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AQI making inroads … in Syria

By Daniel DePetris

February 16, 2012, 8:22 am

As the United States and its allies attempt to tighten the screws on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is eager to take advantage of the conflict.

Apart from a few mass casualty attacks on Iraqi Shia pilgrims, AQI has been largely absent from media coverage—at least compared to six years ago, when the terror group captured headlines nearly every day. Yet a degraded terrorist organization does not mean a defeated one, as Iraq’s Shia community can attest. Now it appears Al Qaeda’s associates in Iraq are trying to branch out into neighboring Syria, where the continuing conflict makes fertile ground for an Al Qaeda franchise.

According to several U.S. intelligence analysts who recently spoke to McClatchy, AQI commanders—with the blessing of Ayman al-Zawahiri himself—are making a desperate attempt to take advantage of Syria’s internal unrest by infiltrating the opposition and turning the conflict into another front in the global jihad.

Iraq’s deputy interior minister, Adnan al-Assadi, supported this claim with his own assessment in AFP. “We have intelligence information that a number of Iraqi jihadists went to Syria.”

All of these remarks, while not incontrovertible evidence, should nevertheless be taken seriously, for Al Qaeda continues to prove that it can be versatile and adaptive when backed into a corner. Just ask the interim leaders of Yemen and Libya, where the organization is either consolidating its control over territory (Yemen) or is seeking to influence the post-conflict transition (Libya).

With Ayman al-Zawahiri’s latest announcement of support for the anti-Assad opposition, we may very well be witnessing yet another attempt by Al Qaeda to exploit a significant chapter of Arab history for its own purposes.

Daniel R. DePetris is an intern in foreign and defense policy at AEI.

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Categories:  Foreign and Defense, Middle East, War on Terror   |   Tags: ,

Roger Noriega

What is Iran up to in Latin America?

By Roger Noriega

February 15, 2012, 4:42 pm

Earlier this month, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper told Congress that “Iranian officials” at the highest levels “are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States….” The next logical question is, “What is that hostile regime doing with the support of its trusted allies very close to our borders?”

Tomorrow morning, Senator Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) will initiate an inquiry into Iran’s activities in Latin America at a 10a.m. hearing of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I am honored to have the opportunity to share my views on this troubling phenomenon and to make recommendations on an appropriate response. My observations are based on AEI’s ongoing project to monitor and expose Iran’s dramatic push into our neighborhood during the last seven years.

My testimony will review some startling findings about the clandestine network that Iran is building in Latin America with the support of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, which represents a clear and present danger to U.S. security and interests. By aiding Iran’s evasion of international sanctions and search for uranium, Chávez and other regional despots are abetting Teheran’s rogue nuclear program. And wherever Iran goes, Hezbollah is not far behind. I will expose the growing presence of two terrorist networks—one a home-grown Venezuelan clan and another cultivated by a notorious agent of Iran’s Qods Force—that proselytize, fund-raise, recruit, and train operatives on behalf of Iran and Hezbollah in many countries in the Americas.

The dangerous activities of Iran and Hezbollah so near our borders demand a whole-of-government strategy, beginning with an inter-agency review to understand and assess the transnational, multifaceted nature of the problem; educate friendly governments; and insist on inspection of suspicious operations and military compounds. Our government must be prepared to implement effective measures—unilaterally and with willing partners—to disrupt and dismantle illicit operations and neutralize unacceptable threats.

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Categories:  Latin America, Middle East, War on Terror   |   Tags: , ,

Marc Thiessen

Majid Khan, the terrorist who gave the CIA information that broke up the West Coast plot, is charged at Guantanamo

By Marc Thiessen

February 15, 2012, 11:20 am

CNN reports this morning:

Military commission charges have been sworn against Majid Shoukat Khan, a Pakistani national who lived in the United States from 1996 to early 2002 who is suspected of helping al Qaeda plan attacks in the United States and elsewhere, the Defense Department said Tuesday.

He is charged with conspiracy, murder and attempted murder in violation of the law of war, providing material support for terrorism, and spying. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Khan is no ordinary terrorist. It was Khan who provided the CIA with the critical intelligence that helped them break up a network of Southeast Asian terrorists that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) had recruited to carry out the “second wave” of attacks in the United States—a plot to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast, the Library Tower in Los Angeles. Here is how he did so:

After Khan was captured and taken into CIA custody, KSM told his CIA de-briefers that he had assigned Khan to deliver $50,000 to an individual working for a senior JI terrorist. CIA officials went to Khan’s cell and confronted him with this information from KSM. Khan confirmed KSM’s account and provided additional information—telling them that he had delivered the money to a JI operative named Zubair. Khan then provided both a physical description and a contact number for Zubair. This was a vital breakthrough. The contact number not only gave officials the ability to track down and capture Zubair—it also gave the National Security Agency the opportunity to begin using signals intelligence to track the entire JI network behind the plot.

Thanks to the information Majid Khan provided, Zubair was captured in June 2003 and taken into CIA custody. Under questioning, Zubair revealed that he worked directly for Hambali—KSM’s partner in the West Coast Plot—and provided information that was used to track down and capture Hambali in August 2003. Hambali was taken into custody along with another key player in the West Coast Plot—a terrorist named Bashir bin Lap (a.k.a. “Lillie”) who, according to the office of the director of national intelligence, “was slated to be a suicide operative for an al Qaeda ‘second wave’ attack targeting Los Angeles.”

Agency officials informed KSM that both Lillie and Hambali has been captured and confronted him with detailed questions from their debriefings. When confronted with this information, KSM finally provided more specific information on al Qaeda’s operational plans with JI, and the identities of JI operatives.

KSM provided information that helped lead to the capture of Hambali’s younger brother, Rusman Gunawan (a.k.a.“Gun Gun”), whom KSM identified as the leader of the JI cell that was to carry out the West Coast plot. Once in custody, Gun Gun then identified a previously unknown cell of JI operatives—the Ghuraba Cell—that was hiding out in Karachi, Pakistan, awaiting orders. When confronted with his brother’s revelations, Hambali gave us information that, together with intelligence from Gun Gun, led to the capture of more than a dozen members of this cell. Hambali then admitted that he was grooming members of the cell as pilots, at KSM’s request, for an aircraft attack in the United States against the tallest building on the West Coast.

The disruption of the Hambali network shows not only the effectiveness, but the unique value of the CIA detention and interrogation program. It was only because KSM and other captured terrorists were held together in secret prisons that CIA officials were able to “triangulate” the detainees—using information from one to elicit more information from others, and ultimately to track members of the Hambali network and unravel the plot.

As the United States prepares to try Majid Khan by military commission, it is worth reflecting on how the information the CIA elicited from him saved lives—and the fact that, thanks to the Obama administration, the United States no longer has this capability.

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Al Qaeda officially welcomes al Shabaab

By Katherine Zimmerman

February 9, 2012, 4:12 pm

Al Shabaab is officially an al Qaeda affiliate. This development is not really new, since I and other analysts have assessed that relationship to be real for some time. But for the naysayers, al Qaeda’s media arm just released a video of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri welcoming al Shabaab to al Qaeda. Is it right, then, to continue to assert that al Shabaab remains a local threat?

The Somalia-based terrorist organization has recently come under military pressure from joint Kenyan, Ethiopian, Somali, and African Union-led operations. Most of al Shabaab’s fighters have been caught up in the fight to protect the organization’s territory, which once extended from the Kenyan border up through central Somalia. Yet not all of al Shabaab is entirely focused on this local fight. A hard-line faction within the leadership has cycled through Somalia’s successive radical Islamist organizations—first al Ittihad al Islamiyya, designated a foreign terrorist organization after 9/11, and then Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union. These leaders, profiled by the Critical Threats Project, subscribe to al Qaeda’s ideology and have more global aspirations.

