the fine promises of secret sharing between the
FBI and CIA directors and between them and the new homeland security department
as an effective intelligence blade for warding off the next al Qaeda assault
in the United States.
-
- Like in 1993, not enough lessons have been drawn from
the 9/ll disasters to prepare America for the fight ahead. If nearly 10
months after that trauma, America has still not set up a central data bank
with updated rundowns and assessments on terrorist tactics, methods, targets,
timelines and threats, then maybe America is not yet in shape to take on
global terror.
-
- In an interview Friday, June 28, defense secretary Donald
Rumsfeld informed the Washington Times that al Qaeda has obtained fresh
supplies, including advanced weapons systems, for fighting the United States
in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He did not by the slightest hint indicate
the supplier, or explain how with the international peace force in place
and American troops surrounding Afghanistan, those supplies got through
to Afghanistan - or reached Pakistan.
-
- It was clear from his words that al Qaeda is not only
alive and well, but kicking again, although the Americans destroyed its
bases in Afghanistan and ousted its Taliban hosts. The lesson here is that
al Qaeda may have lost its territorial base but has acquired instead a
light-footed mobility.
-
- DEBBAfile 's military and intelligence sources fill in
some of the information not forthcoming from Rumsfeld. Two governments
have taken charge of the financing, purchase and transfer of fresh weapons
supplies to al Qaeda: Saudi Arabia and Iran, with Pakistani acquiescence.
-
- The terror network has won a clear logistical field,
ranging from Afghanistan through the Persian Gulf, Syria and Lebanon, Kosovo,
Albania and Macedonia. Al Qaeda can today move men and weapons unimpeded
between Asia, the Middle East and Persian Gulf and all the way to Balkan
Europe. A s for infiltrating the United States, al Qaeda has developed
an active sea route of containers (as revealed in DEBKA-Net-Weekly on June
18 and 26) docking at American commercial ports.
-
- In Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania, the Islamic organization,
led by the Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden, is assembling an Islamic
army with Saudi funding and Iranian instructors.
-
- No combat force on earth can fight these flourishing
terrorist resources without first-rate, real-time intelligence. America,
withal its technological prowess, is weighed down by an unwieldy intelligence
bureaucracy, holding it back from meeting the intelligence challenges posed
by a spreading terrorist enemy.
-
- That was why the official warnings and alarms ahead of
July 4 sounded so vague and unconvincing. Targeting the Statue of Liberty,
the Rushmore monument, nuclear stations, computerized traffic centers,
water and electricity, all at once is well beyond al Qaeda's operational
capabilities inside America.
-
- Israel has offered a certain amount of data on a regular
basis to the as yet unborn Department for Homeland Security. Minister of
Internal Security Uzi Landau and Brig-Gen David Tzur were in Washington
this week to discuss with US officials the creation of a joint anti-terror
office, mainly as a communication hub, for the new department.
|
