Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

The 33rd IFPA-Fletcher Conference
on
National Security Strategy and Policy

October 16-17, 2002
The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center
Washington, D.C.

Transcript Session 2: Strategic Responses to New Security Challenges

Intelligence Requirements to Support National Security in Light of 9/11
Address by Mr. Bill Gertz, Washington Times and author of Breakdown: How America’s Intelligence Failures Led to September 11

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Harmon: Well, our next speaker is unquestionably one of the country’s best national security reporters. James Web once paid him the compliment of saying he’s not only accurate but the best sourced newspaperman in Washington, D.C. I suspect that it does happen to you as has happened to me that in the morning, occasionally, one splashes a bit of the coffee onto the newspaper while exclaiming, “Wow, who told that to Bill Gertz?”

I started reading the Washington Times in about 1985 and that I’ve always considered a piece of great luck because that is when he began turning out these columns that zing through town and singe a few people on the way, usually a politician. He’s been a guest lecturer at many of our governmental schools and agencies in the metro area.

You know him as a best selling author. He has done three books, one the Clinton administration and national security, one on the threat from China, and his most recent called, Breakdown: How American’s Intelligence Failures Led to September 11th. Ladies and gentlemen, speaking about “Intelligence Requirements to Support National Security,” Mr. Bill Gertz of The Washington Times.

Gertz: Thank you very much. I was reminded about, when you mentioned my somewhat rocky relationship with intelligence agencies, a couple of years ago I did an article on the CIA’s analysis on China, which was fairly critical. It wasn’t a major article, but it was part of my column. And I talked to one of the CIA spokesmen and he said, “You know, there’s a lot of people over here that would like to fire a cruise missile at your desk at The Washington Times.”

And my first thought was, “Please, don’t let them use the same people that targeted the Yugoslav procurement office in downtown Belgrade.” There is always going to be a tension between intelligence and reporting. But I’m going to talk about-- My sub-topic for this is, “Intelligence Requirements in the Post-9/11 Era.” I’d like to amend that to say, really, “Intelligence Restructuring” because I really think that in the post-9/11 world we really need radical reform of our intelligence system.

President Bush, when he saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center was heard to remark that, “We are at war.” Only it is clear that there wasn’t a clear enemy where that was located. Who was-- Where was the headquarters? Where was the capitol? On the other side of the country in Washington, D.C., a group of visiting journalists from the People’s Republic of China were watching this event on television and began cheering.

And they were quickly sent home but I think that incident kind of highlights where we were before 9/11. The issue of China as a strategic threat was beginning to be debated seriously. But after 9/11 as the President said, “We are at war.” Well, what kind of war is it? You know, really, at its root it is going to be more or less and intelligence war. What happened on 9/11 was really the result of a series of attacks that didn’t begin or end with 9/11 but it really began with the Al Qaeda group, which was an Islamic terrorist group that has really modeled itself on a certain Leninist formula.

Basically, they believe that they are going to lead all of the Islamic groups into the world to overthrow the infidels. They have declared holy war on us. This was something that was issued by bin Laden in 1998. And yet bin Laden had been active even before that in financing terrorism and actually organizing it. But our intelligence community didn’t have a good picture not only of bin Laden but of the whole Al Qaeda structure and were really taken by surprise when 9/11 occurred.

Now, people knew it was bin Laden because he had carried out attacks earlier, he’s been linked to the ’93 World Trade Center bombing. There’s a dispute about whether or not Al Qaeda was involved in the Khobar Towers bombing, although it appears that it was primarily and Iranian operation. But there are indications that there was also an Al Qaeda role there. And then the bombings of our embassies, which really awoken U.S. intelligence to the Al Qaeda threat—

And then, of course, there was the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. What I found in looking at this was really-- I wanted to try and answer the question after 9/11 that everyone in America wanted to know, how could this happen? How could a band of terrorist groups basically, essentially people who had been living in caves and training in camps in Afghanistan, wreak a strategic surprise attack on the United States?