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper testified to this distinction between nationalist and radical factions of al Shabaab. He said, “Members of this group—particularly a foreign fighter cadre that includes US passport holders—may also have aspirations to attack the United States.” He added that there are no insights into concrete plots to attack outside of the Horn of Africa, however. But the nationalist and radical factions are not entirely distinct. Al Shabaab’s hardliners rely on the safe havens secured by local fighters to operate, which opens up access to necessary networks to conduct operations. Current military operations in Somalia have begun to disrupt some of these networks, but al Shabaab still has safe havens in the country. And from there, the hardliners will continue to operate.

The fact that Zawahiri and al Shabaab’s leadership decided to announce their relationship publicly at this time is in itself interesting, and merits further examination. For now, though, it is essential for American policymakers to register the fact that an Islamist organization that controls significant territory and resources—including U.S. passport-holders—has declared openly for al Qaeda.

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Categories:  Africa, Critical Threats, Foreign and Defense, War on Terror   |   Tags: ,

Marc Thiessen

Will Iran carry out the next 9/11?

By Marc Thiessen

February 1, 2012, 2:52 pm

The Washington Post reports that U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Iran has “crossed a threshold” in its thinking that could lead it to carry out terrorist attacks against the American homeland:

An assessment by U.S. spy agencies concludes that Iran is prepared to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States, highlighting new risks as the Obama administration escalates pressure on Tehran to halt its alleged pursuit of an atomic bomb.

In congressional testimony Tuesday, U.S. intelligence officials indicated that Iran has crossed a threshold in its adversarial relationship with the United States. While Iran has long been linked to attacks on American targets overseas, U.S. officials said they see troubling significance in Tehran’s alleged role in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington last year.

U.S. officials said they have seen no intelligence to indicate that Iran is actively plotting attacks on U.S. soil. But Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said the thwarted plot “shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

Iran has long used Hezbollah as a terrorist proxy. But as I noted here yesterday, a disturbing new article in Foreign Affairs by Seth Jones suggests another proxy with whom Iran might collaborate: al Qaeda.

Jones documents how Iran currently provides al Qaeda with its only safe haven out of reach of U.S. drones, and permits senior al Qaeda leaders to “fundraise, communicate with al Qaeda central in Pakistan and other affiliates, and funnel foreign fighters through Iran.” He notes that “Iran appears willing to expand its limited relationship with al Qaeda,” and that in response to a pre-emptive strike against its nuclear program, Tehran “could support an al Qaeda attack against the United States or one of its allies, although the regime would surely attempt to hide its role in any plotting.”

Clearly, Iran is attempting to deter American or Israeli military action by sending signals that it might respond with a terrorist attack on our soil. Yet if Iran is willing to blackmail America today with the threat of a terrorist attack, imagine the kind of blackmail the regime would be capable of once it obtains a nuclear weapon. And if Iran is already providing safe haven and limited support for al Qaeda today, before it possesses a nuclear deterrent, imagine the support Tehran would be willing to provide al Qaeda once it has the security of a nuclear umbrella.

There are clearly serious risks to action when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program—but the risks of inaction could prove far greater.

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Marc Thiessen

Al Qaeda in Iran—the evidence

By Marc Thiessen

January 31, 2012, 12:36 pm

More evidence is emerging of the cooperation between Iran and al Qaeda. Last June, the Obama Treasury Department named six al Qaeda facilitators operating in Iran under a “secret deal” between al Qaeda and the Iranian regime. Then, in December, a federal court found that Iran had “aided, abetted and conspired with” al Qaeda in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Now, RAND scholar Seth Jones has published an important new essay in Foreign Affairs detailing the evolution of the Iran-al Qaeda relationship. Jones spent much of the past year at West Point culling through hundreds of open-source and declassified documents, and interviewed government officials from the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. Based on this research, he concludes, “Evidence of the Iranian-al Qaeda partnership abounds” and that “the organization’s presence in Iran means that, contrary to optimistic assessments that have become the norm in Washington, al Qaeda’s demise is not imminent.”

Jones writes:

[O]ver the past several years, al Qaeda has taken a beating in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, and North Africa. In particular, an ongoing campaign of drone strikes has weakened — although not eliminated — al Qaeda’s leadership cadre in Pakistan. But the group’s outpost in Iran has remained almost untouched for the past decade.

He notes that:

On the surface, the relationship between Shia Iran and Sunni al Qaeda is puzzling. Their religious views do differ, but they share a more important common interest: countering the United States and its allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom. Iran’s rationale might be compared to that of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who declared, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

Iran is likely holding al Qaeda leaders on its territory first as an act of defense. So long as Tehran has several leaders under its control, the group will likely refrain from attacking Iran. But the strategy also has an offensive component. If the United States or Israel undertook a bombing campaign against Iran, Tehran could employ al Qaeda in a response. Tehran has long used proxies to pursue its foreign policy interests, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon, and it has a history of reaching out to Sunni groups. In Afghanistan, for example, Iran has provided limited support to the Taliban to keep the United States tied down. Al Qaeda’s proven willingness and ability to strike the United States make it an attractive partner.

As for al Qaeda:

Iran is in many ways a safer territory from which al Qaeda can operate. The United States has targeted al Qaeda in Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries, but it has limited operational reach in Iran. In addition, Iran borders the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, making it centrally located for most al Qaeda affiliates. …. Although most governments in the region have clamped down on al Qaeda, Iran’s willingness to allow some activity sets it apart.

Jones is clearly sensitive to the possibility that the evidence he has produced could strengthen the hand of those who argue for military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. He concludes that a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities could backfire by pushing Iran and al Qaeda closer together:

For one, Iran would likely respond to an attack by targeting the United States and its allies through proxies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries. The regime might increase its logistical support to al Qaeda by providing money, weapons, housing, travel documents, and transit to operatives — some of which it is already doing. In a worse scenario, Tehran might even allow al Qaeda officials in Iran to go to Pakistan to replenish the group’s depleted leadership there, or else open its borders to additional al Qaeda higher-ups. … In an even more extreme scenario, Iran could support an al Qaeda attack against the United States or one of its allies, although the regime would surely attempt to hide its role in any plotting.

This is certainly a risk that must be weighed before any military action is taken. But policymakers could reasonably conclude that the risk of a closer Iran-al Qaeda alliance does not, in the long run, outweigh the risk of an Iranian regime armed with nuclear weapons.

You can read the full essay here.

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Marc Thiessen

Obama ‘exposes’ a covert action program

By Marc Thiessen

January 31, 2012, 11:00 am

During an online question and answer session on Monday, President Obama “exposed” a covert action program when, for the first time, he acknowledged the existence of the CIA’s drone campaign against al Qaeda. The drone program is, of course, an “open secret” in Washington. U.S. officials routinely discuss it on deep background, and Obama has referred to it obliquely in the past. But this was the first time an American president had openly acknowledged that the United States was using unmanned drones to kill al Qaeda terrorists.

The president made his remarks in the context of defending the program against charges from critics on the left that it has led to the deaths of a large number of civilians. “Drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” the president declared. “There’s a perception that we’re just sending a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly. This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists who are trying to go in and harm Americans … It is important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a tight leash.”

He added that, far from a source of tension with countries where strikes occur (he judiciously avoided mentioning Pakistan by name), relations would be further frayed if drones were not available to go after al Qaeda and the United States had to use manned missions to kill the terrorists instead. “We have to be judicious in how we use drones,” the president said, “but we have to understand that probably our ability … to limit our incursions into somebody else’s territory is enhanced by the fact that we are able to pinpoint-strike an al Qaeda operative in a place where the capacity of that military in that country may not be able to get them.”

