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From: Edward Jay Epstein
To: Daniel Benjamin
Subject: Al-Qaida, Pawn of Nations
Dan,
You can doubt that a state sponsor
can hide its authorship of terrorism if, and only if, you
assume that American counterintelligence is omniscient. I
do not make that assessment of U.S. counterintelligence, and
perhaps that is where we differ on the issue of state-sponsored
terrorism.
May I also suggest that your confidence
in the media is misplaced? You say "I'm convinced—by my
friends in the intelligence world and the accounts not just
in the NewYork Times but also in the Los Angeles
Times, Newsweek, and elsewhere—that the
source of the al-Ani/Atta story recanted." The New York
Times story, as I already pointed out, was based
on a fabrication. The Newsweek story of April
28, 2002, did report that "the Czechs quietly acknowledged
that they may have been mistaken about the whole thing."
That version was repeated in other newspapers, including
the L.A. Times. However, on May 3, in response
to those stories, the interior minister, Stanislav Gross,
called an extraordinary press conference and stated, "I
draw on the Security Information Service information, and
I see no reason why I should not believe it." As far as
anyone recanting, Gross said he had consulted with the chief
of the counterintelligence service, Jiri Ruzek, on May 2
in order to find out whether the Czech intelligence service
had any new information that would cast doubt on the meeting.
"The answer was that they did not. Therefore, I consider
the matter closed." So the Czech government did not recant,
nor did its source recant. Don't be confused on this issue
by the fog
of journalism generated by its persistent clip files.
As for the CIA, Director George
Tenet testified June 18 before the Joint Inquiry Into Terrorists
Attacks: "Atta allegedly traveled outside the U.S. in early
April 2001 to meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in
Prague; we are still working to confirm or deny this allegation.
It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias
since we have been unable to establish that Atta left the
U.S. or entered Europe in April 2001 under his true name
or any known aliases." That is hardly a denial: It is a
report of an investigation in progress, and, as you know
from the botched investigation of the first World Trade
Center attack, such determinations take time. I suggest
that before rushing to judgment based on flawed media reports,
you might wait until the CIA completes its investigation,
even if that requires interviewing Consul al-Ani in Baghdad.
But let's get beyond Prague and
go to your central point: "a paradigm shift had taken place—that
the real terrorist threat came increasingly from 'non-state
actors,' not from states." Here we disagree. I submit that
state sponsors always have been, and remain, crucially important
to terrorist organizations.
States, and only states, have embassy
bases in which their officers are protected by diplomatic
immunity, diplomatic pouches, and courier planes (which
by treaty cannot be searched for weapons), consulates (which
can issue travel documents to agents), secure enciphering
of communications, and state banks (which can transfer virtually
untraceable money to the accounts of operatives). They also
have internal security services to threaten and compromise
relatives of prospective agents. No free-lance group has
such
resources.
Let us not forget that al-Qaida
was a state-supported organization from its inception. When
it (or its precursor) acted as an anti-Soviet mujahideen
group in Afghanistan, it was backed by the United States,
Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. After it broke with Saudi Arabia
over the first Gulf War against Iraq, it was backed and
quartered by the Sudanese government. After the U.S. Embassy
bombings in 1998, it moved to Afghanistan where it received
safe haven from the Taliban government, which was in turn
backed by Pakistan and its intelligence service, ISI. It
was because it had safe haven in Afghanistan that it could
organize its operations. After the U.S. government and Pakistan
deprived it of this state support in November 2001, it has
not been able to organize a single successful attack in
America.
Other jihadist terrorist organizations,
despite their nominal independence, could not exist without
state sponsorship. For example, Harakat-ul-Ansar in Kashmir
depended almost entirely on Pakistan and its ISI training
camps in Afghanistan. Yet on the State Department list that
you refer to, Pakistan was not included among the seven
state sponsors of terrorism. The relationship between state
sponsors and your "non-state actors" often involves murky,
and temporary, marriages of convenience. Yossef Bodansky,
the former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism
and Unconventional Warfare, wrote in his 1999 book on Bin
Laden that "terrorist operations in several parts of the
world now attributed to bin Laden were actually state-sponsored
operations."
True, as you point out, "non-state
actors" have become increasingly important, but, in my view,
it is a mistake to assume they are necessarily isolated
phenomena. Some may be acting alone, and some may have covert
backing from hostile states. After all, isn't camouflage
the true art of the state?
It is in this context that I deem
it worth pursuing the investigation into whether or not
the perpetrators of 9/11 had state support.
Do you?
Best Regards,
Ed Epstein
From:
Daniel Benjamin
To: Edward Jay Epstein
Subject: A Prague Orgy
Wednesday, April 2, 2003, at 3:45 PM
PT
Ed—
Enough with Prague! Why don't you
bring up Ansar al-Islam, Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, and the reported
cell in Baghdad? More of this and I'll defenestrate myself!
