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 erhaps
because NSA has increased its monitoring of the ether, it's been
hard to get through to the late chief of CIA's counterintelligence,
my old buddy James Jesus Angleton. But, early this morning, the
Ouija board functioned well, and I got a decent connection. He was
in high dudgeon.
JJA:
Did you see what those thumb-suckers at the FBI came up with? They
trotted out some graphologist who told us just what we wanted to
hear about the anthrax envelopes: It's probably some wacko American,
probably not even a Muslim, and probably a loner scientist-type
with his own lab. Feh!
ML:
Well, why not? It's a big country, with all kinds of people, after
all. We did produce the Unabomber, didn't we? Why shouldn't it be
somebody like that?
JJA:
It reminds me of the operation to assassinate the Pope. Remember
how the CIA told everyone in sight that it wasn't the Soviets? They
had no independent information, and there was every logical reason
and plenty of circumstantial evidence pointing to the Soviet bloc,
but somehow they "concluded" it couldn't have been the
KGB or the GRU, or one of the bloc services.
ML:
I remember it well. One day the Pope's private secretary asked me
how it could be that only the CIA was in doubt about the Soviet
role.
JJA:
Why don't you ask the Pope about this one? He'll probably be smarter
than the FBI.
ML:
I gather you don't buy the "lone-nut" theory...
JJA:
Pfui. We've got nearly 50 years' evidence on the terror network
that invariably leads us back to state sponsors. There was a drop-off
in terrorist activity for a few years after the fall of the Soviet
Empire, because the terrorist groups lost an enormous amount of
support, from training camps to safe houses to, above all, guidance
from professional intelligence services. So their former clients
in the Middle East took up the slack, and the Iranians — who
run one of the most brilliant and lethal intelligence services in
the world — increased their activity. And voilà —
the terrorists get stronger again. They start bombing our embassies
and our navy ships, and finally get so brazen that they strike here
at home. At the same time, the anthrax suddenly shows up. We know
that Osama had close ties with Iraq, and probably with Iran as well.
We know that Saddam has a big anthrax program. We know that Saddam
has the best imaginable motive — revenge — and yet we
find some guy who looks at handwriting who tells us it's a nutty
American, and we buy it. And this from an FBI that failed miserably
to infiltrate a sleeper network within the United States that had
been operating for years. It's all too convenient.
ML:
Not only convenient, but it undermines an aggressive policy toward
the terror states, doesn't it?
JJA:
And how! Because some of our policymakers seem to think that the
same standards you need in a courtroom should be applied to intelligence.
So if they can't prove Iraqi involvement beyond a reasonable doubt,
they can't punish Saddam. That's what I call "crackpot realism."
You almost never get that degree of certainty in counterintelligence,
but this is a case in which our survival is at stake, and you must
protect the country against likely scenarios.
ML:
Yes. After all, in this kind of business our enemies don't send
calling cards — and if there were a calling card, we'd have
every reason to think it was deceptive.
JJA:
Never mind that "wilderness of mirrors" talk. Saddam has
an anthrax program, and nobody doubts he'd use it against us if
he could. And it looks like even the secretary of state, who tried
so hard to deny to himself that Saddam was up to his neck in Osama's
operations, now has changed his mind. There are just too many proven
connections.
ML:
Yeah, the Czechs are now saying that Osama's guy, Atta, was discussing
terrorist attacks against American targets — with Iraqi intelligence
officers.
JJA:
Some of my sources at CIA tell me there are lots and lots of these
contacts, well beyond anything that's yet appeared in public.
ML:
So Iraq is next?
JJA:
I can't tell you about our own policymakers. I can only read the
minds of the bad guys. Occupational bias, and all that...
At which point
the Ouija board sparked out. But I'm gonna try again in a few days.
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