At almost the same time the president spoke, eleven terrorists, including four local commanders, are reported to have been killed in a U.S. drone airstrike in a southern Yemeni province where al Qaeda’s affiliate controls significant ground. And earlier this month, the United States resumed drone strikes in Pakistan after a nearly two month pause following an American air strike in November that killed two dozen Pakistani troops. According to the Long War Journal, this was the longest pause in strikes since the program was ramped up in the summer of 2008 by President George W. Bush. Here is LWJ’s list of the pauses in drone attacks:

Number of days between Predator/Reaper strikes in Pakistan since August 2008, eight days or greater

2011:

•    33 days, Nov. 16 to Dec. 19

•    11 days, Nov. 3 to Nov. 15

•    11 days, Oct. 15 to Oct. 27

•    12 days, Sept. 30 to Oct. 13

•    11 days, Sept. 11 to Sept. 23

•    17 days, Aug. 22 to Sept. 11

•    9 days, May 23 to June 3

•    19 days, April 21 to May 6

•    25 days, March 17 to April 13

•    14 days, Feb. 21 to March 8

•    27 days, Jan. 23 to Feb. 20

2010:

•    9 days, Dec. 17 to Dec. 27

•    19 days, July 25 to Aug. 14

•    15 days, June 29 to July 15

•    12 days, May 28 to June 10

•    12 days, March 30 to April 12

•    10 days, Feb. 24 to March 8

•    11 days, Feb. 2 to Feb. 14

2009:

•    19 days, Nov. 18 to Dec. 8

•    13 days, Sept. 30 to Oct. 14

•    9 days, Sept. 14 to Sept. 24

•    10 days, Aug. 27 to Sept. 7

•    8 days, Aug. 11 to Aug. 20

•    9 days, June 23 to July 3

•    28 days, May 16 to June 14

•    9 days, April 19 to April 29

•    10 days, April 8 to April 19

•    9 days, March 15 to March 25

•    11 days, March 1 to March 12

•    12 days, Feb. 16 to March 1

•    21 days, Jan. 23 to Feb. 14

•    20 days, Jan. 2 to Jan. 23

2008:

•    11 days, Nov. 29 to Dec. 11

•    13 days, Sept. 17 to Oct. 1

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Categories:  Bin Laden, Foreign and Defense, South Asia   |   Tags: , ,

Marc Thiessen

Al Qaeda terror training manual found at Gitmo

By Marc Thiessen

January 19, 2012, 9:42 am

Authorities at Guantanamo Bay recently began reading privileged attorney-client communications in an effort to prevent terrorists from passing messages and receiving unauthorized information from their brethren on the outside. Detainee advocates have responded with outrage, but we may now have learned what sparked the new procedures—an al Qaeda terrorist training manual has been found at Gitmo.

The Miami Herald reports this morning:

A copy of Al Qaida’s fiery magazine Inspire somehow got inside the prison camps at Guantánamo, a prosecutor disclosed at the war court Wednesday.

Navy Cmdr. Andrea Lockhart blurted out the embarrassing disclosure in defending the prison camp commander’s plan to give greater scrutiny to legal mail bound for alleged terrorists. She was discussing a system used by civilian lawyers to send materials to Guantánamo captives who are suing the U.S. for their freedom through habeas corpus petitions in Washington, D.C.

An al Qaeda lawyer, Shayana Kadidal of The Center for Constitutional Rights, suggested that an interrogator may have provided the magazine to a detainee to curry favor with a captive. This is simply preposterous. No interrogator in his right mind would give a detainee a copy of Inspire—because the magazine is much more than an al Qaeda “propaganda magazine.” It is an al Qaeda terrorist training manual, replete with detailed instructions for how to commit terrorist attacks against the United States.

Each issue of Inspire includes a section called “Open Source Jihad,” which the editors have described as “a resource manual for those who loathe tyrants; including bomb making techniques, security measures, guerilla tactics, [and] weapons training.” Recent issues included:

•     Detailed instructions for how to “use a pickup truck as a mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah”;

•     “How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” which provided detailed instructions for constructing a pipe bomb “from ingredients available in any kitchen in the world.”

•     A detailed guide for “Destroying Buildings,” with advice on the “best gas to use” and instructions on how to find “the center of gravity … the points in the building that if destroyed would cause the fall of the building.”

•     A series called “Weapons School: Training with the AK,” which instructed jihadists “on the basics of the AK, the weapon’s capabilities, how to open the weapon and clean it, shooting positions, the types of bullets and the add-ons.”

Guantanamo officials regularly black out sections of USA Today before giving the paper to detainees. It is unthinkable that an interrogator would have provided a copy of Inspire to a detainee with these kinds of detailed instructions for carrying out terrorist attacks.

The fact that lawyers are passing on such information to detainees is appalling but not surprising. And it provides yet another reason why Congress was correct in preventing President Obama from transferring Gitmo detainees to the United States. If detainees can get their hands on a terror training manual at a remote detention camp in Cuba, imagine the kinds of communications they would be capable of if they were in federal prison in the United States.

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Marc Thiessen

Ron Paul was for killing bin Laden before he was against it

By Marc Thiessen

January 17, 2012, 12:13 pm

A few weeks ago, I pointed out here at the Enterprise Blog and the Washington Post that Ron Paul had come out against the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, declaring it showed a lack of “respect for the rule of law, international law.”

At last night’s Fox News debate, moderator Brett Baier confronted Paul with his own words. Paul’s response was, to put it mildly, an incomprehensible jumble.

At first Paul denied ever uttering them. Then he said he had voted to give the president the authority to kill bin Laden. Then he said the operation that did kill him showed no respect for the sovereignty of Pakistan. Then he complained that “once they waited ten years, I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t have done it like they did after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed” (ie. working together with Pakistan)—ignoring the fact that bin Laden was hiding out right under the shadow of Pakistan’s equivalent of West Point and that U.S. officials feared bin Laden was being protected and would have been tipped off. Then he bizarrely compared the operation to the Chinese coming into the United States and killing a dissident who had been given political safe haven here. Then he said we should have done what we had in the case of Saddam Hussein (only to have Baier point out that Paul had opposed the Iraq war).

Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney then stepped forward and skewered Paul. Gingrich called Paul’s answer “utterly irrational” and pointed out that “a Chinese dissident who comes here seeking freedom is not the same as a terrorist who goes to Pakistan seeking asylum.” Romney declared, “Of course you take out our enemies, wherever they are. These people declared war on us. They’ve killed Americans. We go anywhere they are, and we kill them.… (APPLAUSE) The right thing for Osama bin Laden was the bullet in the head that he received. That’s the right thing for people who kill American citizens.”

You can see the video of Paul’s rambling response here (the exchange starts at 7:28):



Here is the full unedited transcript, in all its glory:

BAIER: In a recent interview, Congressman Paul, with a Des Moines radio station you said you were against the operation that killed Osama bin Laden. You said the U.S. operation that took out the terrorist responsible for killing 3,000 people on American soil, quote, showed no respect for the rule of law, international law. So to be clear, you believe international law should have constrained us from tracking down and killing the man responsible for the most brazen attack on the U.S. since Pearl Harbor?

PAUL: Obviously no. And that’s what — I did not say that. What I — as a matter of fact, after 9/11 I voted for the authority to go after him. And my frustration was that we didn’t go after him. It took us ten years. We had him trapped at Tora Bora and I thought we should have trapped him there. I even introduced another resolution on the principle of market reprisal to keep our eye on target rather than getting involved in nation building.

BAIER: But no respect for international law was the question about the quote that you used in Des Moines.

PAUL: Well, you know, I can’t say — his colleague was in Pakistan, and we communicated, you know, with the government of Pakistan and they turned him over. And what I suggested there was that if we have no respect for the sovereignty of another nation that it will lead to disruption of that nation.

Here we have a nation that we are becoming constantly trying to kill people who we consider our enemies. At the same time we are giving the government of Pakistan billions of dollars. Now there’s a civil war going on, the people are mad at us but yet the government is getting money from us and I think it’s a deeply flawed policy.

But to not go after him — and if I voted for the authority, obviously I think it was proper. But once they waited ten years, I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t have done it like they did after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And that would have been a more proper way. If somebody in this country, say a Chinese dissident come over here, we wouldn’t endorse the idea, well, they can come over here and bomb us and do whatever. I’m just trying to suggest that respect for other nation’s sovereignty — and look at the chaos in Pakistan now. We are at war in Pakistan, but to say that I didn’t want him killed…

BAIER: No, I just quoted from your radio.

