| THE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11 Ron Suskind New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-7432-7109-7 | ||||
| ISBN 0-7432-7109-7 | 367pp. | HC | $27.00 | |
Here I provide additional glimpses into the "War on Terror", gleaned from Suskind's book.
Justice Department officials John Yoo and Robert Dellahunt, mustering legal opinions to support the vice president's expansive view of executive prerogative, release a memo asserting that the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners of war do not apply to al Qaeda because, as a non-state actor, it is not a party to international treaties of war; that the president is not bound by international law because it is not formally recognized in the U.S. Constitution; and that in any case the War Powers Resolution of 14 September 2001 gives the president "sweeping authority with respect to the present conflict." 1
The State Department calls the analysis "seriously flawed." Nevertheless, on 18 January president Bush directs the Pentagon to ignore the Geneva Conventions. Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former JCS Chairman, expresses his concern that, by tossing aside the Conventions, we would lose precious moral authority and potentially expose our own soldiers to mistreatment. The president calls on White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to explain the authorized policy to Powell. Gonzalez writes that the war on terrorism is a new kind of war which requires "the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians."
A simultaneous debate is taking place on the effectiveness of the interrogation methods the CIA and Pentagon want to use. Dan Coleman, a career FBI agent who has experience with high-value suspects including the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, argues that such methods are not productive of good information. What you get instead, he says, is "a lot of garbage information and nothing you can use."
Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan at the end of March. Now recovered from gunshot wounds he suffered during the raid, the al Qaeda leader is harshly interrogated by CIA personnel. He tells them shopping malls were targeted by al Qaeda. Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, Customs, and various related agencies join local police to surround malls. Zubaydah says banks are a priority target, and FBI agents race to secure banks.
The questioning goes on. Are supermarkets targeted? Yes, al Qaeda plans to blow up several at a time. People will stop shopping. Agents rush to protect the nation's economy. What else? Nuclear power plants, naturally — and water systems, and apartment buildings. Each new class of target named2 receives a surge of frantic — and futile — attention. The efforts are secret, but with the thousands of people involved, word leaks out.
FBI agent Dan Coleman arrives at a private hanger at the airport to claim a prize: what may be one of the faces on the famous deck of playing cards depicting the most wanted leaders among the terrorists. This face is thought to be that of Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of those for whom a $25M reward is offered. In the pre-dawn darkness, Coleman accepts the face, along with the rest of the head, in a metal box. Although it is much decayed, having been dug up from the riverbed where it had lain until returning spring in Afghanistan released it, the hope is that it will positively identify bin Laden's deputy. Coleman stashes the box in his trunk and drives it back to Washington for DNA testing at FBI headquarters. Ultimately, the DNA (from a bit of still-living tissue in an anterior molar) is found not to be a match for Zawahiri's family. (The blood sample for matching is obtained from his brother Mohammed, being held by the Eqyptians.)
The FBI's Buffalo field office has been watching several suspicious men in the nearby city of Lackawanna. The CIA intercepts several e-mails from one of these men, Mukhtar al-Bakri, who has traveled to the Mideast. The messages discuss his upcoming wedding. In the past, "wedding" has been a code word for attack. Urgent conferences are held; the president's office is quickly notified; public alerts are considered. No one checks with the FBI, whose agents know that al-Bakri has actually gone home to get married.
Police in Bahrain arrest Mukhtar al-Bakri on the day of his wedding.
The arrest is ordered by the president and vice president of the U.S. Both the FBI and CIA protest. The day before, Bush raised the terror alert level. He travels to New York City on the following day, 12 September, to make the case for war against Iraq before the United Nations.
Described as looking "more like a scared twenty-three-year-old than a hardened jihadist", al-Bakri gives up the names of his six friends in Lackawanna, and tells how they had all trained the previous year at al-Farooq, an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan. Except for one who never returned to the U.S., these men are taken into custody. Along with al-Bakri, they soon become known as the "Lackawanna Six". Headlines about the capture of the first known potential terrorist "sleeper cell" support official talking points. Less well publicized is the fact that little evidence supports this characterization.
As ofttimes before, the CIA informs FBI's Manhattan field office that a suspect is due to enter the country. They supply the minimum basic "need to know" information — name, photo, flight details — and request that he be followed. As ofttimes before, FBI advises CIA that things are not so simple, that it needs to know more than just basic information, and that a coordinated surveillance effort must be arranged.
CIA personnel react with anger at this demand to break down the traditional barriers between the Agency and the Bureau. But the FBI stands firm. After heated consultations, the file is sent over to them. It is an eye-opener. The suspect has been e-mailing colleagues in the U.S. with plans to bomb synagogues and conduct other violent activities. The FBI's caution is borne out; it will be vital to keep close tabs on the fellow and everyone he contacts, which means cross-agency planning in advance of his arrival. He is due the following day. Intense discussion ensues, reaching the highest levels of both organizations. In the end, cooperation breaks down and the safe, cheap option is chosen. The suspect is a British citizen named Mohammed Sidique Khan. His name is put on a no-fly list.
When Khan arrives at Heathrow airport the following day, he is told that the U.S. has a problem with him and he may not board his plane. Without protest, he returns to his teaching job in Leeds and to masterminding action at home in England. Alerted now that he is known, he does this planning without leaving e-mail or other traces for the authorities. His plans come to fruition on 7 July 2005 in bombings that kill 56 and injure 700 in London.
Tenet reads a New York Times story that makes public what the CIA concluded six weeks previously: Ahmed Chalabi had told an Iranian official that the U.S. has broken the code used by Iran's intelligence agency.
The CIA had long distrusted Chalabi, as did State, for a variety of reasons. But the Pentagon was surprisingly persistent in sticking by him, even defying Bush's disapproval of Chalabi in a March meeting for two more months.
Jami Miscik has been the CIA's analytical chief for years. Now, Cheney wants her to declassify a portion of a report. Miscik knows that report generally concludes that the war in Iraq has aided the recruiting of jihadists, while the particular portion Cheney wants to make public will suggest the opposite.
Through intermediaries, Miscik advises Cheney this would not be a good idea. The vice president turns to Porter Goss, recently made head of the CIA. Goss has a deputy convey Cheney's displeasure to Miscik: "Saying no to the vice president is the wrong answer." Miscik has had enough; she replies that sometimes saying no to the vice president is what the CIA gets paid for. She immediately fires off a memo to Goss in support of her stand.
A few days later, she is informed that Goss reluctantly supports her decision. But she knows, at that point, that she will be replaced. A few weeks later, she is gone. Goss took over the CIA after George Tenet resigned under pressure. He soon advised the top brass that their sole purpose was to support the policies of the administration, and later confirmed it in an agency-wide memo.
Suspicion, both inside America and abroad, became the threshold for action. The stress created by this, in a nation ruled by laws and not men, would build steadily, month by month, then across years, as U.S. citizens were arrested or wiretapped and immigrants rounded up and deported, a stress that created cracks in the nation's foundation of established principles. Whether or not there was a legal "papering" of such activities was almost a technical point: long-established rules of evidence, and their companion standard of "probable cause," were overrun. Not that embracing a reduced standard produced demonstrable results. Lackawanna notwithstanding, after a year of frenetic activity by FBI—with backup from CIA and NSA—there was still no sign of active al Qaeda cells in the United States. These extraordinary means of high technology and hunch, with all their costs, had borne no fruit. – Pages 163-164 |