They did it because there were a series of failures involved, primarily a unit(?) failure, and I don’t have to explain that to this audience, but there was also failures of analysis, there were institutional obstacles, there were structural failures. Really what I found in looking into this is the intelligence system today is broken. It is a big bureaucracy that has focused, turned inward to focus more on itself than really on its mission.

We have 14 agencies that make up the intelligence community, the most prominent of which are the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Really, Al Qaeda is not finished. They were disrupted in Afghanistan but as recent events show Al Qaeda is regrouping. Recent intelligence has indicated that the group is decentralizing.

That means that the cells that operate in 60 countries around the world have a certain degree of autonomy to conduct attacks and that is what is believed to be behind the recent attacks Kuwait and Yemen and Indonesia. In addition, Al Qaeda is also seeking to strike economic targets. Not that they weren’t interested in that in the past, but it seems to be they are focusing in that direction. And there is a real concern within the Bush administration that a serious, a second serious attack like 9/11 could have devastating impacts on our economy.

After 9/11, it became clear that the status quo in Afghanistan could no longer stay. Al Qaeda was operating freely, with the assistance of the Taliban militia, which was ruling most of Afghanistan. And it became quickly clear to everyone that that could no longer stand. And at the time of 9/11, there were almost no U.S. intelligence agents inside Afghanistan.

And this highlights the problem of U.S. intelligence today, which is, again it is related to the unit problem, but there is an over reliance on foreign liaison. And in this case it was the relationship with the Pakistan ISI. Now there is a role for foreign liaison, but there has become an over reliance on it, just as there is an over reliance on our technical intelligence capabilities, which are truly amazing what we can do with our technical intelligence.

There is no limit, it seems to the kind of information. However, when it comes to dealing with small bands of stateless terrorists, this kind of technical intelligence is not going to give you the picture that you need to do what is becoming the preemptive strategy. You are not going to be able to preempt their plans if you can’t get inside the groups. I would-- Marshall has already gone but he described Afghanistan as a lieutenant colonel’s and colonel’s war. I would definitely say it was a sergeant’s war.

And we will probably be hearing more about the sergeants that did some amazing things on the ground. For example, the one sergeant who was near Baghram(?) and was able to beam in on the black turban of a Taliban in a position and then, a few minutes later, out of the silence a JDAM missile destroyed a huge complex of Taliban soldiers. That’s really become kind of the model, at least for Afghanistan.

And I think the number was more like 250 that were able to do that. Military action really did the job there. But the question is, where was our intelligence capability. Why weren’t we in there? Why weren’t we trying to disrupt that? There had been a few covert action operations. A lot of this is coming out in the recent reviews that are being done on the Hill. But they were ineffective.

The fact of the matter is that we knew that Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan. We knew that he was training hundreds, if not thousands, of Islam terrorists for worldwide operations as part of this Leninist plan to destroy the west. Now, as to Iraq, that is another current problem that we are in the middle of dealing with as many of our speakers have talked about. And, again, we have intelligence problems with Iraq. During the ‘90s, again, we had no intelligence agents inside Iraq. Consequently, we do not have good intelligence on what is the state of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.

We have good, what I would call, border intelligence. We know that Iraq has imported certain components and vehicles and things that are being used for that program. We also know Iraqi activities outside. But as for what is going on inside Iraq since ’98, we have very limited information. The defector who came out told us that Saddam has hundreds of weapons of mass destruction sites, many of them underground, many of them in hardened positions.

So, what are the solutions? My book was very critical of intelligence. I make no bones about that. But I also present a prescription for fixing the problems. And, again, as I stated earlier, the real problem was a human intelligence failure. We did not have the system, the people or the capabilities that would allow us to get close to this group or get inside of that group. And that was partly due to some institutional and more or less cultural problems.