PAUL: I’m just suggesting that there are processes that if you could follow and that you should do it. There is proper procedures rather than digging bigger holes for ourselves. That’s what we have been doing in the Middle East, digging bigger and bigger holes for ourselves and it’s so hard for us to get out of that mess. And we have a long ways to go. We are still in Iraq and that’s getting worse and we are not leaving Afghanistan and the American people are sick and tired of it. 80 percent of the American people want us out of there. I am just suggesting that we work within the rule of law. Like only going to war when you declare the law, then we wouldn’t be…

BAIER: International law. I understand. I guess U.S. intelligence officials say they had documents recovered in the compound in Abbottabad that that shows that al Qaeda was planning other attacks, perhaps bigger than 9/11. I asked you in our debate in Sioux City on the topic of Iran about this. But on this topic, GOP nominee Ron Paul would be running far to the left of President Obama on the issue of tracking down and killing terrorists who want to attack the U.S.

PAUL: I would say that if you do your best and you can’t do anything, yes, we had the authority, we voted for it, you got it from the congress, you do it. I just didn’t think they had gone through the process enough to actually, you know, capture him in a different way. I mean, think about Saddam Hussein. We did that. We captured him. We tried him. I mean the government tried him and he got hung. What’s so terrible about this?  This whole idea that you can’t capture — just a minute. This whole idea you can’t capture people…

BAIER: but you voted against the war in Iraq.

PAUL: Adolf Eichmann was captured. He was given a trial. What is wrong with capturing people? Why didn’t we try to get some information from him? You know, we are accustomed to asking people questions, but all of a sudden gone, you know, that’s it. So I would say that there are different ways without trying to turn around and say, oh, for some reason this doesn’t mean he’s supporting America.

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Marc Thiessen

Mitt Romney and the future of Gitmo

By Marc Thiessen

January 11, 2012, 2:13 pm

The focus of the media coverage of today’s 10th anniversary of Guantanamo Bay has been largely on President Obama’s failure to close the facility and speculation about how long it will take before the United States finds some way to dispose of the 171 detainees still held there.

But the real question is not what did not happen on January 20, 2010 (the date set by Obama for Gitmo’s closure) but rather what will happen with Guantanamo come January 20, 2013, if a new Republican president takes office.

With the exception of Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, all the GOP candidates have expressed support for keeping Guantanamo open—and none more vigorously than the winner of yesterday’s New Hampshire primary, Mitt Romney. Indeed, during the 2008 campaign, Romney went so far as to propose doubling the size of Gitmo so it could hold more terrorists, saying of the al Qaeda and Taliban detainees held there:

I’m glad they’re at Guantanamo. I don’t want them on our soil… I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people say that we should close Guantanamo, my view is we outta double Guantanamo. … I believe that Guantanamo plays an important role in protecting our nation from violent, heinous terrorists. Guantanamo is a symbol of our resolve.

During the current campaign, Romney has continued in this vein. He responded to the Obama administration’s decision last April to hold a military tribunal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad instead of a civilian trial by declaring:

An inexperienced and naïve president has finally reversed himself on Guantanamo and terrorist trials. Let’s hope he sees the light on his other flawed policies.

And he has slammed the Obama administration for considering the release of five senior Taliban leaders as part of peace negotiations with the Taliban, telling Reuters:

I don’t believe in releasing prisoners as part of a terrorist negotiation. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. The Taliban are terrorists, they are our enemy and I do not believe in a prisoner release exchange.

Romney also supports enhanced interrogation. During the CBS debate in November, Romney was one of the only candidates not asked his position on waterboarding, so with the debate still going on his campaign spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, tweeted: “He wasn’t asked but it’s not torture.” In 2008, Romney expressed strong support for CIA interrogations, declaring in a CNN debate:

I want to make sure that what happened to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed happens to other people who are terrorists. He was captured. He was the so-called mastermind of the 9/11 tragedy. And he turned to his captors, and he said, “I’ll see you in New York with my lawyers.” I presume ACLU lawyers. That’s not what happened. He went to Guantanamo, and he met GIs and CIA interrogators, and that’s just exactly how it ought to be.

Romney had it slightly wrong: KSM was sent first to a CIA black site where he was interrogated and then later transferred to Gitmo. But his key point remains: he wants other terrorists to be captured and interrogated just like KSM was. Today, that is not happening. Outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration is killing rather than capturing and interrogating terrorists because we have nowhere to take them. The CIA’s black sites are closed and Gitmo is not taking any new arrivals.

If Mitt Romney, or any Republican other than Paul or Huntsman, is elected, that may quickly change. Guantanamo will not only stay open, but will very likely resume its original purpose as a strategic interrogation center where fresh captures are brought for exploitation—so we can get intelligence to stop new attacks. Precisely how the next president will overhaul U.S. detention and interrogation policy is a complicated question, but this much is certain: if Romney is elected, America will have a detention and interrogation policy again for the first time in four years.

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Marc Thiessen

Guantanamo by the numbers

By Marc Thiessen

January 11, 2012, 1:39 pm

Here are some interesting numbers to mark today’s 10th anniversary of the opening of the terrorist interrogation center at Guantanamo Bay, courtesy of Michael Stransky at the Senate Republican Policy Committee:

0

Detainees who were supposed to be at Guantanamo on January 22, 2010, under Executive Order 13492 issued on the president’s third day in office, mandating the Guantanamo facility be closed within one year.

171

Detainees still at Guantanamo as of January 11, 2012—close to two years after the self-imposed deadline for closing the facility—because the executive order was issued to fulfill a campaign promise to the president’s liberal base without any semblance of a plan of how to accomplish it.

27

Percentage of detainees transferred from Guantanamo suspected of engaging in new terrorist or insurgent activities since their release.

779

Detainees ever held at Guantanamo.

94

Senators voting for a resolution stating Guantanamo detainees should not be transferred into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods.

1

Offer to plead guilty in a military commission by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

1

Announcement by the Obama Administration dismissing military commission charges against the September 11 co-conspirators and ordering them transferred to the civilian criminal justice system in New York, with full benefit of the same Constitutional rights available to American citizens.

1

Charges out of 285 Ahmed Ghailani convicted of for his participation in the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings.

285

Charges Ghailani should have been convicted of under Attorney General Holder’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 18, 2009, that “failure is not an option.”

0

New military commission cases commenced under President Obama (given that the commissions for both the 9/11 co-conspirators and the Cole bomber were started in the previous Administration)

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Marc Thiessen

Meet the Taliban leader Obama wants to release from Guantanamo

By Marc Thiessen

January 4, 2012, 2:36 pm

As Michael notes, the Obama administration wants to open peace talks with the Taliban and reward them before they even come to the table by releasing  senior Taliban leaders  held at Guantanamo Bay. Fox News reports that a senior U.S. official has confirmed that “Mullah Mohammed Fazl is among the prisoners being considered for release.”

So who is this Mullah Mohammed Fazl?

Last year, WikiLeaks released a trove of documents it dubbed the “Gitmo Files” with assessments of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees—including Fazl. According to his official record, Fazl is a war criminal who has massacred thousands of people, has close relationships with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, is involved in narcotics trafficking, and is so senior in the Taliban hierarchy that he once threatened the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar. He is considered to pose a “high risk” to American forces and our allies if released.

Here is the official U.S. government assessment of the man Barack Obama wants to put back on the streets (emphasis is mine):

Detainee is assessed to be a HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies…. Detainee is an admitted senior official of the Taliban government and army and was last assigned to the position of Deputy Minister of Defense. Detainee also served as Chief of Staff of the Taliban Army and a commander of the 22nd Division. Detainee is wanted by the UN for possible war crimes including the murder of thousands of Shiites. Detainee had operational associations with significant al-Qaida and other extremist personnel. Detainee wielded considerable influence throughout the northern region of Afghanistan and his influence continued even after his capture. If released, detainee would likely rejoin the Taliban and establish ties with anti-Coalition militias (ACM) participating in hostilities against US and Coalition forces in Afghanistan….

