[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Honorable Commission, Toothless Report

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Honorable Commission, Toothless Report

July 25, 2004
 By RICHARD A. CLARKE 



 

Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its
extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World
Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the
commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a
bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the
public to draw many conclusions. 

Among the obvious truths that were documented but
unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration
did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading
Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation.
(Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of
Americans have already come to these conclusions on their
own. ) 

What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had
no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in
9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al
Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts
may cause many people to conclude that the Bush
administration focused on the wrong country. They would be
right to think that. 

So what now? News coverage of the commission's
recommendations has focused on the organizational
improvements: a new cabinet-level national intelligence
director and a new National Counterterrorism Center to
ensure that our 15 or so intelligence agencies play well
together. Both are good ideas, but they are purely
incremental. Had these changes been made six years ago,
they would not have significantly altered the way we dealt
with Al Qaeda; they certainly would not have prevented
9/11. Putting these recommendations in place will
marginally improve our ability to crush the new,
decentralized Al Qaeda, but there are other changes that
would help more. 

First, we need not only a more powerful person at the top
of the intelligence community, but also more capable people
throughout the agencies - especially the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. In other
branches of the government, employees can and do join on as
mid- and senior-level managers after beginning their
careers and gaining experience elsewhere. But at the F.B.I.
and C.I.A., the key posts are held almost exclusively by
those who joined young and worked their way up. This has
created uniformity, insularity, risk-aversion, torpidity
and often mediocrity. 

The only way to infuse these key agencies with creative new
blood is to overhaul their hiring and promotion practices
to attract workers who don't suffer the "failures of
imagination" that the 9/11 commissioners repeatedly blame
for past failures. 

Second, in addition to separating the job of C.I.A.
director from the overall head of American intelligence, we
must also place the C.I.A.'s analysts in an agency that is
independent from the one that collects the intelligence.
This is the only way to avoid the "groupthink" that
hampered the agency's ability to report accurately on Iraq.
It is no accident that the only intelligence agency that
got it right on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the
Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department
- a small, elite group of analysts encouraged to be
independent thinkers rather than spies or policy makers. 

Analysts aren't the only ones who should be reconstituted
in small, elite groups. Either the C.I.A. or the military
must create a larger and more capable commando force for
covert antiterrorism work, along with a network of agents
and front companies working under "nonofficial cover'' -
that is, without diplomatic protection - to support the
commandos. 

Even more important than any bureaucratic suggestions is
the report's cogent discussion of who the enemy is and what
strategies we need in the fight. The commission properly
identified the threat not as terrorism (which is a tactic,
not an enemy), but as Islamic jihadism, which must be
defeated in a battle of ideas as well as in armed conflict.


We need to expose the Islamic world to values that are more
attractive than those of the jihadists. This means aiding
economic development and political openness in Muslim
countries, and efforts to stabilize places like
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Restarting the
Israel-Palestinian peace process is also vital. 

Also, we can't do this alone. In addition to "hearts and
minds" television and radio programming by the American
government, we would be greatly helped by a pan-Islamic
council of respected spiritual and secular leaders to
coordinate (without United States involvement) the Islamic
world's own ideological effort against the new Al Qaeda. 

Unfortunately, because of America's low standing in the
Islamic world, we are now at a great disadvantage in the
battle of ideas. This is primarily because of the
unnecessary and counterproductive invasion of Iraq. In
pulling its bipartisan punches, the commission failed to
admit the obvious: we are less capable of defeating the
jihadists because of the Iraq war. 

Unanimity has its value, but so do debate and dissent in a
democracy facing a crisis. To fully realize the potential
of the commission's report, we must see it not as the end
of the discussion but as a partial blueprint for victory.
The jihadist enemy has learned how to spread hate and how
to kill - and it is still doing both very effectively three
years after 9/11. 

Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the
National Security Council, is the author of "Against All
Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/25clar.html?ex=1091777733&ei=1&en=350e883333efbc41


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