The prevailing view I found, within the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, for example, is that it is impossible to penetrate a terrorist group like Al Qaeda. The best that is hoped for is that they might lucky and perhaps recruit someone who is close to the group or maybe a defector. But really the key to getting at Al Qaeda is getting people inside the group. This whole notion of preemption has to be applied to intelligence. And that is going to require some major reform.

My first solution would be to create a new clandestine service. I think that the CIA’s Directorate of Operations has shown that it is not ready, it is not trained, it is not peopled properly to be able to deal with the terrorist target. So I would recommend a new service that would take the best elements of the DO plus take the entire Defense Unit Service which has really been kind of under the thumb of the CIA’s DO anyway and create this new service that will be staffed with better people, better trained, better language skills and, first and foremost, more diverse.

To put it frankly, we are going to need to get Arab-Americans to do the very, very risky work of battling terrorists on the intelligence front. And that is going to require-- We are dealing with the threat from terrorists that are willing to kill themselves in carrying out their attacks. Therefore it is going to require a much higher risk on the part of our intelligence people.

I am not saying that it is going to be easy to do. But clearly it has to be done if we are going to win the war on terrorism. As for the rest of the CIA, I would create a new Central Analysis Agency. The 9/11 attacks highlighted some huge gaps in our analytical and information sharing capabilities. One FBI agent testified recently that the CIA failed to inform the FBI when two of the highjackers entered the United States.

And then when the FBI finally found out about it, they were told by the CIA, “Well, we can’t share this information with you because there is a bureaucratic wall that prevents us from sharing intelligence information with people engaged in an ongoing investigation that would lead to a prosecution.” And, of course, the FBI people were dumbfounded. They were wondering whose side they were on, whose team, whether they had a team.

And so he wrote a memo to headquarters and he said, “I don’t know who put up this bureaucratic wall, but somebody is going to die.” And this was several months before 9/11. As a response to that testimony, which was a year after 9/11, the Justice Department announced after that, that it was lowering this bureaucratic wall to allow for greater sharing of intelligence.

And my question is, why did it take them over a year to figure that out. So, clearly, we need a new analytic system that is going to have to be much better at what it does. As for the technical spying agencies, clearly, they do the best job and they do the best job in supporting military operations. They, too, were starved for funds during the ‘90s. Their research and development budgets were cut by huge percentages, which left them in many cases behind the private sector when it came to keeping up with the threats and targets that are out there.

I also would recommend disbanding the DIA. I think that it has outlived its usefulness. If it is going to be just another voice in challenging analytic estimates, I think there is another way to do that. But I think that its functions could be better carried out within the Joint Staff, J-2 and within the command structures. And also, I recommend creating a new Special Operations intelligence capability, which would support in better ways our Special Operations Forces that maybe engaged in these operations like Afghanistan.

I guess at this point my final conclusion is that restructuring intelligence is really an urgent problem because if we don’t we won’t win the war on terrorism. Military can do the job to a certain extent, but I think that the terrorist threat is better dealt with through intelligence and that also means covert action capability, which I didn’t touch on in my remarks.

Thank you very much.

Questions and Answers

Clark: Jeff Clark, Center of Military History. This is a question for Mr. Billingslea, SOLIC. Sir, you spoke about rebuilding, reconstruction, the role of Special Operations in that task, it could be in Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq or Kuwait. And you mentioned Civil Affairs and they have a great capability for infrastructure, for governmental infrastructure reconstruction with help from the Corps of Engineers and maybe companies like Newton-Brown.

But what about the political reconstruction or construction? You go into a country like Iraq or post-World War II Germany and Japan. Who do you think or how-- Do you have any thoughts about how best to approach that part of kind of nation building if we want to get back into that business? That is my question. Thanks.

Harmon: Mr. Clark’s question is a very good one. However, he can’t tell probably because of where the podium sits, but the Principal Deputy of SOLIC has escaped back to the Pentagon and has to face another meeting there. It may well be, however, that three of our other panelists are interested enough in the question to want to comment on it. Yes, sir.

