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Empty Treasury
Paul O'Neill, is manifestly unsuited to the job.

By NR Editors

f Republicans have a coherent economic policy, they are hiding it well. They have spent most of the year making Keynesian arguments for watered-down supply-side measures. Thus the tax cut passed this spring was supposed to "put money in people's pockets" to be spent. When Democrats correctly pointed out that cutting tax rates effective in 2006 would not in fact lead to a spending boom, the Republicans were forced to agree to a tax rebate. The importance of improving incentives to work, save, and invest was lost.

The House Republicans' stimulus bill is the same conceptual morass. It accelerates the date at which the spring tax cuts become effective — but not for the top brackets, lest Demo crats balk. It cuts the capital-gains tax rate by a puny two points. And it includes another round of tax rebates.

The Bush administration has largely been AWOL during this debate, except to insist on bipartisanship now that we are at war. What's the risk of making its case? That Democrats will stop supporting the war because they dislike Republican economic policy? It's an unlikely prospect, and one for which the voters would punish the offending party soon enough. The administration may hope that the economy will recover on its own, and the drop in oil prices and interest rates certainly makes that a possibility. But since Congress is going to pass a stimulus, the administration should shape that stimulus to be effective.

In any case, the administration lacked a coherent economic message before either the terrorist attacks or the drop in oil prices. Part of the trouble is that the man who should be its voice on economic matters, Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, is manifestly unsuited to the job. He spent the first months of his tenure trying to improve worker safety and office cleanliness at Treasury — when he wasn't trying to get Bush to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions. In congressional testimony, he undercut the administration's pitch for tax cuts. He has been a force within the administration for rebates. Rather than constructive action, all conservatives have gotten from O'Neill is pie-in-the-sky talk about abolishing the corporate income tax.

When President Bush nominated him, he said O'Neill was "a steady voice," someone "who can calm people's nerves, calm the markets." Instead, the secretary's most notable effect on the markets has been to roil them with ill- considered remarks about the dollar. One journalist concluded of O'Neill that "if he can't learn to keep his lips buttoned and continues his gaffe-prone ways, he risks being branded permanently as a buffoon." And that journalist was one of O'Neill's defenders. At a moment of economic difficulty, we have a Treasury secretary who inspires confidence neither on Wall Street nor in Washington. O'Neill should go.

State of Refusal
On statehood for Palestine.

By NR Editors

resident Bush joins a long list of people who have kicked around the idea of a Palestinian state, only to be kicked by it in return. The United Nations partitioned British-held Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states as long ago as 1947, but the Arabs said no. Between then and the Six Day War of 1967, Egypt and Jordan were responsible for Palestinians, but said no again to statehood for them. Everyone then spent years in search of a yes, however small, from the Palestinians themselves. At Camp David last year, Yasser Arafat on their behalf pronounced the most thumping of noes. Since when, it has been intifada and suicide bombers without interruption. Arafat and assorted Islamic fanatics are presently in competition to see who can kill the most Jews. The latest victim is Israeli cabinet member Rechavam Zeevi.

Israel has been at its wit's end to extract the missing yes in some form or another. Israel created the Palestine Authority that today is Arafat's fiefdom, and would willingly grant it statehood. But on one condition: that this state provide concrete evidence that it has the resolve and the rule of law indispensable to peaceful coexistence.

President Bush understands that security is a life-and-death issue for Israel. But how to put it lastingly in place on the ground? A state is supposed to be able to convert the Palestinians to peace, but there cannot be peace until the Palestinians have a state. The chase for the elusive yes has become one of those circular arguments that do not distinguish between cause and effect.

In the end — the very long delayed end — a state of Palestine may be the right solution. The practical difficulties nevertheless are enormous — several Arab countries might well go on saying no. The time for Bush and others to experiment is after the defeat of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and anyone else who incites the Palestinians against Israel in pursuit of selfish ambitions. Only after the Palestinians have acted in their own interests and given an unqualified yes to peaceful coexistence can their emerging state be considered on its merits. Speculating — or even worse, temporizing — now over Palestinian statehood will be interpreted all over the Arab and Muslim world as a sycophantic bid for friendship, therefore a sign of weakness, and a good reason to rush out to the nearest anti-American demonstration.

Without Israeli approval and ratification, Palestinian statehood must remain notional. For the administration to spend political capital on the question at this moment, when Palestinian factions are competing to kill Jews, is to oblige Israel either to ensure that any Palestine state is stillborn, or else consent to running its own existential risk. That's a no-win choice for everyone.

What We’re Not Fighitng For
The list includes short skirts, dancing, and secularism.

By Ramesh Ponnuru, NR Senior Editor

n the nation at large, the September massacres have revealed a persistent unity under the surface of our political and cultural divisions. Among liberals, however, they have uncovered a deep divide lying under surface agreement. Many liberal intellectuals have rallied to the defense of the country. The Washington Post and The New Republic have been models of intellectual and moral clarity, supporting the president vigorously — more vigorously, indeed, than he may intend to act.

But the left wing of the liberal co alition has reacted to the attacks with instinctive opposition to military action coupled with not a little anti-Americanism. The Saids, the Sontags, the Chomskys, the other contributors to The Nation — Christopher Hitchens being a noteworthy exception — have been more interested in flaying America for its supposed sins than in defeating its enemies (or "enemies," as they would no doubt put it).

This is a deep disagreement about America's moral status. It is not, to be sure, a new disagreement. But since it manifests itself in debates about foreign policy, it has not been politically consequential since the Cold War. Differences on Kosovo were not important enough to prevent liberals and the Left from living together in the Democratic party. Now foreign policy matters again. The last few years saw an attempt to reunite campus leftists and labor — who had parted ways during the Vietnam War — in opposition to globalization. Owing to the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, that alliance is breaking up again.

For left-of-center supporters of the war, bringing around their allies is thus not only a patriotic service but a political imperative. Yet there is a danger that in the course of arguing for the war, liberals will settle on an interpretation of it that is both wrong and dangerous. According to this interpretation, what we are fighting against is "fundamentalism." What we are fighting for is "tolerance," "pluralism," "modernity," and "the open society" — and these terms are, with varying degrees of explicitness, to be understood as liberals understand them. What we are fighting for is, essentially, moral liberalism.

