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S. HRG. 109–859

COUNTERTERRORISM: THE CHANGING FACE OF

TERROR

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JUNE 13, 2006

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska

LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island

GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska

MEL MARTINEZ, Florida

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware

PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

BARBARA BOXER, California

BILL NELSON, Florida

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois

KENNETH A. MYERS, Jr., Staff Director

ANTONY J. BLINKEN, Democratic Staff Director

(II)

CONTENTS

Page

Alexander, Hon. Lamar, U.S. Senator from Tennessee ........................................ 35

Benjamin, Daniel, senior fellow, International Security Program, Center for

Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC ..................................... 56

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 60

Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware ..................................... 3

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 6

Crumpton, Hon. Henry A., Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Department

of State, Washington, DC .................................................................................... 15

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 17

Feingold, Hon. Russell D., U.S. Senator from Wisconsin ..................................... 32

Hagel, Hon. Chuck, U.S. Senator from Nebraska ................................................. 28

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening statement ........... 1

Martinez, Hon. Mel, U.S. Senator from Florida .................................................... 43

McLaughlin, Hon. John E., senior fellow, Merrill Center for Strategic Studies,

Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins

University, Washington, DC ............................................................................... 46

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 49

Nelson, Hon. Bill, U.S. Senator from Florida ........................................................ 32

Obama, Hon. Barack, U.S. Senator from Illinois .................................................. 38

Redd, Hon. John Scott, Vice Admiral, USN (Ret.), Director, National

Counterterrorism Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence,

Washington, DC ................................................................................................... 7

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 11

(III)

(1)

COUNTERTERRORISM: THE CHANGING FACE

OF TERROR

TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 2006

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:33 a.m., in room

SD–19, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar

(chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Lugar, Hagel, Alexander, Martinez, Biden,

Feingold, Nelson, and Obama.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD G. LUGAR, U.S.

SENATOR FROM INDIANA

The CHAIRMAN. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee is called to order. Today the committee meets to begin

a series of hearings on the issue of global terrorism and our international efforts to combat it. The dramatic and tragic events of

September 11, 2001, caused a sea of change in how Americans view

terrorism. No longer was this a phenomenon that occurred only in

distant places with victims unknown to us.

While many Americans, often working in the service of our State

Department or military, have lost their lives in terrorist acts overseas in recent years, the September 11 attacks on our homeland

seared the images of terrorism in the minds of Americans forever.

Americans were jarred out of our complacency. Our remedies as a

government in the aftermath of the attacks, have changed the way

that we travel, the way that we move across our borders, the way

that we manage international trade and finance, and the way that

we approach our foreign policy.

Through tireless work with our partners overseas and here at

home, we have made progress. We have forced al-Qaeda from its

base in Afghanistan and severely disrupted its central leadership.

Recent news of the successful joint United States-Iraqi strike

against Abu Masab al-Zarqawi and the foiled terrorist plot in Canada clearly indicate that our investments and those of our partners

are meeting with some success.

However, it is equally clear that military operations alone will

not win the longer war on terrorism. The State Department’s recent report on counterterrorism trends notes that while al-Qaeda’s

leadership is now on the run, its finances and logistics disrupted,

and its Afghan safe haven gone, the core leadership continues to

provide ideological guidance to followers worldwide. It has lost

much of its operational capability, but it has increased its emphasis

2

on propaganda activity and it continues to inspire terrorist cells in

many parts of the world. Its political will has not been undermined.

We also are seeing an increase in suicide bombings around the

world. The July 7 bus and subway attacks in London that drew on

British citizens as suicide bombers was a particularly noteworthy

occurrence. The Near East and South Asia regions of the globe remain hard-hit by terrorism, accounting for almost 75 percent of the

attacks and 80 percent of the fatalities last year. Attacks on journalists serving in foreign countries also are on the rise and observers are noting more frequent occurrences of homegrown terrorist

cells here in North America, the Canadian plot being the most recent example.

All of this shows that, despite our operational and tactical successes, the root causes of terrorism and the intense ideological motivation behind the phenomenon persists. How then should we go

forward? What new forms is terrorism taking, and how are groups

changing their tactics? What are their central aims and motivations, and how do we as a nation project to affected populations

worldwide an image of hope rather than enmity? Does our current

strategy sufficiently account for the roles of diplomacy, international exchange, and foreign assistance in this battle, so that we

can reach Muslims and others who currently hear a message of

hate and revenge from within their most radical ranks? How do we

not just counter Osama bin Laden’s tactics, but also enlist support

to discredit his strategic plan and vision within the worldwide

Muslim community? How do we artfully use so-called soft power to

deny the terrorists their favorite havens of unstable societies and

uncontrolled territories?

The purpose of today’s hearing is to receive reports from those

currently and formerly on the front lines of the U.S.

counterterrorism effort about how we are doing, how terrorists are

adapting and changing their operations, and where we are headed

in the short and longer term.

First, we will hear from two Government officials who are key

players in our international efforts to combat terrorism. Vice Admiral John Scott Redd is the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. In this capacity, Admiral Redd heads an entity

that develops plans, conducts analysis, and provides assistance to

all elements of the Government that are involved in disrupting or

preventing future terrorist acts. Admiral Redd commanded the

United States 6th Fleet in the mid-1990s. He also served as Director of Plans on the Joint Staff and was a deputy to Ambassador

Paul Bremer at the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad.

Ambassador Henry Crumpton is the State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism and has responsibility for coordinating

and supporting all United States Government policies aimed at

countering terrorism overseas. Ambassador Crumpton served with

distinction for many years in the CIA as an operations officer, as

a Chief of Station, and most recently as the leader of CIA’s Afghan

campaign in 2001 and 2002. On our second panel we will hear from

two accomplished public servants who have entered the private sector. John McLaughlin is currently a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and is a former Acting and Deputy Director of the CIA. Mr. McLaughlin had a long

3

and distinguished career in the Agency’s Analysis Directorate and

has chaired the National Intelligence Council.

Daniel Benjamin has served on the National Security Council

staff and in this capacity had responsibility for the breadth of programs encompassing U.S. counterterrorism efforts. He is a former

foreign correspondent for Time Magazine and is coauthor of ‘‘The

Age of Sacred Terror,’’ which was selected as a ‘‘Notable Book of

2002’’ by The New York Times and the Washington Post. His latest

book, ‘‘The Next Attack,’’ examines the evolution of the terrorist

threat since September 11, 2001, and the conduct of the war on terror during that period.

I deeply appreciate our witnesses being with us today. We look

forward to their testimony. First of all, it is my pleasure to call

upon the distinguished ranking member of the committee, Senator

Joe Biden.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., U.S. SENATOR

FROM DELAWARE

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you

for having this hearing on international terrorism. We do have a

distinguished panel and I welcome them again. I had a chance to

personally welcome them.

Folks, the risk of catastrophic international terrorism in a single

or multiple events, it seems to me, is the greatest single threat now

to our national security. The question is whether our country is

combatting terrorism in the best way and that is the purpose of the

hearing, at least in part.

Frankly, Mr. Chairman, I do not think it is, despite some very

notable successes. I hope this series of hearings will help us determine the reason for the shortfall, if I am correct about this shortfall, and help point us in the right direction.

After 9–11, the administration very quickly and correctly focused

on uprooting al-Qaeda from its sanctuary in Afghanistan, capturing

and killing its leaders, and assisting other countries like Pakistan,

Yemen, and the Philippines where there was a terrorist presence

tied to al-Qaeda. For a year we went after that clear threat, using

both military and nonmilitary means, with international support

and, I would argue, with a fair amount of success. We also improved intelligence sharing both at home and with other countries

during that period.

Then, in my view, we diverted our attention from defeating international terrorism to ousting Saddam Hussein and remaking Iraq.

Today Iraq has become what it was not, in my view, before the

war, a breeding ground and a training ground for terrorists. Iraq’s

drain on our military resources has been felt clearly in Afghanistan, where our inattention gave the Taliban a new lease on life.

I remember the debate we had after at least my first trip to Afghanistan right after the Taliban was defeated, where I spent considerable time with Secretary of State Powell arguing—and he

agreed, I might add—that we should add resources. I met with the

generals there, including the British general who was up in the

capital, and met with our commanding officer at Bagram Air Force

Base. They were all saying—it was uniform—we needed more,

more—not fewer, but more assets in order to finish the job.

4

I remember coming back and the President asking me to debrief

him, as we all do when we get back from trips and saying, what

a great victory. I said, it was a great victory, it was a great victory

against Afghanistan. But I asked the heretical question: How many

body bags can you count of the Taliban? How many body bags? We

estimated there were 50,000 men in arms and there were not very

many body bags.

Now, that is not a bad thing per se, but it means they went

somewhere. I remember going from Kabul in 17 degree weather out

to the old headquarters where the Soviets housed their personnel—

it looked like a big public housing project—and meeting with a

whole lot of folks who had come into that complex, occupied it, who

were from the plains. I asked them about going back. I said: Will

you not go back home now? They said: Why are we going to go back

home? The Taliban is still there. We are not going back home. We

are not going back home.

So here we are now in the circumstance where I would argue

that Afghanistan at least has increasing problems, not diminishing

problems, and if we are not very deft about it we may find ourselves in real trouble in Afghanistan. So our inattention, I think,

or insufficient attention, has given the Taliban a new lease on life.

The death of Zarqawi last week was obviously most welcome and

I probably said some imprudent things about how happy I was

about his demise. And I hope it proves to be a turning point. But

I doubt that it will in the absence of a real strategy for victory and

a significant change in our strategy in Iraq.

Right now all the administration has in place—and God willing,

with the strategic meeting they have had at Camp David and the

President’s visit to Iraq, there may be a harbinger of change in

strategy. But up to now I would argue this administration has had

a strategy to prevent defeat, but not to win. So far Iraq has been

a net loss in the war on terrorism, in my view. In my judgment,

our emphasis on military force in the war on terrorism has been

a bit shortsighted.

A strong military is absolutely necessary, absolutely necessary,

but in my view not sufficient to deal with this threat we are going

to be talking about today. It has to be part of, not a substitute for,

a wise policy and a coherent strategy. I worry the administration

may be militarizing our policy to a point of leaving our other policymakers all but out of the loop. Combatant commanders are getting

authority to run their own military education and military assistance programs. Special operations forces reportedly are deployed to

countries without our ambassadors knowing about it, let alone approving of the deployments. The CIA allegedly paid Somali warlords to fight against Islamic militants, against the advice of diplomats in the region and, as it turns out, unsuccessfully, causing

a serious setback, in my view, to our counterterrorism efforts there.

In all these cases the State Department, although nominally in

control, seems in fact to have been a rubber stamp for ideas proposed by other agencies.

In Afghanistan, the administration’s failure to follow through on

reconstruction has bred deep resentment that endangers all the

gains we have made, in my view, since 2001. Afghanistan is lapsing into a full-fledged narco-economy. The Taliban are stronger

5

than they have been at any point since their ouster. Last week

Karzai suggested that he had to reverse the disarmament process

and start rearming the warlords. That is progress for you.

Meanwhile, public diplomacy remains ineffective and our support

of democracy is taking a back seat to other issues in Russia, Egypt,

Central Asia, and China, which is, I would argue, understandable

but nonetheless regrettable.

Two and one-half years ago, one of Secretary Rumsfeld’s initial

memos made its way into the press. The Secretary in one of his socalled ‘‘snowflakes’’ asked two critical questions. I think they are

pertinent today: ‘‘Are we capturing, killing, or detaining and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and radical

clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?’’ To repeat his question: ‘‘Are we capturing, killing, or detaining and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and radical

clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?’’

He asked a second question: ‘‘Does the United States need to

fashion a broad integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists?’’ That was the question in one of his snowflakes. Maybe

some of that snow fell on some of you. But they are both very legitimate questions, very legitimate questions.

The answers were and, I believe, remain no and yes. No, we are

not stopping more terrorists than the radical fundamentalists are

creating, and yes, we need a comprehensive strategy to do that.

So Mr. Chairman, I hope we use these hearings to step back and

ask where we are and where we should be heading in combatting

terrorism. What is the nature of the terrorist threat today, now

that we have done great damage to al-Qaeda but not been able to

wipe it out, let alone wipe out its appeal to Muslim people around

the world? Is Iraq the frontline in the war on terrorism? Whether

we planned that or not, is it the frontline now? Or is it really a

different sort of fight?

Outside of Iraq, what are the trends in terrorist organizations

and activities? Why do Osama bin Laden and all the top al-Qaeda

leadership still have safe haven in Pakistan? Are all elements of

the Pakistani Government, including all levels of the intelligence

service, firmly committed to the war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates? Remember the ISI was very, very close to Pashtun and the

Taliban prior to the war. I believe they still are.

What new strategy is needed to reverse the tide in Afghanistan?

What is a reasonable objective in countering international terrorism and how should we measure our progress toward achieving

that objective? How should we balance military and nonmilitary

components of a counterterrorist policy, and how can we orchestrate the full range of counterterrorist tools rather than just trying

one thing, then another? What sort of international support is

needed, if any, and how can we build and maintain that support?

Finally, what level of effort is needed on our part? If this is a global

war, then what sort of sacrifices should we be prepared to make?

If it is to be a long war, then how shall we maintain the public support for this long war?

We have a fine set of witnesses, Mr. Chairman, to help us begin

to grapple with those challenges and I look forward to hearing

6

their testimony and the testimony of those to follow. I want to

thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for arranging this hearing.

[The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., U.S. SENATOR FROM

DELAWARE

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on international terrorism, the

first in an important series of hearings.

The risk of catastrophic international terrorism is the greatest single threat today

to our national security. The question is whether our country is combating terrorism

in the best way. Frankly, Mr. Chairman, I don’t think it is, despite some very notable successes. I hope that this series of hearings will help us to determine the reasons for this shortfall and point us in the right direction.

After 9/11, the administration quickly and correctly focused on uprooting al-Qaeda

from its sanctuary in Afghanistan, capturing or killing its leaders, and assisting

other countries (like Pakistan, Yemen, and the Philippines) where there was a terrorist presence tied to al-Qaeda. For a year, we went after the clear threat, using

both military and nonmilitary means, with international support and with fair success. We also improved intelligence sharing, both at home and with other countries.

Then, in my view, we diverted our attention from defeating international terrorism to ousting Saddam Hussein and remaking Iraq.

Today, Iraq has become what it was not before the war: A breeding ground and

a training ground for terrorists. And Iraq’s drain on our military resources has been

felt clearly in Afghanistan, where our insufficient attention helped give the Taliban

a new lease on life. Many of us argued ever since the Taliban fell that we needed

to put more resources into Afghanistan. We failed to do that and Afghanistan is

once again a growing problem.

The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi last week was obviously most welcome. I

hope it proves to be a turning point. But I doubt that it will in the absence of a

real strategy for victory. Right now, all the administration has is a strategy to prevent defeat. So far, Iraq has been a net loss in the war on terrorism.

In my judgment, our emphasis on military force in the war on terrorism has been

short-sighted. A strong military is absolutely necessary, but it is not sufficient. It

must be part of, not a substitute for, wise policy and a coherent strategy.

I worry that the administration may be militarizing our policy to the point of leaving other policy makers all but out of the loop.

• Combatant commanders are getting authority to run their own military education and military assistance programs. • Special operations forces reportedly have deployed to countries without our ambassadors knowing about it, let alone approving the deployments. • The CIA allegedly paid Somali warlords to fight against Islamic militias—

against the advice of diplomats in the region and, as it turned out, unsuccessfully—causing a serious setback for our counterterrorism efforts there. • In all these cases, the State Department, although nominally in control, seems

in fact to have been a rubber stamp for ideas proposed by other agencies.

In Afghanistan, the administration’s failure to follow through on reconstruction

has bred deep resentment that endangers all the gains we’ve made since 2001.

Afghanistan is lapsing into a full-fledged narco-economy. The Taliban are stronger

than at any point since their ouster. Last week, President Karzai suggested he had

to reverse the disarmament process and start rearming the warlords.

Meanwhile, public diplomacy remains ineffective, and our support of democracy

is taking a back seat to other issues in Russia, Egypt, Central Asia, and China.

Two and a half years ago, one of Secretary Rumsfeld’s internal memos made its

way into the press. The Secretary asked two critical questions: ‘‘Are we capturing,

killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas

and radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?’’

And: ‘‘Does the United States need to fashion a broad integrated plan to stop the

next generation of terrorists?’’

The answers were and remain ‘‘no’’ and ‘‘yes.’’ No, we’re not stopping more terrorists than the radical fundamentalists are creating. And yes, we need a comprehensive strategy to do that.

Mr. Chairman, I hope we use these hearings to step back and ask where we are,

and where we should be heading in combating terrorism.

• What is the nature of the terrorist threat today, now that we have done great

damage to al-Qaeda, but not been able to wipe it out, let alone wipe out its appeal to Muslim people around the world?

7

• Is Iraq the front line in the war on terrorism (whether we planned for that or

not)? Or is it really a different sort of fight? • Outside of Iraq, what are the trends in terrorist organization and activity? • Why do Osama bin Laden and the top al-Qaeda leadership still have safe haven

in Pakistan? Are all elements of the Pakistani Government—including all levels

of the intelligence service—firmly committed to the war against al-Qaeda and

its affiliates? • What new strategy is needed to reverse the tide in Afghanistan? • What is a reasonable objective in countering international terrorism, and how

should we measure our progress toward achieving it? • How should we balance military and nonmilitary components of counterterrorist

policy? • How can we orchestrate the full range of counterterrorist tools, rather than just

trying one thing, then another? • What sort of international support is needed, and how can we build and maintain that support? • Finally, what level of effort is needed on our part? If this is a ‘‘global war,’’ then

what sort of sacrifices should we be prepared to make? If this is to be a ‘‘long

war,’’ then how shall we maintain public support for it?

We have a fine set of witnesses, Mr. Chairman, to help us begin to grapple with

those challenges, and I look forward to hearing their testimony. Thank you again

for arranging this hearing.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you, Senator Biden. We look forward

now to hearing from the first panel of those witnesses. I am going

to call upon you in the order that I introduced you. That will be

Admiral Redd first and then Ambassador Crumpton. Admiral

Redd, would you please proceed, and let me just say that the statements of both of you and of our two concluding witnesses this

morning will be placed in the record in full. You may summarize

if you would like to do so. Please proceed.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN SCOTT REDD, VICE ADMIRAL, USN

[RETIRED], DIRECTOR, NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM

CENTER, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, WASHINGTON, DC

Admiral REDD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee. I do appreciate the opportunity

to appear before you. This is my first appearance before this group,

before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and I am, as always, delighted to be here with my shipmate from the State Department, Ambassador Hank Crumpton.

Mr. Chairman, let me go right to the bottom line. In your invitation you asked me to provide an assessment of our counterterrorism efforts based on my 10 months in the job as Director of

NCTC. Let me give you the bottom line. I believe that we are better prepared today to fight the war on terror than at any time in

our Nation’s history, and we are getting better every day. That is

the bottom line and I will come back to that a little bit later on.

That said, as the President has noted many times, sir, we are at

war and we are at war with a dangerous, adaptable, and persistent

enemy. Some aspects of this war are familiar to us. As was the cold

war, this is likely to be a very long war. Although I very sincerely

hope to be proven wrong, I fully expect that my grandchildren will

be well into their adult years before this conflict is over. Also like

the cold war, with its war against communism, this war has a

strong ideological content to it.

Let me start out by outlining our current picture of the enemy

if I could. First, al-Qaeda and its core leadership still remain our

8

preeminent concern. As you have noted, we have achieved considerable success in attacking the leadership, but the battle is by no

means over. They are resilient, smart, and committed.

We also worry about the merger between al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda

in Iraq, or AQI, the group formerly headed by Abu Musab alZarqawi. Eliminating Zarqawi is clearly a major step forward, but

both al-Qaeda and AQI will continue with their deadly work.