Locher: It has been many years since I have been the Assistant Secretary for SOLIC, so I am a little dated, but with respect to this idea of political reconstruction, when a Civil Affairs team is preparing for reconstitution of a government, the team can have expertise on political, governmental matters. As a matter of fact, when we were redoing the reconstitution in Kuwait, that was actually planned here in Washington with 54 Civil Affairs Reservists and one member from 20 Kuwaiti ministries.

So there is expertise there, political expertise in the Civil Affairs Organization, how that might be augmented by other elements of the United States government I don’t know at that present time. But this is an area where the Civil Affairs people could at least make a start.

Harmon: General Anderson, the Army is so heavily involved in Civil Affairs abroad, especially with some of the reservists work, things like that side of work. I don’t know if you wanted to add to—

Anderson: Well, you bring up a very good point. And certainly, Mr. Locher is well informed on that. I think the other dimension to this, however, is that when you are addressing that kind of a problem, that kind of an issue, this really requires an inter-agency approach. And it should not be expected that the military, in and of itself, has to develop those skills solely to be able to perform that function.

Others, such as the Department of State and other organizations within the government are well equipped to be able to do those kinds of things. And so, I think an inter-agency approach with the Civil Affairs and the other organizations equipped to do that is a good start, if you would.

Gertz: Yes, and I would also like to make the point that I think that NGOs can also play that role. There is a very good group headed by Al Santoli who used to work on the Hill and he just a formed a group that is supporting our Special Forces in the Philippines by getting medical supplies and getting them out to the people in the poor areas of the southern Philippines. And he really looks at it as the humanitarian war against terrorism because that is really going at the root causes.

And that is a program that is just beginning and I think that the military is going to look to NGOs to do that in a lot of other places, too.

__: I would add that the President’s new National Security Strategy certainly indicates the significance of the war of ideas in the current effort abroad against terrorism, that certainly reasonable structures have a great deal to do with the kind of alternative there can be both to some of the plans of terrorist but also the norms the despots try to establish before housing some of those same terrorists.

And I think that the United States may or may not have been tremendously good in the past at sort of the war of ideas and the proponency in preparation for democracy abroad. But it does seem to me to be an absolutely vital part of our national strategy. It has been, of course, a part of all past national security strategies, at least all those I have read.

And it varies on emphasis with administration to administration but each has recognized its utility and the current one, released September 17th , certainly does too.

Harmon: Good. We should go to another question. Dr. Shultz. Richard.

Shultz: This is for Bill. Your comments were interesting. I wondered if you could elaborate a bit on what you had in mind when you said that SOCOM should have its own intelligence capability and what specifically, how do you see that unfolding?

Gertz: Again, it is a unit kind of a function whereby you would have a unilateral capability in places around the world that could— I mean, it is an action-oriented organization but it would be involving the infrastructure and preparations for the deployment of forces so that we don’t have to start from ground zero to begin an operation renting warehouses, locating various things that are going to be needed for those kinds of things. I think that we need a Special Operations intelligence/covert action capability that can be doing that in a lot of places.

It is a fairly expensive thing to do. It is fairly time consuming but I think that that is the kind of thing that they need to do.

__: ...(inaudible)

Gertz: Absolutely, yes, both places where we can get to easily and especially places that we can’t get to. And, of course, that is going to involve better unit capabilities across the board to be able to do that.

Harmon: I think I saw another arm down that way. Yes, sir.

__: ...(inaudible) of Indonesia. My question is for Mr. Bill Gertz. Because we all know that in ...(inaudible) in the northern tip of Sumatra Island, there is Muslim’s ...(inaudible) movement. They want to establish 100% Muslim country. And we all know that in 1980s they got training from Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Now their strength is about 300 weapons and what is your point of view about this movement. Is it belong to ...(inaudible) terrorists or not. Thank you.

