K9APE’s Bookshelf

Blindspot

The Secret History of American Counterterrorism

by

Timothy Naftali

ISBN 0-465-09281-0

Timothy Naftali is Associate Professor at the University of Virginia who worked as a contractor for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States (a.k.a. 9-11 Commission - www.9-11commission.gov). Blindspot is his book about failures in government programs and policies to combat terrorism. It deserves to be read – if only for its chronology of terrorist events starting with those of Puerto Ricans during the Truman Administration. Its weakness is that Naftali is partisan in his approach (e.g. he states that Clinton was the most effective President in dealing with terrorism – which facts do not support).

Our government’s problem in dealing with terrorism are twofold; namely, a) terrorism falls between crimes punishable by our criminal justice system and acts of war punishable by our military justice system and b) our need to balance protection of our civil rights in a free society with our need to have advance knowledge of terrorist planning.

Our criminal justice system is designed to prosecute and punish individuals committing illegal acts for criminal rather than political purposes. It is not well adapted for countering attacks launched to bring down our government. For example, criminal procedure protects a defendant’s right to remain silent, limits evidence that can be introduced at trial and requires a guilty verdict beyond a reasonable doubt for conviction.

Similarly, our need to balance protection of our civil rights against our need to have advance knowledge of an attack means that at the very least all of us surrender some aspects of our privacy. That this can lead to abuse is shown by recent disclosures about how J. Edgar Hoover, former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), used his resources to spy on his political enemies and about how Mark Felt (Deep Throat), former Deputy Director of the FBI, tried to use his knowledge about Watergate to be promoted to FBI Director.

The FBI’s abuse of its investigate powers had been an open secret long before 1975 when President Ford’s Attorney General Edward Levi established Guidelines that prohibited the opening of an FBI file on a U.S. citizen without some evidence that a crime had been or was about to be committed. In addition to the Levi Guidelines, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and our other intelligence agencies were prohibited from collecting intelligence about U.S. citizens in the United States or sharing intelligence about U.S. citizens abroad with the FBI and prosecutors. One reason was that it was government policy to prosecute individuals under the criminal law and that nothing should be done (e.g. an illegal wiretap) that would vitiate a prosecution because of a violation of criminal procedure. Another reason was a need to protect the secrecy of government intelligence sources and technology.

As Naftali points out, this led to a series of counterterrorism failures in each of the Administrations from Truman to Clinton and G.W. Bush as Presidents were reluctant to retaliate for a number of reasons. Blindspot is worth reading – if only for this chronology of events. Unfortunately, Naftali describes very few successes – probably because the nature of counterterrorism is that while its failures are highly publicized, its successes remain secret.

It is also unfortunate that Naftali’s partisanship may have caused him to exclude three important counterterrorism events – one of which occurred in during the Carter Administration and two that occurred in the Clinton Administration.

Naftali never mentions the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (a.k.a. BCCI) – which is strange because the Second Rule of Counterterrorism is Follow The Money. BCCI (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International) was an international bank, founded by a Pakistani, which had a large number of branches in foreign cities – but, none in the United States. The reason it lacked a U.S. presence was that the Controller of the Currency was well aware of its questionable activities and shady customers because BCCI had been penetrated by spies working for the United States, Israel, West Germany, France and other countries. BCCI was a major conduit for transferring funds for terrorist use. Despite BCCI’s activities, President Carter’s close advisors (i.e. Bert Lance, Clark Clifford and Robert Altman) struggled partially unsuccessfully to obtain a U.S. banking license for BCCI. BCCI managers were able to develop close ties to government officials and one can only wonder how much information about sources and methods of counterintelligence found its way to terrorists or their sponsors. When BCCI failed, a major source of counterterrorism intelligence evaporated as terrorist sponsors such as Marcus Wolfe, East Germany’s head of foreign intelligence, switched to private money changers.

A second event that Naftali excludes is the allegation that the Sudanese government offered to deliver Osama Bin Laden to the United States during the Clinton Administration (www.drudgereport.com/matt91h.htm). Clintonites rebut the allegation by saying that a) the charge is not true and b) although the charge may be true, the reason that Bin Laden was not taken was that Attorney General Janet Reno did not believe he could be prosecuted successfully under our criminal law because of a lack of admissible evidence. If the latter is true, then this further highlights difficulties in bridging the gap between Criminal Justice and Military Justice.

A third event that Naftali does not explain is the action of President Clinton’s Deputy Attorney Jamie Gorelick in ordering her Wall of Separation that imposed stiff restrictions on the sharing of critical information by intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies. She instructed the Director of the FBI to go beyond what is legally required (washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20040415-094758-5267r.htm). Therefore, we are left without an estimate as to how much damage the Wall caused to our national security and what part it may have played in mistakes made in leading up to the attack of 11 SEP 2001.

What is known about consequences of the Wall is that the House and Senate are scheduling hearings on the Defense Department’s Able Danger program that allegedly had withheld from the FBI information on the 9-11 lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta, more than one year before the tragedy. Also, the CIA’s Inspector General has issued a classified report that purportedly recommends disciplinary reviews for top CIA officials – including former Director George Tenet – because of their roles in the CIA's failure to put two known operatives, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, on government watchlists and to let the FBI know that the future Sept. 11 hijackers had entered the United States.

Despite these serious shortcomings, Blindspot is important reading for an understanding of how Presidents and their Administrations have dealt with terrorism threats. Naftali is correct in describing how all of them prior to 9-11 hoped that attacks would be small and none had developed an effective strategy for containment, prevention or retaliation.

The book also provides a partial foundation for analyzing past policies on counterterrorism as well as seemingly dubious allegations of Richard Clarke (so-called counterterrorism expert and TV guru), reauthorization of the Patriot Act, our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and our policy toward nations that sponsor terrorism. These issues are likely to be a focus of both our and our Presidents’ collective attentions for years to come.