Our second broad area of concern is the collection of other Sunni

terrorist groups who have been inspired by al-Qaeda. Although

they tend to be primarily regional in nature, many of these groups

increasingly see themselves as part of a global violent extremist

network and they indeed target United States interests overseas.

Third, as you have noted, we worry about the relatively recent

emergence of a homegrown variant of the terrorist problem. Recent

events in Canada highlight the importance of this issue. While not

controlled by al-Qaeda, these new networks draw inspiration from

their ideology, and clearly we are not immune here in the United

States.

Finally, although we are focusing on the Sunnis, we are not concerned only with al-Qaeda and its Sunni variants. The Shia organization, Hezbollah, remains a potent terrorist organization, one that

is backed by two long-term sponsors of terrorism. In the same vein,

the behavior of state sponsors, particularly Iran, continues to be a

high priority for us.

No matter how one chooses to characterize the nature of the

enemy and the war, one thing is clear. To win the war on terrorism, as you have indicated—both of you have indicated—the

United States and its allies need to bring all elements of power to

bear on the problem. That, sir, in a nutshell is why the National

Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, was established.

If you would, let me review briefly with you the role that NCTC

is playing today in the war on terror and the role we will continue

to play in that war. As you know, we are a fairly new organization.

As mandated by the reform legislation, intelligence reform legislation of 2004, we basically perform two critical functions. As the Director, going back to my Navy days, I wear two hats. One of those

hats involves a very familiar role. That is the role of intelligence.

In that, I report to the Director of National Intelligence, Ambassador John Negroponte.

The second hat involves a new and what I believe almost fair to

say revolutionary role, and that is the responsibility for conducting

strategic operational planning for the war on terrorism for the entire U.S. Government. In that hat I report to the President. To put

that in military terms, we at NCTC, in conjunction with our interagency colleagues, are responsible for producing the Government’s

war plan for the war on terrorism and the intelligence annex which

supports it.

Let me focus first, if I could, on the intelligence mission. The

DNI has recently designated NCTC as its mission manager for

counterterrorism. In that role, John Negroponte looks to us to integrate all of the intelligence community’s efforts in counterterrorism, including collection, analysis, and production. In the

area of analysis, the law designates NCTC as the primary organization in the U.S. Government for analyzing and integrating all CT

9

analysis. Today NCTC produces a wide spectrum of intelligence

product ranging from strategic analyses for the President to tactical warning reports for the operators.

We are also in the information-sharing business. In fact, I would

submit that NCTC is the Government’s model for classified information-sharing. At the tactical level, NCTC runs a 24–7 high-tech

operations center that is in constant touch with all the

counterterrorism community, ensuring that everyone has the latest

threat information. We are also responsible for the Government’s

central database of known or suspected intelligence terrorists. This

all-source repository contains more than 300,000 entries, representing over 200,000 unique identities. This database is the ultimate source of the various watch lists, including, for example,

TSA’s no-fly list.

Finally, we assemble intelligence information and analysis from

28 different government networks and we distribute it online to

5,000 analysts—over 5,000 analysts—around the world. Today

those analysts have access online to more than 5 million pieces of

terrorism-related intelligence.

Sir, that is a very short summary of a very sophisticated intelligence operation. Let me turn briefly now to our second fundamental mission—that of strategic operational planning. In my view,

strategic operational planning serves to fill a long-existing gap in

government, one which has been present for almost all of my 4 decades of Government service. Simply put, the White House has long

been in the business of establishing and promulgating strategic

broad strategy and policy. At the other end of the spectrum, the

Cabinet departments and agencies have been responsible for conducting operations in the field. What has been missing has been

that piece in between policy and operations, and that need has become even more obvious as we fight the global war on terrorism.

Strategic operational planning is designed to fill that gap.

The goal of SOP, or strategic operational planning, is very

straightforward. It is to bring all elements of national power to

bear in an integrated and effective manner in the war on terror,

and by all elements of national power, as has been alluded to, we

mean diplomatic, financial, military, intelligence, homeland security, and law enforcement activities.

NCTC’s role in this regard is to lead a Government-wide planning process which is simple in description and extremely complex

in execution. Basically, it involves four phases. First is a planning

phase. This involves taking those national strategies and policies

and translating them into a comprehensive list of discrete tasks.

Those tasks are then prioritized and assigned to the departments

for execution.

The second phase involves implementation of the plan. Our job

is to monitor and facilitate operations. As noted in the legislation,

we do not conduct operations. That is the job of the departments

and the agencies.

The third phase involves assessing and adjusting our efforts. Is

the plan working? Is it accomplishing our strategic goals? Does it

need to be changed?

The final phase, of course, is adjusting the plan and starting the

process all over again.

10

Now, I want to emphasize that this is a continuing and iterative

process and, although it may sound bureaucratic, as General

Dwight Eisenhower once said: Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

Sir, that is a quick summary of NCTC and our role in the war

on terrorism. We are in many ways a work in progress as we take

on major new responsibilities while continuing to perform the tasks

which we have already taken on. As we often say, we are building

an airplane while we are flying it. That said, I believe we are making a true value add which will only grow over time.

Mr. Chairman, I began my remarks by stating that the United

States is better prepared to fight this war than at any time in our

history. While we still have lots of hard work before us, I believe

there is good evidence for that assessment. First, our intelligence

is better. Terrorists are clearly a difficult target, but our analysis,

our production, and our collection are all improved. Second, we

have made significant strides in information-sharing and getting

that intelligence to those who need it to conduct operations. Third,

as you noted, we have taken the fight to the enemy and achieved

significant successes in the field. Many of those successes and probably most of them will never see the light of day, but we owe a

great debt of gratitude to those who have made them happen.

Fourth, we are attacking every element of the terrorist life cycle,

specifically including terrorist travel and terrorist financing. Fifth,

as you have noted, this is not only an American effort. We are

working more closely and more effectively with a great number of

allies around the world to defeat the terrorists. Some we can talk

about publicly, such as our cooperation with Canada. Others are

sensitive and must remain classified.

Sixth and very importantly, we have made the United States

homeland a hostile place for terrorists to enter and to operate. Seventh and finally, through a revolutionary strategic planning effort

we are laying the groundwork to take the superb efforts which are

already under way to a new level of integration and effectiveness.

That effort specifically includes a comprehensive approach to longterm strategic efforts as well as near-term tactical offense and defense.

The bottom line in all of this is it makes me guardedly optimistic

about the long-term picture. I believe it is no accident that we have

not been attacked since 9–11 here at home. It is the result of hard

work, great sacrifice, and determined effort. However, while we

take satisfaction from that record, we certainly cannot assume that

we will not be attacked again. We must always remember that this

is a long war. We must always remember that the enemy is adaptable and the enemy also has a vote. There are many battles yet to

be fought and setbacks are certain to come along the way. But I

do remain confident about the ultimate outcome if we remain

steadfast and on course.

Thank you for your attention, sir, and that completes my oral

statement.

[The prepared statement of Admiral Redd follows:]

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN SCOTT REDD, VICE ADMIRAL, U.S. NAVY (RET.),

DIRECTOR, NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER, OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, WASHINGTON, DC

Chairman Lugar, Senator Biden, distinguished members of the Senate Foreign

Relations Committee. Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee

this morning to discuss the changing face of terrorism and the role that the National Counterterrorism Center is playing in support of the President’s strategy to

combat terrorism. This is my first appearance before the SFRC, and it is an honor

to engage with you on this critical subject.

I am also pleased to be appearing on this panel alongside Ambassador Crumpton,

the State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism (CT). As I’m sure you are

aware, Ambassador Crumpton has worked tirelessly over the past year to advance

our Nation’s CT agenda around the world, and to forge the web of multilateral, bilateral, and regional partnerships that is so critical to the success of our strategy

in the war on terrorism. His work has been invaluable in explaining the President’s

counterterrorism policy around the world.

In my brief remarks today, I would like to do three things. First, I want to provide

a summary picture of the terrorist threat: How we see it, how it has evolved in the

period since we were attacked on 9/11, and how it may continue to change over

time.

Second, I would like to outline for you the ways in which the National

Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the organization I am privileged to lead, is contributing to the Nation’s war effort and to making the American people safer and

more secure, both here at home and around the world. At the end of the day, that

is our core mission and the single measure of effectiveness that matters most to me

and my colleagues at NCTC.

And third, I will offer a brief assessment of our overall counterterrorism efforts,

from my perspective after 10 months as Director of NCTC.

I use the words ‘‘war effort’’ quite deliberately, because, as the President has said

on many occasions, we are indeed a Nation at war. And I believe it is a war that

we will be fighting for quite some time into the future. I would be quite happy to

be proven wrong on this point, but I expect that my young grandchildren will be

well into their adult years before we can say that the war is over.

Preparing ourselves to fight and win this ‘‘long war’’ requires that we know our

adversary and that we understand as much as we can about how the enemy operates. In assessing the changing face of terrorism, I would draw your attention to

three distinct incarnations of the terrorist threat; each with its own characteristics

and capabilities, and each requiring tailored counterterrorism strategies to defeat it.

First, al-Qaeda and its core senior leadership, although significantly degraded, remain our preeminent concern. As committee members are well aware, working with

our allies and partners, we have made significant progress in eliminating much of

the core al-Qaeda leadership. Our actions have disrupted ongoing terrorist planning

and operations; we have clearly made it much more difficult for al-Qaeda to train,

plan, and conduct terror attacks.

But the battle is by no means won. It is equally clear that al-Qaeda continues

actively to plot attacks against the U.S. homeland and our interests abroad. They

are resilient, adaptable, and committed. They remain our greatest and most immediate concern in the war on terrorism. UBL and Ayman al-Zawahiri also continue

to tell us directly in their audio and video statements that targeting U.S. interests

remains a top priority.

The merger between al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the terrorist group formerly led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, also remains near the top of our list of concerns. While the successful elimination of Zarqawi represents a severe blow to both

al-Qaeda and AQI, we expect both organizations will carry on with their deadly

work. The merger between AQ and AQI is of particular concern because it puts alQaeda in a position to access a much wider, more diverse pool of terrorist

operatives, many of them battle hardened and experienced in terrorist tradecraft.

The second face of our terrorist enemy is represented by the host of other Sunni

terrorist groups around the globe who have been inspired by al-Qaeda and who subscribe to the violent extremist worldview articulated by the al-Qaeda senior leadership. In addition to UBL’s and Zawahiri’s statements about targeting the United

States, the plethora of audio and video messages from them over the past year reflects al-Qaeda efforts to motivate other like-minded violent extremists as well,

reaching those who may not be under formal command and control of al-Qaeda, but

who certainly share their aims.

These groups have traditionally operated in a regional context and been motivated

by grievances specific to the politics of their particular region. As their kinship with

12

the al-Qaeda belief system has taken hold, these groups have adopted the view that

it is the United States that is at the root of most problems affecting Muslims around

the world.

We have long been concerned that these groups constitute a significant threat to

our allies and interests in key regions around the world. It is also apparent, however, that many members of these groups view themselves as part of a global violent

extremist network that aims to advance the al-Qaeda agenda and target U.S. interests around the world.

Our third area of concern with respect to the terrorist threat is the relatively recent emergence of a ‘‘homegrown’’ variant of the traditional terrorist cell or group.

Following the attacks last summer in England, the recent arrests in Canada highlight the growing salience of this trend. We are uncovering the spread of new violent

extremist networks and cells that lack formal ties or affiliation with al-Qaeda or

other recognized terrorist groups. These groups or cells do not fall under the command and control of the AQ senior leadership and indeed operate quite independently.

These new networks are often made up of disaffected, radicalized individuals who

draw inspiration and moral support from al-Qaeda and other violent extremists.

Group members are most often young, in their teens and twenties, and from families that are second- or third-generation immigrants to their western communities.

To the outside observer, these terrorists might well appear to be fully assimilated

members of their western communities.

We have begun to see cells like these here in the United States as well. Federal

and local law enforcement authorities have done outstanding work over the last 2

years to disrupt the planning of potential homegrown terrorists who aim to strike

at the homeland. In one case, two individuals who are U.S. Muslim converts were

caught robbing a gas station to support their attack plans in California. Possible

targets included Jewish synagogues, the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, and a National Guard facility.

The challenge of countering these cells is complicated by the fact that they may

operate virtually, with much of their communication and planning taking place over

the Internet. This network of virtual contacts increases the relative stealth with

which these terrorists can organize, communicate, and plan potential attacks.

The emergence of this new brand of al-Qaeda-inspired, homegrown terrorist group

poses real challenges to the intelligence community and we are grappling with a

whole new set of questions: What forces give rise to this violent ideology in immigrant communities that may appear otherwise to be quite well assimilated? How

and why are young Muslims becoming radicalized to the point where they embrace

this violent ideology? How do we counter those forces? What signs should we be

looking for to try to draw early warning of potential problems?

Lastly, I will say a few words about Lebanese Hezballah. Hezballah remains a

potent, capable terrorist organization backed by two long-time state sponsors of terrorism. I would not want my emphasis on al-Qaeda and other Sunni-affiliated terrorist threats to suggest in any way that we are not focused on the potential threat

to U.S. interests posed by Shia-inspired terrorism, and more specifically, Hezballah.

I can assure you that we are. The behavior of state sponsors, particularly Iran and

Syria, also continues to be a high priority, something on which I know Ambassador

Crumpton and Secretary Rice are very focused.

That, in brief, is the shape of the terrorist threat as we see it at the National

Counterterrorism Center, representing the intelligence community. We certainly

focus on other groups that target United States interests around the world, such as

the FARC in Columbia, but I wanted to focus my remarks today on the principal

terrorist enemy, as we define it. We are constantly working to improve our understanding of that enemy so that we can be sure that we are employing the proper

tools to defeat him. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I’d now like to walk you

through the work that the NCTC is doing to support the President’s strategy and

our Nation’s war on terrorism.

NCTC is a relatively new organization, built on the foundation of the Terrorist

Threat Integration Center (TTIC), which was established by the President in early

2003. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA) significantly expanded upon TTIC’s initial mission and created the NCTC organization,

as it exists today.

As Director, I have a number of responsibilities, but they boil down to two critical

missions. The first relates to intelligence, where I report to Ambassador Negroponte,

the Director of National Intelligence. I am his Mission Manager for

Counterterrorism, serving as the intelligence community’s focal point for all intelligence matters relating to counterterrorism. Wearing this intelligence hat, I work

closely with all of the different elements of the intelligence community.

13

But NCTC has an important role to play beyond the intelligence arena, and it requires that I wear a different hat and that we interact with a broader set of actors.

As codified in the IRTPA, NCTC is responsible for conducting Strategic Operational

Planning (SOP) for the war on terrorism for the entire U.S. Government. Wearing

that hat, I report to the President and interact constantly with the President’s National Security Council and Homeland Security Council staffs. In a few minutes, I

will say more about this strategic operational planning function, which I believe represents something truly innovative, even revolutionary, in the way we do business

as a Government.

But first, let me say a little more about the intelligence role that NCTC plays in

support of the President’s strategy and the war on terrorism. Wearing this hat, I

am responsible for overseeing three key intelligence-related functions: Terrorism

analysis, information sharing, and mission management.

With respect to terrorism analysis, NCTC’s role in the intelligence community is

expanding dramatically to fulfill the vision of the IRTPA. Put simply, the law states

that NCTC will be the primary organization in the U.S. Government for analyzing

and integrating all intelligence information related to terrorism, excluding purely

domestic terrorism. To support that analytical effort, NCTC serves as the single

place where all terrorism-related information available to the Government comes together.

That means NCTC analysts have daily access to an unprecedented array of classified information networks, databases, and intelligence sources. Using this data,

NCTC analysts, working with counterparts throughout the intelligence community,

produce daily products that focus on both big picture, strategic terrorism analysis

that supports policy development, as well as analysis of tactical threat reporting

that supports U.S. personnel in the field, both overseas and here at home.

My second area of responsibility in the intelligence field relates to information

sharing, where we are working hard to address the shortcomings that were all too

apparent in the period after September 11. I believe we have had significant success

in this critical area.

I’ll start with a very simple and straightforward example of information sharing

that benefits the entire counterterrorism community in a very real way. Three times

a day, NCTC chairs a secure video teleconference with all of the key members of

the intelligence community, as well as other counterterrorism players from around

the Government.

In those meetings, we share the latest threat information, discuss the steps various departments and agencies are taking to mitigate the threat, and provide a

forum for interagency coordination on intelligence tasks. One of the good news stories that we have seen during my tenure is the way in which this kind of information sharing has become institutionalized, a matter of habit and routine rather than

an ad hoc arrangement dependent on personalities or personal relationships.

NCTC also provides a critical information sharing backbone for the CT community

with our maintenance of the Government’s central database on known or suspected

international terrorists. The NCTC database, known as the Terrorist Identities

Datamart Environment, or TIDE, contains all-source intelligence information provided by all of the various members of the intelligence community, up to the very

highest levels of classification. Today there are over 300,000 record entries in the

TIDE database, reflecting over 200,000 unique terrorist identities.

This database serves a critical purpose as it supports all of the various watchlisting efforts that go on around the Government. The classified information in

TIDE is used to produce an unclassified extract that goes to the FBI’s Terrorist

Screening Center. That information is then used to compile the TSA’s No-Fly List,

the State Department’s Visa and Passport Database, DHS’s Border System and the

FBI’s National Crime and Information Center.

While I would not claim the system is foolproof or perfect, it represents a major

step forward for our Government in the effort to solve the problem of disparate, incomplete, and disconnected watch lists.

A further example of information sharing can be found in NCTC’s management

of what we believe is the most effective classified counterterrorism Web site in the

world, something we call NCTC Online, or NOL. Put simply, we gather disseminated intelligence on the terrorist threat from throughout the counterterrorism community by virtue of our access to almost 30 networks and databases. We then post

that intelligence on a single NOL Web site, where it can be accessed by policymakers, intelligence analysts, and a host of other consumers around the Government.

This site aims to provide one-stop information for the consumer of terrorism intelligence information, whether that person sits in an office in downtown Washington,

or is deployed in a forward headquarters in a combat zone, or in an embassy overVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:08 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\COUNT.TXT mich PsN: mich
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seas. Today, there are approximately 5,000 cleared consumers in the Federal family

who take advantage of NOL offerings, which contain approximately 5 million different intelligence products or reports.

The third broad area of our NCTC responsibilities in the intelligence area can be

summarized under the heading of Mission Management. As Ambassador

Negroponte’s designated Mission Manager for Counterterrorism, I am responsible

for understanding the needs of our customers around the community, for monitoring

and improving the quality of our collective activities and analysis on terrorism

issues, for identifying and closing key information gaps that prevent us from understanding the terrorism problem as well as we might, and for ensuring the most efficient use of our CT intelligence resources across the board.

This Mission Manager role is new and reflects a concept introduced by Ambassador Negroponte based on the WMD Commission report. In support of this role,

we have established a Mission Management directorate whose sole purpose is to advance these broad aims, serve as an advocate within the CT community, and bring

about greater integration of our intelligence efforts.

All of these various analysis and information-sharing activities are aimed at one

thing: Ensuring that we provide the best possible information and analysis to those

who need it, when they need it, to fight and win the war on terrorism. I can think

of no more important mission in the intelligence field.

A few minutes ago, I mentioned that I wear a second hat as NCTC Director, one

related to Strategic Operational Planning for the war on terrorism. Let me say a

few words about that function.

At first blush, ‘‘strategic operational planning’’ almost seems like a contradiction.

How can planning be both strategic and operational? The answer to that question

can be found in the gap that we are trying to fill between the development of policy

and strategy at a high level, and the ground-level tactical operations of frontline departments and agencies that seek to implement policy and strategy. This is a gap

that has existed for as long as I have served in Government, and that covers over

four decades of service.

For developing broad policy and strategy, we have the well-developed, time-tested

mechanism of the National Security Council (NSC) system, and more recently the

Homeland Security Council (HSC) process. The NSC and HSC serve to frame policy

issues for discussion, debate and ultimately decision by the principals and the President. It is a system well known to everybody in this room. At the other end of the

spectrum, there are the individual departments and agencies responsible for conducting operations in the field that support the policy and strategy of the United

States. What has long been missing is that piece in the middle, the space between

policy and operations.