I'm wounded, too, that you could
allege that I place too much trust in the Fourth Estate.
Never mind that my near-decade in the business at Time
and the Wall Street Journal gave me biological
immunity to the malady you diagnose. As you know, we also
devote a long chapter in Sacred Terror to the question
of why America slept while the threat of al-Qaida was on
the rise, laying much of the blame on the press. American
journalists were lazy, uncritical, and at their pack-mentality
worst in reporting on the bombing of Khartoum, Sudan, in
1998 and downplaying the danger thereafter. Nor were we
kind to the New York Times, which produced a daisy
chain of phony scandals stretching from Whitewater to China
satellites to Wen Ho Lee that had the country distracted
by all the wrong things.
No, I'm not relying just on press
reports—though it's worth noting that the Independent
reported that British intelligence dismissed the al-Ani-Atta
story, and Der Spiegel said the German spooks had
done the same—but also on the fact that the administration
gave up on the issue. Do you really think Colin Powell would
have gone to the Security Council armed with just that paltry
list of terrorist connections if he could have pointed to
Prague as well?
Let's turn things around: Even
if an Iraqi intelligence agent met with Mohamed Atta in
Prague, it would be interesting and worrisome but not decisive.
I apologize for the sin of quoting myself, but when asked
this question by USA Today (Dec. 3, 2001) and many
others, I said, "In that part of the universe, the part
occupied by Muslims who hate Americans, there are bound
to be some (al-Qaida) contacts with Iraqi agents, even some
who are known as such." There may have been Iraqi spies
within al-Qaida, keeping an eye on the group. There were
likely individuals who worked for Baghdad and then joined
up with Bin Laden. The point is that establishing a real
relationship in which the two sides were working on joint
projects for common goals requires a lot more. One meeting
would not a relationship make.
Which brings me to your point about
U.S. intelligence capabilities. I don't think that the CIA—and
the herd of other acronyms in the intelligence community—is
omniscient. But it is very difficult to hide serious ties
between a government and a terrorist group. We have a hard
time spying on terrorist organizations, but governments,
which have buildings with telephones and faxes and employees
who will trade information for money, are easier to keep
an eye on. When terrorist groups and governments work together,
they negotiate over targets, finances, materiel, and tactics.
That affords plenty of opportunity for detection. My judgment
that we would have seen more evidence of cooperation is
based on the pretty extensive trail left by state sponsors,
including the Iraqis, working with other terrorist groups.
Given this empirical record, we would need some explanation
for why there is no analogous record regarding al-Qaida
and Iraq. And, by the way, even if we accepted the most
robust administration accounts of Iraqi links to Zarkawi
and Ansar al-Islam (which, incidentally, has been a remarkable
group in getting support from both the Iraqis and the Iranians—I
guess there is a big demand for those who want to attack
America's Kurdish friends), I think we would still want
more information on a Baghdad/al-Qaida relationship before
going to war against Iraq. As I fear we are about to find
out, the costs of turmoil in the region and the huge opening
that we have given jihadists—Iraq will be the central
theater of operations for terror against Americans for a
good while to come—have not been adequately balanced against
that possible nexus.
You raise good points about the
issue of states and the new terrorism. I'm not going to
pretend that this isn't a complex picture. But your description
of the advantages that states have does not note that al-Qaida,
at least for the last eight years, appears not to have relied
on embassies, diplomatic pouches, other privileged communications,
or state banks for its operations. With the critical exception
of territory on which to train and hide out, virtually everything
it needed was provided by its leadership, cells and network
of financial supporters. It has resources few states can
muster. What country, after all, could assemble a team of
19 suicide operatives? Maybe Iran. Perhaps Iraq will show
it can, too.
Let's clear up one misconception
that has crept into our discussion. You say in closing,
"It is in this context that I deem it worth pursuing the
investigation into whether or not the perpetrators of 9/11
had state support." That implies that there has been no
such inquiry. I've been out of government since the end
of 1999, but I cannot imagine that this issue has not been
chewed over many times in the intelligence community. After
every terrorist attack, our spies and all our friends' spies
around the world would be tasked to check all their sources
to examine exactly that question. That would be standard—and
it looks like all that turned up was that lousy story from
Prague. Unless the quality of operations has fallen dramatically,
that question would be asked over and again as time went
by. Especially when you have an administration that believes,
as the Bush team does, that states remain the core issue
in terrorism.
OK, I've tried to use the powers
of sweet reason. Can I buy you a few rounds of Pilsner Urquell
and see if that will do it?
All the best,
Dan
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