Detainee is wanted by the UN for possible war crimes while serving as a Taliban Army Chief of Staff and was noted having a long record of human rights abuses. Detainee was implicated in the murder of thousands of Shiites in northern Afghanistan during the Taliban reign. When asked about the murders, detainee and [ANOTHER DETAINEE] did not express any regret and stated they did what they needed to do in their struggle to establish their ideal state.

Detainee protected a subordinate accused of mass murder. Detainee’s deputy commander, Mullah Dadullah Lang, aka (Commander Dadullah), was reportedly responsible for the murder of 500 Shia, Hazara, and Uzbek civilians, including men, women, and children, during the winter of 2000. Dadullah Lang’s troops seized the people near Sar-i-Pol, AF, trucked them to Baghlan Province, AF, killed them, and threw the bodies into gorges…. After Mullah Omar found out about the massacre, he ordered Dadullah Lang to be disarmed and brought to Kandahar to explain his actions. Detainee vouched for Dadullah Lang, reportedly telling Supreme Leader of the Taliban Mullah Muhammad Omar that if Dadullah Lang was disarmed, detainee would disarm Mullah Omar. (Analyst Note: Detainee was directly subordinate to Mullah Omar. Detainee’s threat directly against the Supreme Leader of the Taliban indicates he held great authority and power within the Taliban)….

Detainee was reportedly involved in Taliban narcotics trafficking activities….

[Another detainee] stated detainee has continued to spread anti-Afghan government and anti-US messages among detainees at JTF-GTMO [and] lists detainee among several detainees at JTF-GTMO who would likely pose a threat to the Afghan government it released….

Detainee was directly connected to several extremist organizations and facilitated programs supporting the Taliban, including al-Qaida and IMU…. Detainee has specific information relating to several extremist organizations that provide support to the Taliban. Detainee also probably has significant information on Taliban and al-Qaida personnel still active today.

This is the man the Obama administration wants to release—not in return for any concession on the part of the Taliban, mind you, but as a confidence building measure before any talks even begin. Based on this assessment, Mullah Mohammed Fazl is a mass murderer who should not be released under any circumstances. He should be tried by military commission and spend the rest of his life in custody at Guantanamo Bay.

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Michael Rubin

Now Obama wants to talk to the Taliban?

By Michael Rubin

January 4, 2012, 9:57 am

Whenever the U.S. military undertakes any drill, let alone an engagement, there are hundreds if not thousands of man-hours spent after the fact going over the lessons learned in mind-numbing detail. Never, however, has the State Department conducted a lessons-learned session to investigate why their diplomacy has failed, hence the prevalence of the myth in diplomatic circles that it never hurts to talk.

Obama has sought not only to engage the late Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi, current Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, but also Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. In each case, poorly considered dialogue backfired on U.S. interests and, more often than not, on the people living under the thumbs of these dictators or Islamist groups.

Now word comes that Obama wants not only to talk to the Taliban, but also to reward it for coming to the table by releasing high-value detainees before a new round of talks even begins. Forgotten is the fact that between 1995 and 2000, the Clinton administration and its State Department undertook high-level negotiations with the same Taliban leaders who lied and stalled, hemmed and hawed, in order to protect Osama Bin Laden as he planned 9/11. Alas, just over a decade after 9/11, Obama and his aides seem intent on repeating the mistakes that led to that day.

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Marc Thiessen

More evidence of growing Iran-Al Qaeda links

By Marc Thiessen

December 27, 2011, 11:52 am

While the folks at Think Progress deny the growing links between Iran and al Qaeda, more evidence of the terror network’s collaboration with the regime in Tehran emerged just before Christmas when the State and Treasury Departments put out a bounty for an al Qaeda leader operating in Iran under a secret agreement with Iran.

As I pointed out earlier this month, Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil was designated by the Treasury Department earlier this year as the leader of an al Qaeda network operating in Iran with the help and protection of the Iranian regime. Now, Josh Rogin at The Cable reports that the U.S. government has offered $10 million through the Rewards for Justice program for information leading to the death or capture of Khalil (a.k.a. Yasin al-Suri):

According to two U.S. officials who briefed reporters today, [Suri] stands at the center of the link between the Iranian government and al Qaeda… “From his sanctuary inside Iran, he has moved terrorist recruits through Iran to al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has also arranged for the release of al Qaeda operatives from Iranian prisons and their transfer to Pakistan. And he has funneled significant amounts of money through Iran to AQ leadership in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Robert A. Hartung, assistant director for threat investigations and analysis at State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security…. “We have reliable information indicating that there is an agreement between the Iranian government and this al Qaeda network [led by Suri],” said Eytan Fisch, Treasury’s assistant director of terrorism and financial intelligence.

This is the second time in the past six months that the Obama administration has taken action to highlight the links between al Qaeda and Iran. And it comes on the heels of a federal court ruling earlier this month which found that Iran was responsible for the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the bombings would not have been possible without “direct assistance” from Tehran. “The government of Iran,” Judge John D. Bates wrote in his 45-page decision, “aided, abetted, and conspired with Hezbollah, Osama Bin Laden, and al Qaeda to launch large-scale bombing attacks against the United States by utilizing the sophisticated delivery mechanism of powerful suicide truck bombs…. Prior to their meetings with Iranian officials and agents Bin Laden and al Qaeda did not possess the technical expertise required to carry out the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.”

Considering the fact that the Shiite regime in Tehran and the Sunni terrorist network have already collaborated to attack the United States, their growing cooperation is an ominous sign. If Iran was willing to give al Qaeda the means to destroy two American embassies, what kind of assistance might a nuclear Iran be willing to provide them?

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Marc Thiessen

GOP frontrunner opposes the killing of Osama bin Laden

By Marc Thiessen

December 21, 2011, 10:56 am

The Iowa caucuses are less than 14 days away and three new polls show Representative Ron Paul is the new frontrunner in the Hawkeye state—leading the GOP field in Iowa by anywhere from three to six points. Should Paul come out on top when the caucuses convene next month, Iowa Republicans will have given their endorsement to a presidential nominee who just yesterday announced that he opposes the killing of Osama bin Laden.

That’s right. ABC News reports:

Rep. Ron Paul… explained to a Iowa radio station why he would not have ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden. The answer seemed to catch Iowa radio host Simon Conway off guard; he asked Paul to repeat it.

Paul was unequivocal: “No, not the way it took place,” Paul said of the killing of bin Laden.

Why?

“It was absolutely not necessary and I think respect for the rule of law, international law—what if he’d been in a hotel in London?” Paul asked. “We wanted to keep it secret. Would we have sent the helicopters into London? Because they were afraid the information would get out. No you don’t want to do that.”

It has long been clear that Ron Paul has nutty views when it comes to foreign policy. (In one presidential debate earlier this year, he explained that America had brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself.) But what is most surprising is that his objection to the killing of Osama bin Laden rests on his contention that our actions showed a lack of respect for “international law.” Not long ago, Paul was much more dismissive of international law. Back in 2002, he wrote in a column that “America must either remain a constitutional republic or submit to international law, because it cannot do both. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and the conflict between adhering to the rule of law and obeying globalist planners is now staring us in the face.” Now, he claims, international law constrains us from killing the man responsible for the most brazen attack our country since Pearl Harbor—and who was actively plotting another attack to match or exceed the magnitude of 9/11? Since when do libertarians believe that international law has the power to prevent a sovereign nation like the United States from defending itself against foreign aggressors?

Ron Paul is no conservative—indeed, his views on the war on terror put him on the far left of the political spectrum when it comes to national security. It would bring shame on the state of Iowa if the state’s Republicans made a man who opposes the killing of Osama bin Laden their choice for the president of the United States.

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Marc Thiessen

New York Times still denying Al Qaeda in Iraq is Al Qaeda

By Marc Thiessen

December 15, 2011, 11:12 am

In a story on the pending departure of U.S. forces from Iraq, the New York Times yesterday referred to “al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, which has some foreign members.” Boy, the folks at the Times are either really stubborn or really slow learners. Probably both.