The goal of our SOP function is straightforward: To bring all instruments of national power to bear in support of our counterterrorism strategy, and to do so in

a coordinated, integrated fashion. As laid out in the IRTPA, ‘‘all instruments’’ means

diplomatic, financial, military, intelligence, homeland security, and law enforcement

activities. The NCTC charter in this regard is extremely simple in one sense, yet

remarkably complex in it execution. Let me explain.

First, there is a deliberative planning process. This means taking our nationallevel counterterrorism strategy and policy and breaking it down into strategic goals,

tangible objectives and subobjectives, and ultimately into discrete tasks. These tasks

are then assigned to a lead agency or department for execution. Finally, we must

prioritize the tasks.

As NCTC builds this plan, we employ a fully collaborative, fully participatory

interagency process. This means bringing planners, terrorism experts, and other

subject matter specialists from all of the relevant departments and agencies into the

strategic operational planning process, under the direction and leadership of NCTC.

This process, which involves hundreds of people across the CT community, has been

underway for a number of months now.

NCTC has worked hard to make this process work in a way that leverages the

skills, abilities, and expertise of all of the relevant departments and agencies. Make

no mistake. The product that emerges from this planning process is an interagency

product, not simply the work of a small group of planners working out at NCTC.

After we have built a strategic operational plan, and run it through the NSC process for approval, we move to implementation of the plan. This second phase involves

what the IRTPA describes as ‘‘interagency coordination of operational activities.’’

This means the coordination, integration, and synchronization of departmental operations. We are just beginning to work out how this will function in practice.

The third phase of our SOP process involves an assessment process. NCTC is

charged with monitoring, evaluating, and assessing the execution and effectiveness

15

of the plan. The fourth and final phase involves adjusting and revising the plan,

at which point we begin the cycle anew.

The point I would highlight here is that we are creating a rigorous, iterative planning process to support the President’s strategy. As General Eisenhower once noted,

‘‘Plans are nothing; planning is everything.’’ We have taken that message to heart.

Chairman Lugar, in your invitation to this hearing, you indicated that you would

like to hear my assessment of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the period since I assumed my duties at NCTC last year. I firmly believe that we are making great

progress in our counterterrorism efforts, progress that should give us great satisfaction. While I cannot go into great detail about many of our operational successes

given the open nature of this hearing, I can make a few general observations about

our overall progress.

We are taking concrete steps to improve our collective understanding and analysis

of the terrorist threat and the enemy we face. We are working diligently to correct

the deficiencies in information sharing that have plagued us in the past and to institutionalize patterns of cooperation and collaboration so that they become a permanent part of the interagency landscape.

And lastly, with our strategic operational planning efforts, we at NCTC are leading the Government’s efforts to provide the connective tissue that will link the

President’s bold and visionary counterterrorism strategy with the operations and activities of our colleagues on the front lines of the war on terrorism.

All of this work marks a new, more collaborative, and more integrated approach

to winning the war on terrorism. As a government, we have come together in ways

that I have never seen during my four decades of Government service. We at NCTC

are honored to be a part of that interagency team effort. Indeed, our Government

workforce at NCTC is made up almost entirely of officers, from other departments

and agencies, men and women who bring the skills, experience, and expertise from

their home agencies to the fight every day.

NCTC has come a long way in a short time, but we are in many ways a work

in progress, taking on new responsibilities and functions even as we develop capability. I often say that we’re building the airplane at NCTC even as we are being

asked to fly it. But I believe strongly that we have made real, tangible progress toward making the American people safer and more secure.

All of this makes me relatively optimistic about the long-term picture. As a Government, we have done an incredible amount to make our country safer and more

secure. We have taken the fight to the enemy and achieved great successes in the

field. For that, we owe a great debt of gratitude to our men and women in uniform

and to the intelligence professionals in the field, all of whom are confronting the

enemy on the front lines of the war on terrorism. And this is not only an American

effort. Working with our partners around the world, in ways we often cannot talk

about publicly, we are jointly making real headway in the war on terrorism.

Here at home, we have made the homeland a hostile place for terrorists and those

who provide them with material support. The fact that we have not been attacked

here in the homeland since 9/11 is not an accident. And while we take great satisfaction in the record since 9/11, it would be foolhardy to think that we will not be

attacked again. As I noted earlier, this is a long war with many battles yet to be

fought and with setbacks certain to come along the way. But I remain confident and

optimistic about the ultimate outcome.

As I hope you can see, Mr. Chairman, we are clear-eyed about the road ahead

and the work we still have in front of us. The enemy is capable, determined, resilient, and focused on doing us serious harm. Our efforts to defeat that enemy and

win the long war must be equally determined and focused.

Thank you for your attention. I look forward to addressing your questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Admiral Redd, for

your very forthcoming testimony. We look forward in due course to

questions of you from our committee. But it is my privilege now to

call upon Ambassador Henry Crumpton for his testimony.

STATEMENT OF HON. HENRY A. CRUMPTON, COORDINATOR

FOR COUNTERTERRORISM, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Chairman Lugar, Senator Biden, distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity

to testify today. I am especially pleased to join my colleague and

16

friend, Admiral Scott Redd, with whom I have worked closely during the last year.

The U.S. Government has achieved some success in the war on

terror. Plots have been disrupted. A large portion of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has been caught or killed, including most recently

Zarqawi. We have degraded the group’s global network by capturing or killing hundreds of operatives. We have also contributed

to the ongoing development of a global counterterrorism network of

allies.

While recognizing our success, we also recognize that challenges

remain. The terrorist threat is constantly evolving. Self-radicalized

and self-organized groups and cells pose a growing threat. They do

not necessarily depend on the operational support or guidance from

centralized al-Qaeda command structures, but what they do share

is al-Qaeda’s violent ideology, a belief in existential war. The

enemy gains strength from exploiting local grievances and conflicts,

building alliances with regional groups, and engaging in intelligence collection, deception, denial, sabotage, subversion, terrorism, and open warfare.

In response to our operational success, enemy elements are becoming smaller in size and less tightly organized. We see more

threats emerging from tiny cells and even individuals, some with

greater autonomy, which makes them more difficult to detect, more

difficult to engage. Terrorist groups are becoming more sophisticated, using the Internet to improve their global reach, intelligence

collection, and operational capacity.

Technological advancement has been matched by a growing sophistication in terrorist propaganda, information operations, and

increasingly diffuse organizational structures. They continue to

seek access to weapons of mass destruction, making efforts to

counter WMD proliferation a fundamental part of the fight against

terrorism. We also see the increasing overlap of terrorist and criminal enterprises.

Iraq poses unique challenges. We must deny Iraq to terrorists

who oppose Iraqis’ new government. Al-Qaeda and associated foreign fighters seek to hijack, transform, and direct local Sunni insurgents. They view Iraq as a training ground and indoctrination

center for Islamic extremists from around the world. Although

Zarqawi is dead, al-Qaeda in Iraq still poses a threat, and not only

for Iraq but for the region.

There is evidence that core leaders, including bin Laden and

Ayman Zawahiri, are frustrated by their lack of direct control.

They are isolated in the hinterlands of the Afghanistan-Pakistan

frontier. We must retain this unrelenting pressure against alQaeda, especially their leadership, to further diminish the links in

their global networks.

Like enemy leadership, enemy safe havens have a great strategic

importance. Safe haven allows the enemy to recruit, organize, plan,

train, coalesce, rest, and claim turf as a symbol of legitimacy. That

is why al-Qaeda and its affiliates place so much emphasis on attaining safe haven. We therefore must contest physical space and

cyberspace, where the enemy recruits, fundraises, plans, and

trains.

17

We must also contest belief systems, ideas, and ideologies that

terrorists disseminate. We must bring an end to state sponsorship

of terrorism, in which Iran and Syria are prominent examples, especially in light of their ongoing support to Hezbollah and a wide

array of Palestinian terrorist groups.

Our strategy to defeat terrorists is structured at multiple levels:

A global campaign to counter violent extremism, a series of regional collaborative efforts to deny terrorists safe haven, and numerous bilateral security and development assistance programs designed to partner CT capabilities as well as liberal institutions that

support the rule of law and address political and economic injustice. This strategy is aimed to enhance our partners’ capacity to

counter the threat and address conditions that terrorists exploit.

We work with or through our partners at every level whenever possible.

To implement this strategy, U.S. ambassadors, as the President’s

personal representatives abroad, lead interagency country teams

that recommend strategies using all instruments of statecraft. We

must help host nations understand the threat and strengthen their

political will and capacity to counter it. These nations, of course,

also help us.

Toward this end, the Department of State in concert with the

interagency has launched a regional strategic initiative, which is

designed to establish flexible regional networks of interconnected

country teams. We are working with ambassadors and interagency

representatives, especially those from NCTC, to assess the threat

and devise strategies, actionable initiatives, and policy recommendations for specific theaters of operation. To date, several of

these RSI strategy sessions have been held, with more scheduled

in the coming weeks and months.

As I survey the changing face of terror, I draw three conclusions.

First, we must maintain flexibility in our approach as the enemy

continues to evolve. We must fight the enemy with precise, calibrated efforts that will deny it leadership, safe haven, and financial

and criminal networks of support.

Second, we must replace an ideology of hatred with one of hope.

Over the long term, our most important task is not the ‘‘destructive’’ job of eradicating enemy networks, but rather the ‘‘constructive’’ task of building legitimacy, good governance, trust, prosperity,

tolerance, and the rule of law.

Third, we cannot fight counterterrorism alone. We must use all

the tools of statecraft in cooperation with our growing network of

partners to construct enduring solutions that transcend violence.

Because of our collective efforts and our interdependent strength,

we will win this fight. Our citizens and global partners expect no

less.

Mr. Chairman, this completes the formal part of my remarks and

I welcome your questions and comments.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Crumpton follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. HENRY A. CROMPTON, COORDINATOR FOR

COUNTERTERRORISM, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC

Chairman Lugar, Senator Biden, distinguished members of the committee, thank

you for the opportunity to testify today on the important topic of ‘‘The Changing

18

Face of Terror: A Post 9/11 Assessment.’’ I will summarize my formal written statement and ask that you include my full testimony in the record.

We have achieved some success in the war on terror. A significant portion of alQaeda’s senior leadership has been caught or killed, and we have degraded the

group’s global network. Most recently, we learned of the successful effort to kill Abu

Musab al-Zargawi, which dealt a severe blow to al-Qaeda. We have also worked to

successfully disrupt terrorist plots. While recognizing these successes, we also recognize that significant challenges remain.

The terrorist threat is constantly evolving, while radicalization has spread. Osama

bin Laden and the core al-Qaeda leadership group seeks to expand their influence,

as does al-Qaeda in Iraq, which includes foreign fighters from the region and Europe. Self-radicalized and self-organized groups and cells pose a growing threat. We

have seen the results in Madrid, London, and Egypt. The perpetrators of these attacks do not necessarily depend on operational support or guidance from centralized

al-Qaeda command structures, but what they share with the core al-Qaeda group

is a violent ideology, a belief in existential war.

The enemy gains strength from exploiting local grievances and conflicts, building

alliances with regional groups such as the Jemaah Islamiya terrorist organization

in Southeast Asia, and engaging in intelligence collection, deception, sabotage, and

even open warfare, as we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS

In addition to increased radicalization, the State Department’s congressionally

mandated Country Reports on Terrorism outlines other important trends and developments. For example, in response to our operational success, enemy operational

elements are becoming smaller in size and less tightly organized. We see more

threats emerging from small cells and even individuals, some with greater autonomy. This makes them more difficult to detect and engage. These looser terrorist

networks are less capable but also less predictable and in some ways more dangerous. We may face a larger number of smaller attacks, less meticulously planned,

and local rather than transnational in scope.

Terrorist groups are becoming more sophisticated in their use of technology, particularly the Internet, to improve their global reach, intelligence collection, and operational capacity. Technological sophistication has been matched by a growing sophistication in terrorist propaganda, information operations, and increasingly diffuse organizational structures. Terrorists continue to seek access to sophisticated

weapons of mass destruction, including chemical, biological, and radiological technology—making efforts to counter WMD proliferation a fundamental part of the

fight against terrorism.

Another trend is the increasing overlap of terrorist and criminal enterprises. In

some cases, terrorists use the same networks as transnational criminal groups, exploiting the overlap between these networks to improve mobility, build support for

their terrorist agenda, and avoid detection. Hezballah operatives, for example, are

involved in a wide range of criminal activities, ranging from trafficking in counterfeit or pirated goods to sophisticated money laundering. They are also involved in

a variety of financial crimes, including credit card and insurance fraud.

Iraq must also be included in a discussion of trends. We are determined to deny

Iraq to terrorists who seek to undermine its new government. Al-Qaeda and its associated foreign fighters seek to hijack, transform, and direct local Sunni insurgents

in Iraq. They view Iraq as a training ground and indoctrination center for Islamic

extremists from around the world, particularly from Europe, North Africa, and the

Middle East. They not only want to defeat the United States, the coalition, the

international community and our Iraqi allies, but also the notion of democracy in

the Middle East. Networks that support the flow of foreign terrorists to Iraq have

been uncovered in several parts of the world. Although Zarqawi is now dead, the

terrorist organizations still pose a threat as their members will try to terrorize the

Iraqi people and destabilize the government as it moves toward stability and prosperity.

STRUCTURE OF INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

Al-Qaeda Today.—Al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups remain the primary terrorist

threat to the international community. Our collective international efforts have

harmed al-Qaeda. The capture of Hambali reduced the linkages between al-Qaeda

and affiliated groups in Southeast Asia. The capture of Abu Faraj-al-Libi diminished

contacts in the Middle East and North Africa. The death of Ayman-al-Zawahiri’s

lieutenants in January 2006, in Pakistan, further isolated al-Qaeda leadership. The

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death of Zarqawi in Iraq last week disrupts the al-Qaeda leadership network. In

this respect they are weaker and pose less of a direct threat.

Al-Qaeda’s core leadership no longer has effective global command and control of

its networks. The few enemy leaders that have avoided death or capture find themselves isolated and on the run. Thus, al-Qaeda increasingly emphasizes its ideological and propaganda activity to help its cause. By remaining at large, and intermittently vocal, bin Laden and Zawahiri seek to symbolize resistance to the international community, retain the capability to influence events, and through the use

of the media and Internet, aim to incite actual and potential terrorists. They seek

to claim local and regional conflicts as their own. This was evident in the recent

bin Laden audiotape where al-Qaeda aimed to appropriate the humanitarian crisis

in Darfur as part of its ‘‘cause.’’

There is evidence that core leaders including bin Laden and Zawahiri are frustrated by their lack of direct control, as demonstrated by the 2005 Zawahiri-Zarqawi

correspondence. With its Afghan safe haven gone, with Pakistan reducing its safe

haven along the border, and with global international cooperation constraining terrorist mobility, al-Qaeda and its affiliates are desperate to claim Iraq as a success.

This is why, even until his last breath, Zarqawi feared a viable Iraqi nation and

continued efforts to foment terrorist attacks and sectarian violence against Iraqis.

We must retain unrelenting pressure against al-Qaeda. We must work together to

ensure al-Qaeda will never regain its tight, pre-9/11 command and control structure.

Safe Havens.—Like enemy leadership, enemy safe havens have great strategic importance. Safe haven allows the enemy to recruit, organize, plan, train, coalesce,

rest, and claim turf as a symbol of legitimacy. This is why al-Qaeda and its affiliates

place so much emphasis on safe haven. We must focus on both the physical space

and cyberspace that the enemy uses to recruit, fundraise, plan, and train. We must

also focus on ideological safe havens where belief systems, ideas, and cultural norms

provide space within which terrorists can operate. We must also bring an end to

state sponsorship of terrorism, with Iran and Syria being the most prominent examples, in light of their ongoing support to Hezballah and a wide array of Palestinian

terrorist groups.

Physical safe havens usually straddle national borders or exist in regions where

ineffective governance allows their presence. Examples include the trans-Sahara,

Somalia, the Sulawesi and Sulu Sea littoral, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Because of the importance of safe havens, much of our present strategy in the war

on terror is focused toward their elimination. Denying terrorists safe haven therefore demands a regional response as a matter of priority. For this reason, building

regional partnerships is one foundation of our counterterrorism strategy. We are

helping partner countries fight terror. We are joining with key regional countries,

working together to not only take the fight to the enemy, but also to combat the

ideology of hatred that uses terror as a weapon. We must work with our many partners around the world to build and sustain democratic, well-governed states that

respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the

international system.

There are some examples of success against enemy safe haven. Colombia now

boasts police forces in all 1,098 municipalities throughout the country, and is trying

to work with bordering countries to combat the FARC. With United States Government assistance, the Philippine Government now has increasing control of the island of Basilan and is beginning to create stability on the island of Jolo, both areas

of operation for Jemaah Islamiya and the Abu Sayyaf Group. Algerian forces have

reduced the GSPC strongholds in Algeria to small, isolated pockets. Starting in

2004, Pakistan has continued its effort to wrestle the federally administered tribal

areas from al-Qaeda influence, but this will be a difficult task.

Enemy safe havens also include cyberspace. Terrorists often respond to our collective success in closing physical safe havens by fleeing to cyberspace where they seek

a new type of safe haven. Harnessing the Internet’s potential for speed, security,

and global linkage, terrorists increase their ability to conduct some of the activities

that once required physical safe haven. They not only use cyberspace to communicate, but also to collect intelligence, disseminate propaganda, recruit operatives,

build organizations, fundraise, plan, and even train.

There are several thousand radical or extremist Web sites worldwide, many of

which disseminate a mixture of fact and propaganda. Countering the messages that

terrorists propagate cannot be done quickly or easily. It must become part of a longterm strategy that will demand concerted action at all levels.

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CURRENT CT INITIATIVES

Our strategy to defeat terrorists is structured at multiple levels—a global campaign to counter violent extremism; a series of regional collaborative efforts to deny

terrorists safe haven; and numerous bilateral security and development assistance

programs designed to build partner CT capabilities, as well as liberal institutions

that support the rule of law, and address political and economic injustice.

This strategy is aimed to enhance our partners’ capacity to counter the terrorist

threat and address conditions that terrorists exploit. We work with or through partners at every level (both bilaterally and multilaterally), whenever possible. To implement this strategy, U.S. ambassadors, as the President’s personal representatives

abroad, lead interagency country teams that recommend strategies using all instruments of U.S. statecraft to help host nations understand the threat, and strengthen

their political will and capacity to counter it.

Our strategy is aimed over the long term. Over time, our global and regional operations will reduce the enemy’s capacity to harm us and our partners, while local security and development assistance will build our partners’ capacity. Once partner

capacity exceeds threat, the need for close United States engagement and support

will diminish, terrorist movements will fracture and implode, and the threat will be

reduced to proportions that our partners can manage for themselves over the long

term.

Examples of such strategies include the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative

(TSCTI), the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), and the regional strategic

initiative (RSI). The TSCTI is a multi-faceted, multi-year strategy aimed at defeating terrorist organizations by strengthening regional counterterrorism capabilities,

enhancing and institutionalizing cooperation among that region’s security forces,

promoting democratic governance, discrediting terrorist ideology, and reinforcing bilateral military ties with the United States.

The MEPI is a presidential initiative that was launched in 2002 so that democracy can spread, education can thrive, economies can grow, and women can be empowered in the Middle East. The initiative is a partnership that works closely with

academic institutions, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations in the

Arab world with the goal of building a vibrant civil society so reform can flourish.

As such, both the TSCTI and MEPI are examples of ‘‘homegrown, partner-led’’ initiatives.

The third example of one of our long-term, interagency CT strategies is the RSI.

My office has worked to develop this program which is designed to establish flexible

regional networks of interconnected country teams. We are working with ambassadors and interagency representatives in key terrorist theaters of operation to assess the threat and devise collaborative strategies, actionable initiatives, and policy

recommendations.

