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October
15, 2002 9:00 a.m. |
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've
been having real difficulty getting through to my favorite intelligence
analyst, the late CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton,
but late last night I finally got the ouija board to work properly, and
the old Yale alum was full of stimulating ideas.
Like everyone else in the Washington area, I've been thinking about the series of assassinations, and I was sure he had, too.
ML: So what do you think?
JJA: It could be anything from a lone nut — always Americans' favorite hypothesis when something terrible happens — to an organized terrorist cell. Americans don't like to face the possibility of an active conspiracy, even though there are lots of them at work in the country, from mafias to street gangs. And you pointed out in The War Against the Terror Masters that we had detailed information on three Arab terrorist sleeper networks inside the United States as early as 1981.
ML: Thanks for the plug. I keep remembering the chilling promise from Iran's #2 thug, former President Rafsanjani, that his country would respond to Bush's condemnation of the Islamic Republic. He said they'd reply "in the heartland of America."
JJA: Sure. This could be a probe, a test to see how well we deal with it, how much panic they can create with it, and our methods for coping. If it is a relatively sophisticated terror group — something like Hezbollah, or its ally al Qaeda, for example — by now they have a lot of useful information, particularly about our methods of getting information. That's particularly important if they intend to expand the attacks on a larger scale — you know, similar assassinations in several cities all at once.
ML: Why is it so important that they know how we get our information?
JJA: Because they will want to deflect our investigations. The more they know about the information flow, the easier it will be for them to put deceptive and misleading data into the pipeline, and the harder it will be for us to put psychological pressure on them.
ML: For example?
JJA: Well, take the white van for example. There have been several reports of a white truck, a white van, and so forth at several of the shooting sites. This is the sort of thing that captures the imagination, which is exactly what they would want. Ideally, they will have law-enforcement people obsessing over the white van while the killers are driving around in a red Mustang convertible or something. You can be positive that as soon as another shot is heard, half the world will look around for the white truck or van, and it will be harder to spot the real getaway vehicle.
On the other hand, if it really is a lone nut — and lone nuts certainly exist, don't get me wrong — then he or she may very well drive around in a white van every time as part of his whacko challenge to the world at large, a form of bravado.
ML: So there's no evidence so far that points in one direction or the other?
JJA: Not so far as I can tell. Of course, it's hard to get anything beyond the popular press up here, so I don't know enough to have a really informed opinion. However, if I were in the government, I'd be yelling at all my colleagues to take the Washington case as a model for future developments, and to plan how to react if this sort of thing spread. It may even spread if it's not terrorism, after all; there are always lots of copycats around, and all the publicity will probably encourage others to do similar things.
ML: Anyway, we pay our government to protect us against worst-case scenarios, right? So they should always assume the worst and hope for the best...
JJA: Yes. Especially at a time when the worst is happening with a certain frequency.
— Michael Ledeen's new book, The War Against the Terror Masters, has just been published by St Martin's Press.