This, I take it, is what Salman Rushdie is getting at when he writes, in a generally quite admirable op-ed rebuking anti-American leftists, that we must be willing to die for "short skirts and dancing." Michael Lind, who is hard to categorize politically but is certainly a liberal on moral issues, makes the point more clearly: "It's a war of reason and tolerance against medieval superstition." Such superstition is not confined to radical Islam. "The anti-American Muslims believe that the United States is a godless, secular humanist regime. So does the religious right," writes Lind. "The radical Muslims want to roll back feminism and stamp out abortion and homosexuality. So does the religious right." Aryeh Neier, the head of the Open Society Institute, has drawn the same parallel. The Rev. Jerry Falwell's notorious remarks, he writes, "make clear that American fundamentalists are as hostile to modernity as their counterparts elsewhere."

Andrew Sullivan — who is not himself a liberal in the contemporary sense but is a scourge of religious conservatives — has been a strong and eloquent supporter of the war on Islamist terrorism. He goes so far as to call it "a religious war." In the New York Times Magazine, he writes that it is "a war of fundamentalism against faiths of all kinds that are at peace with freedom and modernity. This war even has far gentler echoes in America's own religious conflicts — between newer, more virulent strands of Christian fundamentalism and mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism." He concludes, "What is really at issue here is the simple but immensely difficult principle of the separation of politics and religion."

As I've said, not all the above-quoted people are orthodox liberals, but it's easy to see the appeal their view of the war will have for liberals. Many of them tend to regard what Alan Wolfe calls "moral freedom" as the essence of freedom and the highest achievement of our civilization. As the Supreme Court put it in an abortion case, "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." (That's quite a lot to pack into the Fourteenth Amendment's due-process clause, one might think, but never mind.) Many of them tend to think that any form of absolute conviction, especially religious conviction, is likely to lead to coercion and, at the end of the road, totalitarianism. And all liberals, whether for or against the war, can agree that the Religious Right is a threat to American democracy. The Taliban, for them, is simply Gary Bauer in power.

If this view of the war might recruit some liberals, if widely adopted it would cause many others to stop supporting the war. It would shrink our international coalition. Is Pakistan prepared to fight by our side for abortion rights? Latin America has not been keen on tolerance for gays. And this is to say nothing of our domestic coalition. "Fundamentalist" Christians make up, by some estimates, a quarter of our population. We will not get our side of the war off to a good start by defining them as, philosophically, part of the enemy. And there are millions of Catholics who share many of their moral views. (I would wager that social conservatives make up a disproportionate number of our men in uniform.)

Sullivan outlines some of the parallels between Christian and Islamic "fundamentalists": Both groups have strong faiths based on absolute truths; both feel their cultures are slipping away from them and are consequently insecure. But this isn't much, really. Secular philosophies can be absolutist, and totalitarian, too. (Sullivan concedes, at least in his Times Magazine piece, that secular philosophies can be totalitarian. On his website, though, he writes, "In my view, atheists are far less politically dangerous than fundamentalists of any stripe.") The flip side of the coin is that philosophies of freedom can be held with absolute, indeed religious, conviction: Many of us believe that God commands us not to kill one another in disputes about God's commands. Most of us feel no doubt whatsoever when we say that the mass murders of 9/11 were absolutely wrong.

Islamists and Christian fundamentalists may agree that the West is decadent, just as Islamists and liberals may agree that the West bears responsibility for Third World poverty. Were we really attacked for our social license? One hesitates to make definitive judgments about the psychology of the strip-club Islamists who crashed our planes. But the answer is probably, "Yes, in part": This is the kernel of truth to the social-liberal analysis of the war. It seems unlikely that Osama bin Laden would hate us less, however, if we were really the "Christian crusaders" coming "under the banner of the cross" of his propaganda. It was evangelizing for Christianity, not peddling pornography, that landed Americans on the Taliban's death row.

The Revs. Falwell and Robertson lent some credence to the argument that Christian and Islamic "fundamentalism" are brothers under the skin. (This was, in fact, a reason that many conservatives regretted their remarks.) But for all their frequent folly and occasional malice — and I wrote an essay criticizing Falwell and Robertson the day their remarks were reported — conservative Christian leaders are not bringing down buildings. And what they, together with rank-and-file conservative Christians, want is a far cry from theocracy.

What conservative Christians want is to restore certain aspects of the America of the 1950s. That America banned abortion and practiced a mild censorship. Perhaps it was wrong to do these things. But most people would agree that the America of the 1950s was a free society, and a society worth defending from external attack. All of these things, of course, could also be said of the America of 1941.

We can fight for freedom while disagreeing about the full meaning of freedom. The war on Islamism does not need the distraction of our culture wars: of clerics who say our decadence is to blame for the attacks; of intellectuals who exult that our decadence has brought us such ugly enemies. Liberals should not support the war because the Taliban is hostile to feminism. They should support it because they are patriots. That is why most of them actually do support it. They are better than their ideology.

Security Blanket
Will it smother the nation's capital?

By Byron York, NR White House Correspondent

espite jitters about security, tourists coming to Washington these days can still enjoy all the sights: the White House, the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jersey Barrier. Actually, that last is not an official monument, but is fast becoming the symbol of post-September 11 Washington. Jersey barriers — the long, low concrete objects usually found along highway construction projects — are everywhere around town, keeping cars and trucks away from government buildings. They're also keeping federal and local officials locked in a debate over how much security is enough.

The barriers, which can be hauled in on trucks and put into place in a few hours, are perfect for creating instant, if makeshift, security. In the days since September 11, they have popped up around the State Department, the FBI building, the U.S. Attorney's office, and several other places. In the future, some of them will no doubt be taken away and the streets they blocked re-opened. But local officials in Washington worry that many will stay, and that still more will be replaced by permanent barriers — enough to change forever the landscape of the city.

Some changes will amount to no more than minor inconveniences for locals and tourists alike. But the biggest fear of those who want to keep Washington open is that the heart of the city and the heart of the U.S. government — the White House and the Capitol — will be transformed into two sealed-off campuses joined by Pennsylvania Avenue.

That's already largely true of the White House. The portion of Pennsylvania Avenue that runs in front of the executive mansion was closed by Bill Clinton in 1995 in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Many in Congress protested, and, although George W. Bush did not make an explicit commitment to reverse Clinton's decision, the 2000 Republican party platform did: "We will re-open Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House as a symbolic expression of confidence in the restoration of the rule of law."

Now, that's out the window. "There's a good reason why it's closed," Vice President Dick Cheney said recently on PBS. "It was closed because of the car-bomb threat, and it ought to stay closed . . . If somebody were to detonate a truck bomb in front of the White House, it would probably level the White House." And that, the vice president concluded in classic Cheneyesque understatement, would be "unacceptable."

