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| September 11th: Five Years Later How safe are we? Talking with Bob Graham Two top intelligence experts share their views on terror. Mark Matthews, Sentinel Staff Writer September 7, 2006 |
| Rep. Porter Goss
of Sanibel and Sen. Bob Graham of Florida were at the Capitol having
breakfast together on Sept. 11, 2001, when they
learned two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. The two leaders of congressional intelligence committees -- Goss in the House, Graham in the Senate -- would oversee the investigation into what went wrong with the nation's security network. Goss went on to become head of the CIA. Five years later, Goss -- in his first interview since leaving the agency in May -- and Graham, now retired, offer their assessments of the impact of that day in wide-ranging conversations with the Orlando Sentinel's Mark Matthews. It's been five years since the Sept. 11 attacks. Are we any safer? The answer is no. First, our adversary has grown substantially stronger. In the fall of 2000, there were about 100,000 [international terrorists]. I would estimate today that number is substantially larger. My own speculation would be a factor of two or three of what it was. In large part, that is because of the change in the organizational structure of al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda used to be highly centralized. For instance, Osama bin Laden personally made the decision that the attack would be on Tuesday, Sept. 11. Today, al-Qaeda is a franchise, with operations in 60 or more countries. What has the United States done well, and poorly, in securing the nation? There are some areas where we are stronger -- commercial aviation being the primary one -- but we still have got major gaps in vulnerability. First, an observation: The British have done a very good job of being anticipatory. That is, they ask questions, [such as]: What are the primary vulnerabilities of the United Kingdom to a terrorist attack based on the best intelligence? In the United States, we tend to use the rearview mirror. We look at where we have been attacked... and we start hardening that. We ought to be asking the questions: What are our greatest vulnerabilities... and the potential consequences? For instance, I would put high on my list municipal water supplies. Do you think there will be a point when Americans will have to deal with bus bombings and suicide bombings in crowded plazas? That certainly is possible. [But] one of the characteristics of al-Qaeda is that its attacks have been structured so that each attack has a larger impact than the ones previous. Now that is not a very comforting analysis. But it does indicate that part of the reason we haven't had the individual car bombings and suicide bombers in restaurants or other heavily populated locations is this desire every time to exceed past operations in terms of those killed. What missteps has the United States taken since Sept. 11? The overwhelming mistake was to [scale back] in Afghanistan when we were on the verge of crushing al-Qaeda. You felt as if we were that close? Oh, yes. The CIA said in the fall of 2001 -- when asked how close were we to getting Osama bin Laden -- that we don't know his street address, but we have his ZIP code, and his ZIP code was in the mountains of Tora Bora, where he was surrounded. And for some reason, the United States elected not to take personal responsibility for securing the perimeter around Tora Bora and left it to Afghanistan's Northern Alliance and Pakistan. And bin Laden was able to escape and reconstitute his organization into this franchise and become even more lethal than the past. What changes in Middle East policy would help, if any? The most important thing is to change the relationship with Saudi Arabia, which continues to be the principal financier of al-Qaeda and the insurgency in Iraq -- and which I think played a much more significant role in 9-11 than what is yet to be fully known. It's just incredible the way in which we have facilitated the Saudis' anti-American faction. We need to stop providing Saudis with a justified cover for their actions. In your book, Intelligence Matters, you discuss how Iraq has affected the war on terrorism. Where are we seeing those consequences today? We are going to pay tremendously for Iraq over decades -- not years. We have got to get out of Iraq. We often define a victory in Iraq as having done all that we reasonably could to assist the Iraqis to stand up with their own army and justice system so that they can be responsible for security in Iraq. We could do that for the army, for the military part, by the end of this year. And we can do it for the law-enforcement part by the end of 2007. Like most things, people tend to respond to deadlines. There is [also] a great deal of suspicion that as soon as we finish in Iraq, then we will immediately go to war with Iran. And again, there are a number of people who are in, or recently have been in, the administration who have stated that our war planning for Iran is in a very advanced state. I think we have very detailed plans on targets, munitions, number of sorties, where those sorties are going to originate from and the number of days the bombing campaign will take. I think that would be -- if anything -- a more tragic mistake than the one that we took going into Iraq. We should do everything we can to deal with the legitimate Iranian issue without having to resort to the military. We need to use our military to finish the job in Afghanistan, to take on the al-Qaeda presence in other areas. What is the single most important step the United States can take to make itself safer? To recognize that this war against terror is going to require several components. You've got to have a long-term strategy. This is not like World War II. We're fighting an adversary that's not a nation-state. You're dealing more with a cancer. We're going to have to get countries like our European allies, Russia, and countries such as Egypt to ally against terror... We have got to have the best intelligence to direct us to where the risk is the greatest. One of the things the British [have done] is that they have the ability to either penetrate cells or hire third parties to get inside terrorist cells. Why hasn't the United States done the same? During the Cold War, we became very reliant on the technical means of collecting information and were able to do it at a satisfactory level that we allowed our human intelligence to atrophy. In 2002 and 2003, when we were getting all these frightening reports about weapons of mass destruction, we had zero Americans inside Iraq who were capable of verifying the accuracy of the information the exile community was giving us. We paid a high price for that inability to determine what was fact and what was fiction. We're not much better off today. We need to put a major investment in training the next generation of human intelligence. With our attention focused on the Middle East, is there another hot spot that you see developing that we have missed? Europe. As we have seen in several of those places, in Germany, England and Spain, those people -- even if they were born and raised in those countries -- they have been involved in terrorism plans. It's one of the things that should be a concern. With the problems you mentioned, what is the probability of another terrorist strike on the U.S.? I think if you set the time frame at 10 years, it's 100 percent. It won't probably be 9-11 in the sense of hijacked commercial airliners being flown into buildings. It may take the form of a chemical-plant or a seaport attack. But I think the chances of a significant terrorist event inside the United States in the next 10 years is 100 percent. |
| Courtesy of OrlandoSentinel.com Source: Orlando Sentinel This interview was edited for length and clarity. Mark Matthews can be reached at mmatthews@orlandosentinel.com or 202-824-8222. |
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