A Plague on the Nation

That's exactly what has happened, argues a CIA terrorism expert who, at the insistence of the agency, writes under the name "Anonymous." And that mistake dooms the U.S. to endless wars, says the 23-year intelligence veteran, who directed research into bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, in his most recent book, Imperial Hubris.

While the White House says radical Islamists hate the United States for its values and our freedoms, the reality is very different, Anonymous says. Islamists despise our policies in the Middle East. That misunderstanding lures the United States into strategies that benefit al-Qaeda more than the U.S., he says.

Question: You say that we're losing the war on terror. Why?

Answer: We've missed the nature of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden. Presidents Clinton and Bush were both insistent that Osama bin Laden was attacking us because of who we are and what we do. That's about as far from the truth as you can possibly get. My bottom line is that we're never going to win this war if we don't realize what motivates our opponent and try to address it across a spectrum of policies instead of just the military policy, which is basically our only option at the moment.

Q: Is it really that clear cut?

A: Since 1996, bin Laden has been explicit in what he is up to. He is focused on a very limited number of U.S. policies and the way they are perceived in the Middle East.

Q: Why focus on the U.S.? He started out focused on the leadership of his own country, Saudi Arabia.

A: Part of his genius is his focus on the United States. One of the last remnants of European colonialism in the Arab world was a tradition of resistance against national governments. These tyrannies (today's governments) in the Arab world are too strong. There is no way (bin Laden) can ever beat them one at a time. It is too costly in terms of money, lives and families.

He argues that the U.S. is weaker because it's a democracy, because it doesn't like to lose people, because it's so hypersensitive to any kind of opinion around the world that is critical, that if they can drive the Americans out of the region, the rest of it falls like fruit from a tree. The tyrannies in all of the countries go.

Q: What do we know about al-Qaeda?

A: To this day, we don't have a grasp of the size of his organization. We claim that we've killed two-thirds of al-Qaeda's leadership. But what we've done is kill two-thirds of the leadership we knew of on 9/11. We have a body count; we don't have a measure of progress.

Again, we have a semantic problem. Al-Qaeda is not a terrorist group; it's an insurgency that is extraordinarily well structured in terms of succession for leadership. Al-Qaeda loses somebody and within hours, someone who has been an understudy is named to take his place.

Until you have defined what al-Qaeda looks like in terms of organization and have an order of battle, you don't have a gauge against which to measure progress.

Q: So how should we attack it?

U.S. policy targets Six U.S. policies enable Osama bin Laden to rally his followers against the U.S., Anonymous says: Support for Israel that allows the Israelis to dominate the Palestinians. U.S., Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula. Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Support for Russia, India and China against the Muslim militants there. Pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low. U.S. support for corrupt Muslim governments. Source: Imperial Hubris

A: It's not a choice between war and peace, it's a choice between war and endless war. The goal should be to undercut the potential of bin Ladenism to grow, and the only way to do that is to address those polices which have been identified in the Muslim world as anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic. Looking out 10, 20, 30 years, it's only going to get worse if these policies stay in place.

Q: You say war is unavoidable — just the length and form are in question. How should the war be waged?

A: When we have the opportunity to hit someone, we have to be willing to do it without evidence that could be presented in court. One of the tragedies of the 1990s was the forced injection of the law enforcement community into intelligence work, because we stopped talking about intelligence and we started talking about evidence. You get to the point where you paralyze yourself. It also gives those people in the intelligence community who prefer to protect their career rather than taking risks an opportunity to beat their chests and say, "I wanted their heads on stakes but the lawyers said I couldn't do it." So you have to be ready to act.

Q: What impact has that had?

A: We lost in Afghanistan on the first day. The argument we staged between ourselves of whether or not it was bin Laden who attacked New York delayed our assault on Afghanistan for a month. By that time, everyone had dispersed.

So if there is another attack, it's simply a matter of our military being much more active on the ground. You are going to have to be able to go after two or three or four people at a time. Because that's what the target is. And we are not doing that.

Q: Is it inevitable that there will be a nuclear attack?

A: It's inevitable that they will use a weapon if they have one. And that's a terrible answer. But he has never made any bones about it. He doesn't see a weapon of mass destruction as a deterrent. He sees it in Cold-War terms as a first-strike weapon. If he has it, he will use it.

Q: In a recent report, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously criticized the quality of intelligence that led to the decision to attack Iraq. What might fix that problem?

A: The president should have the opportunity to talk to a substantive expert. And that is not the case. I came into the agency under directors William Casey and Robert Gates (in the 1980s). They constantly pushed the expert forward. But there has been a marked retreat from providing the experts. The American intelligence community has a contempt for expertise, for the most part. An expert is a nerd. A generalist is what you want to be. So you have lots of people who know a little bit about a lot of things. But we also have some expertise that is world class.