With the Pennsylvania Avenue issue off the table, the question today is whether to expand the zone of security around the White House — "the box," as one Secret Service official calls it — beyond its present limits. In the first days after the terrorist attacks, the Secret Service abruptly closed 15th, 17th, E, and H Streets around the White House. That created hours of gridlock — and surprised city officials, who hadn't been warned ahead of time. (There wasn't anything they could do about it: The law gives the Secret Service virtually unlimited discretion to do what it feels necessary to protect the president.) After a few days, all the roads except E Street, which curves around the South Lawn, were re-opened. But the Secret Service, citing a longstanding refusal to discuss "methods and means" of presidential protection, will not say for how long.

Far more dramatic security changes are in store for the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, where the Capitol has traditionally been open to nearly everyone. Some proposals would create a perimeter around the Capitol similar to what exists at the White House — only vastly larger. One plan under consideration recently called for the complete shutdown of Constitution and Independence Avenues in the area around the Capitol, which would have created a 40-square-block security area. "A lot of people talked about it," says Republican representative Bob Ney, chairman of the House Administration Committee, who opposed the idea. The idea had its champions, Ney says, but "it never got to the point where there was going to be a shutdown."

That was in part because local D.C. officials pleaded to keep the streets open. "We objected strongly," says John Koskinen, the deputy mayor and city administrator in charge of security issues (previously, he was the Clinton administration's Y2K conversion czar). Koskinen argued that in an emergency thousands of people would need to evacuate, and shutting down Constitution and Independence Avenues would effectively trap them in town. While his view prevailed, Koskinen knows that things might change at any time. "Congress controls those streets," he says. "They can do whatever they want."

For the moment, congressional leaders have decided to ban truck traffic from the area around the Capitol. They've stationed police officers along Constitution and Independence to wave trucks aside as they approach the Capitol. "They've all been cooperative," explained one officer on a recent Friday morning after he ordered a large unmarked truck to make a U-turn and head toward the narrow, crowded side streets of the surrounding neighborhood.

As for the officers themselves, they're quickly wearing out, working shifts that stretch 13 hours with three 45-minute breaks. "Everything's round-the-clock now," says the officer, who nevertheless appreciates the bundles of overtime. "The bills are getting paid with no problem," he says. (His extra pay is part of the $600 million that Congress plans to spend on new security.)

Like the 13-hour schedules, other parts of the new security system seemed jury-rigged at best. For example, at one entrance to the Capitol grounds, there's an array of barriers, plus a small guardhouse. But the entrance has to remain passable for VIPs, so there is a tiny, winding path for a car to follow through the maze of concrete. To keep that path blocked on the recent morning, security officers parked a bright red Dodge Intrepid
across the driveway — the last barrier between the Capitol and a possible
terrorist bomber.

Finally, congressional officials have installed fencing around the Capitol, preventing walkers from stepping onto the grounds except at the main en trances and exits. Taken together, the new measures suggest that security planners ultimately envision the Capitol as an enclosed facility, not unlike a military base, with specific points of entry and tight limits on freedom of movement inside the barriers. That perception is reinforced by the influence of the Senate's new sergeant-at-arms, Alfonso Lenhardt, a retired Army major general who used to run the military police. Lenhardt is said to be a strong advocate of tough new security measures.

Given the sheer scope and deadliness of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it's hard for city officials to claim that the new emphasis on security is excessive. Still, local leaders worry that today's new security, much of which is arguably necessary, will set off a creeping closure of parts of the city. After all, it is one of the characteristics of a bureaucracy to measure its importance by the security measures it can command. With Congress and the White House tightly locked up, what is to keep the Transportation Department from arguing that it, too, might become a target for terrorism and therefore needs the authority to shut down streets nearby? Or the IRS? Or the Labor Department? Or dozens of other agencies? "It's the camel's nose and the inch and the mile," says John Koskinen. "They're going to be doing this routinely if we continue to allow them to get away with it. It's pretty obvious that we're going to have to fight for this, one block at a time."

In May 1995, when he shut down the street in front of the White House, Bill Clinton said, "Pennsylvania Avenue has been routinely open to traffic for the entire history of our republic. Through four presidential assassinations and eight unsuccessful attempts on the lives of presidents it's been open; through a civil war, two world wars, and the Gulf War, it was open. But now, it must be closed." Many of Clinton's critics thought he had made a better argument for keeping Pennsylvania Avenue open than for shutting it down. But it was closed, and it has stayed closed.

Now the same argument is being made for shutting down other parts of Washington — and it is unlikely that local officials will be able to stop it. "Trying to have an open city is hard, but our city is a working symbol of democracy," D.C. mayor Tony Williams told reporters recently. "We could make it really a lot safer by putting Jersey barriers around everything, but then we wouldn't have much of a city to protect."

Playing Nice?
That old devil ’bipartisanship.’

By Kate O’Beirne, NR’s Washington Editor

fter a month of nerve-racking tension, the news came that the battle had finally been joined: "Congress Resumes Partisan Warfare," declared a New York Times headline. And the report was accurate: By mid October, Democrats were howling about Republicans' plans to push their own proposals on tax cuts, airline security, energy, and trade. The GOP is realizing, none too soon, that just as the desire for a broad international coalition cannot be allowed to thwart our war aims, the hope of a bipartisan congressional coalition should not frustrate the efforts to promote growth in the economy, safety in the skies, and other national priorities.

An obituary for bipartisanship that ran on the Times's editorial page points up the fundamental problem — for Republicans — with the call for putting allegedly partisan concerns aside: When partisanship is shelved, the media play referee — and blow the whistle only on the Republican team.

Here's an example. Democrats were reportedly "stunned" when the president said that his energy proposal should be included in the economic-recovery package; they said that he was exploiting the crisis "to ram through drilling in the Alaskan wilderness and tax breaks for big energy companies." In fact, there was no need for Bush to "ram through" the GOP energy proposal; it enjoys bipartisan Senate support. And Senate majority leader Tom Daschle was hardly bipartisan in what he did next: When it was clear that a majority of the Democratic-controlled Energy Committee supported the package, he yanked the bill from the committee to prevent its approval.

