How Not to Counter Terrorism
By Coleen Rowley & Other Intelligence Veterans
June 18, 2007
Editor's Note: Former FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley and other members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have compiled the following memo examining the question of whether Bush administration policies have made Americans safer from the threat of terrorism since 9/11.
Rowley gained national attention on June 6, 2002, when she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about pre-9/11 missteps and how the FBI could do a better job detecting and disrupting terrorism. Time magazine had acquired (not from Rowley) a long letter she had written to FBI Director Robert Mueller listing lapses before 9/11 that helped explain the failure to prevent the attacks.
Five years after her testimony, her VIPS colleagues asked Rowley to evaluate what has been done and what needs to be done. They also have contributed their own expertise to the memo:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Given the effort that many of us have put into suggestions for reform, how satisfying it would be, were we able to report that appropriate correctives have been introduced to make us safer. But the bottom line is that the PR bromide to the effect that we are “safer” is incorrect. We are not safer. What follows will help explain why.
Wrong-headed actions and ideas had already taken root before that Senate hearing on June 6, 2002. Post 9/11 dragnet-detentions of innocents, official tolerance of torture (including abuse of U.S. citizens like John Walker Lindh), and panic-boosting color codes, had already been spawned from the mother of all slogans—“The Global War on Terror”—rhetorically useful, substantively inane. GWOT was about to spawn much worse.
Within a few hours of the Senate hearing five years ago, President George W. Bush reversed himself and made a surprise public announcement saying he would, after all, create a new Department of Homeland Security. The announcement seemed timed to relegate to the “in-other-news” category the disturbing things reported to the Senate earlier that day about the mistakes made during the weeks prior to 9/11.
More important, the president’s decision itself was one of the most egregious examples of the doing-something-for-the-sake-of-appearing-to-be-doing-something-against-terrorism syndrome.
As anyone who has worked in the federal bureaucracy could immediately recognize, the creation of DHS was clearly a gross misstep on a purely pragmatic level. It created chaos by throwing together 22 agencies with 180,000 workers—many of them in jobs vital to our nation’s security, both at home and abroad.
lots more...[Open in new window]
Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent
Tom Maertens, former NSC Director for Nonproliferation; former Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State
Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst; former counterterrorism manager, Department of State
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst
By Coleen Rowley & Other Intelligence Veterans
June 18, 2007
Editor's Note: Former FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley and other members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have compiled the following memo examining the question of whether Bush administration policies have made Americans safer from the threat of terrorism since 9/11.
Rowley gained national attention on June 6, 2002, when she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about pre-9/11 missteps and how the FBI could do a better job detecting and disrupting terrorism. Time magazine had acquired (not from Rowley) a long letter she had written to FBI Director Robert Mueller listing lapses before 9/11 that helped explain the failure to prevent the attacks.
Five years after her testimony, her VIPS colleagues asked Rowley to evaluate what has been done and what needs to be done. They also have contributed their own expertise to the memo:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Given the effort that many of us have put into suggestions for reform, how satisfying it would be, were we able to report that appropriate correctives have been introduced to make us safer. But the bottom line is that the PR bromide to the effect that we are “safer” is incorrect. We are not safer. What follows will help explain why.
Wrong-headed actions and ideas had already taken root before that Senate hearing on June 6, 2002. Post 9/11 dragnet-detentions of innocents, official tolerance of torture (including abuse of U.S. citizens like John Walker Lindh), and panic-boosting color codes, had already been spawned from the mother of all slogans—“The Global War on Terror”—rhetorically useful, substantively inane. GWOT was about to spawn much worse.
Within a few hours of the Senate hearing five years ago, President George W. Bush reversed himself and made a surprise public announcement saying he would, after all, create a new Department of Homeland Security. The announcement seemed timed to relegate to the “in-other-news” category the disturbing things reported to the Senate earlier that day about the mistakes made during the weeks prior to 9/11.
More important, the president’s decision itself was one of the most egregious examples of the doing-something-for-the-sake-of-appearing-to-be-doing-something-against-terrorism syndrome.
As anyone who has worked in the federal bureaucracy could immediately recognize, the creation of DHS was clearly a gross misstep on a purely pragmatic level. It created chaos by throwing together 22 agencies with 180,000 workers—many of them in jobs vital to our nation’s security, both at home and abroad.
lots more...[Open in new window]
Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent
Tom Maertens, former NSC Director for Nonproliferation; former Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department of State
Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst; former counterterrorism manager, Department of State
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst
posted by Dan at 12:40 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home