Q: What are our chances of finding bin Laden?

A: They are very poor. Afghanistan is the size of Texas .... He's going to zig when we zag. He's not in hostile territory. The image of bin Laden going from cave to cave is one that is appealing but false.

Q: The Intelligence Committee report also said that there had not been a credible human source on the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program since 1998.

A: But that doesn't mean we're not trying. The one thing people don't understand is you're asking a person to commit treason. We got ragged consistently for not having a penetration of al-Qaeda at the highest level. No Arab intelligence service on earth has that.

One of the big shifts in the recruitment of human agents between the Cold War and now is that, in the Soviet system, the most ideological fervor and dedication to Bolshevism and communism was found in the outer ring, the youth group. The further people went into the party, the more they realized it was corrupt, and so they became disillusioned. The closer someone got to the center, the more access he got to the information you needed, and the more he became less enchanted with his own society.

Q: And now?

A: The new paradigm is we want to recruit somebody who sits next to bin Laden. The most corrupt, unIslamic, less pious ring is the outside ring. If you get him there, as he goes into the center he finds these people are who they say they are. And so, in a sense, the further he gets into the system, the less willing he is to work with you.

Q: If we kill bin Laden, what happens then?

A: It makes a big difference for al-Qaeda in the short term. Al-Qaeda has virtually every nationality on earth. It's an organization which is well run in the modern sense. It has tensions. But as a whole, he keeps it together and it moves forward.

Q: What are our chances of finding him?

A: They are very poor. Afghanistan is the size of Texas, with a bit more tacked on because the border area with Pakistan is really the same country. It's got the largest mountains in the world. It's got a population that is either neutral or pro-bin Laden. What's the tooth-to-tail ratio? He's going to zig when we zag. He's not in hostile territory. The image of bin Laden going from cave to cave is one that is appealing, but false.

Q: Why has bin Laden waited so long for his next attack?

A: Because everything has gone his way since the attack on 9/11. We lived up to our reputation of being unwilling to be a ruthless military power. We let al-Qaeda escape. We let the Taliban escape. We had him cornered in the Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan, but we sent in surrogates rather than U.S. soldiers and he got away. We've reinforced all of the negative aspects of our military policy since 1991.

Also, the development of Palestine as an international issue has helped him. Frankly, I don't know what else the Israelis can do than what they are doing, but the perception in the Muslim world is that we are no longer playing any kind of moderating role there. Certainly the Europeans have backed away from the war on terror. Things have developed in a way that he just doesn't have to take any action until he's ready to do it.

Q: Is it possible that bin Laden does not see it in his self-interest to attack the United States?

A: He's enough of a strategist to see that there is no hurry to attack us. We've tied ourselves in knots now because of this supposed pre-election terrorist threat. There is a lot of threatening information out there, but there's a lot of hubris involved, too. But in the history of Islamic terrorism, we've never known them to attack on an anniversary or an event of any kind. I think he has his own plan, his own tempo and he sees it in his interest to attack us again. It's just that the timing will be his, not ours.

Q: Is it inevitable that there will be a nuclear attack?

A: It's inevitable that they will use a weapon if they have one. And that's a terrible answer. But he has never made any bones about it. He doesn't see a weapon of mass destruction as a deterrent. He sees it in Cold-War terms as a first-strike weapon. If he has it, he will use it.

My own view is he probably wants to use a weapon that is limited in its geographic scope. He is more likely to use something like a dirty bomb or a nuclear bomb, than biological or chemical weapons that might flow outside the borders of the United States and somehow hurt a Muslim community. But that's all speculation.

Q: When you talk about the mind-set of the country on the war on terror, where do you think the misconceptions come from? The media, politicians?

A: It's trite to say, but the idea of political correctness is very, very important in terms of the performance of the intelligence community. How many times has USA TODAY, or The New York Times or The Washington Post discussed the role of Islam as a motivating factor in bin Laden's appeal in the Muslim world? I can't remember it very frequently. The director of intelligence and the president say al-Qaeda represents the lunatic fringe of the Muslim world, which, on the face of it, is absurd. But there is no one talking about Islam as a motivating factor for war.

There were times when our ancestors went to war to defend their faith. So, the debate is very constricted, not only in America but certainly within the intelligence community. We do a lot of analysis by assertion rather than by reality. Somehow the argument that someone is fighting for his faith is seen as a negative. So we assert that only gangsters do that. We make bin Laden into a gangster. But it doesn't get you anywhere.

Q: Where can this all end?

A: I don't know. But it's going to end in disaster if there is not some kind of discussion of whether we want to remain in the status quo of our policies.