But the Times editorial helpfully ex plains that if the president persists in pushing for this bill, which enjoys sufficient bipartisan support to pass the Senate, he will be responsible for the inevitable "filibusters and other disruptive tactics by opponents." In other words, liberal Democrats obstructing the Senate's will in order to promote environmental policies pleasing to the Times are disinterested public servants, but Republicans pressing for pro-growth tax cuts are destructive ideologues pursuing "what they know is an unsound economic approach." The phoniness of the media's notion of bipartisanship is evident, in that there's only one type of bipartisan coalition that meets with their approval: the kind in which Democrats and rogue Republicans join forces to advance liberal goals.

For the past month, Republicans have watched warily as White House officials appeared to hint that they are willing to sacrifice conservative policy goals — and the president's own policy preferences — in order to avoid the displeasure of House minority leader Dick Gephardt. The temptation to prolong Democratic cooperation following the September 11 attacks is understandable: Bush ran last year as "a uniter, not a divider," and dearly hoped to find in Washington some Democratic leaders like the late Bob Bullock, the powerful lieutenant governor who supported so many of then-Gov. Bush's policies in Texas. When cordial meetings and disarming nicknames failed to temper Democrats' familiar rhetoric about tax cuts for the rich, special favors for Big Oil, and extremist nominees who threaten civil rights, the president was clearly disappointed.

The unanimously positive reviews he has enjoyed for his conduct since September 11 appeared to present a new opportunity for a better policy relationship with the Democrats. It is, however, sadly obvious by now that Democrats are willing to provide that level of support only on issues beyond the water's edge. Gephardt, for example, was incensed when House Republicans decided to push an economic-recovery proposal that failed to include the Democrats' proposed billions in "stimulus" spending. The president's soaring popularity ratings have immunized him from direct criticism, so proxy targets — more easily demonizable — are blamed: Gephardt complained that "a strong minority in the majority party is putting the brakes on moving forward in a bipartisan way with measures that I think are very important."

On the evening of October 4, how ever, the tide turned against Gephardt's phony bipartisanship. Meeting with House Republican leaders at the White House, Bush said he thought an economic-recovery plan should focus on pro-growth tax cuts. According to House majority leader Dick Armey, the president then pointed out that plenty of new spending in the name of "stimulus" had already been approved. And Bush was right: So far this year, Congress has approved spending increases for next year that total $105 billion, including $60 billion in direct response to the September attacks. Armey then recommended that the House return to its usual practice of drafting and approving legislation through the committee system, rather than in the kind of bipartisan, bicameral leadership meetings that produced the airline-bailout bill and the initial emergency-recovery package. Armey reports that the president "didn't have to be convinced. He responded, 'Of course.'"

A week later, the Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee approved a $100 billion economic-recovery plan, including an elimination of the corporate alternative minimum tax, accelerated individual rate cuts, rebates for low-income workers, and a reduction in the capital-gains tax. The media referees, of course, cried foul over the party-line vote. The committee also — with the help of a couple of Democrats — approved a bill providing the president with trade-promotion authority; for this offense, the New York Times labeled Republicans unpatriotic wartime policy profiteers. (The news story began, "Disregarding the spirit of wartime bipartisanship . . .")

Worst of all, when House Republicans defend the president's position on enhanced airline security, the media completely ignore their policy arguments — for example, the fact that the Europeans and Israelis had bad experiences when public employees were performing the security duties — but are quick to accuse them of the basest partisan motives. According to CBS, Republicans who oppose federalizing airline baggage screeners "don't state their underlying fear that if baggage screeners become federal employees they'll probably join unions, and unions often support Democrats."

Prosecuting America's new war on terrorism is properly the administration's first priority, and the White House is right to want to avoid the kind of gratuitous partisan bickering that could sour congressional unity on the war front. But there is little reason for fruitless foraging for bipartisan consensus on crucial initiatives to improve the country's economy and security. In the end, the president himself — not Congress — will be held accountable for the economy and for airline security; he must insist on the most effective policies. On these and other important questions, there are profound differences between the parties, and these differences survived the September attacks. Democratic policy prescriptions were wrong for the country before September 11, and they remain wrong today. Ignoring this fact does the GOP — and the country — no favors.

The New Cold War
Familiar battle lines, unfortunately.

By David Pryce-Jones, NR Senior Editor

n front of our eyes, a new organizing principle is emerging in the world. Islamic extremism is an ideological challenge, and states have to respond to it accordingly. Another Cold War is taking shape. Its duration and scope are uncertain. President Bush is already speaking of a year or two, but some experts are forecasting as much as fifty years. The implications are global. Once more, people will be deciding what exactly freedom means to them.

Communist and Islamic extremism both have militaristic and imperial aims, directed to recruit where possible, and to attack elsewhere. Their claims to be universal imply the actual destruction of all other values. Communism turned out to be the Russian national interest in disguise. Soviet grievances against the West were unreal, but the expression of them was rational. In contrast, Islamic extremism has a restricted territorial base, and by definition cannot appeal to non-Muslims. The phenomenon arises from the complex interplay of an identity wounded by modernity, and the complete political and social failures of Muslim states. The grievances here are real, but their expression is irrational, even suicidal. Islamic extremism is therefore a more unpredictable and elusive enemy.

The failure of Muslim states seems to have taken the West by surprise. Decolonization, it was assumed after the world war, was the prelude to freedom. Emerging nationalist leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt were said to be "officers in a hurry," a phrase hiding the reality that under the khaki of their uniform were traditional tyrants intent on absolute rule. Such as it was, their modernization was at the expense of traditional Islamic identity. Fighting back, Muslims formed groups, some open, others clandestine, and all violent. In every country they appeared at first as a fringe minority, but dangerous to the state, therefore to be repressed. The Ayatollah Khomeini revolution in Iran fanaticized this minority to believe that power in other Muslim countries might be in their grasp.

A barbarous civil war between Islamic groups and the regimes in power has already spread through much of the Muslim world. Offering more of an identity than a program, Islamic extremists have been able to impose themselves only in Iran and Afghanistan, though in Algeria and even Egypt it has been — and still is — a close-run thing. During the past twenty years or so, fugitives from Islamic groups have been settling abroad, partly to escape the fearsome crackdowns in their homelands, and partly to pursue their cause in the countries of the West, where they exploit the rule of law and the structure of human rights that they have no intention of respecting for others.

Nobody knows how many such refugee extremists there are. Estimates range between 1,000 and 5,000. Organized to be self-contained, members of these groups cover their tracks with skill, making use of safe houses and false passports and identification papers. They appear to have acquired the techniques indispensable to subversion, with systems of communication, access to hidden funds, and the infiltration of "sleepers," or individuals planted to stay inactive until the moment arrives for whatever operation is planned for them. Communist cells throughout the West used to operate on just such lines, and Islamic extremists have shown themselves every bit as thorough and imaginative.

