Terrorism & Jihad – Page 13 – Public Intelligence Blog

Worthwhile primary research,

June 27, 2004

Marc Sageman

On balance this book is a very fine review of the actual background and motivations of over 150 members of four specific terrorist networks: the Central Staff around Osama bin Laden, the Core Arabs, the Maghred Arabs, and the Southeast Asians.The author, who does have intelligence experience and is not just an ordinary foreign service officer, gets high marks for making excellent use of open sources of information, for emphasizing the role of Egypt as a source of terrorism and Israeli behavior against Palestine as the primary catalyst for terrorism now directed against Americans and other Western nations (and recently, Asian nations), and for documenting the distinction between the near enemy (corrupt Muslim regimes) and the far enemy (the West), a distinction all the more relevant because US actions against Iraq brought the far enemy near, and changed the dynamics of the global war on terrorism in favor of the terrorists.

Pages 65-68 offer a superb overview of the nuances of open sources of information, including a useful caveat on “experts” that are only as good as their discipline in seeking out and validating the sources they claim as their foundation. From my own role as a former spy and now global proponent for improved use of open sources of information to product open source intelligence, I regard the author's methodical review of sources and their dangers to be among the very best I have ever seen. His details on press misinformation and the laziness of journalists, and his understanding of how many “leads” about terrorists are actually more sinister and selfish efforts to settle personal scores by fabricating the leads to destroy others using American power, are clear signs that this author is a top-notch professional.

In general the book and the original research by the author confirm what earlier scholars of revolution (Chalmers Johnson, Ted Gurr, Eckstein, among others) have documented in the past, to wit that most top-notch terrorists are middle-class, smart, educated beyond the norm, and grow into their motivation. They are *not* crazy and suicide is a rational choice for them, not an aberrant behavior.

I found the author's observation that recruitment is a bottom-up self-selected process rather than a top-down “seek out and recruit” process, quite fascinating, especially when the author makes the point that these people are NOT brainwashed. This is about a conflict of ideas, of ideals, of perception, and of context, and America is clearly not able to field the “idea army” and is not able to be competitive with Bin Laden in the war for the hearts and minds of these hundreds of thousands of prospective terrorists.

Most importantly, the author documents that Bin Laden is not your typical terrorist, is not seeking a controlled network, and is perhaps most brilliant for letting thousands of cells blossom with a little financial nurturing and a lot of social liberty.

The author documents the return of kinship as a source of power–kinship and social networking as means of organizing, as means of providing security, as means of radicalizing supporters.

The book is disappointing in two respects–a cursory conclusion as to how to marshal global resources against their severe threat, and no reference to the Pakistani and Hamas variants of terrorism, nor to the overlapping networking of ethnic criminal, corrupt government, and motivated terrorist networks.

For those interested in understanding the terrorist threat at the individual level of detail, I recommend this book together with Yossef Bodansky's classic on “Bin Laden: the Man Who Declared War on America” and Steve Emerson's more recent “American Jihad.” However, for a broader strategic understanding of the emerging threats and the reasons why billions are increasingly against America, I suggest the Amazon customer consider the several books in my Emerging Threats List and my Blowback List (“see more about me” should really say “see my other reviews and specific lists”).

I believe this author has more to offer, and would be interested in a second book from him, one that answers the specific question: “How must America behave, what pathologies of American corporate and government action must be corrected, if we are to live in peace with billions of faithful Muslims?” The author has helped us understand the core of the terrorist networks that are capable of bringing down America. Now it might be helpful if he turns his medical eye on our own mind-sets, and tells us how to heal ourselves.

2004/05/152009/12/04

Review: Against All Enemies–Inside America’s War on Terror

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Terrorism & Jihad

Love Him or Hate Him, He's Got It Largely Right,

May 15, 2004

Richard A. Clarke

You cannot discuss 9-11 or Iraq, and be credible, without having read this book carefully and thoroughly (many of the other reviews strike me as glib, superficial, and not representative of having actually read the book).Clarke begins by pointing out that four US Presidents, not one, are responsible for the over-all failure.

Clarke strikes out at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, throughout the book.

Clarke confirms both all the reports of CIA failing to tell FBI, FBI leaders ignoring their own field reports and consequently failing to tell the White House clearing house on terrorism, of any and all the indicators and warnings received from June 2001 to September 10 2001. Clarke confirms that as of January 2001, despite a decade or more of Al Qaeda activism, “most senior officials in the administration did not know the term.”

