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June
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should
begin by saying that I'm hopeless with wiring diagrams, and unlike so
many Washingtonians I have never been fascinated by the bureaucratic balance
of power, which no doubt explains in part why I was such a lousy bureaucrat
myself. But I've got lots of experience with counterterrorism, and I do
not believe that you can fix what's wrong with our counterterrorist program
by rewiring the federal bureaucracy, however necessary that may be.
The problem with our intelligence services is not structure, it's culture. For more than 25 years they've been hammered into brain death by the scandal-crazed media and Congress. They've been hamstrung by guidelines so restrictive that as of September 10 the FBI was not even permitted to clip newspaper articles for their files unless they had reason to believe the people and organizations described in the articles were engaged in criminal activity, or preparing to commit criminal acts. And the CIA was not permitted to work with people who might have had "human-rights issues" in their past.
That's half the story. The other half is political: Every president since Jimmy Carter has declared war on terrorism, but George W. is the first president to wage war on terrorists. Even Ronald Reagan did very little (we bombed Libya once, and we caught a couple of bad guys overseas and locked them away in American jails), despite hundreds of American deaths, including servicemen, spies, diplomats, and the inevitable innocents. When the policy people saw that nothing was going to be done, they automatically shied away from bringing forward information that demanded strong action, because they knew that the top people would be angry. Read Bob Baer's memoir, See No Evil, or read Reuel Gerecht's various essays, and you will find that the CIA gradually eliminated from its ranks any gung-ho officers who really wanted to get to the heart of the terror network. And that was only logical, because the top people weren't going to act, and so they didn't want to hear the gory details about the terrorists. Such information would make them uncomfortable, and they didn't want it.
Over time, these habits became rules, and the intelligence community now has a set of instincts that prevent them from getting, analyzing, and interpreting hard intelligence on terrorism. How else can you explain the fact that as of September 10 we had not a single human agent in Iran, Iraq, or Syria? Or that, even months afterwards, George Tenet was proclaiming that there could not be active cooperation between the PLO and Iran, because Sunnis and Shiites didn't work together (in fact they had been working together for 30 years).
September 11 wasn't the result of poor bureaucratic organization, or inattentive supervisors, or poor communication between the various agencies. All these existed, to be sure, but they were not the cause of the debacle, and fixing them won't transform the government's ability to get the terrorists, or bring down the regimes that sponsor them. Moreover, the reorganization plan is a distraction. We should be bringing down the regimes and killing the terrorists, and to do that well requires political will and brave leadership.
The president has to rid himself of those of his top advisers who lack the political will to wage war against the terror masters, and fire those people who have failed to demonstrate bravery in leading their people. The top people in the intelligence community need to be replaced, and those military leaders who tell the president that it can't be done, or they just aren't ready, or we need to do something else first, should be replaced as well, and the people in the national security community who have told the president that he has to solve the Arab-Israeli question before the war can start also need to go.
Bureaucratic fixes may help something, but they won't solve our current problem. We need war leaders, not compulsive negotiators or management consultants. And we must attack soon, before the next assault.
Faster, please.