Most people in the West appreciated that the organizing principle of the Cold War had its either-or logic: for or against democracy. The NATO alliance was a symbol of the general will for self-defense, although in practice its military capacities and political inspiration were almost wholly American. Neither was the either-or logic absolute. Non-aligned countries played one superpower against the other, bidding for aid and weaponry in return for support. Following the example of Nasser, Arab countries specialized in this dubious variant of blackmail and made the Middle East an arena in which the Cold War was openly and regularly fought out. In Europe, the flashpoint was Germany, which had the particular misfortune to be divided between the two blocs, with the Berlin Wall to prove it. Successive West German leaders devised the policy of Ostpolitik to explore ways out of this predicament in the direction of neutrality and unification.

The Left in general did not share the either-or logic of the Cold War. "Better red than dead," was one of their slogans. A wide-ranging assortment of pacifists and Communist sympathizers, professors and students, Sixty-Eighters and Vietnam protesters, counter-cultural drop-outs, clergymen, Quakers, playwrights and actresses, historians and commentators in the mainstream press — revisionists one and all — liked to maintain that America was a greater threat to peace than the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of West Germans could demonstrate against the stationing in their country of the missiles that alone protected them. Defeatism appeared to accompany democracy.

Under the immediate shock of the terror attacks, public opinion in the West was unanimously in favor of striking back at the main culprit, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group, to be followed by measures for the long-term containment of Islamic extremism in all its forms. "Every nation has a choice to make," President Bush declared as he laid the basis for the world's new organizing principle. "In this conflict there is no neutral ground." Osama bin Laden confirmed it: "These events have divided the world into two camps, the camp of the faithful and the camp of infidels."

China, Russia, and India are among countries with private agendas in choosing to side against Islamic extremism. Muslim and Arab countries are in the old non-aligned position of extracting maximum advantage in return for any support they may give. Pakistan and Uzbekistan offer military facilities conditionally. Confused as ever, unpopular, and breeding extremists through its unjust handling of domestic affairs, the ruling family of Saudi Arabia depends on the United States for its security — as West Germany once did — but dares not come out openly and say so, for fear of offending Muslims.

Israelis and Palestinians face each other across the new ideological divide in a dilemma that bears comparison to Germany's in the Cold War. Here is a continuous flashpoint. Israel must share territory with Palestinians, a growing number of whom are proven Islamic terrorists, and who identify with bin Laden's cause, as he identifies with theirs. Exploring terms of compromise and neutrality in conditions of incompatibility, the Oslo peace process is to the Middle East what Ostpolitik was to Germany and central Europe. Proposals to separate the two peoples physically on the ground spookily evoke the Berlin Wall.

The moment the new organizing principles emerged, the same Cold War objectors of yesterday appeared as if they had been ready in the wings for a reprise. That too is spooky. Without a hiccup, the professors and students, actresses and clergymen, and all who used to hold that an aggressive United States was responsible for starting and pursuing the Cold War against a peace-loving Soviet Union, have adapted this self-accusation to present circumstances. The Left is again collecting petitions against war, mobilizing demon strations in major cities, pleading that humanitarian considerations ought to exclude any military measures — never mind the victims of September 11 — and calling for bin Laden to be brought before a court, an Alice-in-Wonderland prospect.

One egregious specimen typical among others in the media is an article in the Washington Post by Robert Malley. A member of President Clinton's National Security staff, Malley at present is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Lately he published a lengthy and casuistical defense of Yasser Arafat's no-saying at Camp David a year ago, and now he writes that there is no such thing as Islamic terrorism. There are simply Muslims who are angry at their own repressive regimes "and the American superpower that backs them." Malley might have checked himself to consider that the truly repressive regimes in the Muslim world are those of Saddam Hussein, Sudan, the ayatollahs in Iran, Qaddafi in Libya, the Assad dynasty in Syria . . . (and Malley's favorite Arafat is no liberal either). Far from backing these tyrants, in reality America has expressed censure, imposed sanctions, and sometimes taken outright military measures against them. Useful idiots are evidently with us always.

Bin Laden's declaration of war, broadcast on the Qatar-based television network al-Jazeera, has been widely judged a propaganda triumph, while faults of presentation are found with Bush. Articles suggest that in the minds of some women the handsome and soft-spoken bin Laden is already in their apartment. At this level Uncle Joe used to be admired for his moustache. Other articles whimper that this is five minutes before bioterror and apocalypse. "Better Islam than anthrax" — but it's not quite catchy enough for a slogan.

NATO declared that the attack on America constituted an attack on all its members, but so far as is known, Britain is the only NATO country yet to provide any material help. A typical French commentator is afraid that "the blundering American giant may overreact." Germany's most prominent television anchorman, Ulrich Wickert, writes that, while President Bush is no murderer or terrorist, he and bin Laden have the same intolerant "thought structures." Schoolteachers and lecturers in "peace studies" and of course the novelist Günter Grass are busy condemning American attacks on Afghanistan, and accusing the United States of trying to remake the world to suit itself. Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi uttered the self-evident truth that "we should be confident of the superiority of our civilization, which . . . guarantees respect for human rights and religion. This respect certainly does not exist in Islamic countries." European leaders bludgeoned Berlusconi until he qualified what he had said and half-apologized.

The propaganda war matters because we are in for another long haul, in which the black arts of secret services must play a major part. Intelligence is the only effective method for eliminating terror networks like al-Qaeda already established throughout the West. Intelligence involves the underworld of double-agents, collaborators, and informers, and runs the risks of entrapment, blackmail, bribery, and murder. In extensive police work in a dozen countries, hundreds of Islamic extremists have already been arrested. In the Cold War, the testimony of defectors and Soviet dissidents steadily influenced public opinion. The courageous writers Kanan Makiya and Fouad Ajami and others can do the same for fellow Muslims victimized by those who claim to speak and act for them.

Much can go wrong. A military campaign in Afghanistan faces formidable obstacles of terrain and climate. The Taliban may merge into an even more brutal successor regime. Bin Laden may escape and live to fight another day. Panicky pressure to establish a premature or badly defined Palestinian state could well push Israel, Arafat, and the local Islamic extremists into a three-cornered showdown with unforeseen consequences, perhaps even regional war. Cow ardly doublethink in Saudi Arabia or a coup by the mullahs in Pakistan might force those countries into the sphere of Islamic extremism. Unchecked, the misplaced defeatism of the Left is likely to demoralize public opinion as it did before.