Gertz: Well, as I said, I think that the Al Qaeda strategy is to try and fold all of those kind of groups into one group that they head that has their extremist vision of Islam. I am not familiar with that particular group but I know that that is a pretty bad neighborhood as far as emerging terrorist threats. I think the Philippines is also dealing with that too.

I know that— As I mentioned this one humanitarian program is trying to get on the Island of Suhoo(?) and try to get some help there to try to do humanitarian work and in some sense, ideological work. I didn’t mention it in my points but one of the big intelligence challenges for the war on terrorism is going to be how to deal with the ideological component. And I don’t think we are doing a very good job.

And part of the problem is that the President has said this is not a war against Islam, but from the Islamic extremists point of view, this is clearly a war against Judaism and Christianity. And we need to find some ways to deal with that, whether it is bringing together moderate Muslims, say, in Egypt and Turkey, if we can find them, and trying to deal with the issue of Islamic extremism head on.

Again, I think it is an ideological problem that would have an impact on the area that you are talking about.

Harmon: Yes, sir.

Fautua: Dave Fautua, Joint Futures Lab, U.S. Joint Forces Command. I’d like to take advantage of the panel members and ask a question of all three of you that are linked and, depending on how you answer, be interactive. First to Mr. Locher, you mentioned the Seven S’s, McKinsey’s Seven S’s, in relation to culture with the inter-agencies. And I completely agree with your. It is a very, very big problem.

I wonder if you could speak to how you would operationalize those Seven S’s within HLS but also within the context of NORTHCOM. And then, General Anderson, based on what he says, what would you do to operationalize his recommendations. And then, lastly, Mr. Gertz, given what General Anderson says, how does that at all relate to sharing information, which in itself compartmentalized and hidden behind green doors, etcetera. Is it possible to have this kind of Seven S with information and intelligence?

Locher: Well, I guess I need to start this response. With respect to the issue of culture and the inter-agency, the different departments that play a role in the national security process have, over the years, developed different cultures. Culture is not something that is easy to address straight on. It actually takes a long period of time. And as you are thinking about how can I change the culture, you often need to think about what are the nearer term things that I can do in some of the other Seven S’s that slowly begin the cultural change.

For example, in the Counter-terrorism Security Group at the NSC where I served for four years, there was little interest by many of the participating agencies to get involved in exercises. In the Department of Defense it was something that we were always used to doing. But it was alien to the civilian agencies.

And the Department of Defense actually proposed doing exercise, tabletop exercises, here in Washington with various terrorism scenarios. And in the beginning there was very weak participation by the civilian agencies. The Fifth Assistant would normally be sent to participate. But over time the value of those exercises became obvious to the participants from all of the agencies and we slowly began to change the culture there to understand how we had to be prepared for some of these national security responsibilities.

To talk about the Department of Homeland Security, in my slide I had mentioned some of the things that would be foremost in my mind if I were the Secretary of Homeland Security and thinking about how am I going to, what are those organizational levers that I have out there that I could employ across those Seven S’s that could begin to unify this department. And those are the things that I would focus on.

Anderson: Interestingly enough, Dr. Younger and I were talking about this issue over lunch, as a matter of fact. Because I think that our challenge is considerably different than the challenge that OHLS or the Department of HLS faces primarily because we are in a situation where our challenge is to create a culture. The Department of HLS is in a situation where they have to change culture that has already been created in 17, 22, or whatever the number is, different organizations.

So I do feel that is a significant difference between the two. So, we have talked about this and we do believe that it is very, very important to establish our culture at the beginning and what Commander General Ed Eberhardt has established, has been a number of different elements, if you will, of the culture.

And I would submit to you, and I know he believes the same thing, that the most important one of that is establishing relationships with those with whom we are going to work across the broad spectrum of organizations to include the inter-agency services, other DOD agencies, and that kind of a thing because there is just no way we can do it by ourselves. We recognize that. And ultimately with the Department of HLS as well--

But there are a number of other elements, as well, that constitute culture. But that, I would submit to you, is probably one of the very first and important ones for us.