The RSI is a key tool in promoting cooperation between our partners in the war

on terror—between Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, for example, as they

deal with terrorist transit across the Sulawesi Sea; or among Iraq’s neighbors working to cut off the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq.

To date, several RSI strategy sessions have been held. These include strategy sessions in Southeast Asia, among Iraq’s neighbors, and most recently in the Horn of

Africa. More are scheduled in the coming months. These sessions are chaired by ambassadors, with Washington interagency representatives in attendance. The sessions

focus on developing a common, shared diagnosis of the strategic situation in a region. Using this common perspective, networked country teams then identify opportunities for collaboration, and self-synchronize efforts across multiple diverse programs in concert with the National Counterterrorism Center’s strategic operational

planning effort to achieve the President’s national strategic goals. We are engaging

enemy networks with flexible, strong interagency regional networks of our own.

EFFECTIVENESS OF USG CT APPROACH

The war on terror is an enormous effort across varied geographical regions and

a multiplicity of programs, with numerous partners. In measuring its effectiveness,

we must focus on how our efforts affect the enemy rather than focusing solely on

the scale and efficiency of our inputs. These inputs have improved dramatically in

efficiency and coordination across the whole of Government since the war began—

but success demands that we translate this improved performance into an improved

effect on the enemy.

At the global level, al-Qaeda leaders are less and less able to offer practical support and leadership to their affiliated networks, because of the need to remain constantly on the run and in hiding. They increasingly focus on propaganda efforts to

inspire their followers. But bin Laden’s statement directly admitting responsibility

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for the 9/11 attacks shook many potential supporters, who had been convinced by

conspiracy theories and the lies of terrorist supporters that they had been unjustly

framed for the attacks. Bin Laden’s own words have undermined him.

We see some progress m Iraq, where a new, sovereign government is taking

shape. Here, terrorists have suffered significant damage. The most recent example

is the death of Zarqawi. Zarqawi was the most important al-Qaeda terrorist in Iraq,

responsible for a gruesome campaign of hate, violence, and intolerance that included

beheadings, bombing of innocent civilians in Iraq and Jordan and for targeting

Americans and members of the international community. But most importantly, he

was a key promoter of sectarian conflict and communal violence between Iraqis of

the Sunni and Shia communities. Many challenges remain in Iraq, but his death

may afford us and our Iraqi partners more time and space to address the socialpolitical-economic conditions that the enemies of Iraq seek to exploit.

In the Horn of Africa, terrorists continue to exploit poor governance, lack of basic

societal infrastructure, and the failed state of Somalia. The fight against terrorism

is inseparable from the need to address the underlying conditions, as well as targeting terrorists themselves. We continue to work with partners across the region

to help local people build a better future for themselves, improve governance and

rid themselves of the terrorists who prey on them.

In Afghanistan and Pakistan, terrorist-affiliated insurgents such as the Taliban

are seeking to spread their influence into settled districts and undermine government efforts to improve administration and meet people’s basic needs. They seek to

exploit the changeover of forces in Afghanistan and draw on local grievances to

build alliances between terrorists and insurgents. But our partner governments remain committed to the struggle, and we must help them.

Closer to home, Canada has proven a key partner in the war against terror, recently disrupting a major extremist plot. Like the United States and other open,

democratic societies, Canada faces challenges from those who seek to exploit its

freedoms. While the emergence of the extremists behind this plot is worrisome, Canada’s security forces detected and disrupted this plot with world-class professionalism. We continue to work closely with Canada in an enormous range of

counterterrorism programs.

Role of Regional and Multilateral Partnerships.—Our work with regional and

multilateral partnerships is important to achieve U.S. Government counterterrorism

goals. The United States finds strength in numbers and cannot accomplish these

goals alone. Further, by working through international partners we can provide CT

assistance in certain parts of the globe that is politically more palatable than if we

provided it bilaterally. Examples of progress with regional partnerships include the

Inter-American Committee against Terrorism (CICTE) and the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Through CICTE, the United States has

delivered more than $5 million in capacity-building in the region, providing training

to hundreds of security officials in the region. The OSCE has pushed its 55 members

to implement ICAO travel document standards, sponsoring workshops, and training

for government officials, as well as to modernize shipping container security and

prevent and suppress the financing of terrorist organizations.

Likewise, we have had success in working with multilateral organizations. In

2005, we adopted two resolutions in the U.N. Security Council aimed at

counterterrorism. The first, resolution 1617, strengthened the current sanctions regime against the Taliban, bin Laden and al-Qaeda and their associates, and endorsed the Financial Action Task Force standards for combating money laundering

and terrorist financing. The second, resolution 1624, addressed incitement to terrorism and related matters. In addition, we continued to work through the U.N.

1267 Sanctions Committee to impose binding financial, travel, and arms/munitions

sanctions on entities and individuals associated with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and bin

Laden. We also worked within the U.N. General Assembly to ensure the Outcome

Document, issued at the end of the high-level plenary meeting of the 60th General

Assembly, contained a clear and unqualified condemnation of terrorism ‘‘in all its

forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever, and for whatever purposes,’’ and set objectives for U.N. actions to counter terrorism.

Within the G–8, we worked with our partners in 2005 to complete virtually all

outstanding project tasks included in the 28-point action plan that is part of the Secure and Facilitated International Travel Initiative (SAFTI) issued at the June 2004

Sea Island Summit. This included strengthening international standards for passport issuance; developing new measures to defend against the threat of MANPADS;

establishing a point-of-contact network to deal with aviation threat emergencies;

and expanding training and assistance on transportation security to third-party

states.

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CONCLUSION

As I survey the changing face of terror, I draw three conclusions. First, we must

maintain flexibility in our approach as the enemy continues to evolve. In doing so,

we must measure counterterrorism success in the broadest perspective. Tactical and

operational counterterrorism battles will be won and lost, but we wage these battles

in a global war within a strategic context. We must fight the enemy with precise,

calibrated efforts that will deny the enemy its leadership, its safe havens, and its

financial and criminal networks of support.

Second, we must replace an ideology of hatred with an ideology of hope. Over the

long term, our most important task in the war on terror is not the ‘‘destructive’’ task

of eradicating enemy networks, but the ‘‘constructive’’ task of building legitimacy,

good governance, trust, prosperity, tolerance, and the rule of law. Social and governmental systems that are characterized by choices, transparent governance, economic

opportunities, and personal freedoms are keys to victory. Ignoring human development is not an option. It is imperative that we encourage and nurture democratization. When a lack of freedom destroys hope, individuals sometimes feel they are justified to lash out in rage and frustration at those they believe responsible for their

plight. In fact, no cause, no grievance can justify the murder of innocent people.

Public diplomacy programs that encourage exchanges of ideas and seek to develop

regional and local programming to reject violence and hate, and instead encourage

tolerance and moderation are critical.

Third, the United States cannot fight counterterrorism alone. We must use all

tools of statecraft, in cooperation with our growing network of partners, to construct

enduring solutions that transcend violence. Because of our collective efforts and our

interdependent strength, we will win this fight. Our citizens and global partners expect no less.

Mr. Chairman, this completes the formal part of my remarks and I welcome your

questions and comments.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Ambassador Crumpton.

We will now have a round of questions. We have several Senators that are present and we will have a 10-minute round. We will

ask Senators to try to each stay within that mark so that all can

be heard and so that we will have ample time for our second panel

of witnesses.

Let me begin the questions by asking you, Mr. Ambassador. You

have spoken about the regional strategic initiative, through which

you are bringing affected ambassadors who serve in regions that

are key terrorist theaters of operation together. Can you speak

more specifically as to what these meetings are yielding? What is

most on the minds of these ambassadors? Is this a new innovation

altogether or is this a continuation of programs that have occurred

in the State Department before?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. First, sir, there are some examples, good

examples of regional cooperation: The Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative, the East African Counterterrorism Initiative.

This is really an extension and expansion of some of these plans,

but here it is not just about meeting; it is about pulling these country teams together into regional networks and having a continuing

dialog. That includes the use of communications every day, whether it is video conferences, exchanges of e-mails.

But importantly, it is not just about the Department of State.

Ambassadors in the field are leading this effort, but these meetings

include interagency representatives from Washington. It goes from

the military to NCTC to USAID and really all those actors within

the U.S. Government that are contributing to this fight. It provides

a unique dynamic and, importantly, it looks at the theater of operations, often which astrides national borders. That is why we think

a regional approach is so important.

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The CHAIRMAN. So these people, the ambassadors plus the other

officials, are hearing each other, listening to each other carefully,

and informing you and the Secretary. And you believe this is an

important innovation that has been helpful in the specific policies

you have enumerated?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir. We just started. Really, in January, was the first to launch, and we have had a series of these

meetings in different regions. Importantly, it is not only about informing myself and the Secretary, but specific policy recommendations come from this. In concert with NCTC, we put this forward

to the National Security Council. They look at this and they modify, they accept, and then we move forward into specific programs

and to specific requests for resources.

We are measuring success against the enemy. We are looking at

safe haven, in particular, and seeing how can we reduce safe

haven, how can we replace enemy safe haven with something more

enduring, with liberal institutions, with civic society. There are

some good examples of that to date.

The CHAIRMAN. I have underlined that and I thank you for your

comments about this because I think it offers a great boost to our

foreign service, our professional foreign service persons who serve

in these capacities, to understand the role that they have in the

war against terrorism, beyond their individual service and the bilateral relationships with countries in which they represent us.

Let me just pursue one more difficult area. That is, what kind

of improvement can you make on our relations with countries such

as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia? Comment is made all the time

about the difficulties of our intelligence situation, quite apart from

pursuit of obvious targets, and people we would like to interview

in these countries. What headway are we making and what can

you foresee?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. In terms of cooperation with Pakistan,

they have lost hundreds of people in the military and law enforcement in pursuing terrorist threats within their own country. I was

just in Pakistan recently. I met with some of their senior leaders

and we talked about the enduring challenges, especially along their

frontier with Afghanistan. President Musharraf has rolled out a

new strategy that emphasizes political and economic development,

especially aimed at those traditional tribal leaders that have been

targeted, have been assassinated by al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

Musharraf, with our support and others, wants to help reinforce

this traditional tribal authority and provide economic incentives for

some of the people there. We think that is an important issue and

we need to support him. He understands, I believe, as others in the

region, that we must address these enduring questions—not only

go after the high-value targets.

Saudi Arabia, sir, in response to that, since May of 2003 when

al-Qaeda launched a series of attacks in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi

Government has responded vigorously. They have captured or

killed their top 26. They have gone after another 10 with some success. They have reformed some of their banking laws. They are

doing a better job of monitoring their charities, although they still

could do more, we believe. They are working with us increasingly

in the region, not just within the borders of Saudi Arabia.

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The CHAIRMAN. Let me just take two specific cases, one in Pakistan. The recurring question comes as to why we cannot interview

A.Q. Khan. Let me just ask the second question so you can have

both. In the case of the Saudis, the world oil price spiked one day

when terrorists were met on a roadway heading toward a refinery

that ostensibly refines 13 percent of all the oil on any one day in

the world. The terrorists were stopped, but the fact is that the

world wondered about the security for that refinery, which clearly

is of importance to the Saudis, but obviously to the conduct of commerce in the western world. Is all that safe?

Can you address those issues?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Sir, the first question, about interviewing A.Q. Khan—I do not have a ready answer for you, but I

will be glad to get back to you with some details on that.

The second question, regarding the terrorist intent to strike at

economic infrastructure—important economic and symbolic targets.

That is their intent. They did hope to disrupt the oil supplies out

of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi forces responded with alacrity and were

able to stop that attack.

Are these facilities safe, is your question. Sir, we have a long way

to go. If you look not only at Saudi Arabia, but you look at the oil

facilities in West Africa and other parts of the world, they present

a massive array of soft targets for potential enemy acts. We are

working with these countries to improve this infrastructure. But,

sir, it is a long, long road.

The CHAIRMAN. You make a good point, and it is a different hearing, a different subject, but often around this table we have talked

about the vulnerability of the oil supply in this world, given the

tight margin of 1 or 2 percent between supply and demand on any

one day, and almost the naivete in this country and the rest of the

world as to the security of that supply, given these vital situations

that you have just described.

Obviously, a great deal more safety is going to be required if we

are going to enjoy life as we have known it, without severe disruption of both civilian and military life.

Let me just ask you, Admiral Redd. You have commented and offered good evidence as to why analysis is better and better all the

time. However, there are hard targets that have been very difficult.

What headway are you making with your analysts in North Korea?

Admiral REDD. North Korea actually is a subject or is under the

cognizance of another mission manager which John Negroponte has

established, Ambassador Joe Detrani. From the terrorism standpoint, obviously we are very interested in that, but nothing I could

say in an open hearing, sir, that you would probably find useful.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well. Let me ask you then about the hard

targets we have just been discussing, one of which is Pakistan. You

have a good number of people working on that issue. How are you

doing?

Admiral REDD. I think part of the whole point of what I described to you in this strategic operational planning side, sir, is exactly that, is to take a comprehensive top-down look, taking that

national strategy and policy, breaking it down into strategic objectives, and further into subobjectives, and then finally into discrete

goals. All of those things when you get done with that are discrete

25

tasks, several hundreds of tasks, and assigning them responsibility

to a specific entity or specific department for that.

That is exactly the thing, the sort of thing that we look at in that

process: Again, comprehensive, top-down. As you would appreciate,

the State Department obviously has a—obviously ends up leading

a large number of those, but with partnering with other elements

of the U.S. Government.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you both very much for your responses

and I call now upon distinguished ranking member Senator Biden

for his questions.

Senator BIDEN. Gentlemen, you both have daunting jobs and I

am glad you take them with such obvious seriousness and have

taken a fresh look at how to approach these issues.

Admiral, on page 3 of your testimony you said: ‘‘These new networks are often made up of disaffected radicalized individuals who

draw inspiration and moral support from al-Qaeda and other violent extremists.’’ Going on, you said: ‘‘To the outside observer, these

terrorists might appear to be fully assimilated members of their

Western communities.’’ Continuing: ‘‘We have begun to see cells

like these here in the United States. Federal and local law enforcement authorities have done an outstanding job.’’ Continuing: ‘‘The

challenge to countering these cells is complicated by the fact that

they operate virtually, with much of their communication and planning taking place over the Internet.’’ Continuing: ‘‘The emergence

of this new brand of al-Qaeda-inspired homegrown terrorist groups

poses real challenges to the intelligence community and we are

grappling with a whole new set of questions. What forces give rise

to this violent ideology in immigrant communities that may appear

otherwise to be quiet and assimilated?’’

Your assertion that there are new cells in the United States is

consistent with everything that we have been told for some time.

Do you have any authority or coordination with the Homeland Security Department?

Admiral REDD. Actually, one of the major jobs that NCTC does,

is exactly that. Because of—you mentioned the Internet, but the

whole transnational nature of this threat, one of our jobs, and as

I mentioned several examples of how we bring the intelligence community together. That explicitly includes both foreign and domestic. In a closed hearing I could take you through a number of—several instances certainly where something starts out in, say, South

Asia today and tomorrow it is a concern in a United States city or

on a border.

Senator BIDEN. The reason why I ask—and this may not be in

your portfolio—is that I am perplexed. The 9–11 Commission has

given the Congress and the President failing grades on implementation of their recommendations. We have an argument going on,

which I think is a false argument, about how to allocate $740 million. Do we cut New York by 40 percent and Washington by X percent to give Omaha money or to give to St. Louis? I think Omaha

and St. Louis need more funding, but I also think New York needs

more funding.

The price tag to implement just those recommendations from the

9–11 Commission as of the report they wrote on December 15 of

2005, was $42 billion over 5 years. It seems to me that at the same

26

time we are doing this we are also cutting—you talk about local

law enforcement—we cut local law enforcement assistance by $2

billion over the last several years. Police departments are cutting

the number of police.

How does this fit into your thinking? I mean, here we are, we

are not doing what is recommended, we are not funding it, and we

are cutting local law enforcement. My experience is if anybody is

going to find a terrorist dropping sarin gas into the air conditioning

system of a giant mall or a stadium, it is going to be some cop having come from lunch or his snack and riding behind the building,

inspecting the dumpster. Or the cell is going to be discovered, like

it always has been, not just by intelligence, but by a cop walking

the beat and saying: By the way, those three apartments were

empty the last 4 years; now I notice there are activities in there

in this neighborhood.

How does this fit? Does it matter what we do in terms of local

law enforcement and funding of the 9–11 Commission recommendations?

Admiral REDD. Let me just start off by noting that actually

NCTC got the highest grades from the 9–11 Committee.

Senator BIDEN. It did, yes.

Admiral REDD. And I was born and married in Omaha, so I want

that to be on the record, Senator Hagel.

Senator BIDEN. And I think Omaha needs the help. I do not

think you should take it from New York.

Admiral REDD. Senator, we have been—as you know, we have

been doing the foreign side of this thing for a long time. We have

been doing foreign intelligence, we have been doing foreign operations. September 11 has brought us into a new era that we are

now looking inside. Clearly, Mike Chertoff has been given probably

one of the largest M and A jobs. If you take it to Wall Street you

might have a little trouble generating some venture capital. It is

a very difficult job which he has. I think he is doing a superb job.

One of the jobs that we have—and this is—first of all, there is

a lot of wonderful stuff going on, and NCTC’s job is to take that

and then see where we can take it and take it to the next level in

an integrated manner, so down the line—and I mentioned that

four-stage process. Planning is the first stage, implementation

next. The third thing is assessment. That is one of the things clearly we have to look at. As you look across, it would not surprise you

on the foreign intelligence side and foreign operations we have got

a pretty good record of doing things and working together.

On the domestic side, new ground. So first of all, bridging the

foreign-domestic gap is extremely important; and second, getting

our hands around a very difficult internal issue—domestic issue.

But again, I think Secretary Chertoff has a very good construct,

which we are going to see again and again: What is the threat,

what is the consequence of that threat, and what is our vulnerability? Very often you get to the point where you say you have got

a questionable threat. If the threat happens to be right, it has a

very serious consequence, and so what do you do about vulnerability? Trying to balance all that across the United States is a

very difficult job.

27

Senator BIDEN. Well, I think it is difficult, but just so you

know—and I am sure you do, being from Omaha—all politics is

local, buddy. They are a hell of a lot more concerned about the

threat around the block in the neighborhood in Omaha or Wilmington, DE, or Gary, IN, or New York City than they are about

anything happening in Iraq or anywhere else in the world.

Everyone I have spoken to in the intelligence community says

there are more cells now in the United States, there is more activity in the United States. I find it absolutely mind-blowing—and I

do not want to go into this now because my time is running out—

mind-blowing that we are not funding the 9–11 Commission’s recommendations. I find it absolutely on the verge of criminal that we

are not doing it. We are spending $740 million for the whole shooting match and the recommendation is $42 billion over 5 years. I

find it criminal.

But that is another point. And I do not share your view of Mr.

Chertoff, God love him, as my mother would say. I do share your

view that he has an overwhelmingly difficult job and I am not sure

anybody is up to it. But so far his department is not ready for

primetime in my view.

But let me move on to Pakistan and al-Qaeda. Our military commanders in Afghanistan with whom I have spoken and other observers say Pakistan’s spy service, the ISI, Mr. Ambassador and

Admiral, continues to support the Taliban and anti-United States

operations. Is that true? What is your—if you can say on the

record; if not, tell us—what is your honest assessment of the Pakistani intelligence service’s collaboration or lack thereof with the

Taliban?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Senator Biden, we believe that there

may be elements of the local governments, tribal governments, that

are in collusion with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Whether there are

elements of the national Government involved, we do not have any

hard intelligence or evidence of that.

Senator BIDEN. Well, you are aware our commanders in the field

think there is?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir, I have talked to them.

