[Originally published in the Valley News.]
The national terrorism-alert level was raised to orange – one step below the top level – just before Christmas 2003. Our gift from administration officials was advice that we could go ahead with whatever holiday plans we had, but should exercise “increased vigilance.” Just what does that mean? Before we answer that, however, we need to ask ourselves whether this color-coded alert system really serves our needs.
Terrorist threat intelligence is extremely tricky, often incomplete and ambiguous stuff. It’s unlikely that we have sufficiently penetrated the al-Qaida organization to produce timely intelligence about its intentions and capabilities, which is really what we need to be more secure. It takes time to get to the point where we can hope to penetrate an intelligence target. Judging from our experience with Soviet intelligence services, internal discontent within al-Qaida will grow as the organization matures, a dynamic that gives us opportunities to penetrate it. At this stage of the game, however, information seems to come largely in bits and pieces from a wide range of technical collection sources as well as from al-Qaida members being held and interrogated by our intelligence agencies in places like Guantanamo Bay. This sort of intelligence is “raw” and therefore largely unevaluated. Unless there is corroborating information, it is really impossible to evaluate. That presents major problems for the administration.
Let’s say we have fragments of phone conversations and e-mails from known or suspected al-Qaida members. This information indicates there will be some sort of attack and that it may involve the West Coast, possibly Las Vegas. There is no corroborating intelligence. If the administration says nothing to the public and there is an attack, there will be a huge price to pay in the press and Congress. If it does inform the people and there is no subsequent attack, the population will have become a bit more paranoid, but no real harm to people or property will have been done.
So, in the absence of accurate and actionable intelligence, a terrorism alert system is created, and we are told what color we are living in at the moment. This leads inexorably to the politically motivated solution of telling the public every time a threat seems credible. The political advantages are obvious: By issuing public warnings, the administration protects itself against the possibility (which they are unable to corroborate) of an attack being launched against an unwarned public. In Washington, that’s called CYA – cover your ass – and it’s a time-honored tradition with both Republicans and Democrats.
This approach has problems. Anyone familiar with the little shepherd boy who cried wolf will understand immediately its long-range implications.
It also leaves this country wide open to what we in the intelligence business call “disinformation.” In this case, “disinformation” means the deliberate provision of false intelligence and false corroborating information to intelligence services by al-Qaida members participating in a carefully conceived operation to mislead the U.S. government into undertaking action counterproductive to its real interests.
The scenario reads like this: Al-Qaida feeds us information through channels it knows (from congressional leaks) that U.S. intelligence is monitoring. That information implies that terrorists are going to fly a hijacked plane into Caesar’s Palace, but it’s not that straightforward or clear. It’s in code and is leaked to us in dribs and drabs that require complicated, difficult and imaginative professional analysis to sort out. When we get the information the hard way, we are more likely to accept the findings. At that point, CYA kicks in, and the public is informed that the threat level has been raised.
Why is this so bad? Simply because we end up increasing the public’s stress and paranoia, squandering vast amounts of our resources, and alienating our allies – all of which would clearly serve al-Qaida’s interests. How often will the British or French be amenable to our requests that they stop flights to the United States, costing them millions? How many times will this have to happen before they blow us off on a request that has real merit (“Wolf!”)? How inclined will they be to share threat intelligence with us in the future?
How will these kinds of actions, along with the recently introduced photographing and fingerprinting of foreign travelers, affect us economically and politically in the rest of the world? And what about the effect on the American public? We are told to be “more vigilant.” That is an exhortation that is completely relative. Reactions to it will range from the truly paranoid citizen who sees enemies in everyone who is not blue-eyed, pale-skinned and blond, to the vast majority, who haven’t the faintest idea of how to respond. In short, such advice is all but meaningless.
This is not an easy problem. The administration must do everything it can to protect us, something it clearly is attempting to do. The CYA aspect of this issue is the real problem and presents the greatest challenge.
Is it really necessary to continually remind us of the threat level? Probably not; it does us little real good. What is necessary is that our government protect us. It can best accomplish that by acting without political motivation, colors and bombast, but rather through quick, discreet and decisive action based on accurate intelligence. The best hope we have for such intelligence right now is that it will come from countries still willing to cooperate with us in the war on terrorism. We alienate those allies, particularly those in the Middle East, at the risk of blinding ourselves to the terrorist threat.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in Beirut and Tehran and was Chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.
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