The historical review, going back to the Iranian revolution of 1979 (which overturned a CIA coup much earlier) and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (which mobilized global jihad), is quite helpful. The failure of the White House to kill the Republican Guard in the first Gulf War, and the post-Gulf War decision to put thousands and thousands of US contractors into Saudi Arabia, thus further inflaming Saudi dissidents, and the related misadventures in Lebanon as well as over-tolerance for Israeli aggression on the Palestinians, are all put into useful context. The book begins with a solid meticulous review unlike any other I have found.

CIA and FBI both take substantive and deserved beatings. The CIA Directorate of Operations–with the full backing of the DCI– cannot be considered to be anything other than “chickenshit” in the manner in which it blocked just about every proposed initiative including the arming of the Predators and the insertion of language-qualified personnel into Afghanistan.

Clarke lists four strategic mistakes: 1) CIA becoming overly dependent on the Pakistani intelligence service; 2) CIA importation to the Afghanistan jihad of Arab extremists it did not understand; 3) USG's quick pull-out from Afghanistan without flooding them with water, food, medicine, and security first; and 4) US ignorance of and failure to help Pakistan stabilize itself and survive the deadly mix of millions of Afghan refugees and thousands of radicalized Arab Muslims.

The Saudi government's sponsorship of Bin Laden as a religious revolutionary with a global mission beginning in 1989 cannot be denied. The book documents what we knew and when we knew it, and how we chose to ignore it.

1993-1994 were clearly turning point years–both the 1993 World Trade Center car bombing, and the discovery of a network of suicidal terrorists based in the US and tied to the blind Muslim preacher in Brooklyn, should have but did not lead to a nation-wide cleansing and appropriate border controls and foreign intelligence measures. Al Qaeda was formed in 1990. It would be five years before CIA and the FBI would realize this.

On page 84, Clarke makes my day by providing the ultimate OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) story. After ordering a strike on Iraqi intelligence headquarters, Clinton refused to go on TV until it was confirmed. The $35 billion a year intelligence community could not confirm it–no spies or agents on the ground, satellites out of position, etcetera. Bill Clinton, without telling anyone, called CNN, CNN called its Jordan bureau, whose cameraman had a cousin who lived near the intelligence headquarters, who confirmed the strike.” Got to love it–all money, no eyes. When will Congress get it!?

Clarke confirms the many ugly stories about CIA's operational incompetence in Somalia (professionals will recall we sent old dogs without language skills, two of whom went nuts, literally, afterwards). The following quote should be hung in CIA's entryway until we get a serious clandestine service: “They had nobody in the country when the Marines landed. Then they sent in a few guys who had never been there before. They swapped people out every few weeks and they stayed holed up in the U.S. compound on the beach, in comfy trailer homes that they had flown in by the Air Force.” Sure, there have been some improvements, but as CIA operations super-star Reuel Gerecht says, until diarrhea is accepted as part of the job description, the DO will never be real.

Clarke sums up the Clinton era by saying that policy was good, and intelligence bad. The bureaucracy was not willing to take terrorism seriously nor to work as a team. He sums up the Bush the Second era by saying that both were bad. Clarke slams George Tenet repeatedly, identifying 1994 as the year in which he blew the chance to nail Bin Laden and the Saudis early on.

Clarke fails Congress for failing America in 1995, when its oversight should have identified the failures of the past two years, and moved to correct them.

The Atlanta Olympics stand out as a major success story, and I emphasize this to note that there were successes, and there were extraordinary new means developed of planning, of inter-agency coordination, of rapid response. The Secret Service emerges from Clarke's book with its reputation much enhanced.

Saudi mendacity and Canadian complacency (the latter fixed since 9-11, the former not) get special mention. Prince Bandar is labeled a liar on more than one occasion.

There are many other important points raised by this book, including specific recommendations for addressing our global vulnerability to terrorism, and they will not be listed here. Buy the book.

One final comment: this is a very intelligent man who has actually read books and done some cross-cultural historical thinking. He laments the fact that politicians with power tend to view visionaries with knowledge as nuts (page 131). This is a brilliant book that should be read in detail, not–as Rich Armitage confessed to the 9-11 Commission on C-SPAN–the way Washington reads: checking the index for one's name. Washington has become stupid. Richard Clarke is not.

2004/01/252010/11/12

Review: Militant Islam in Southeast Asia–Crucible of Terror

5 Star, Religion & Politics of Religion, Terrorism & Jihad

Superb Book, Shows what OPEN Sources Provided, Great Speaker,

January 25, 2004

Zachary Abuza

I have the advantage, in reviewing this book, of having heard the author present his views in a superb illustrated briefing that held 150 government intelligence professionals glued into their seats and fixated on the author's rapid-fire compelling presentation.This man is a brilliant scholar who has returned to the almost lost art of combining persistent field work with foreign language open sources (both printed and oral), and thoughtful analysis.