Senator BIDEN. You are aware that everyone you talk to in the

field thinks there is. You may not be able to prove it, but you have

not found anybody, have you, in Afghanistan in our folks who say,

by the way, the ISI is clean, they are playing it level? Have you

found anybody to tell you that?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. No, sir, I am not confirming that ISI is

clean. I am saying that we do not have any compelling evidence

right now that points to this. We do have concerns about Taliban

leadership that are in Pakistan and we believe that the Pakistanis

can do more. What the links are to ISI, sir, I cannot go into in open

session, but I would be glad to follow up to the extent that we can.

Senator BIDEN. Maybe we could do that. I would appreciate it.

I only have a couple minutes left, if I may. What should we make

of the situation in Somalia recently, where reported United States

support for Somali warlords in hope of finding and thwarting terrorists apparently brought about the rise of Islamic governance in

Somalia? Was there a disconnect between State Department and

our intelligence services on this one?

28

Admiral REDD. I would just say about Somalia, it turns out I was

the commander of the last United States operation that took the

United Nations out of Somalia about 10 years ago. Obviously there

have been some things going on inside Somalia. I would not jump

to the conclusion, however, that that means that al-Qaeda now

owns Somalia by any stretch of the imagination.

Senator BIDEN. I did not say that.

Admiral REDD. I know. A very complex place, tribal issues, warlord issues, et cetera.

Senator BIDEN. That is not my question, though. My question

was that you, Mr. Ambassador, talked about the coordination with

the State Department. My contacts tell me there was none, zero.

Ambassador CRUMPTON. That is incorrect, sir.

Senator BIDEN. There was some?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir. I was just in Nairobi a couple

weeks ago where we had a large interagency discussion and that

was part of an ongoing discussion of the interagency—the military,

the intelligence community, Department of State, and USAID.

Senator BIDEN. So before the decision was made to support Somali warlords, the State Department was in on that decision?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Sir, I cannot comment on any kind of

specific operational elements in open session. I would be glad to

speak to you offline if you wish.

Senator BIDEN. Well, again maybe—my time, I have 18 seconds

left. What I have been told is that—I cannot verify this—that State

Department officers warned against this effort, sometimes to the

point of damaging their own career in the process. I do not know

that to be a fact. That is the assertion made to me, and maybe I

could follow up privately.

Senator BIDEN. Gentlemen, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Biden.

Senator Hagel.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHUCK HAGEL, U.S. SENATOR FROM

NEBRASKA

Senator HAGEL. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Gentlemen, good morning. Thank you and your colleagues for

your efforts and your good work.

I would like to pursue the line of questioning that Senator Biden

began regarding Somalia. I want to ask you, Admiral, as well as

the Ambassador, if you could define for this committee what is our

policy in Somalia. Then I want to get a little deeper down into the

specifics of that.

Admiral REDD. I am afraid I will have to—I do not do policy in

my current incarnation, so I want to——

Senator HAGEL. What is your objective in your responsibilities?

Admiral REDD. The objective generally is, as mentioned, in the

planning effort which we are putting together, as alluded to in

both, particularly in Ambassador Crumpton’s statement, is deny

the enemy safe haven whether that safe haven is physical or

whether it is virtual. Somalia is clearly one of the key areas which

we worry about as an ungoverned state and so the bottom line objective is to deny that as an effective safe haven for al-Qaeda or

for terrorism in general.

29

Senator HAGEL. Do you understand what our policy is? You do

not do policy, but do you understand what it is?

Admiral REDD. I would defer to——

Senator HAGEL. No, do you understand what our policy is? I

know you do not do it.

Admiral REDD. Yes, sir. Our policy would be to make sure that

Somalia does not turn into a safe haven for al-Qaeda and for terrorism.

Senator HAGEL. That is our policy?

Admiral REDD. My understanding of our policy, yes, sir.

Senator HAGEL. How are we adjusting our counterterrorism efforts in Somalia in light of what Senator Biden just asked you, in

light of events that have occurred over the last couple of weeks?

Are we adjusting or what can you tell us about it?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir, I will be glad to take that question, Senator Hagel.

Senator HAGEL. Thank you.

Ambassador CRUMPTON. There are three objectives really: Safe

haven in terms of denying the enemy the ability to plan, to organize. Somalia has posed an enduring problem. Al-Qaeda has been

in Somalia in some form or another since the early 1990s. Harun

Fazul, responsible in some part for the 1998 East Africa bombings,

we believe has been and may still be in Mogadishu. Also this cell

is responsible for the attack in Mombasa in 2002. This is a resilient, enduring, dangerous al-Qaeda cell and we must make every

effort we can to rid Mogadishu and Somalia of this threat.

But that is not all we are doing. We must also work with a very

weak nascent transitional government to see if they can gain traction and we can help them work with others in Somalia, traditional

leaders, to build some degree of civic society.

Third, there is a humanitarian aspect of this. So we must approach all three of these things with vigor. As a new initiative, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Jendayi Frazer, is going to the

U.N. She will be in New York. She has established a contact group

with our European partners in concert with the U.N. to see if we

can address some of these broader, more enduring questions.

Senator HAGEL. What is your assessment of the Islamic Courts

Union, the group that seized control in Mogadishu last week?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Sir, we have imperfect understanding of

them. They did send us a letter proclaiming that they are not an

enemy of the United States, and our response has been very clear,

that we expect them to work with the transitional government and

we also expect them to work with us to hand over al-Qaeda and

foreign fighters that have found refuge in Mogadishu.

Senator HAGEL. How would you answer that question, Admiral?

Admiral REDD. I think that was my point earlier, which I guess

I did not answer Senator Biden’s question directly. But exactly

that. I think it is a very complicated thing. The issue there is more,

I think, a more sharia law, as you know, that the commissions or

councils are setting up, and it is not clear that that is necessarily

coincident or completely coincident with either what al-Qaeda or

any terrorist organization would want.

Again, as you know from that area, it has a very complex, long

history. I remember going in and meeting with the warlords before

30

we took the U.N. out. The tribal issues there, the clan issues—I

think we need to sort of wait and see, let the dust settle.

Senator HAGEL. Thank you.

You noted, Admiral Redd, in your statement—and I will paraphrase what you said—working more closely and effectively with

our allies now than ever before. You mentioned specifically, Canada. You said there were some countries that obviously you cannot

talk about in an open hearing.

How is that occurring? How are you working more effectively, as

you say, and closely? Give me some examples?

Admiral REDD. First of all, as you would expect, three of our closest allies, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, all have

similar organizations to NCTC. They call them something different.

They all end with ‘‘TAC.’’ We call them ‘‘tic-tacs,’’ but basically we

have a very close relationship with them, that extends to regular

meetings with them, classified communications links with them,

and regular exchanges on analysis. So that is sort of on the closest

side.

Without going into detail, at the other extreme I will tell you

that, having been in Government for a long time and coming back

into Government, we are partnering, if you will, with some very interesting countries, which I was quite actually surprised to find out

we were, and we are doing it simply because we have the same objective. They understand that terrorism is a challenge or is a threat

to their vital national interests and so we work very closely with

them. As you would expect, most of those tend to be through the

ambassador and through the DNI’s representative or chief of station.

Senator HAGEL. Thank you.

Ambassador Crumpton, let me ask you, and it follows to some extent what the Admiral just referenced in these new closer, more effective relationships. On April 22, the Washington Post reported

that the Pentagon no longer needed the approval of the U.S. ambassador to deploy special operations forces known as military liaison elements. The first question—I have two others that will be associated with it—is this true?

In addition to that, are these military liaison elements under or

outside of the authority of the U.S. ambassador? Is there a clear

interagency agreement that a U.S. ambassador has the authority

to deny country clearance to such special operations forces as well

as oversight, approval authority of such special operations forces

that are operating in the ambassador’s country?

Can you clear all that up for us?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. First, the U.S. ambassador abroad, as

the President’s representative, is uniquely positioned to pull together all those instruments of statecraft to apply it against the

enemy, and that includes the military.

Senator HAGEL. Including special operations?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir. There is—there are no military

personnel assigned to any country anywhere in the world where

our ambassador is not fully and completely informed. This is very

clear in the letter of instruction the President has given to all of

our ambassadors. He also instructs them and the geographic comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:08 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COUNT.TXT mich PsN: mich
31

batant commanders to cooperate fully on all threats and be transparent in regard to counterterrorism.

Moreover, last year Secretary Rice sent a letter to Senator Biden

underscoring the importance and the value of the ambassadors

overseas and their central role in counterterrorism.

Senator HAGEL. Well then, how would you respond to that April

22 Washington Post report? Was that inaccurate?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir, in part it was inaccurate. I

think it does reflect to some degree ongoing discussion between the

Pentagon and the Department of State and others in how do we

best orchestrate our instruments of statecraft, how do we combine

the right degree of authority with the flexibility and speed that we

need.

So there is ongoing discussion, but that is part of government.

That is how government works and that is how counterterrorism

works.

Senator HAGEL. But the fact is there is no change of policy? Is

that what you are saying, that the ambassador of each country continues to have the authority that that ambassador has always had,

knowledge, awareness, of special operations, of troops, intelligence

in the country that he or she is responsible for?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir, that is correct. Based on my experience in the last year, I have seen outstanding cooperation between the uniformed military and the Department of State, in the

field especially. PACOM has been very responsive to some of our

requests, some of our programs, CENTCOM also. I see that to be

a continuing trend.

Senator HAGEL. Could you also clear up, Mr. Ambassador, a

point. This is regarding the State Department support, I understand, in ceding training and equipping authority to the Defense

Department. You are generally aware of what I am talking about,

the subject?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir.

Senator HAGEL. Has the State Department given that authority

up? Can you clarify where we are with this military training issue?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. As of last year, there is funding, 1206

funding, that the military has. It gives them the authority to train

and equip. But this is done in concert at the field level with the

embassies, but also back here in concert with the Department of

State regarding what specific types of programs, what specific

types of funding.

I should also note there is a requirement that we notify Congress, the Pentagon and the Department of State notify Congress,

and outline what these expenditures are for. Again, in my experience, in a couple of examples I have seen the military to be fairly

responsive to some CT programs that we needed funded.

Senator HAGEL. Are you saying that there is no change, even

though we are all aware of requests made in defense authorization

bills to cede some of that power to, if not some, all, to Defense?

What is your answer? There is no change, there is a change?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir, there is a change as of last

year, the 1206 funding, where the Pentagon is authorized to train

and equip some of our foreign partners. But that is in coordination

with the Department of State.

32

Senator HAGEL. My time is up, so I appreciate both of your efforts and your willingness to come before the committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Hagel.

Senator Nelson.

STATEMENT OF HON. BILL NELSON, U.S. SENATOR FROM

FLORIDA

Senator NELSON. I know Senator Obama was ahead of me.

Senator OBAMA. Go ahead.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, apparently the Senators are prepared to

yield to Senator Feingold, so I will ask you to proceed.

Senator NELSON. And if I could just ask Senator Feingold if he

could ask what would happen to al-Qaeda if Osama bin Laden were

captured or killed.

Admiral REDD. I think that in some ways the lesson of Zarqawi

is clearly, as I indicated in my testimony—we have dealt al-Qaeda

central leadership very serious blows. OBL is able to stay alive because he is basically hiding in a very difficult area. I think if he

were to be taken out we would see a very strong effect in terms

of the symbolic effect. In terms of his operations, operational guidance, I would say it is very diminished right now, but also it would

be significant, I think, in terms of the effect on jihadists worldwide.

But it would probably not have a major effect on operations.

Ambassador CRUMPTON. I would like to add to that, please. I

agree with Admiral Redd, it would be a strategic win, but it is only

one part of our strategic objectives. When we stop the enemy from

attacking us and when we are able to nullify enemy leadership,

that buys us space and time and gives us the opportunity to address the more enduring questions of safe haven and those local

conditions, social, political, economic, the enemy exploits to their

advantage.

So enemy leadership, sir, is a strategic target, but it is not a

stand-alone target. You must look at safe haven and those specific

local conditions also and you must address all three.

STATEMENT OF HON. RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, U.S. SENATOR

FROM WISCONSIN

Senator FEINGOLD. Mr. Chairman, I just left the room momentarily to take a call and I really do want to thank Senator Nelson

and Senator Obama. I will try to not use all my time.

Ambassador Crumpton and Admiral Redd, thank you both for

coming here today to discuss this critical topic and I hope that we

can continue this dialog on a more regular basis. Before I get to

a couple questions, I want to highlight a few key counterterrorism

issues. First, our massive presence in Iraq is diverting resources

and attention from places around the world where terrorist networks that threaten the United States are operating and I think

we need obviously to address that.

Second, I have yet to see or hear about a comprehensive strategy

to eliminate global terrorist networks, sanctuaries, and operational

environments, as well as to address root causes and the underlying

conditions that fuel extremism, radicalism, and terrorist organizations. While I was heartened by the creation of your position, AmVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:08 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COUNT.TXT mich PsN: mich
33

bassador Crumpton, and by Secretary Rice’s recent efforts to create

a director of foreign assistance to coordinate most forms of foreign

assistance, I am still concerned that there remains no one central

focal point for bringing to bear all of our country’s capabilities to

defeat terrorist networks.

Third, I remain concerned about the places that are apparently

going largely unnoticed by this administration. As has already been

discussed to some extent, for some time I have been pushing this

administration to address Somalia. Unfortunately, this administration ignored the warning signals, has failed to pay attention, and

is now basically having to try to play catch-up in a country and a

region that really does matter to our national security.

Along the same lines, I continue to be concerned about northern

Africa and the Sahel region, the Suluwese Sea and the Straits of

Malacca in the area of Indonesia and Malaysia, the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and other ungoverned, undergoverned, corrupt, poverty-stricken and other operational and technological environments that terrorist organizations can exploit to

plan, prepare, and stage their attacks against us.

In sum, I am deeply concerned about the way our Government

is handling the global fight against terrorist networks. I believe

that we need to take a more comprehensive approach to this problem and that we need to use the full range of our capabilities.

Going back to an issue that I have mentioned, and that I understand Senator Biden and Senator Hagel mentioned, and that is

again Somalia. I would like to dig just a little deeper. Ambassador

Crumpton, can you articulate again for us—for the committee—

what the U.S. Government policy is for Somalia?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir. There are three main objectives. First is to find and fix al-Qaeda leadership, al-Qaeda cells in

Somalia. As I noted earlier, it is an enduring, resilient cell that

poses a threat not only to United States interests, but to the entire

region, especially Kenya, as demonstrated in 1998 and 2002.

Second is to look to this new fledgling nascent transitional government, to see if they can indeed gain some traction and build alliances throughout Somalia. They are off to a very slow, and I

might note weak, start, but we are working with them, the United

Nations, and other partners. This is illustrated in the establishment of a contact group. Assistant Secretary of State for African

Affairs Frazer will go to New York to meet with our European

partners and others to see if we can work with some of the Somali

leadership. The third point, sir, is humanitarian relief and assistance. That remains an enduring problem for the Somali people.

Senator FEINGOLD. On the second point, do you feel up until recent events that we were doing enough to work with the transitional government and help the transitional government, or should

we have taken it up a few notches?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Sir, I think we could do more to some

degree, but I also think the international community as a whole

could do much more. This is not just an American problem. It is

an international problem, and Somalia has been a failed state for

many years.

Senator FEINGOLD. I think that is fair enough. It is not just an

American problem, but it is especially an American problem, given

34

the goals of the elements that you have already identified before,

present in Somalia and other places.

Was the Department of State surprised about the events in

Mogadishu last week?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Sir, we have been following this closely.

In fact, as I noted earlier, I was in Nairobi just a couple of weeks

ago and we followed these events with some concern. We still have

some concern because, despite their public overtures, we are not

sure what the Islamic courts really want in terms of their strategies and in terms of their relationship with al-Qaeda.

Senator FEINGOLD. But were you surprised with the effectiveness

of this organization taking over Mogadishu? Was that anticipated?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. No, sir, it was not anticipated.

Senator FEINGOLD. Somalia is home to terrorist networks and illicit power structures, criminal networks, abject poverty, and dire

humanitarian conditions, and it is apparent that it demands far

more resources and attention than we are providing. Can you be

a little more specific about what you think we need more of for Somalia?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. We need to have legitimate actors inside

Somalia with whom we can work. That is probably the most difficult challenge right now. It is a fractured political entity with

competing, conflicting tribal leadership, and we need to help them

establish some type of interface, some kind of network, so we can

help them right now.

A lot of this depends on the Somalis themselves and to date they

have fallen short. That is probably the most immediate challenge,

to see if this fledgling government can establish some degree of legitimacy and some power, and right now they have very little.

Senator FEINGOLD. In terms of our own governmental role on

this, can you talk a little bit about the State Department’s role in

this effort? Is the State Department the Department that is playing

a leadership role on Somalia-related policy, and if not who is?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir, and this was illustrated most

recently when I was in Nairobi. We had ambassadors from the entire region that came to Nairobi to have an in-depth discussion. I

might note that that meeting had been scheduled for a couple of

months before these recent events that you are talking about.

But it was not only the Department of State. We had representatives from the military, in fact from OSD, from CENTCOM, from

Special Operations Command. We had USAID there. We had

NCTC, other elements of the intelligence community—a wide range

of interagency. We came back with some specific policy recommendations.

And yes, the ambassadors in the field had a leadership role. They

chaired that meeting.

Senator FEINGOLD. How many people does the State Department

have working on Somalia full time? I just want the full-time figure.

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir. There is one dedicated foreign

service officer in Nairobi that looks at Somalia, but there are a

multitude of others, not just in the State Department, but across

the U.S. Government, that work the issue.

Senator FEINGOLD. Mr. Chairman, I am going to leave some of

my time, as I said. I just want to say that I obviously respect the

35

work that those individuals are doing, but this issue in my view—

in fact it has been my view for some time, as I have expressed on

this committee on hearing after hearing—is that this situation deserves more than one full-time person. I greatly respect the work

that the Ambassador is doing, though, and I thank him and I

thank the witnesses.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Feingold, for your continuing

interest in not only Somalia but the African continent.

STATEMENT OF HON. LAMAR ALEXANDER, U.S. SENATOR

FROM TENNESSEE

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Ambassador and Admiral, thank you for being here. My

questions are about homegrown terrorists and particularly the extent to which that might be happening in the United States and

what we ought to do about it. What happened in Canada a few

days ago when Canadian intelligence agents arrested 17 people,

most of whom were Canadian citizens, who had a large amount of

the same kind of fertilizer that was used to blow up the Federal

Building in Oklahoma, and apparently were intending to do that

and other things, that was a chilling, a chilling incident in Canada,

particularly because those who were arrested were mostly Canadian citizens.

The same feeling I am sure swept through Great Britain when

three out of four of the terrorists who blew up the subway were

British citizens.

To what extent is this happening in the United States? What can

you tell us in a hearing like this about how many operations are

going on in the United States like the one in Canada? Are there

any? Have there been many such operations frustrated in the last

5 or 10 years? Are there more today than there were 10 years ago?

What can you tell us about this?

Admiral REDD. I think that is probably mine, Senator. I guess

what I can say to you is pretty limited in open session, but I can

sort of point to three specific examples, all of which resulted in arrests, all of which have ongoing prosecutions, and therefore we cannot talk about details. But you will remember Torrance, CA, perhaps, about a year ago; Lodi, CA; and most recently in Atlanta.

So there have been indications. Obviously, that is one of the

things we watch very carefully. We have worked very closely with

the Canadians in making that not only foreign but domestic connection. Clearly, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, it is one

of the things we worry about. But it really is one of those things

that, when people ask me what I worry about, the thing you do not

know, and that is the one you worry about the most probably.

Senator ALEXANDER. Well, are these once a year phenomena or

are these random occasions? Are these isolated instances, or is this

something of growing concern? And is there more or less today

than there was 3 or 4 years ago?

Admiral REDD. It is hard—in terms of the intelligence side of it,

this is, as I mentioned earlier, this is a new phenomenon. We have

been doing foreign intelligence for a long time. We have some pretty good baselines as to what is happening. On the domestic side,

36

the FBI, as you know, has done a tremendous job. They have gone

from writing, for example, 25 intelligence information reports before 9–11 to over 8,000 a year now. But that is still—the baseline

probably is not there.