Back in 2007, you may recall, opponents of the surge in Iraq—including the Times—worked overtime to spread the myth that al Qaeda in Iraq (aka Mesopotamia) was an Iraqi phenomenon independent of Osama bin Laden. They did so because, if al Qaeda in Iraq was bin Laden’s al Qaeda, then America could not accept defeat in Iraq—we had to win. But if they could convince Americans that we were not fighting bin Laden’s al Qaeda in Iraq, but rather some “homegrown” terror group, then America could pull out of Iraq and not undermine our efforts in the war on terror.

In July 2007, President Bush delivered an address in Charleston, South Carolina where he definitively put to this myth to rest. As Bush explained:

Al Qaeda in Iraq was founded by a Jordanian terrorist, not an Iraqi. His name was Abu Musab al Zarqawi.… In 2004, Zarqawi and his terrorist group formally joined al Qaeda, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and he promised to “follow his orders in jihad.” Soon after, bin Laden publicly declared that Zarqawi was the “Prince of Al Qaeda in Iraq”—and instructed terrorists in Iraq to “listen to him and obey him.”…

Zarqawi was killed by U.S. forces in June 2006. He was replaced by another foreigner—an Egyptian named Abu Ayyub al-Masri. … He has collaborated with Zawahiri for more than two decades. And before 9/11, he spent time with al Qaeda in Afghanistan where he taught classes indoctrinating others in al Qaeda’s radical ideology….

According to our intelligence community, many of al Qaeda in Iraq’s other senior leaders are also foreign terrorists. They include a Syrian who is al Qaeda in Iraq’s emir in Baghdad, a Saudi who is al Qaeda in Iraq’s top spiritual and legal advisor, an Egyptian who fought in Afghanistan in the 1990s and who has met with Osama bin Laden, a Tunisian who we believe plays a key role in managing foreign fighters. Last month in Iraq, we killed a senior al Qaeda facilitator named Mehmet Yilmaz, a Turkish national who fought with al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and met with September the 11th mastermind Khalid Shaikh Muhammad, and other senior al Qaeda leaders. … Foreign terrorists also account for most of the suicide bombings in Iraq. Our military estimates that between 80 and 90 percent of suicide attacks in Iraq are carried out by foreign-born al Qaeda terrorists.

The Times wasn’t sold, declaring in their story the next day on Bush’s speech: “The Iraqi group is a homegrown Sunni Arab extremist group with some foreign operatives that has claimed a loose affiliation to Mr. bin Laden’s network, although the precise links are unclear.” Apparently, they are still at it. The Times editors should study these words President Bush delivered in Charleston carefully: “There’s a good reason they are called al Qaeda in Iraq: They are al Qaeda … in … Iraq.” Hopefully, Barack Obama has not given them a new lease on life with his precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces.

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Marc Thiessen

Panetta visits Marine base saved by CIA interrogators

By Marc Thiessen

December 13, 2011, 10:21 am

Yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, where he thanked the Marines stationed there for their service. He might have also thanked someone else during his East African stop—the CIA interrogators who uncovered al Qaeda’s plans to blow up Camp Lemonier in an attack that might well have rivaled the 1993 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed nearly 300 service members.

As I explain in my book, Courting Disaster, in 2004 a Somali terrorist named Hassan Guleed was captured and taken into CIA custody. Guleed worked for an East African al Qaeda leader named Abu Talha al-Sudani—one of the leaders behind the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya. Abu Talha appointed Guleed as al Qaeda’s Djibouti cell leader—responsible for locating safe houses, casing targets, assisting in the transfer of funds, and procuring weapons, explosives, and other supplies for the al Qaeda leader. As a result, he knew many details of al Qaeda’s East African operations—including its hideouts, its bank accounts, and its plans for new attacks.

During CIA questioning, Guleed revealed a plot by Abu Talha to attack Camp Lemonier using water tankers loaded with explosives. Guleed told the CIA he had been sent by Abu Talha in September and October 2003 to case the Marine camp, and was tasked by the al Qaeda leader to purchase two rocket-propelled grenades, five AK-47s, and four 9mm pistols. Information from Guleed—including the identities of the operatives associated with the plot—allowed the United States to thwart this attack on our Marines in Djibouti.

As I point out in the current issue of World Affairs, this account of the disrupted plot against Camp Lemonier has been confirmed by none other than WikiLeaks. Earlier this year, WikiLeaks released a trove of documents it dubbed the “Gitmo Files”—including files on Hassan Guleed. According to those WikiLeaks documents, Guleed admitted to the CIA that when captured he was “in the progress [sic] of planning terrorist operations against U.S. coalition personnel and assets in Camp Lemonier.” He told the agency that “in October 2003, the operatives identified a dark red Isuzu water tank truck that delivered water to Camp Lemonier. Subsequently, in December 2003 they agreed on a plan to target Camp Lemonier with an explosives-laden water truck. While operatives still needed to secure funding, a string of arrests in 2004 and September 2005 disrupted the operation.” It was information Guleed provided the CIA that made those arrests possible.

Had al-Qaeda succeeded in carrying out this attack, many Marines might have died and al Qaeda would have struck a major blow against the United States. Camp Lemonier still stands thanks to the skill and hard work of our much-maligned CIA interrogators—and because Hassan Guleed was not read his rights and given a lawyer when he was captured in 2004. That’s a fact Leon Panetta left out of his speech in Djibouti this week.

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Sadanand Dhume

What next for Pakistan’s army?

By Sadanand Dhume

November 29, 2011, 9:14 am

As Afghans and Pakistanis trade charges over the circumstances that led to the death of 24 Pakistani soldiers on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border Saturday, once again the Pakistani army finds itself under scrutiny. Afghan and Western officials say Afghan troops called in the air strike that killed the Pakistanis in self-defense, after coming under fire. The Pakistani version of events, by contrast, suggests that the soldiers were attacked in their sleep without provocation. NATO officials have promised a full investigation.

While we wait for the truth to emerge, one thing is certain: U.S.-Pakistan relations—already rocky following the raid in May that killed Osama bin Laden in the garrison town of Abbottabad—have sunk to another low, one of many this year. Pakistan has asked the United States to completely evacuate an air base in remote Balochistan province used for drone strikes against militant targets. It has also shuttered NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, which account for about half of all coalition cargo. (But down from more than 70 percent two years ago.)

In my WSJ column last week, spurred by the resignation of Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States under murky circumstances, I wrote that the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is headed toward being less expansive and more transactional. In an age of television, public opinion in both countries reflects deep mutual suspicions. Only 12 percent of Pakistanis hold a favorable opinion of the United States, the second lowest such figure in the world. According to Rasmussen Reports, 40 percent of Americans regard Pakistan as an enemy.

On November 30 we’ll host a panel discussion at AEI to discuss the situation in Pakistan and what it means for the United States. Our focus will be on the Pakistani army, the country’s most powerful institution by a long measure. If the United States and Pakistan are to avoid the recurrence of incidents like this weekend’s, their armies will need to work out clearer ways of communicating along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. At the same time, if Pakistan’s fledgling democracy is to have a chance of flowering, its generals will have to give up their virtual monopoly on their country’s policies toward Afghanistan and India, and also develop a keener appreciation for the idea of civil supremacy than they have managed thus far.

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Gary Schmitt

Counterterrorism in America and the Jose Pimentel case

By Gary Schmitt

November 22, 2011, 11:03 am

This past Sunday, New York City’s Police Department arrested 27-year-old Jose Pimentel on state charges of plotting a bomb attack. According to the NYPD and the prosecuting Manhattan district attorney, Pimentel maintained a jihadist website, published materials on how to make bombs, tried to reach out to Anwar al-Awlaki (the American-Yemini terrorist leader whom the United States recently killed with a drone strike), talked about killing American marines and soldiers and bombing sites around New York, and was nearing completion of making at least three pipe bombs.