Across the board, from his narrative to his footnotes to his bibliography to his index, this book is as good as it gets. This is a world-class contribution to our understanding in three areas: 1) what can be known about terrorism and militant Islam from open sources of information (but is being largely ignored by the so-called professional intelligence agencies that are obsessing on secret sources and methods; 2) what governments in Southeast Asia are and are not doing about it (in many cases, abusing American naiveté or being put off by American arrogance; and 3) where militant Islam is going in this area–be afraid, be very afraid.

If all academics were this good, we would not need spies. This book and this author represent the very best scholarship that one could ask for. The author is the Program Director for East Asian Studies and associate professor of international politics at Simmons College. Goggling him yields a fine selection of interviews and Congressional testimony.

2004/01/172009/12/04

Review: An End to Evil–How to Win the War on Terror

5 Star, Future, Politics, Terrorism & Jihad

Has Some Real Gems, Documents Authors' Bad Points as Well,

January 17, 2004

David Frum

There are some real gems in this book. The authors:1) Document the split between the hard-line neo-conservatives who have captured the mind of 43, and their growing (and increasingly public) disrespect for 41 and for General Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State and former General Colin Powell.

2) Are correct in their condemnation of the Clinton national security team for being weak and incompetent. Any Democratic candidate foolish enough to appoint such individuals as their advisors is not smart enough to beat 43.

3) Make it clear that the top priority for neo-conservatives in the war on terrorism is not overseas action, but the implementation of a national identification card system here at home.

4) Are correct in their condemnation of US-based Muslim charities and clerics (and FBI agents of the Muslim faith) unwilling to speak out against Islamic radicalization and those who recommend jihad in America, abusing our freedom of speech. They are also correct when they propose to end all tax exemptions and breaks for those that fail to condemn terrorism and fatwas against Americans.

5) Are correct when they point out that the trillions of dollars we have spent on national intelligence have resulted in a vacuum on both Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and a lack of knowledge about terrorist financing.

6) They are correct when they emphasize the importance of funding the education and elevation of women into power within Islamic societies.

7) Are correct when they point out that with the exception of Jordan, no Arab country has been willing to give Palestinians a break–no access to schools, ownership of land, or passports. Lebanon, they say, forbids Palestinians from 72 professions.

8) Are correct when they point out that we are “fighting the war on terror with the same people and the same bureaucracies that so conspicuously failed us on 9/11.” They are especially powerful when they criticize the CIA for failing to collect, read, translate, or understand the openly published writings of Khomeini during the Carter years–CIA is operating on perhaps 2% of the available global knowledge because it obsesses on spying and disrespects open sources of information in 29 languages–something Herb Meyer understood when he was Special Assistant to then DCI Bill Casey.

8) Are correct when they characterize the US Army specifically, and the entire US military generally, as “forces of the past, built to counter threats that no longer exist.”

9) Are correct to emphasize how the U.S. Government as a whole is completely fragmented and lacking in an inter-agency management and coordination structure that both Kissinger and Rubin have suggested is urgently required to keep pace with the threats and demands of the modern world.

10) Are correct to slam the FBI for being incompetent at counter-intelligence, and to call for a new national homeland security agency reporting to the secretary for homeland security. They do however overlook the equal importance of funding state and local intelligence centers and counterintelligence personnel.

11) Are correct to emphasize that US free trade agreements with various nations should demand that the nations sign the same agreement with one another (e.g. in South Asia).

12) Are correct to point out that the United Nations and its focus on “armed attack” is completely out-dated, and that America should increase and sustain its support to the UN only on condition that the UN modernize both its by-laws and its operating procedures.

13) Are correct to propose that national security funding should rise to 5% of the national budget, up from 3%, but they fail to understand that modern warfare requires co-equal funding for non-military sources of power including massive preventive *peace* operations.

There is, then, a great deal of good in this book. It is, however, also full of a great deal of crap. It has no footnotes, no bibliography, no index, and a great deal of either badly researched material or plain disinformation. They misrepresent or ignore a number of very important facts. On page 24, for example, they discuss the debriefing of Hussein's son-in-law, defector Hussein Kamel, and fail to mention that he told us all the stocks had been destroyed, and only the cookbooks remained. Throughout the book, while lambasting CIA for not knowing (half true), they decline to discuss the unethical and unprofessional manner in which the neo-cons not only shut out the professionals from the Iraq war deliberations, but cherry-picked and fabricated information to mislead the president as well as the American people. On page 32 and again on page 35 they lie when they say that Iraq was “one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the region.” On various pages they gloss over the fact that Chalabi was both a thief and a liar, fired by CIA for stealing millions from covert funds, and ultimately found by CIA to be fabricating translations to deceive the US military intelligence people. On pages 45-46 they repeat the long proven lie about Mohammed Atta meeting an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. Not only has the FBI determined that Atta was in Florida at the time, but Vaclav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia, recently honored by President Bush, has repeatedly stated this did not happen. On page 155, they deliberately avoid mentioning that it was Rumsfeld who allowed 3000 Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders to escape by approving a Pakistani air evacuation operation that went on all night. Rumsfeld's naiveté and ignorance cost us the chance to nail Bin Laden early on. There are many other points where the facts differ from their representations.