I would say the ones I mentioned, the ones I can mention in an

open hearing, that is three in a little over a year. There obviously

are other investigations ongoing. The Internet makes it—as we

have mentioned or somebody else has mentioned, the cyber nature

or the virtual nature of that makes it very easy to transcend borders.

Senator ALEXANDER. What is your estimation of how the joint

terrorism task forces are operating that have been established in

the last few years?

Admiral REDD. I think at this point in time——

Senator ALEXANDER. In this country.

Admiral REDD [continuing]. I think they have been generally

very effective. If you look at where we want to go and where we

are today, clearly the JTTFs have good classified connectivity,

which is an important thing in terms of our ability to get information, classified information, down to State and locals, and they provide that conduit. They are closely connected, obviously, with the

State and local law enforcement. Secretary Chertoff obviously has

a large law enforcement thing with the Border Patrol and other aspects under his responsibility and they are building those communication networks as well.

I think the JTTFs by and large have been generally very effective, sir.

Senator ALEXANDER. Let me move on a little bit then. What can

we do to discourage the growth of such feelings, such attitudes?

Senator Lugar and I were at a meeting in Istanbul last week where

one of the speakers pointed out the now millions of Muslims in Europe and that if European states did not find ways to assimilate

or integrate those new residents into their countries, in that speaker’s words, there would be colossal problems.

Germans are dealing with whether to continue to create enclaves

of Turks in Germany. Italians are sending Muslims here to help

them see how we assimilate people who come to our country.

I guess what I am getting to is: Are there lessons we can learn

in the United States about how to help people who come here to

live to become a part of our country and want to support our country rather than blow it up?

Admiral REDD. I think clearly there are, and I think both at the

State and local level and at the national level we are obviously

looking for those lessons learned. As you go across other countries,

Europe in particular, you have a variety of scenarios, some of

which the Muslim communities are not well integrated at all and

live in sort of enclaves, other places where they are much better

assimilated, including here.

I think if you were to look at—go talk to Ray Kelly up in New

York—probably there are some good lessons learned in New York.

But it clearly is an area which is new, which we are looking into.

It is one of the objectives as we write what we are calling our national implementation plan, getting that messaging out, underVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:08 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COUNT.TXT mich PsN: mich
37

standing what the right message is and how to do it. And it varies

by country.

Senator ALEXANDER. I am thinking specifically of our debate on

immigration that we have had in the last few weeks. One of the

most difficult parts of the immigration bill and one that Senator

Hagel and Senator Martinez have both been very instrumental in

is that if there is a new legal status for people who are illegally

here, do they then have a chance to become a citizen. While I did

not vote for the bill at this stage because I did not think the border

security provisions were strong enough, I am very—I am very worried about any decision just to lock in 8, 10, or 12 million people

into our country into enclaves where they salute another flag,

speak another language, and have no opportunity to develop a loyalty to our country.

It would seem to me that that by itself might be a breeding

ground for homegrown terrorism over a longer period of time.

Would you have any comment on that?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Sir, we have seen no clear indication

that immigration to the United States leads to that type of homegrown terrorism. Immigration we believe makes us strong.

Senator ALEXANDER. No, I am not suggesting that. What I am

suggesting is—I am talking about people who are permanent residents of the United States—are citizens of the United States—who

then turn on us because they do not feel a part of us. While the

United States has, over 200 years, had a lot of practice and history

in assimilating people, helping them become Americans, the rest of

the world has not had much of that. It is hard to become German,

hard to become Japanese, hard to become Italian. You have to become an American if you are a citizen.

So I was wondering about whether the concern about homegrown

terrorism would say to us that we ought to try to have policies that

help make sure that people who come here, that most of them become citizens if they stay for a long period of time.

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir. I think if we want to continue

building a strong society that we do need to integrate immigrants

into our communities, into our Nation. Some of my European counterparts have asked me, how do we do it, how do we manage this?

As you noted earlier, they are faced with a large and growing problem because many of their immigrant communities are not assimilated fully into their national cultural fabric.

Admiral REDD. Could I just follow up on that?

Senator ALEXANDER. Yes.

Admiral REDD. I think if you were to go to a place like New York,

for example, which as you know has a large immigrant community,

much of it is from the Middle East. I think what they would say

up there—the lesson learned up there—is that assimilation really

is the key, that people come and after a very short period of time

they can get a job, they can make money, they can send their kids

to college, they get invested. That clearly is something which again

we have a long history of doing.

I think you always have to be careful about that, obviously, the

danger of having a population or part of the population which is

not assimilated. But I think that is our strong point as a society.

You come and you get a stake in what is going on here and you

38

want to stay and you want to be part of that, rather than tear it

down.

Senator ALEXANDER. I happen to think it is perhaps our greatest

accomplishment as a country, and the better we do it the less likely

we are to have breeding grounds for homegrown terrorism.

I have one last question and not much time, so I will ask it

quickly. You have not said anything much about new rules at

home. We have a lot of discussion here about snooping at home,

surveillance here in the United States. We are concerned about

military tribunals, about prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. That is in

the newspapers today. Do we need to get ready for a different era

here where we have to accept the idea of more surveillance in the

United States in order to prevent homegrown terrorism?

Finally, along that line, if we were to close Guantanamo Bay to

which State of the United States would all those prisoners go?

Admiral REDD. I am sorry? The first part was?

Senator ALEXANDER. The first part is are we in a new era where

we are going to have to accept more surveillance in our daily lives

in order to prevent incidents like the Canadian cell that was getting ready to blow up parliament, apparently?

Admiral REDD. I think, Senator, that that is going to be an ongoing discussion. A lot of it is going to take place probably in this

chamber as we move forward. Clearly, there are challenges today

which we have not faced in the past, on the one hand. On the other

hand, the U.S. Government and certainly the executive branch is

completely dedicated to obeying the law and following the law as

it is.

So there are going to be some of those tensions and we are going

to probably bounce up or bump up against those as we go forward.

But it is going to be healthy discussion, as it always is, on civil

rights and protections on the one hand and the need for security

on the other. I think this is—we are not done with that discussion

yet by any stretch.

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Alexander.

Senator Obama.

STATEMENT OF HON. BARACK OBAMA, U.S. SENATOR FROM

ILLINOIS

Senator OBAMA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate very much the appearance of the Ambassador and

the Admiral here today. It has been a useful discussion. I thought

actually Senator Alexander brought up all sorts of interesting

issues that at some point we will undoubtedly have to address here

in this chamber.

A couple things I want to focus on. One, obviously the death of

al-Zarqawi has dominated the news over the last week. I thought

it was interesting that the New York Times ran an article yesterday about—it may have been the day before yesterday—about how

Iraq had trained—how Zarqawi had apparently trained a number

of potential terrorists who had been dispersed out of Iraq.

You will recall that in the 1980s and 1990s, one of the consequences of Afghanistan, despite the fact that we pushed the Soviets out, was extremists who trained or fought in Afghanistan and

39

went on to spawn international terrorist networks around the

world. So far we are already hearing, for example, French

counterterrorism officials say they found Zarqawi’s handiwork in a

Chechen-trained terrorist cell in the suburbs of Paris that was broken up in December of 2002.

So I am just curious. What is your assessment of terrorist training activities in Iraq? Are there individuals that are leaving Iraq,

having been trained there? Or is your impression that al-Qaeda

operatives in Iraq stay in Iraq and are focused on that country at

this point?

Admiral REDD. I would say that, with respect to Zarqawi and

representing the larger issue, basically there are three aspects to

his presence. First, he was, I think you are aware, a terrorist icon.

He was a money magnet, a recruiting magnet. Obviously he was

able to attract and inspire a large number of people to his cause.

That is going to be a very hard role probably to fill.

The second one refers to what I think you are concerned about,

what we, NCTC and around the Government, are very concerned

about, and that is the external operations role. We know that

Zawahiri has sent a letter to Zarqawi about a year ago, first of all

talking about the importance of Iraq and how they viewed that as

the centerpiece of the war on terror, if you will, from their standpoint; and second, instructing him that we would like to work on

the external operations side of it.

The third is his role within Iraq. I think clearly we are concerned. We have some indications that there are plots at least

hatching for external operations and some of those may have been

far enough along that we will see them. We have seen some of

them obviously in the attack in Jordan on the hotels, going back

several years ago to when Ambassador Foley was killed in Jordan.

That was an AQI. And of course, those things have gone on obviously within Iraq.

So I think there are several theories on that. I do not know that

we have a very good sense of the total numbers of how many are

going in and how many are going out. But clearly this is the central battlefield in the war on terror right now and it is in Iraq, and

that is AQ’s own assessment and I think that’s our assessment.

Senator OBAMA. I mentioned Afghanistan earlier. There have

been a number of reports that the Taliban seems to be re-emerging

and strengthening. To what extent do you think al-Qaeda is involved? What does it mean strategically? Is the Taliban regenerating in Afghanistan and are they receiving support, safe haven

in Pakistani territory? What is our approach at this point and how

are we addressing it other than just militarily trying to hold the

line?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. We think there are three reasons for the

resurgence to some degree of the Taliban in Afghanistan. One is

the international community has not responded quickly enough in

terms of building roads and digging wells and providing the Afghans in the southern and eastern part of the country the ability

to become part of an economically viable society.

Instead, in many places you have poppies growing, which leads

to a second reason for the resurgence of Taliban fighters. You see

increasing cooperation between narcotraffickers in Helmand and

40

Kandahar Province and Taliban. They have money, they have some

of the infrastructure. This is one of the major trends we note in our

country reports on terrorism, the overlap between terrorist networks and transnational criminal networks.

The third reason is indeed we believe Taliban leadership and

some of the Taliban recruiters have got some degree of safe haven

along that border area. A border area that in some respects defies

both Pakistan and Afghan Government’s efforts to assert their sovereignty. You look back throughout history and really no one has

been able to control that, going back to Alexander the Great.

So how do you address it? It is not by military means alone. As

I noted earlier, President Musharraf just a few weeks ago has

rolled out a new strategy that emphasizes the redevelopment of

these areas or in many cases the development of these areas—economic zones of opportunity. The U.S. Government is working with

the Pakistani Government on that. The Under Secretary for Economic Affairs was just in Pakistan. She spent several days in this

area.

But also it is about rebuilding the structure, the traditional tribal leadership. More than 100 tribal leaders have been assassinated

by al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives along this border region. These

are local leaders who are working with the Pakistani Government.

We have got to help the Pakistanis rebuild that type of local civic

society. So it is not just military. It is economic, it is political also.

Senator OBAMA. While we are on the topic of undergoverned regions, the crisis in Darfur. We started to see spillover of the conflict

into Chad. We heard bin Laden call on jihadis to fight imperialism

in Sudan. I am wondering if you can give your best assessment to

the extent to which foreign fighters have actually permeated

Darfur or that region? Is there a danger that that becomes one

more safe haven and, if so, how does that impact our policy?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. This is a perfect example of al-Qaeda

leadership trying to reach out and claim otherwise local conflicts as

their own. They try to gain strategic strength from this. To date

we do not see them gaining any traction in this part of the world,

specifically Darfur. However, the larger question of the trans-Sahara as a safe haven for terrorists—the GSPC, mostly an Algeriabased organization, they travel throughout that area and they operate in that area. We have not seen them in Darfur. They have

been further to the west. But it does pose an enduring problem for

us and we are working with local governments there to see what

we can do.

Senator OBAMA. Well, let me ask you two questions. I am running out of time and these are sort of two more global questions.

But they touch on the problems we are having across the board.

Ambassador, as you mentioned, this is not something that is going

to be solved solely militarily. There is going to be an important

military component to whatever we do, but we have got to have

more tools in the tool kit.

Specifically, number one, what structures are we putting in place

between the State Department, DOD, CIA, and so forth, to coordinate these activities? Because, from my perspective, one of the concerns about Somalia was what appeared to be a lack of a consensus

strategy between various branches of the U.S. Government. You

41

had folks who officially protested and objected to some of the policies that were being pursued by the CIA.

So No. 1, what kind of operational structure are we putting in

place to make sure that everybody is rowing in the same direction

and that we have the military component working with the reconstruction component working with the political and social components?

The second thing is, what are we doing to get more buy-in from

our allies, because Iraq in some ways is sui generis. Given how we

went in there, it is understandable that there has been resistance

from our allies. Afghanistan is a slightly different situation. In

Darfur and in the trans-Sahel we are not seeing as much cooperation as we would like to.

I guess what I am curious about is what diplomatic efforts and

what organizational structures are we putting in place that will

permit the kind of international buy-in that we are going to need

over the long haul to be successful in creating some semblance of

order and buy-in from individuals who live in these regions?

Admiral REDD. Let me start with the U.S. Government structure,

which is, as I mentioned in my testimony, really was one of the

major reasons that NCTC was established in the first place in the

strategic operational planning role. As I noted, broad policy and

strategy, done by the NSC, Homeland Security Council, with foreign and domestic operations done by the various departments,

cabinet departments and agencies.

What we are doing at NCTC, and we are about 10 months into

it, is this four-part process I talked to you about, but it is planning

basically. It starts with the planning process. One of the key accomplishments which, having again almost 4 decades in Government, I have never seen—in fact, we have had comments from people with similar experience who say this is truly revolutionary.

What we have done is take that strategy and policy and break it

down to strategic objectives, subobjectives, and then discrete tasks.

This is a comprehensive top-down, what does it take to win the war

on terror tactically, strategically, offense and defense, over the long

term; broken it down into a number of tasks. In fact the tasks actually number in the hundreds—the high hundreds as a matter of

fact.

That in itself in government, some people said, I never thought

that could take place. But I think it is an indication of how seriously people understand the need for interagency coordination that

goes back to some of the other sort of turf issues that have come

up.

The second thing that happens there is we say, OK, not only do

we have this task, but who is in charge and who are the partners.

It will not surprise you that in many of the things we are talking

about—safe havens, for example, overseas and that sort of thing—

the State Department is in the lead, and everybody has agreed to

that, but Defense, whoever the other Departments that have a role

in that, are assigned as partner relationships. They are accountable to the President for making sure that that particular task,

whether it is a virtual safe haven, physical safe haven, is taken

care of.

42

The next step is implementation, which we are really just starting to get into. But again, the role is when these turf battles come

up—I hate to use the word ‘‘turf battles’’—when these issues come

up they are resolved and we do not have to go all the way to the

White House to get them resolved. We can resolve them at a much

lower level and make things a lot more responsive.

Finally, we do the assessment. Is the plan working or not? How

do we need to revise it? And you start up all over again.

So this is—I use the term ‘‘revolutionary’’ advisedly, but I think

it is a fair assessment of what we are doing. This has never happened in government before and it gets to a lot of the issues which

you are seeing in terms of macro and how do we bring all those

elements of power—diplomatic and law enforcement as well as

military and intelligence—to bear.

Senator OBAMA. I know I am out of time, but if you will just indulge me, just a follow-up. This group is empowered by its constituent parts? You are not just generating several hundred tasks

that then are ignored by——

Admiral REDD. First of all, Senator, you empowered it when you

wrote—when you signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act and you say that I report to the President. So my

power comes, if you will—not my power, but NCTC’s ability to

make this happen comes from the President. We write the plan——

Senator OBAMA. Well, it comes from the President listening.

Admiral REDD. Oh, yes. We write the plan. It is done not by

NCTC sitting in an ivory tower. Two hundred people from around

the interagency come together, fight it out, sharp elbows, and this

is the plan. Then we take it to the NSC deputies level, principals

level, and then we take it to the President for approval, and he approves it. And trust me, it is not a rubber stamp sort of thing.

This is really unusual in the history of our Government, but it

is an interagency effort where everyone has come together, again

a recognition that this is a different kind of war.

Senator OBAMA. We will be hopeful.

On the international front, Ambassador, do you want to tackle

that? I appreciate the indulgence.

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir. I should note that the international front, a big part of what we are doing is to take this plan

that Scott is talking about and operationalize it and put it in the

field, and to keep the kind of flexibility and agility we need when

you put that kind of plan into action, because the battlefield not

only varies from country to country, but sometimes from valley to

valley, village to village, and you have got to have that flexibility

in the field, going back to our emphasis on interagency work in the

field.

So what we are trying to do is to bring the field to Washington

and Washington to the field, to make sure this thing works and it

is not just a Washington, DC plan; it involves the interagency really around the world, especially working with our global partners.

The emphasis is on working with partners whenever and however

possible. We do this in a variety of ways. We do it through joint

training, joint exercises, information exchange, which we talked

about earlier, and there are a multitude of successes at a tactical

level, but increasingly at a policy level, when we work with our

43

partners in terms of conventions, counterterrorism conventions at

the United Nations, working with the Organization of American

States, CICTE, an interagency or an intergovernmental group devoted exclusively to counterterrorism. I was in Bogota recently at

the annual convention and the declaration that came out of that

convention focusing on terrorist mobility in this hemisphere is a

powerful document. We are putting more money into that to make

sure that our partners can work better in terms of spotting terrorists and inhibiting their mobility. I will be glad to forward you that

document if you wish.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Obama.

Senator Martinez.

STATEMENT OF HON. MEL MARTINEZ, U.S. SENATOR FROM

FLORIDA

Senator MARTINEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being with us today. I wanted to begin

by asking you about an area that probably in the last couple of

years may be the single greatest success of seeing a turnaround in

a country, which is Libya. I wonder whether, first of all, you would

agree that it is a success as it relates to our efforts on the war on

terror; and also second, whether, in fact, there are some lessons

that might be learned in our interaction with Libya and where

Libya has come from and where it has come to that we might apply

to other countries?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir, I think it does serve as a useful

example. We talk about bringing to bear all the instruments of

statecraft and this is an example of that, stretching over almost 2

decades. It also is a lesson for us in stamina that is required when

we face this type of challenge. You had military application, you

had economic sanctions, and of course you had the rule of law. You

had those responsible for Pan Am 103 be sentenced. You had the

Libyan Government pay more than $2 billion in reparations. You

have got a leadership now that understands that they had to join

the community of nations and to do so they had to renounce terrorism, and they have done that.

We extend this to those countries today that support terrorism.

There is a path to join the community of nations. And also to terrorist groups, that they can renounce terrorism also, be part of the

solution and not the problem. So there are many good lessons to

learn from that.

Senator MARTINEZ. The other area of the world that concerns me

greatly is the area of Latin America. You were just talking about

a report coming out of Colombia where you recently were. I think

Colombia is a great example of again success in the way that they

have progressed in combatting narcotrafficking and narcoterrorism.

The border region between Venezuela and Colombia continues to

be a troubled area and one in which—I wonder if you can comment

on whether there is in your opinion any implicit cooperation by the

Venezuelan Government in—well, first I should start by saying, is

the Venezuelan Government in your view cooperating with the Colombian Government or are they in fact on the other hand impeding the opportunity for the Colombian Government to continue to

44

stamp out the FARC, which seem to operate in that region rather

freely?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Just this year we categorized Venezuela

as not fully cooperating with us and the international community

in terms of counterterrorism. Because of this border area, Colombia

continues to face some challenges, despite what I think is the extraordinary leadership of President Uribe and the Colombian military and Colombian police. He has done a remarkable job, but, as

I noted earlier, as long as the enemy is able to have some degree

of safe haven or an ability to transit areas, it is going to be a problem. And Venezuela has not been fully cooperative.

Senator MARTINEZ. In terms of the region again, Cuba has been

on the list of terrorist states for quite a number of years and continues to be on the list. I wondered if you can comment on one of

the areas obviously they fail to cooperate in on the war on terror,

but in addition to that have provided safe harbor for many years

to either fugitives of United States law or also known terrorists,

FARC, ELN, ATA, and others, their level of cooperation with Iran

and also Venezuela and that triumvirate, and also—well, let me

just ask you that, and then I will have a follow up on that.

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir, we are worried, and we see increased cooperation between those three countries. We see

Hezbollah members in Venezuela. We see them engaged in criminal activities in Venezuela and increasingly throughout the region.