Over the past few days, a number of stories, from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times to the New York Daily News, have run in the press “explaining” why federal prosecutors and the FBI declined to take over the case, including doubts about the NYPD’s use of a particular confidential informant and, according to one official, “The FBI also had doubts over whether Pimentel would be capable of carrying out a terror plot on his own, because they believed he had mental problems.”

I suppose it’s inevitable that the press would ask why the feds had not taken the case on given the high priority of countering terrorism these days. But that said, it seems to be extremely bad form for the Bureau to be dumping on the case after the arrest, especially since the FBI is always touting how state and local police have to be their eyes and ears on the streets. Plus, on its face, New York authorities had every reason to arrest Pimentel. The fact that he might have had mental problems or the confidential informant is not clean as a whistle would have been cold comfort if one of those pipe bombs had gone off in a crowded post office this holiday season.

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Marc Thiessen

AEI Debate Prep: We need a terrorist detention and interrogation policy

By Marc Thiessen

November 18, 2011, 1:44 pm

This post is part of an ongoing series preparing for the AEI/CNN/Heritage National Security & Foreign Policy GOP presidential debate on November 22. See the rest of the posts here.

The willingness of so many Republican presidential candidates to speak out in defense of waterboarding is encouraging. But the Bush administration only waterboarded three high-value terrorists out of more than 100 held by the CIA. The problem today is not simply that America is no longer waterboarding the Khalid Skeikh Mohammeds of the world; it is that, outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, we are no longer capturing, detaining, and interrogating the Khalid Sheikh Mohammeds of the world at all.

Under the Obama administration drone strikes have escalated dramatically, while live captures have plummeted. There is documented evidence that the Obama administration has chosen to kill senior terrorist leaders when the military recommended capturing them alive—because, according to a senior military officials, we “don’t have a detention policy or a set of facilities” to hold live captures. The CIA black sites are shut down and under Obama, Guantanamo Bay is not accepting any new guests. So the current administration simply kills terrorists instead of taking them in alive for questioning.

The problem with this approach is: dead terrorists cannot tell you their plans for new attacks. When we kill high-value terrorists instead of taking them in alive, we vaporize all the intelligence they possess—invaluable information we cannot get anywhere else about al Qaeda’s operations, recruits, safe houses, communications, and plans for new attacks. We need this intelligence to save lives.

The Obama administration inherited a treasure trove intelligence that had been gathered by the Bush administration from KSM and other CIA detainees. That information was critical to the administration’s greatest counterterrorism success: the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.

But with each passing year, that intelligence becomes increasingly dated. New leaders rise through the ranks. New terrorists operatives are recruited. New plots are conceived. New methods are developed to communicate, move money, recruit operatives, and carry out attacks. And new networks—like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al-Shabab—emerge about which we know little. We are no longer replenishing the information we have about al Qaeda’s inner workings because we are no longer capturing and detaining the terrorist leaders who could refresh our knowledge about al Qaeda’s operations—which means the next administration will not enjoy the same intelligence inheritance its predecessor did.

Worse, the head of U.S. Special Operations command recently told Congress that because the Obama administration has no clear plan for handling suspected terrorist leaders if they are caught alive outside a war zone, it is U.S. policy that if such a captured terrorist cannot be tried in a U.S. court or transferred to the custody of an allied country, the prisoner is ultimately “let go.” In other words, America has a policy of terrorist catch and release.

This is unacceptable.  The next administration should take several immediate steps to rectify this situation:

1.    Resume capturing high-value terrorists alive whenever possible, instead of the current default of killing them with unmanned drones.

2.    Decide on a terrorist detention policy. Such a policy might include re-establishing secret prisons outside the United States. And it should include bringing captured terrorists to Guantanamo Bay again. Guantanamo has a state of the art CIA detention facility, which already houses KSM and other high-value detainees. This facility could easily accommodate fresh captures. The next president should restore Gitmo to its original purpose: as a strategic interrogation center.

3.    Put interrogation back in the CIA’s hands, and give interrogators the tools that they need to effectively question terrorists—tools beyond those currently in the Army Field Manual on interrogation.

4.    Keep those techniques secret. The key to the effectiveness of a revitalized terrorist interrogation program is making sure the terrorists do not know the limits of the techniques they will face.

The enemy we face today does not mass armies on borders or flotillas on the high seas. Terrorist conspire in secret, hide among civilians, and then emerge suddenly to attack us from within. Their plans to kill innocent men, women, and children are known only to a handful of evil men. And our ability to find out what is in the minds of these individuals could mean the difference between stopping the next attack and seeing bodies scattered in the streets—as we did on September 11, 2001.

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Sadanand Dhume

Romney v. Gingrich on Pakistan

By Sadanand Dhume

November 15, 2011, 2:38 pm

How do Republican frontrunners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich view Pakistan, a country mentioned a staggering 55 times in Saturday night’s debate in South Carolina?

As on most issues, Gingrich came across as the more pugnacious of the two. He pointed out early on that Pakistan offers sanctuary to anti-U.S. Taliban fighters. He criticized Islamabad for having “hid Bin Laden for at least six years in a military city within a mile of their national defense university.” He pulled no punches on the question of continued U.S. aid: “I think that’s a pretty good idea to start at zero and sometimes stay there.”

If Gingrich’s red meat responses seemed designed to appeal to the gallery, then Romney’s appeared better tailored for policy wonks. To begin with, the former Massachusetts governor showed greater familiarity with detail. “Pakistan is not a country like other countries, with a strong political center,” he said. “This is, instead, a nation which is close to being a failed state.”

Romney pointed out that Pakistan houses competing power centers and that the United States ought to “work with our friends in that country to get them to do some of the things we can’t do ourselves.” He would continue the current policy of going after militants on Pakistani soil with drone strikes, but balked at the idea of using ground troops. Even talking about it in a debate would be “highly incendiary.”

At the same time, Romney tried to strike a muscular note. “One of the things we have to do is have understanding with the various power bases within the country that they’re gonna have to allow us, or they themselves go after the Taliban and Haqqani network to make sure they do not destabilize Afghanistan, particularly as we’re pulling our troops out.”

Interestingly enough, these contrasting approaches cleave closely to how Americans view Pakistan. According to a Rasmussen Reports poll released last month, 40 percent of Americans view Pakistan as an enemy while a nearly identical 39 percent see it as somewhere in between an enemy and an ally. My hunch: we’ll see more of the Gingrich/Romney contrast when Pakistan likely comes up again at the November 22 AEI/Heritage national security debate on CNN.

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Gary Schmitt

AEI Debate Prep: Charting the right course in Afghanistan

By Gary Schmitt

November 10, 2011, 9:30 am

This post is part of an ongoing series preparing for the AEI/CNN/Heritage National Security & Foreign Policy GOP presidential debate on November 22. See the rest of the posts here.

President Obama is to be given credit for increasing the size of the American military deployment to Afghanistan. Within the first two months of his presidency, the president announced that he would be sending 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan to meet the increasingly unstable situation there. Then, in October 2009, the administration announced an additional 13,000 support troops would be headed to the theater. And, finally, in early December of that year, the president announced a third set of deployments. This December “surge”—tied to a more comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) effort designed by the new American commander on the ground there, General Stan McChrystal—would add another 30,000 troops. With these deployments President Obama more than doubled American ground forces in Afghanistan.

However, in both the actual numbers deployed and the length of deployment, it appears that the president ignored the advice of his military commanders in the field. In the first instance, General McChrystal gave the president different options when it came to adding forces, options which were tied to different levels of risk in carrying out his newly designed COIN strategy. Noteworthy is the fact that the lowest figure he put forward was 40,000—some 10,000 more than what the president finally chose. So, right from the start, the president’s “surge” was less than what the military believed was required to do the job effectively.

This has been followed by the president’s announcement in June of this year that he would have all the additional 30,000 troops sent to Afghanistan out of that country by September 2012—a timeline which at a minimum made no sense militarily in light of the Afghan fighting season, ran contrary to the advice coming from American commanders in country, and could only be understood as a date designed to enhance the president’s political prospects domestically in the run-up to November’s presidential election. Now comes word that the White House is seriously considering an even more drastic drawdown in 2013, to be announced by the president at the NATO summit in Chicago this coming May.