The book does *not* offer a true strategy for the future of American security or even the near-term war on terrorism. It is largely a baloney justification for the war on Iraq. It fails to acknowledge that unilateralist American behavior is spawning more terrorists than we are catching. On balance, this book is worth reading to understand both the good and the bad of the neo-conservative viewpoint.

2003/09/242009/12/04

Review: Bin Laden–The Man Who Declared War on America

4 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Terrorism & Jihad

Over the Top in Iraq, Brilliant in All Other Respects,

September 24, 2003

Yossef Bodansky

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add comment and links.

New Comment: this remains a very important foundation document for understanding the complete failure of US intelligence to detect and monitor Saudi government funding of violent Islam and Wabbabism.

The author is a brilliant Arabist who has refined the art of acquiring and exploiting open sources of information on bin Laden and terrorism to a near science. His “MOSQINT” lectures draw packed houses of professional intelligence officers from over 40 countries.

The book is a hard read, but if one desires to understand the murky inter-relationships among the *governments* of Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, among others, the businesses and charities working actively to channel government and private funds to terrorists, and the global loosely-knit network of “fellow travelers” and jihadists, then this book is “Ref A.”

In my personal view, the author is a bit over the top in trying to link Iraq to bin Laden. This reminds of the Claire Sterling-Ollie North school of “anything goes” as long as you believe it. Having said that (and so has Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia, who personally dismissed a lie consistently told by the Bush Administration about a meeting in Prague between a terrorist known by the FBI to have been in Florida at the time, and an Iraqi intelligence officer), I give the book very high marks in all other respects.

The Conclusion, appropriately Chapter 13, is titled “What Next.” The book is worthy of purchase and recurring reference for this chapter alone. Especially troubling is the documentation of how many terrorists are moving around the world on legitimate passports from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Turkey, Kuwait, Algeria, Albania, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and other countries. The book adds confirmation to the many other references I have seen (many posted to OSS.Net news and reference section) regarding the active involvement of the Pakistani intelligence service in funding and training and facilitating travel for bin Laden personally, for his top lieutenants, and for terrorists in general.

The author's focus in the conclusion on the potential for Central Asia (all former khanates, all Muslim, all angry separatists from the Soviet Union) is especially interesting, as we see the beginnings of a “third front” there, with India-Pakistan being a fourth front, and South Asia a fifth front. Latin America and Africa are the sixth front. In brief, the author is one of those documenting the depth and scope of a global terrorism threat that the Bush Administration has unwisely chosen to attack with conventional military means, on six different fronts, none of which is sustainable in the medium or long term.

The author anticipated terrorist attacks against the UN and NATO when he discusses, on page 403, the Muslim declarations that include the UN and NATO in the fatwas against the USA, because the Muslim world “is being deceived by [these organizations], because they are hostile to Muslims and are responsible for all the massacres being perpetrated against Muslims in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Albania, and Kosovo.” The UN in Iraq has been hit twice. I expect NATO in Afghanistan to be hit several times between now and the end of 2003, and I expect US special forces units to be massacred in detail in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Bin Laden, dead or alive. Right. Bin Laden could not, in his wildest prayers to Allah, have imagined a better partner for fostering terrorism around the world than hip-shooting cowboy and unilateralist George W. Bush. Bin Laden created a global system of terrorism, the fire if you will, and George W. Bush and his neo-conservatives are blindly pouring $250 billion worth of tax-payer funded gasoline on that fire.

The author has recently been the recipient of the Golden Candle Award from the international open source intelligence committee. His citation reads:

“For his global multi-lingual open source investigations into terrorism, and his extraordinary professional achievement in writing and publishing “BIN LADEN: The Man Who Declared War on America”, years before the 9-11 World Trade Center demonstration of what well-funded suicidal terrorism can achieve when intelligence and policy both fail to focus on the threat.”

Whatever research or opinion flaws might be contained in this book, it is an essential reference in understanding both the dangers of terrorism, and the futility of the current US “strategy” for defeating terrorism by hammering and then abandoning Afghanistan and Iraq.