Senator MARTINEZ. That includes the tri-border region?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Yes, sir, it does. It includes the tri-border region.

Also, Hamas and others. The role of Cuba continues to be troublesome because of their links to the FARC in Colombia and we

have expressed our concerns, but we have seen very little progress

in that regard.

Senator MARTINEZ. One of the areas that continues to be in reports that I see is the disproportionate biological research program

in Cuba to a country of that size and that stage of development.

I have not ever seen any linkage between that and make a clear

connection that in fact it also includes offensive weaponry related

to bioweapons, but I wondered if you have any information that

you can shed on that, in addition to the fact that there seems to

be recent cooperation between Cuba and Iran in the area of biotechnology?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Sir, I do not have a good answer for you,

but I will be glad to research that and get back to you. But I will

note we have seen, at least to my knowledge, no indications that

the Cubans are trying to develop BW weapons. But let me double

check and let me get back to you on that. I would be glad to.

Senator MARTINEZ. Thank you. I would appreciate that.

The other area I wanted to touch on was the area of Africa and

the issue of Somalia, which I think has really been probably covered sufficiently by others. But I wondered if in that area—you

know, there is some good news in Africa that I am always encouraged by. Then obviously there is this terribly troubled area. One

of the answers that has been encouraging has been the participation of the African Union in its own peacekeeping activities. One

of the problems obviously has been the underfunding of their efVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:08 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COUNT.TXT mich PsN: mich
45

forts and terribly undermanned that they are. Do you think that

they could play a viable role in the continuing efforts to provide

stability so that these ungoverned areas might find a way to become more stable and be less of a breeding ground for future terrorists?

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Sir, I lived in Africa for 10 years and I

have a deep sympathy for the people and for the challenges they

face. I believe ultimately the only answer to some of these problems

of ungoverned space will be an international coalition. I think the

African Union can play a role, but they are going to need a lot of

help, because in many respects they are starting at a very basic

level in terms of transport, in terms of communication, and in

terms of command and control.

It is a challenge for any military—any type of peacekeeping

force—to extend themselves into such areas as the Darfur or the

trans-Sahel at large. We need to help them, the AU and others, because the problem I fear is going to continue to grow.

Senator MARTINEZ. One last quick question, Admiral Redd. Senator Alexander brought up the issue of our current immigration

discussion here at home and the issue of border security, and I

wondered if, given the issues that recently arose in Canada, whether or not we—we have been very focused on border security in our

border with Mexico in terms of securing our homeland and

antiterrorism efforts. Do you think that our border with Canada

could also use some additional look, additional resources, or additional manpower?

Admiral REDD. I think first of all we are looking very carefully

at both borders. At congressional mandate, we had completed and

submitted to the Congress about 3 months ago, a national strategy

for countering terrorist travel, and one of the key parts of that had

to do with how we deal with both borders.

We work very closely with the Canadians, as you know, but

clearly we are watching that border. As indicated by the events of

the last several weeks, there is no place that is really safe. So we

work closely with the Canadians and we clearly are watching that

border as well as the southern border.

Senator MARTINEZ. Thank you, sir.

That is all I have, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Martinez.

We thank both of our witnesses for your initial testimony and

your full papers and for your very forthcoming responses to our

questions. We ask your cooperation in responding to the questions

for the record that you have mentioned that you would respond to

in the course of the questions. Thank you very much for coming.

The chair will now call on the second panel.

Admiral REDD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ambassador CRUMPTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. The second panel will be the Honorable John E.

McLaughlin, senior fellow, Merrill Center for Strategic Studies, the

Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the

Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC; and Daniel Benjamin,

senior fellow, International Security Program, Center for Strategic

and International Studies, Washington, DC.

[Pause.]

46

The CHAIRMAN. Gentlemen, we thank you for coming this morning, and I will ask you to testify in the order I introduced you. That

would be first of all, Mr. McLaughlin, and second, Mr. Benjamin.

Mr. McLaughlin, would you please proceed with your testimony.

Your full statement will be made a part of the record as we indicated at the beginning of the hearing.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN E. McLAUGHLIN, SENIOR FELLOW,

MERRILL CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES, PAUL H. NITZE

SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, JOHNS

HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Thank you. Thank you for your invitation to

testify, Mr. Chairman. In my judgment you have chosen exactly the

right moment to ask these important questions about terrorism.

You have a lengthy prepared statement from me, as you noted, and

I am going to take just a few minutes to summarize its main

points, concentrating on the recommendations that I describe at

the end.

You will notice in the front part of my statement I talk a lot

about the successes we have had against terrorists, especially since

9–11, but there is still a lot of work to do and so I would like to

focus on that. The bottom line is that the terrorist movement we

now confront is in some ways less dangerous than the 9–11-era alQaeda, but in some ways more dangerous.

It is less dangerous in that terrorists now have more obstacles

to overcome in attempting to orchestrate large-scale international

terrorist operations. It is more dangerous in that the movement is

now more amorphous, operates in smaller units that are more dispersed geographically. It is today less dependent on geography and

hierarchy than it used to be and much more dependent on the

Internet and ideology.

The movement now has an African face, a European face, an

Asian face, and, as illustrated most recently by the wrap-up of terrorist suspects in Canada, a North American face. It is not easily

profiled. While the inspiration and presumably some level of funding and training still come from the center, more autonomy is flowing to locally based parts of the network that recruit locally and

rely less on external operatives.

While many of the recent attacks—London, Madrid, Istanbul, Casablanca, Bali, Sharm el-Sheik, and the one attempted in Canada—appear local in nature, we must not delude ourselves into

thinking that this is no longer an international phenomenon. In

fact, the goals and consequences of each attack transcend regional

borders, in that successful attacks feed recruitment efforts worldwide and are celebrated in jihadist Web sites worldwide.

Although it can be argued that our successes must be making it

harder for al-Qaeda to mount a major attack in the United States,

we cannot take any real comfort in that, nor can we really afford

to believe it. Nothing would boost the movement more or provide

a greater incentive to al-Qaeda’s seemingly flagging donors than

another attack on American soil. For al-Qaeda that remains the

brass ring, the way to recoup its losses and return the movement

to its earlier preeminence.

47

Against the backdrop of these changes, what is required of intelligence and our policymakers over the next 5 to 10 years? First and

perhaps most obviously, we must intensify our focus on the remaining elements of the leadership, including of course, bin Laden and

Zawahiri. Although the movement has evolved beyond the point

that a decapitation strike would end the war, putting these remaining leaders out of business would nonetheless be an operational

setback and an enormous symbolic blow to the movement. It would

weaken the international glue in the movement, lead to further

fractures, throw many of these extremists off balance, and reduce

the overall threat the movement poses in its current configuration.

Second, our policies have to reflect the certainty that there is no

unilateral solution to the problem America faces. American intelligence has been extraordinarily successful in building counterterrorist partnerships with other intelligence services around the

world, but must now, along with counterparts across the U.S. Government, tighten, deepen, and build on these relationships. Increasingly, the terrorist nexus will be in remote parts of diverse societies where Americans will have trouble operating.

Third, success against this adversary has little to do with structure or organization in the intelligence community, despite the

near-exclusive attention paid to that since 9–11. It has everything

to do with something even more prosaic, the effective fusion of

data. Success against terrorist networks has yielded an enormous

amount of data and it must be managed in a way that a local law

enforcement officer trying to sort through all of this and encountering suspicious activity, say, somewhere in the Midwest is able

to reach into a database to bounce his findings off of what CIA case

officers have picked up overseas, what FBI officers may be hearing

in New York City, or what Customs and Border Patrol may have

learned, and all of this has to work just as well in reverse.

Fourth, the key to intelligence success against terrorists is speed

and agility. We must be on guard against anything that reduces

the progress achieved on that score in recent years. Response decisions must frequently be made in a matter of minutes or hours on

very perishable intelligence. The National Intelligence Director

must be careful not to allow the new intelligence structure to

evolve into any additional layers of approvals that would compromise speed and agility.

Fifth, our intelligence and military services must obviously stay

on the offensive, but the country must pay increasing attention to

the defense. Intelligence will frequently pick up the signals necessary to head off a major terrorist attack, but intelligence professionals can bat .900 and still fail. The homeland security effort has

come a long way since 9–11, but I wonder if our country is yet beyond a mind-set geared to the expectation that specific intelligence

on timing, target, and method is the primary way to avoid terrorist

attacks. Certainly that should be the goal, but we must use systematically the large body of data we already have to close the gaps

in our vulnerabilities at home.

Sixth, we must focus intensively on potential terrorist use of

WMD. Terrorism is by its very nature an asymmetric approach to

war. WMD, nuclear, chemical, and biological, are the tools that

would restore asymmetric power to a weakened terrorist movement

48

and give it the potential to level the playing field with the United

States and its allies. Terrorist leaders know that the use of such

weapons in the United States would be the surest way to top 9–

11.

Seventh, national policymakers must provide constancy in resources and moral support to the counterterrorism community to

maximize its effectiveness in what surely will be a protracted war.

Budgets that go up and down or depend on unpredictable supplemental funding will make it harder to maintain the relentless focus

that counterterrorism requires.

Mr. Chairman, the foregoing recommendations are a mixture of

tactical and strategic considerations, but clearly there must be a

still more strategic component to the U.S. approach to this problem—one that looks well beyond the day to day struggle and addresses the underlying forces at work. Otherwise our children and

grandchildren will still be fighting this war long after we have left

the field.

Put another way, we must attack not only the terrorists, we

must also attack their strategy. After all, this is partly a war of

ideas, not unlike our struggle with communism after World War II.

But today’s problem is more complex because it is entwined with

religion and because many of those opposed to Islamic extremists,

unlike the foes of communism, do not necessarily welcome support

from the United States.

Still, there are some guiding principles that can inform—inform

a long-term strategic approach. First, this war needs to be called

what it is—a campaign against Islamic radicalism. The war on terror has become too abstract a concept in my judgment. The enemy

needs to be personalized in a way that permits both Muslims and

non-Muslims to understand that we are not talking about the great

and good Islamic faith, but about a group of people who have taken

a cut and paste approach to Koranic scholarship, one that aims to

justify killing not just nonbelievers, but those Muslims who disagree with them. Being as clear and concrete as possible about who

precisely we oppose and why, will help to separate them from the

rest of the Islamic world and make every other aspect of a longerterm strategy more manageable.

Second, in order to be effective, this message must come from the

Muslim community itself. Only they can speak with the requisite

authority on these matters. There is no question that the vast majority of Islamic leaders oppose what bin Laden represents. Ways

must be found to engage them actively, help them communicate

their message, and increase their authority in the Islamic community. Given the Islamic radicals’ aims, these mainstream Muslims

have more to lose than we do.

Third, we must continue to deny territory to the terrorists. AlQaeda writings, especially those of Zawahiri, lay great stress on

the need to get control of a major piece of territory, preferably a

country, as a platform from which to spread their influence. Denying them territory at this stage of the battle means keeping pressure especially on areas of the world that are less governed, to use

a phrase mentioned earlier in this hearing, or simply ungoverned

by virtue of their location, ethnic composition, or the heritage of a

failed state.

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This means paying special attention to areas such as the Pakistan-Afghan border, parts of East Africa, the vast stretches of

Southeast Asia, and even to Europe because its societal complexity

and its large and often alienated Muslim population amount to an

environment that Islamic radicals can exploit.

Fourth, United States diplomatic and aid policies must continue

to target the economic, policy, and education policies that in many

Islamic countries contribute to unemployment, poverty, and recruitment into radical movements. This, of course, is easy to say

and hard to do, and will not bring change overnight.

Finally, U.S. policy must do everything possible to take away the

excuses—and I emphasize, excuses—that radical extremists seize

upon to justify their murderous practices. Nothing would do more

to undermine their message and isolate them than the reality of a

settlement in which Israel’s right to exist was recognized by a Palestinian state and endorsed by other Islamic nations. Again, this

is easier said than done, but it is clearly a goal that deserves our

utmost effort.

It is often said, Mr. Chairman, that it will be very hard to know

when this war will be over and that there will obviously be no surrender ceremony on a battleship. Terrorism at some level and in

some form has been part of international life for centuries and we

probably have as much chance to eliminate it completely as we

have to stamp out all crime in the world.

So when can we begin to feel that we have won? I suggest, Mr.

Chairman, that this day will not come until we have dismantled

the movement into so many isolated and weakened parts that it is

manageable on a local basis. And it will not come until this ideology has become, for lack of a better term, unfashionable or unacceptable. Adherents will still exist, just like communists, but will

no longer be taken seriously. Regrettably, we are still a long way

from that day.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. McLaughlin follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN E. MCLAUGHLIN, SENIOR FELLOW, MERRILL

CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES, THE PAUL H. NITZE SCHOOL OF ADVANCED

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON, DC

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your invitation to testify today on this most important topic. Now that nearly 5 years have passed since the devastating attacks of 9/

11, this is clearly the right moment to stand back and ask the questions you pose

in this hearing—how have things changed since 9/11, how has the threat evolved,

and how are we doing in countering it?

In addressing these questions, I intend to focus mainly on al-Qaeda and those inspired by it. And while the war in Iraq clearly bears on these issues, I intend to

deal more with the war outside Iraq than with the ongoing conflict there. While

United States conventional military forces carry the main burden in Iraq, obviously

supported by intelligence officers, the war being fought outside Iraq and outside

parts of Afghanistan has been, and in my judgment remains, largely an intelligence

war. And the challenges associated with that will also be part of what I try to address today.

Another distinction that I will try to explore is that between the tactical and the

strategic aspects of the war on terrorism. While our actions since 9/11 have been

carried out in a thoughtful strategic context, they have been largely tactical in nature. The emphasis has been on degrading and disrupting the terrorist networks

that exist, and we have done this very effectively. As a nation, we have put less

energy into dealing with the root causes of terrorism—the complex social, economic,

and political factors that are the engines driving the terrorist movement.

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WHERE WE HAVE BEEN: 9/11 IN CONTEXT

My background is of course in intelligence, and it goes without saying that, like

other Americans, intelligence officers viewed 9/11 as a devastating tragedy—but not

as the beginning of a war. U.S. intelligence had been combating terrorists for at

least two decades and had considered itself at war with al-Qaeda since the mid- to

late-1990s. The attack of 9/11 was thus seen by intelligence as a catastrophic loss

in a war that had been ongoing.

It was a war in which the United States had seen both victories and defeats.

Among the victories were the disruption of a Ramzi Youssef plot to down 10 civilian

United States airliners over the Pacific in the mid-1990s, the disruption of plots to

bomb our Embassies in Yemen, Albania, and at least one West European capital,

and the disruption of a wide array of planned attacks on United States interests

in the United States, Jordan, and other parts of the Middle East in 2000–2001 (the

so-called Millennium plots).

Among the defeats were the bombings of our Embassies in East Africa in August,

1998, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October, 2000, and of course the most

devastating loss—9/11 itself.

So, while 9/11 will forever be viewed as the major demarcation line between eras

in U.S. counterterrorism, it was also in a sense the most dramatic mark along a

continuum—the major battle lost in a long-running war.

And while the specific targets, timing, and method of attack came as surprises

to intelligence, the community was expecting some kind of major terrorist event.

Throughout the summer of 2001, the conviction grew within U.S. intelligence that

a major attack was coming—so much so that the alarms sounded by the intelligence

community were seen by many in the policy world as having an almost frenzied

quality—the more so since the intelligence lacked the sort of specificity that policymakers hungered for at that time.

After the attacks occurred, the Nation’s response benefited from the fact that

much thought had been given, beginning in the Clinton administration—to tactics

and strategies designed to undermine al-Qaeda’s Afghan sanctuary.

This all came into play in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 as the CIA’s strategy

of working closely with Afghan tribal allies moved to center stage and as the relationships built years before with the Afghan Northern Alliance paved the way for

CIA teams to be on the ground in Afghanistan just 16 days after 9/11. This was

of course the front end of what became the successful takedown of the sanctuary

by combined military and intelligence capabilities in Operation Enduring Freedom.

WHAT HAS CHANGED

Since 9/11 and the early days of Enduring Freedom, much has changed in our Nation’s approach—and also in the enemy camp.

Having made the point that this is largely an intelligence war, I need to talk in

particular about how intelligence has evolved since 9/11. It is not well understood

that by 9/11, the intelligence community was already in the midst of a dramatic

transformation—one that accelerated as the community adjusted to its new authorities and responsibilities post-9/11. Following resource cuts approaching 25 percent

in the 1990s after the Soviet collapse, intelligence capabilities had become extremely

stretched. Hiring had come to a virtual standstill, and the CIA in the mid- to late1990s was training only a couple dozen clandestine service officers a year. Meanwhile, requirements for foreign intelligence were mounting steadily as the illusion

of a peace dividend gave way to reality.

It was during this time of resource stress and constantly shifting priorities that

the terrorist challenge began to come into sharper relief. It was also in this period

that the CIA embarked on a strategic plan designed to increase its collection capabilities, adapt them to new technological realities, enhance its analytic expertise,

and ensure that its scientific work stayed on the cutting edge. These efforts were

just off the ground and just beginning to benefit from a restoration of some resources when 9/11 hit.

The intelligence community had already moved far away from the cold war paradigm by the time of 9/11, but the momentum increased markedly in the wake of

the attack. Any comparison with how intelligence was postured in the cold war illustrates this dramatically.

Back then, for example, intelligence focused on tracking and locating big things,

such as motorized rifle regiments, deployed strategic forces, bombers, and submarines. Today, intelligence still has to do much of that but, meanwhile, has

learned to hunt with considerable success for small things—a suitcase with a bomb,

a single person in a city of 17 million, one room in an apartment, a single packet

of data moving through the global information network.

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During that earlier era, intelligence worried mainly about governments and political parties—especially those with a Soviet connection. Today, there is still a requirement to follow governments and parties, but for what they represent in and

of themselves. And in seeking to counter terrorism, the requirement is to look deeper into other societies—down to towns, regions, religions, and tribes—while also assessing the societal stresses that can be factories for terrorism.

During the cold war, the secrets intelligence had to unlock were shared by hundreds of individuals in ministries and embassies—a large pool from which to recruit

agents. Today, the secrets terrorists guard most closely are shared by small numbers of people, and they are likely to be living in remote areas, possibly in caves,

or broken into small groups scattered throughout dense urban environments. None

of them will be found at cocktail parties, embassy receptions, or government ministries. In other words, the recruiting pool has shrunk, avenues into are constricted

and obscure, and those who fight terrorists have had to adjust to this new reality.

The cold war period was also often marked by a shortage of data on many issues.

Today, despite the difficulty of acquiring secrets through classic espionage, the capture of a terrorist cell in the computer age may yield enormous amounts of data—

as much as we house in a small public library. The challenge is to find ways to sort

it, fuse it with other data, and discern any threatening patterns in it.

Finally, years ago, intelligence acquired by the United States had to be shared

mainly with other agencies in the Federal Government and with a few foreign partners. Today, it must be shared with a worldwide antiterrorist coalition and with

thousands of local law enforcement officers in the United States. Today, a local cop

on the beat should be able to access nationally compiled domestic and foreign data,

and that data should reflect the essence of homeland and overseas information acquired by agencies such as the FBI and the CIA.

Beyond these broad trends, the specific practices of the intelligence community on

counterterrorism have changed substantially since 9/11. Little of this is recorded or

even acknowledged in the 9/11 Commission Report, because the Commission drew

a line at October, 2001, and did not delve into changes and improvements subsequent to the attack. Therefore, the report takes no real account of these in its analysis or its recommendations.

As I told the Senate Armed Services Committee in testimony in August, 2004, this

was the most dramatic period of change for the intelligence community in my memory.