Muslims have to define their identity for themselves; they alone can decide what part Islam has to play in their lives. The political and social failure of Muslim societies is not about to convert into success now or in the near future; outsiders anyhow have no say in the matter. But not long ago, the Free World created conditions in which people were able to liberate themselves from Soviet tyranny, and it has the chance to do the same now for those in the grip of another ideological tyranny.

Fatal Contact
The Western influence on Islamic radicals.

By John O’Sullivan, an NR Editor at Large

he more we learn about the men who destroyed the World Trade Center, the more mysterious they seem. That mystery does not, however, reside in their foreignness. Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and various Muslim clerics with walk-on parts, hectoring crowds in Pakistan, look exotic enough in their long beards and flowing robes. If we ran into such figures in our travels, we would not be surprised to discover that they had very different religious and political beliefs from our own; we would, indeed, expect it, and make every effort to understand their exact meaning and to avoid giving unintended cultural offense. We might even think these men more foreign, in the sense of more remote from our concerns, than they are in reality.

But the men who actually hijacked the planes on September 11 — men such as Hanji Hanjour, who flew a plane into the Pentagon, or Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania — looked just like any number of Middle Eastern graduate students we have all met on American campuses or at London parties. And this should not surprise us, because that is what — among other things — they were. Mohamed Atta, the apparent ringleader of the hijackers in America, had enrolled at a technical university in Germany to learn engineering. Other hijackers also fit this pattern: They were Western-educated, spoke English or German, and had modern American tastes in several respects. Their friends and families, now baffled by what has happened, often say things like: "But he loved America — everything from jeans to hamburgers." If we had met them, we would probably have thought them more American than, as it turns out, they were in reality.

Cultural appearances can be deceptive — especially when people move in two cultures simultaneously. Islam and the West have been living in close proximity for 1,400 years, and in the last 200 years there has been a good deal of cultural interpenetration. In this process, Islam has learned more about the West than the West has about Islam. Despite the scrupulous work of scholars such as Bernard Lewis and J. B. Kelly, the sheer practical impact of the expanding West on the rest of the world has meant that more ordinary Muslims have some sort of cultural sense of America than ordinary Americans do of the Islamic world. In the last thirty years especially, a combination of immigration, Hollywood, the open doors of Amer ican academia, and the rise of multinational corporations has meant that millions of Muslims have been absorbing the West's cultural messages.

Does that mean they have become Western or American? In some cases, it does. Many Muslim Arabs have settled in the West, married Americans, gradually adopted American mores, and become Americans with only the slightest trace of hyphenation. Over time they may well develop a distinctively American version of Islam and export it back to the Muslim heartland of the Middle East — just as American Catholics, by adapting to the originally Protestant liberalism of the United States a hundred years ago, helped by their growing influence to shift the Vatican in a liberal direction.

Whether that is the dominant response, however, will depend inter alia on what America and Americans do. For, as Mohamed Atta and his colleagues demonstrate all too horribly, there are other cultural possibilities for those living in two worlds. Some fiercely reject the new society into which they have moved. Its culture may strike them as corrupt or godless; its prosperity and power may awaken resentment rather than gratitude; and its internal critics may prove hospitable — and persuasive. Whatever the reason, some people reject an American future and ricochet backwards into their own tradition — except, of course, that the tradition they seek is no longer the uncomplicatedly comforting one of their youth but one subtly distorted by their rejection of American modernity.

At some point in his life — a Wall Street Journal article dates it in the mid 1990s — Atta became a born-again Muslim. He rediscovered his religion and his cultural roots: "He grew a traditional beard. He interrupted his graduate studies in 1995 to make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. In 1996, at the age of 27, he made out a will requesting a strict Muslim funeral. Women, especially pregnant women, and 'unclean people' were to be excluded. Mourners were instructed not to cry."

The Islam to which Atta "returned," however, was not one of the relatively relaxed strains available in the Arab world, but radical Islamism. This is a harsh, puritanical, politicized version of Islam, which — while it claims to return to the first traditions of the religion — actually couples them to radical strains in Western political thought. As U.P.I.commentator James C. Bennett has observed, radical Islamism is the "bastard child" of fundamentalist Islam and of the neo-Marxist theories of dependency that explain Third World poverty as the result of Western exploitation. These neo-Marxist theories are transparent nonsense — they are refuted by a mountain of evidence, notably by the fact that the European colonial powers grew richer, not poorer, after losing their colonies — but for someone from the Middle East, they are very comforting. In one fell swoop they account for the long decline of Islamic civilization after a millennium of great achievement, for the failure of today's Muslim societies to modernize and prosper, for the corrupt and cruel dictatorships that govern them, for their inability to "solve" the "problem" of Israel, and for the political and cultural dominance of the West. They offer the ever-soothing, catch-all explanation: "We wuz robbed."

And the Islamic fundamentalism that incorporates such theories might have had a further attraction for Atta. They reflected an experience that, in some respects, was like his own. As Daniel Pipes pointed out six years ago in First Things, radical Islamism was the invention of Westernized intellectuals at home in both Islam and the West — and sometimes more at home in the West:

Turabi of the Sudan has advanced degrees from the University of London and the Sorbonne . . . Abbasi Madani, a leader of Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), received a doctorate in education from the University of London. His Tunisian counterpart, Rashid al-Ghannushi, spent a year in France and since 1993 makes his home in Great Britain . . . Mousa Mohamed Abu Marzook, the head of Hamas's political committee, has lived in the United States since 1980, [and] has a doctorate in engineering from Louisiana State University . . .

As might be expected, the Islam shaped by such people is not a gentle recovery of tradition but an Islam reshaped into an aggressive modern ideology in the light of Western experience. In all sorts of ways, argues Pipes, they import Western concepts into Islamic practice. They seek to centralize the traditionally decentralized Islamic clerisy as it if were the Catholic Church. They see Islam less as a religion for saving men's souls and more as a political doctrine for running a society. They seek — contrary to long practice — to subject non-believers to Islamic sacred law. And in all these things they seek to increase the political power of the Islamic world as a main aim of Islam the religion.