More recent books relevant to this one:
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

2003/07/092012/10/27

2003 Information Peacekeeping & The Future of Intelligence: The United Nations, Smart Mobs, and the Seven Tribes

Articles & Chapters, Civil Affairs, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Chapter 13: “Information Peacekeeping & the Future of Intelligence: The United Nations, Smart Mobs, and the Seven Tribes” pp. 201-225

2003/05/242009/12/04

Review: Terrorist Hunter–The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Religion & Politics of Religion, Terrorism & Jihad

US Terrorism, Open Sources, and Federal Ineptitude,

May 24, 2003

Anonymous

WARNING NOTICE: Reliable sources in the counter-terrorism world inform me that this book is partly fiction in that the author is systematically integrating the accomplishments of others into her story as if they were her own. I have, however, decided to leave my review intact because she tells a very good story and its key points are right on target. I recommend the book for purchase by all–on balance it is a fine contribution.—-

Although there are no endorsements or other means of validating the truth of this book, and “woman with four-children” may be a cover for a hyper-active Israeli man in his mid-20's who is of Arab descent, it reads with enormous credibility, it is loaded with correct references, and its many anecdotes about both the value of public records (open sources) and U.S. federal government ineptitude (especially the FBI but also including State, AID, INS, and the CIA) are in my opinion spot on.

This book is an excellent companion to Steven Emerson's book, AMERICAN JIHAD: The Terrorists Living Among Us. Indeed, it has occurred to me that the anonymous author of this book is, if not working directly for Emerson, then possibly in one of the Jewish-funded research elements that he relies upon for research assistance.

Among the many compelling points that I found to recommend the purchase and reading of this book are:

1) Israeli McCarthyism against any Jew willing to express need for a Palestinian state as part of regional stabilization
2) The Rabin assassination as the Israeli equivalent of the US Kennedy assassination–everyone remembers where they were
3) The vital importance of reading all Islamic charity information in Arabic, where the messages are violent and subversive–English for the fund-raising, Arabic for the incitement to terrorism
4) The catastrophic cost of American naivete pre-9-11 in putting all religious and charitable organizations off limits to US counterintelligence, however inept it might have been
5) The extraordinary utility of public records, not just within the US but from Israel and the Arab states, in nailing down relationships among charitable organizations, Saudi financiers, and specific individual terrorists
6) The extraordinary utility of historical (back ten years) Arabic newsletters and newspapers in nailing threatening statements and jihad intentions of people applying for US citizenship or already US citizens, because the federal government has no clue how to do proper open source research
7) The accuracy of the 1990 predictions of American proponents of jihad who claimed that the US's ultimate intent was to “occupy the Arab and Islamic oil sources”
8) The degree to which African Americans have been pulled into the jihad-aspects of Muslim extremism as practiced and preached in the US
9) The ineptitude of the FBI's “knock knock” neighborhood canvassing approach to basic information, completelely eschewing proper open source research and proper undercover collection
10) The ineptitude of the FBI in particular, but the US government in general, in sharing information about terrorists and their organizations (we are amused to note that Aqil Collins, in My Jihad, is virulent on this topic–evidently one thing both mujahids and Israeli counter-terrorism researchers can agree upon is that the FBI was and remains inept)
11) The suspect loyalties and competence of the FBI liaison to Saudi Arabia, who is of Muslim faith and refused to do proper undercover work against other Muslims while posted in the US
12) The pervasive and deep Saudi financial links to all aspects of US Muslim extremism, to include funding for mosques intended to be centers for radicalization over the long term
13) The early open source literature on how Bin Laden decided to apply his construction expertise to solving both smuggling and storage and protection issues in Afghanistan (we have in other reviews noted the importance of the book on Vietnamese tunnels, titled “The Tunnels of Cu Chi”)

As I finished the book, I agreed completely with the author's basic premise, to the effect that open source information about US terrorist and charity ties, properly validated, should be posted to the Internet for all to see. This appears to be the only proper response to continuing federal ineptitude. The author is compelling in stating that in the years since 9-11, very little has improved. The FBI continues to refuse to share, the State Department continues to be incompetent at screening terrorists out (and in one instance, allowed the Agency for International Development to offer funding to a known terrorist organization), the list goes on.

This is a very impressive personal account. The author's proven accomplishments, well-documented in the book, lend credence to the value of open sources and methods in the war on terrorism–and lend credence to the legitimate concerns of citizens who are overly trusting in their federal government, which appears to still be, 2 years after 9-11, massively inept.

Category: Terrorism & Jihad

Review: Understanding Terror Networks