President Obama’s half-hearted commitment to what he described while running for president as “the right war” will have, and is already having, a serious impact on our military’s ability to succeed in this conflict. Not only have too few troops been deployed and committed for an insufficient length of time, the president’s decisions have resulted in: allies making plans to leave as early as possible, as well; increasing the Taliban’s confidence in their ultimate return to power; reducing any interest the Taliban might have had in serious negotiations with the Kabul government; undermining the Afghan population’s confidence that government forces will be in a position to provide real security by the 2014 deadline for turning responsibility over to them; and reinforcing the Pakistani military’s belief that its best strategic option is to continue supporting the Taliban and its insurgent-terrorist allies.

The question for Republican presidential candidates is whether they think President Obama’s decision to ignore the American military’s advice when it comes to Afghanistan is the wisest course and whether, if elected, he or she will reverse course.

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Frederick W. Kagan

AEI Debate Prep: Is this the only path to victory in Afghanistan?

By Frederick W. Kagan

November 8, 2011, 10:40 am

What do we need to achieve in Afghanistan in order to protect the security of the United States and its allies?

That core question should shape any discussion of our strategy in Afghanistan or the resources we devote to executing it. But that question is too often obscured.

Many say that pursuing any kind of “success” in Afghanistan, the supposed “graveyard of empires,” is sheer folly. Others say that is has become irrelevant, and that the death of Osama bin Laden has deprived the war in Afghanistan of continued meaning.

These facile assertions produce more palatable answers, but do not answer the core question. Presidents and candidates for president owe Americans a clear and cogent answer, at least, as well as an explanation for how their proposed strategy will accomplish the requirements for American security.

President Obama identified a number of reasons for the American presence in Afghanistan in his December 2009 speech announcing both the surge of forces there and the strategy that those forces would pursue—the strategy that continues in effect to this day. The clearest articulation of American interest in Afghanistan he offered was this one:

This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. And this danger will only grow if the region slides backwards, and al Qaeda can operate with impunity. We must keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and to do that, we must increase the stability and capacity of our partners in the region.

He added later in that speech: “We’re in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country.”

President Obama dismissed the notion that Afghanistan is simply another Vietnam.

“And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan, and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border,” he said in that 2009 speech.

He rejected the notion that targeted strikes alone could defeat al Qaeda: “To abandon this area now—and to rely only on efforts against al Qaeda from a distance—would significantly hamper our ability to keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and create an unacceptable risk of additional attacks on our homeland and our allies.”

He thus articulated a series of objectives, the achievement of which, he argued, were vital to America’s national security:

Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future. To meet that goal, we will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan. We must deny al Qaeda a safe haven. We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future.

He did announce an 18-month timeline for the start of the withdrawal of the surge forces in Afghanistan, but added, “we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground. We’ll continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul.”

Some in the White House and outside it, nevertheless, oppose continued efforts in Afghanistan, and thus advocate abandoning the current strategy or reducing force levels below what is needed to execute the mission there. The question they must answer is: What part of the objective President Obama enunciated in December 2009 has become unnecessary? Do we not need to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future?” Do we not need to prevent the Taliban from threatening the Afghan government? Do we not need to build the capacity of our partners and allies—including Afghanistan—so that they can take responsibility for Afghanistan’s future, thus preventing the “cancer” that had taken root there from returning? Do we seriously think that the killing of one man, however important, ends the threat to the United States and thus removes the entire region from the list of America’s national security interests?

Above all, if we abandon our current efforts in Afghanistan either by accepting defeat or by declaring success before actually achieving it, what will prevent al Qaeda and its affiliates from re-establishing their bases there and resuming their efforts to attack and kill Americans?

The American people deserve a serious, thoughtful, and detailed answer to those questions from anyone seeking the responsibility to keep them safe.

This item first appeared on CNN’s security clearance blog.

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Categories:  Critical Threats, Foreign and Defense, War on Terror   |   Tags: ,

Sadanand Dhume

AEI Debate Prep: Should Pakistan be engaged or contained?

By Sadanand Dhume

November 8, 2011, 10:39 am

The raid in May on Osama bin Laden’s compound in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad has brought intense focus on Washington’s policy toward Islamabad. Since then, the weight of informed opinion—in influential op-eds, think tank reports, and magazine articles—has coalesced around a consensus: the current policy has failed.

Ostensibly, since 2004 Pakistan has been a major non-NATO ally of the United States, a status it shares with such stalwart friends as Israel, Japan, and Australia.

In 2009, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act, also known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act, boosted aid to Pakistan by $1.5 billion a year through 2013. These blandishments were meant to encourage Islamabad to co-operate with Washington in fighting terrorism.

Though Pakistani authorities have at times helped round up wanted al Qaeda leaders from their soil, their overall record has been disappointing. Of particular concern to the United States: continued Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other militants who regularly use safe havens in Pakistan to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Stepped up attacks by Haqqani Network insurgents in recent months, including an audacious assault in September on the U.S. embassy in Kabul, have added urgency to long-standing misgivings about Pakistani intentions. The country’s powerful army has long used jihadist groups to assert influence in Afghanistan and bleed India in the disputed territory of Kashmir.

One possible response to what is colloquially known as Pakistan’s double game—fighting some terrorists while helping others—is to move from a strategy of engagement to one of containment. This would place less emphasis on carrots such as aid and advanced equipment. Instead, it would rely more on sticks such as targeted sanctions against military officers involved in aiding America’s enemies, and more unilateral Abbottabad-style raids against high value targets. (Keep in mind that Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Taliban’s Mullah Omar are believed to live in Pakistan.)

The main idea: target Pakistan’s recalcitrant military while sparing its civilian population and continuing to strengthen Pakistan’s fledgling democracy. Whether it will be implemented, and how Pakistan will respond, will be one of the most important decisions the president will have to make in South Asia.

This item first appeared on CNN’s security clearance blog.

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Marc Thiessen

Reading attorney-client mail at Gitmo

By Marc Thiessen

November 2, 2011, 1:53 pm

The Washington Post reports this morning:

Lawyers representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, say authorities at the military base have begun reading privileged attorney-client communications—in a sharp break with past practice…. Previously, military personnel at Guantanamo opened the mail in the presence of detainees—thus ensuring there was no contraband in the envelopes—and handed it to them without reading the contents. Last month, the official said, Rear Admiral David B. Woods, the new commander at Guantanamo, changed the policy and insisted on checking that the communications were relevant to commission cases.

It is not clear what sparked the change in policy, but it is a matter of record that a number of law firms have been sanctioned for helping terrorists in Guantanamo pass messages. For example, on March 7, 2006, Thomas Wilner of the law firm Shearman & Sterling used a privileged counsel-detainee meeting to pass questions from the BBC to his client, Fawzi al Odah—and received a letter from the Justice Department declaring his conduct “a serious violation … which cannot be tolerated.” That same year, attorneys for the firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison were sanctioned for sharing non-legal information with their clients at Guantanamo—leading to the suspension of their non-supervised access to detainees.

During questioning, military interrogators expose intelligence to detainees. Al Qaeda terrorists are trained to use visits with their lawyers to transmit this information to their comrades on the outside. According to the “Manchester Manual”—a terrorist training document that was found in the apartment of an al Qaeda operative in Manchester, England—the terrorists are instructed to “take advantage of visits to communicate with brothers outside prison and exchange information that may be helpful to their work outside the prison … the importance of mastering the art of hiding messages is self-evident here ….  Information benefits the organization’s command by providing information about the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses … movements of the enemy and his members.”

The arrival of lawyers at Guantanamo gave terrorists held there the opportunity for unscreened communications with the outside world—raising the risk that critical intelligence could be inadvertently passed on to the al Qaeda leadership through family letters or other communications delivered by lawyers. It is likely some serious breach occurred to cause Gitmo officials to enact such a drastic change in screening procedures.

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