Gertz: And as far as the— And what the issue here is, and I think Jim Locher put it good, the imbalance between department and national interests. That is really the problem of bureaucracy and there is no easy solution to that. To get the job done you need a bureaucracy but the problem always is that after a time, bureaucracies turn on themselves and become more interested in survival and self-preservation and that is really where we are.

In the Homeland Security Department, I would point out that the intelligence community was excluded from that. They have their own bureaucracy and they don’t want to be part of a new bureaucracy. And that is going to create problems because those agencies won’t have their own ability to get the information. They are going to have to ask other intelligence components to get that information for them. So that is one problem right there.

And I don’t really have an answer for how to fix it. But I can tell you in Washington, information is power and sharing it tends, in the bureaucratic sense, there is a resistance to do that because you would lose power and influence and budget and people and that kind of thing. It is a big cultural problem and I am not sure I know the answer on how to fix that one.

Harmon: We go now to the gentleman in the back.

Williams: Avon Williams, Department of the Army. General Anderson, in keeping with the focus on organizational architecture, I have a more parochial question. There is already a Division of Military Support for Civilian Authorities Function in DOD, which I believe the Secretary of the Army is the executive agent. And it sounds to me-- And reading the documents related to the stand up of NORTHCOM, the function, the civil support function that NORTHCOM is going to perform sounds almost identical to the DOMS function at HQDA.

And I am wondering if there is some redundancy there of if I am not understanding what the separation of functions is going to be between NORTHCOM and DOMS.

Anderson: Okay, you are absolutely right. DOMS has been for 40 or 50 years doing that particular function. My understanding is that OSD is in the process of reevaluating exactly that issue as whether or not there is a continued need for DOMS given NORTHCOM. We will see what the outcome of that is going to be. My expectation, however, is that DOMS will no longer exist.

And the functions performed by DOMS will be passed either to the Joint Staff or OSD or to Northern Command and that is how I see I think that will be settled so that we eliminate that duplication.

Harmon: I think we have time for a couple of more questions. See a hand anywhere-- Okay. Very Good. Thank you. Yes.

Joyal: Thank you. Paul Joyal, InterCon International. I was very interested in your analysis concerning the S’s, especially your stress on the second most important element being systems. So, my question, Mr. Locher is, does an opportunity now present itself actually, with the formation of the Homeland Defense Organization if you establish or organize the entity around the a system, which creates, a technological system, which creates a virtual enterprise-wide environment that stress collaboration, shared documents through proper compartmentation, etcetera, etcetera.

Do we face a real opportunity to maybe overcome some of the traditional impediments that bureaucracies develop over time especially when they develop from a paper-laden environment versus an electronic environment? What opportunities do you see existing under these conditions?

Locher: Well, I think there is a great opportunity, an opportunity that can be exploited by effective leadership. And one of the things that I have noticed in the legislation describing the structure of the Department of Homeland Security is that in most of our departments, especially in the Department of Defense, we are organized almost everywhere on a functional basis.

And in the Department of Homeland Security the Undersecretaries really have a mission focus. And so they are broader than those functional stovepipes that have a tendency to be inward looking. And so, right away, the structure lends itself to focus more on outcomes, to be thinking about looking across the department. But this will be quite a challenge. There is a lot to do. There is a lot to bring together and to unify.

But there is a great opportunity here to layout some of these new ideas, to make use of some of the new technologies, some of the new techniques, to really create an organization that can work all the way across those disparate entities and get focused on what we have to achieve.

Harmon: Another question from the floor. And if there isn’t any, then we can adjourn a moment or two early and keep on time. Despite the pressures of schedules in Washington we have managed to retain the majority of our panel for the two-hour panel and I want to ask you now to join me in thanking General Anderson, Mr. Gertz, and Mr. Locher.