In the Los Angeles Times, however, Khaled Abou El Fadl of UCLALaw School noted a key disjunction between traditionally Islamic views and the terrorist ideologies that claim to represent Islam. He pointed out that although almost all modern Muslim terrorist groups employ theological justifications for their behavior, in fact their ideologies, language, and symbolism are all drawn from the political "liberation" struggles of the last two centuries: such as hizb (party), tahrir (liberation), taqrir al-masir (self-determination), [and] harakah (movement) . . . are imported from national liberation struggles against colonialism and did not emerge from the Islamic heritage."

It would be going much too far, of course, to disassociate Islam entirely from the attack on the World Trade Center. All the perpetrators believed themselves to be pious Muslims fighting in a holy war and headed directly to Paradise; they were given support in this belief by some Muslim clerics; a significant section of Islamic opinion has applauded what they did; some passages in the Koran lend themselves to justifying such acts (others, of course, condemn them); and whatever else Atta and his accomplices murdered and died for, it was not solely from belief in Leninism. Some of the malign energy that inspired their crime was nurtured by the widespread Islamic resentment at the power and prosperity of the (once-) Christian West.

And that requires explanation. After all, many non-Westerners have visited the great capitals of the West, and tasted their cultures, in the last two centuries. Some frankly preferred their own customs and returned home. Of the great majority who were impressed, however, very few were also hostile and vengeful. Most wanted to continue living in the culture of freedom and prosperity even if they could not stay geographically in the West. They tried, sometimes naively, to transplant that culture into their own societies in the hope of effecting a renaissance in their own civilization. They wanted to return to the West frequently and, when that was not possible, they did so in imagination by subscribing to its books and magazines.

The difference between the reactions of those visitors and the response of a Mohamed Atta may lie less in their respective personalities than in the reception they received. Visitors in the 19th century encountered a more self-confident society — one that was proud of its achievements, and was prepared to proclaim its own superiority to societies that were less free and less prosperous. There were drawbacks to such civilizational egoism, of course. But the test of practice suggests that it invited admiration, whereas the West's recent cultural relativism (at best) and cultural self-flagellation (at worst) seem to invite contempt, hostility, and attack.

Another test of practice is about to begin: war. Whether the contempt for us exhibited by Atta, bin Laden, and much of the Muslim world is justified will now be demonstrated in the clearest possible way. But so what? Their opinion of us should matter much less to us than our opinion of ourselves. For in the end, our opinion of ourselves will determine their opinion as well.

In Castro’s Service
The undertold story of Cuba’s spying, and terror.

By John J. Miller, NR’s National Political Reporter

ttención! Attención!" snaps the female voice in Spanish at the start of each broadcast. To all but a few listeners, the message that follows is perfectly unintelligible: a long series of seemingly random numbers that drone on for 50 minutes. Just about anybody with a shortwave radio can hear them several times a day at various frequencies, though their intended audience is small. To these few recipients, however, they make exquisite and terrible sense — because they are spies in the service of Fidel Castro's Cuba.

It's not clear how often Ana Belen Montes tuned in to these so-called numbers stations, but there's little doubt that she did or that some of the signals were sent specifically for her. FBI agents on a search warrant last May sneaked into her apartment and checked the hard drive of a laptop computer she kept there. They found sequences matching those that had been broadcast previously, instructions on how to run them through a decryption program that turns the numbers into words, and messages she traded with Cuban spymasters.

On September 21, agents arrested Montes at the Defense Intelligence Agency's headquarters at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., where she worked as the DIA's top Cuba expert. Assuming the charges against her are true — she won't enter a plea before November 5 — Montes's actions probably will go down as the Cuban intelligence service's most spectacular penetration of the U.S. national-security apparatus. Montes had access to highly classified information and regularly briefed policymakers on matters involving Cuba. If Havana had been given a choice about where it would most like to place a spy, the sensitive DIA post held by Montes certainly would have made the short list.

How badly Montes damaged U.S. interests remains an open question. She surely doesn't rank with the Soviet Union's two deadliest American spies, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, even though their lawyers, Plato Cacheris and Preston Burton, now represent her. An FBI affidavit says she blew the cover of at least one agent (who survived the betrayal) and delivered "information relating to the national defense of the United States, with the intent and reason to believe that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of Cuba." Yet Montes is only part of a bigger problem — a broad espionage effort waged by Cuba against the United States that has brought death to Americans. There's even a startling connection between Cuba and the September 11 terrorist strikes.

As the Cold War recedes into history, there's been a growing suspicion that the United States takes the Cuban threat too seriously — and specifically that Cuba policy is "held hostage" to an outspoken minority of Florida swing voters. New evidence from the Montes case and elsewhere, however, strongly suggests that we haven't been treating the Cuban threat seriously enough.

If September 11 had been just another day, Montes probably would still be at large — and under the close watch of FBI agents. They only began to investigate her in May, acting on information whose source and nature remain undisclosed. They followed Montes around Washington all summer as she embarked on numerous roundabout journeys to pay phones, where — it is believed — she communicated with her handlers. Agents rummaged around her apartment twice and found additional proof linking her to Cuban intelligence. Normally the FBI does not pounce after only a few months of surveillance — sometimes it waits for years as it quietly builds a case against a spy and patiently tries to discover the identities of her contacts. Yet the FBI moved against Montes with unusual speed, taking her into custody less than two weeks after the terrorist attacks. The possibility that she would pass along vital information to the Cubans, who then might share it with America's other enemies, was a risk not worth taking.

Montes started working at DIA in 1985, and was assigned to Cuba seven years later. The FBI believes she's been a spy since at least the fall of 1996. She's tall and slender, looking a bit younger than her 44 years. Plenty of Cuba experts know Montes from attending her briefings or sitting with her at other meetings, such as those sponsored by Georgetown University's Caribbean Project. In public she was reserved, as intelligence officers are prone to be, but behind closed doors she left distinct impressions. "She was a severe person, a hard-edged person," recalls Richard Nuccio, a Cuba adviser in the Clinton White House. She was also well known for advocating a softened Cuba policy — to the point where at least two people with links to intelligence had expressed concern over her views long before anybody questioned her loyalty. Her motivation for spying remains a mystery: The FBI affidavit says nothing about payments. By all appearances she lived modestly, fighting her landlord over tenant dues and driving a Toyota Echo. She is of Puerto Rican heritage. And there don't seem to be any obvious expressions of Communist sympathy in her past.

After her arrest, an important 1998 DIA report — suggesting that Cuba no longer poses much of a strategic threat to the United States — was immediately called into question. As the DIA's senior Cuba specialist, Montes would have exercised a major influence over the final product. When the report was completed, in fact, defense secretary William Cohen considered it too weak. He toughened the language, though not to the extent Castro's strongest critics would have liked. The broader problem with the report, however, is that it reflects the views of the foreign-policy establishment, which continues to downplay Cuba. Castro has "done good things for his people," said secretary of state Colin Powell at an April 26 House hearing. "He's no longer the threat he was."

It's true that ever since the Soviet Union quit its role as patron, Cuba has suffered from chronic cash shortages, and it desperately relies on the tourist dollars of Canadian and European vacationers. Yet it does continue to pose a significant threat. Castro maintains the ability to spark a migration crisis whenever he wants, and Cuba is a money- laundering magnet. Even more worrisome is Cuba's biological-weapons capability. Castro may not be willing to provide his people with aspirin, but he has invested heavily in a biotechnology infrastructure with frightful capabilities. José de la Fuente, a top Cuban scientist who escaped the island by boat in 1999, said recently that Castro's minions know how to manufacture anthrax bacteria and the smallpox virus.

Then there's the espionage. By using an agent such as Montes to influence threat assessments, Havana may hope to build support for ending the U.S. economic embargo. A less menacing Cuba, after all, is a more attractive trading partner. A House vote on lifting the embargo drew 201 votes earlier this year — a failure, but tantalizingly close to success.

A more direct benefit from Montes involved specific knowledge of U.S. contingency planning — in other words, secret information on how the American government intends to respond to potential crisis situations. Shortly before Montes observed a war-games exercise put on by the U.S. Atlantic Command in Norfolk, Va., for instance, she received this message from Cuba: "Everything that takes place there will be of intelligence value. Let's see if it deals with contingency plans and specific targets in Cuba, which are prioritized interests for us." This type of knowledge helps Cuba understand how much it can provoke the U.S. without suffering consequences. What would happen, for instance, if it encouraged a throng of women and children to climb the fences at the Guantánamo Bay naval base? Or if it tried to spark a new Mariél boatlift incident?

If Montes represents one major prong of Cuban espionage, another recently has come to light in Miami. Over the last three years, the government has indicted 16 members of a spy ring called La Red Avispa, or the Wasp Network. Five admitted involvement following their arrests, another five were convicted in June, two more pled guilty in September, and four have fled the country. Just like Montes, they communicated with Havana by unlocking coded messages received over shortwave radios. The Wasp Network did just about everything, from counting takeoffs at a Key West airbase to attempting the penetration of military facilities. Their most successful operation, however, involved the infiltration of anti-Castro exile groups. "The Miami community is heavily penetrated," says Mark Falcoff, a Latin Americanist at the American Enterprise Institute. "It's full of provocateurs who try to embarrass and discredit Cuban-Americans. We saw them out in full force during the Elián González controversy."

Some of the Wasp Network's deeds were relatively modest, such as making hostile phone calls to Miami Herald editors in the name of anti-Castro groups; the point was to create tension between the press and certain Cuban-American leaders. Other actions, however, were monstrous. Two members, René González (code name: Castor) and Juan Pablo Roque (code name: German), succeeded in joining Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that flies private planes over the Florida Straits in search of people fleeing Cuba in rickety rafts. Once inside the group, they obtained closely held flight schedules, which they passed along to Wasp Network leader Gerardo Hernandez. He transmitted these to Havana in early 1996. Cuba then sent back an order: "Under no circumstances should agents German or Castor fly with BTTR or another organization on days 24, 25, 26, and 27." They didn't — and on February 24, 1996, three planes piloted by the Brothers departed on one of their humanitarian missions. There's been some dispute over whether they actually entered Cuban airspace, but none over the fundamental fact of what happened that day: A Cuban MiG jet destroyed two of the planes, killing four people. A week after the shootdown, Cuban intelligence sent its Miami agents a congratulatory message through a numbers station: "We have dealt the Miami Right a hard blow, in which your role has been decisive." They called their murderous effort "Operation Scorpion."

Some have speculated that one of the captured Wasp Network spies provided federal agents with the information that led them to Montes. This seems unlikely. "The Cuban intelligence service is one of the best in the world," says a former CIA official. They almost certainly would have built firewalls between Montes and the Wasp Network. Yet it's difficult to keep all their efforts completely compartmentalized.

What makes Cuban espionage especially troubling now is the Castro regime's longstanding support of terrorism. Cuba is one of the seven countries on the State Department's terrorism list. It may not compare to Iraq or the Taliban, but its indulgence of terrorists is beyond dispute. Last year, Cuba was the only country attending the Ibero-American Summit in Panama that refused to join a condemnation of terrorism. This spring, Castro toured Libya, Syria, and Iran. At Tehran University on May 10, the dictator declared, "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees. The U.S. regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up."

Some 20 fugitives from American justice currently call Cuba home, including Victor Gerena, who pulled off a $7 million bank robbery in Connecticut in 1983 as a member of the terrorist group Los Macheteros. He's currently on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, and much of what he stole is believed to have made its way to Cuba in diplomatic pouches. Los Macheteros is also responsible for the ambush of a Navy bus in Puerto Rico that left two sailors dead in 1979 and an attack on a Puerto Rico Air National Guard base in 1981 that wrecked eleven planes. Other terrorist links to Cuba involve more recent activities: On August 11, Colombian officials arrested three members of the Irish Republican Army as they returned from a part of the country controlled by the narcoterrorist group FARC. Two were explosives experts and the third, Niall Connolly, has been identified as Sinn Fein's Havana representative.

Then there's the bizarre case of Mohammed Raza Hassani, Nez Nezar Nezary, and Ali Sha Yusufi — three Afghan men recently detained in the Cayman Islands. They carried fake Pakistani passports and claimed to have gotten off a boat bound for Canada from Turkey. The police commissioner, however, determined that they actually had arrived by plane from Cuba. They were still in the Caymans on August 29 when a local radio station received an anonymous note saying that they share an association with Osama bin Laden. three agents are here organizing a major terrorist act against the U.S. via an airline or airlines," said the letter. The station gave it to the authorities. Soon after September 11, they tracked down its author, Byron Barnett, a local building contractor, who says his note was "pure speculation" and based on "a premonition." This incident has received scant attention from the media.

It's a startling story, perhaps even revelatory; then again, maybe there's nothing to it apart from amazing coincidence. But what is beyond doubt is that even though the Wasp Network has been busted and Ana Belen Montes is under arrest, those Cuban numbers stations continue to broadcast their coded messages several times each day.

Who is listening to them?

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