• Our policies—the Nation’s and the intelligence community’s underwent fundamental changes. The principal change is that post-9/11 national policies and the

authorities given to the intelligence community allowed it to go decisively on the

offensive against terrorists worldwide. As a result, most of the traditional sanctuaries are dismantled or under relentless pressure. The complex logistical, financial, and communications networks that sustain terrorist activities have also

been disrupted or made less effective through the efforts of the United States

and its allies. • Day to day practices have also changed dramatically. While the degree of pre9/11 tension among agencies has been highly exaggerated by critics and commissions, it is nonetheless true that there is routinely closer integration of effort

today. While there is always room for improvement, intelligence officers, law enforcement, and military officers serve together and share information in real

time on the front lines of the fight at home and abroad. When something happens, the default instinct today is to share information. A good example was the

discovery in August, 2004, of highly detailed al-Qaeda-sponsored casing reports

on some of our most important financial institutions. Within a day or so, all of

this was in the hands of Federal and local law enforcement and local officials

right down to the affected building managers. • Operational integration and response has also advanced markedly. Since 9/11,

CIA has followed a practice of holding operational meetings, often on a daily

basis, bringing together intelligence and law enforcement representatives, along

with defense intelligence and military officers stationed at CIA. Decisions made

at the table have gone immediately to officers in the field and their foreign partners, whose penetration and disruption of terrorist networks yielded the precise

kind of intelligence represented by the casing reports discovered a year and a

half ago. And during the last year, this integration has been given an additional

boost as the new National Counterterrorism Center has begun to take hold.

• The worldwide antiterrorist coalition has changed. This still takes constant

tending, as I will discuss below, but the climate of skepticism and disbelief we

frequently encountered abroad has diminished in the face of the new realities

of terrorism. As a result, the coalition is broader, deeper, and more committed

than before 9/11. This reflects the very high priority the intelligence community

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has placed on building relationships with foreign counterparts, recognizing that

the work cannot be done without local officials who are ready and willing to

work jointly with the United States. It also reflects the growing recognition on

the part of many partners that they are personally threatened by the terrorist

drive and that the terrorists’ campaign is drawing more heavily on local resources and indigenous populations. • Needless to say, our laws have also changed. Principally, the Patriot Act that

you recently renewed has given the intelligence community real time access to

data it did not formerly have, and this has permitted a more productive integration of data from all sources. • Finally, our institutions have changed. Almost 2 years before the stand up of

the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) late last year, the intelligence

community had pooled resources to create its progenitor—the Terrorist Threat

Integration Center (TTIC). The NCTC is really an augmented version of the

TTIC, with a strategic planning function added. What made both institutions

unique is the bringing together of more than 20 databases from a wide variety

of foreign intelligence, domestic law enforcement, homeland security, military,

and diplomatic agencies. Both TTIC and NCTC also are unique in the diversity

of their personnel; like TTIC before it, the NCTC is staffed by officers from

agencies as diverse as CIA, FBI, Coast Guard, Homeland Security, Customs,

and Treasury. While there is much work still to be done—more on that later—

these institutions hold the promise of integrating data more thoroughly and

with less chance that something will be missed.

The terrorist landscape has also undergone enormous change since 9/11.

• Obviously, the key strategic change was al-Qaeda’s loss of its most comfortable

sanctuary as a result of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. This

forced the leadership and foot soldiers to scatter, making them more vulnerable

to apprehension and less able to plan and execute large operations securely.

• A second key strategic development was the decision of Pakistan’s President

Musharraf to work in close partnership with the United States on

counterterrorism following 9/11. This helped expose key operatives to capture

and disruption in Pakistan’s urban areas, where so many of the major United

States counterterrorist successes have occurred. President Musharaff continues

to walk a dangerous tightrope in a country whose populace is deeply skeptical

of his cooperation with the United States, which remains today no less essential

to our ultimate success against al-Qaeda in particular.

• A third key strategic moment came in the aftermath of successful al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia in May, 2003, leading the Saudi leadership to dramatically step up operations against al-Qaeda in the Kingdom. More than 200

operatives have been brought to justice there since then, in aggressive operations that have cost the lives of at least 20 Saudi officers.

In other arenas, including Yemen and other gulf countries, the Levant, Southeast

Asia, North and East Africa, and Europe, intelligence-based partnerships have kept

the movement under pressure that has in many cases seriously hindered or prevented terrorist fundraising, communication, and operational planning.

The by now widely-cited figure of 2⁄3 to 3⁄4 of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 era leadership in custody or killed is testament to the success of the U.S. effort. And beyond these acknowledged successes, there is the less visible but relentless grinding away at other

essential components of the terrorist networks—the couriers, the facilitators, the

fund raisers, the safe house keepers, the technicians—that U.S. intelligence officers

and their foreign partners have pursued for years. This seldom-noticed work, if left

undone or neglected, would allow these networks to regenerate in ways even more

dangerous than we have seen in recent successful terrorist attacks in London, Madrid, Sharm-el-Sheik, Amman, and elsewhere.

So the terrorist movement we now confront is in some ways less dangerous than

the 9/11 era al-Qaeda and in some ways more. It is less dangerous in that terrorists

now have more obstacles to overcome in attempting to orchestrate large-scale international terrorist operations. It is more dangerous in that the movement is now

more amorphous and operates in smaller cells that are widely dispersed geographically. It is driven less by a hierarchical command structure and geographic considerations and more by an ideology that is spread easily by the Internet and other electronic media.

The movement now has an African face, a European face, an Asian face, and—

as illustrated most recently by the plot foiled in Canada this month—a North American face. It is not easily ‘‘profiled.’’ While the inspiration, and presumably some

level of funding and training, still comes from the center, more autonomy is flowing

to locally based parts of the network that recruit operatives from indigenous popuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:08 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\COUNT.TXT mich PsN: mich
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lations and rely on the external operatives for only portions of the planning and execution.

Clearly, the movement in its current configuration presents new challenges for intelligence and law enforcement officers seeking to penetrate the networks, acquire

their secrets, and bring them to justice. Terrorist cells are more dispersed, they

have gone to school on our successes, and they are adopting stealthier forms of recruitment, training, reconnaissance, and operational execution.

And while many of the recent attacks—London, Madrid, Istanbul, Casablanca,

Bali, Sharm el-Sheik, and the attempted attack in Canada this month—appear local

in nature, we must not delude ourselves into thinking this is no longer an international movement. Even if these attacks are not being staged by a centrally directed, hierarchical movement, the goals and consequences of each attack transcend

regional borders, in that successful attacks feed recruitment efforts world wide. Dispersed cells, moreover, are connected by, among other things, the celebration of each

attack in jihadist chat rooms and the propaganda that moves across the Internet

after each terrorist success.

Although it can be argued that our successes must be making it harder for alQaeda to mount a major attack in the United States, we cannot take any real comfort in that or afford to believe it. Nothing would boost the movement more or provide a greater incentive to al-Qaeda’s seemingly flagging donors than another attack

on American soil. For al-Qaeda, this remains the brass ring, the way to recoup its

losses and return the movement to its earlier preeminence.

To avert an attack in the United States, we must be alert to the certainty that

al-Qaeda is looking for new ways to surprise us and to circumvent obstacles we have

put in their path. We must recall constantly something that would have profound

consequences in any fight: We are up against an opponent who plays by no rules.

Therefore, we are most vulnerable when we begin to feel comfortable that we have

closed off their avenues of approach or that we can predict their profile or methodology. We have learned a lot about how they operate, but they have also gone to

school on our successes. And they have undoubtedly learned a lot from our increasingly public discussion of how we have succeeded.

WHAT MUST BE DONE?

Against the backdrop of these changes, what is required of intelligence and our

national policymakers looking out over the next 5 to 10 years?

The requirements range from the heroic to the mundane, from the short-term tactical to the long-term strategic—but all are essential to success. Although it is possible to draw up a list, it is important to emphasize that these tasks cannot be approached serially; they must be tackled simultaneously, albeit with varying degrees

of intensity. Among the key aspects of the problem:

• First, and perhaps most obviously, we must intensify our focus on the remaining elements of the leadership, including of course Bin Laden and his deputy,

Ayman al-Zawahiri. Intelligence has had noteworthy success in weakening the

central leadership of the movement through the apprehension of a large number

of the 9/11 perpetrators, most notably the operational architect of the attack,

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and many of his lieutenants. That said, the movement has now evolved beyond the possibility of a ‘‘decapitation strategy.’’ Although success by the German plotters in their assassination attempt on Hitler

in July, 1944, probably would have ended World War II, wrapping up Bin

Laden will not end this war.

• But it would nonetheless be an operational setback and an enormous symbolic

blow to the movement. Essentially, taking Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri out of

play would weaken the international glue in the movement, lead to further fractures among extremists, throw many of them off balance, and reduce the overall

threat the movement poses in its current configuration.

• Second, our policies must reflect the certainty that there is no unilateral solution to the problem America now faces. American intelligence has been extraordinarily successful in building counterterrorist partnerships with other intelligence services around the world but must now—along with counterparts

across the U.S. Government—tighten, deepen, and build on these relationships.

They cannot be allowed to flag or wither. And as important as the intelligence

relationships are, they in many cases need stronger diplomatic and military-tomilitary components. The goal should be to build shared commitment with other

societies—a goal that will require resources for training and equipment and

large investments of personal time on the part of U.S. officials. Increasingly, the

terrorist nexus will be in remote parts of multiple and diverse societies where

Americans will have trouble operating. Senior American officials need to be able

54

to pick up the phone and reliably mobilize the resources of other countries in

response to intelligence leads—not through pressure or superpower preeminence but as the result of shared commitments developed over time. If this

kind of ‘‘intelligence diplomacy’’ is neglected, we will find ourselves lacking some

of the fundamental tools required to defeat terrorists where they live. • Third, success against this adversary has little to do with structure or organization in the intelligence community, despite the near exclusive attention paid to

that since 9/11; it has everything to do with something even more prosaic—the

effective fusion of data. As noted earlier, success against terrorist networks has

yielded an enormous amount of data—enough that sophisticated algorithms are

required to sort through it efficiently. But along with volume, it is the diverse

sources of this data—and classification levels that range from none to the most

sensitive—that make it especially hard to integrate and share. It is critical that

our terrorist data be managed in a way that a local law enforcement officer trying to sort out suspicious activity somewhere in the Midwest is able to reach

into a database to bounce his findings off of what CIA case officers have picked

up overseas, what FBI officers may be hearing in New York City or what Customs or Border Patrol officers may have learned—and for all of this to work just

as well in reverse. The United States has made impressive strides toward that

goal with institutions such as the National Counterterrorist Center and a variety of databases developed by the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, but we are still

not where we need to be. If there was ever a goal worthy of a ‘‘Manhattan

Project’’ approach—bringing together the best minds in industry and technology—this is it. Getting this done should be a legacy issue for the new Director of National Intelligence. • Fourth, the key to intelligence success against terrorists is speed and agility in

responding to leads, and we must be on guard against anything that reduces

the progress the intelligence community has achieved on that score in recent

years. Response decisions must frequently be made in a matter of minutes or

hours on highly perishable intelligence. The possibility of honest error is thus

ever present. The National Intelligence Director must be careful not to allow the

new intelligence structure to evolve into an additional layer of approvals that

would compromise speed and agility, and he must also preserve and enhance

the responsible risk-taking environment that the community has created in recent years. • Congressional intelligence committees and other overseers, meanwhile, must exercise careful judgment as they pursue their important work, mindful that one

way to ensure risk aversion is to highlight every error made in the course of

taking risks. • Fifth, our intelligence and military services must stay on the offense, but the

country must pay increasing attention to the defense. Intelligence will frequently pick up the signals necessary to prevent attacks, but given the highly

compartmented secrets in the terrorist world, intelligence professionals can bat

over .900 and still fail. The homeland security effort has come a long way since

9/11, but I wonder if our country is yet beyond a mindset geared to the expectation that specific intelligence on timing, target, and method is the primary way

to avoid terrorist attacks. Clearly, that should be the goal, but given the large

body of data we now have on potential terrorist targets and methods, we need

to ensure that we are using that data systematically to close the gaps in our

vulnerabilities here at home. This should not be seen as intelligence ducking

a responsibility; the point, rather, is to make sure we are using to the fullest

the information we already have at hand.

• Sixth, we must pay special attention to and focus intensively on potential terrorist use of WMD. Terrorism is, by its very nature, an asymmetric approach

to war. WMD—nuclear, chemical, or biological—are the tools that would restore

asymmetric power to a weakened movement and give it the potential to level

the playing field with the United States and its allies. There is no reason to

doubt that the terrorists have the ambition to deploy such weapons. Bin Laden

has said so plainly, and intelligence has uncovered ample evidence that alQaeda, in particular, has devoted substantial effort to gaining a WMD capability. Terrorist leaders know that use of such weapons in the United States

would be the surest way to top 9/11.

• Seventh, national policymakers must provide constancy in resources and moral

support to the counterterrorism community to maximize its effectiveness in

what surely will be a protracted fight. This risks sounding like ‘‘special pleading,’’ but the reality is that few aspects of intelligence work are as resource-intensive and painstakingly detailed as counterterrorism. Budgets that go up and

down or depend on unpredictable supplemental funding will make it harder to

55

maintain the relentless focus that counterterrorism requires. And while holding

the intelligence community to high standards and expecting strong performance, national decision makers must also throw in a dose of patience for an intelligence community that was practically in chapter 11 in the late 1990s and

in the early stages of a strategic rebuilding effort when 9/11 hit. The community

has been fighting the war very effectively so far—but with essentially no reserve capacity. It will take the Director of National Intelligence and the agencies he oversees several more years to hire and train the numbers of skilled

case officers, analysts, and technical specialists required to achieve maximum

effectiveness on counterterrorism while simultaneously meeting the community’s manifold other responsibilities.

The foregoing recommendations are a mixture of tactical and strategic approaches. Clearly, though, there must be a still more strategic component to the

U.S. conduct of the war—one that looks well beyond the day to day struggle and

addresses the underlying forces at work. Otherwise, our children and grandchildren

will still be waging this battle long after we have left the field.

Put another way, and in classic counterinsurgency terms, we must attack not only

the terrorists; we must also attack their strategy. This means working systematically to dismantle the pieces of the network that give it global reach—such as its

finances, communications, and logistics. In other words, to isolate its decentralized

cells and deprive them of the means to spread their ideology and recruit converts

prepared to act on it. In essence, to take away their oxygen.

Ideally, this should occur against a backdrop of broader U.S. information, development, and aid policies designed to attack the intellectual, ideological, and socioeconomic roots of terrorism. In some ways this is analogous to a problem the United

States faced after World War II as it sought to limit the spread of communism as

a system of belief and governance. That was at root a ‘‘war of ideas’’ and required

strenuous efforts to combat false or misleading ideologies and sustain those who opposed them.

Today’s problem is more complex, because it is entwined with religion and because many of those opposed to Islamic extremists, unlike the foes of communism,

do not seek or welcome support from the United States. And we do not yet have

for this era a guiding strategic concept—something akin to George Kennan’s famous

‘‘X’’ article that in one word, ‘‘containment,’’ gave everyone a strategic concept appropriate to that era.

All this said, there are some guiding principles that can inform a long-term strategic approach in this struggle against Islamic extremism.

First, this war needs to be called what it is—a war on Islamic radicalism. The

‘‘War on Terror’’ has become too abstract a concept. The enemy needs to be personalized in a way that permits both Muslims and non-Muslims to understand that we

are not talking about the great and good Islamic faith but about a group of people

who have taken a cut and paste approach to Koranic scholarship—one that aims

to justify killing not just nonbelievers but Muslims who disagree with the radicals.

Being as clear and concrete as possible about who precisely we oppose—and why—

will help to separate them from the rest of the Islamic world and make every other

aspect of a longer-term strategy more manageable.

Second, in order to be effective, this message must come from the Muslim community itself. Only those with authority to interpret the faith can speak with the requisite impact on these matters. There is no question that the vast majority of Islamic leaders oppose what Bin Laden represents. Many of them have spoken out

in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Ways must be

found to engage them actively and to help them communicate their message and increase their authority in the Islamic community. Given the Islamic radicals’ aim,

these mainstream Muslims have more to lose than we do.

Third, we must continue to deny them territory. While this is also a short term

tactical aim, it also has a longer term strategic salience. Al-Qaeda writings, especially those of al-Zawahiri, lay great stress on the need to get control of a major

piece of territory, preferably a country, as a platform from which to pursue their

dream of recreating a caliphate that would subject all Muslims to their will.

Denying them territory as this stage of the battle means keeping pressure especially on areas of the world that are ‘‘less governed’’ or simply ‘‘ungoverned’’ by virtue of their location, ethnic composition, or the heritage of a failed state. This means

paying special attention to areas such as the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, parts of

East Africa, and the vast stretches of Southeast Asia. Europe also needs to be on

this list, not because of any governmental inattention, but because its societal complexity, legal structure, and its large and often alienated Muslim population amount

to an environment that Islamic radicals can effectively exploit.

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Fourth, U.S. diplomatic and aid strategies must continue to target the economic,

political, and educational policies that in many Islamic countries contribute to unemployment, poverty, and recruitment into radical movements. This is, of course,

easy to say and hard to do—and will not bring change overnight.

Finally, U.S. policy must do everything possible to take away the excuses that

radical Islamists seize upon to justify their murderous practices. Recognizing that

their continual citing of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is little more than an excuse,

nothing would do more to undermine their message and isolate them than the reality of a settlement in which Israel’s right to exist was recognized by a Palestinian

state and endorsed by other Islamic nations. Again, this is easier said than done

but probably an essential component of any comprehensive strategy for isolating

and defeating the terrorists.

It is often said that it will be hard to know when this war will be over and that

there will obviously be no surrender ceremony on a battleship. Terrorism at some

level and in some form has been a feature of international life for centuries, and

we will probably have as much chance to eliminate it completely as we have to

stamp out all crime in the world.

So when can we begin to feel that we have won? I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that

this day will not come until we have dismantled the movement into so many isolated and weakened parts that it is manageable on a local level. And it will not

come until this ideology has become, for lack of a better term, unfashionable.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. McLaughlin, for a

really remarkable essay and likewise for your summation this

morning.

I would like to call now upon Mr. Benjamin for his testimony.

STATEMENT OF DANIEL BENJAMIN, SENIOR FELLOW, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC

AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. BENJAMIN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the issue of the evolution of the terrorist threat. You have my statement. I would like

to provide you with a summary of it now.

As everyone has agreed, the terrorist threat we face today is

vastly changed from the one that existed on September 11, 2001.

The killing last week of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi represents a signal

achievement in the war on terror, in my view the most important

such blow since al-Qaeda was run out of Afghanistan. But it is exactly this kind of dramatic, yet ultimately tactical, achievement

that invites misinterpretation of where we are in the struggle

against radical Islamist violence. So I am pleased you have scheduled this hearing and the others that will follow so that we can discern where we stand in this conflict and what needs to be done.

Today the United States faces an unnerving paradox. For all the

tactical successes that have been achieved, our strategic position

continues to slip. The ideology of jihad is spreading and a new generation of terrorists is emerging with few ties to al-Qaeda, but a

world view soaked in Osama bin Laden’s hatred of the West, and

new areas of the globe are increasingly falling under the shadow

of this growing threat.

You have heard from John McLaughlin and Ambassador

Crumpton about al-Qaeda itself, the core group, and I agree with

their assessments and so I will not spend time on that. I would

prefer to devote my time to what has changed in the last 5 years

and in particular to address my comments to three new types of

terrorists we face and to the changing geography of terror.

The first group, which you have already heard something about

this morning, is the self-starters, who are also described as homeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:08 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COUNT.TXT mich PsN: mich
57

grown. We have become familiar with them through such attacks

as the bombings in Madrid, London, the murder of the Dutch artist

Theo von Gogh by a young Dutch Muslim, also in 2005, and in a

number of other places. These are individuals who have very little

connection to the al-Qaeda organization or to other preexisting

groups, but they have been won over by the ideas of bin Laden and

his followers. They are self-recruited and often self-trained, using

the vast wealth of instructional materials available on the Internet.

The most recent and, from an American perspective, most worrisome development is the disruption just this month of a conspiracy

involving self-starters in Canada. The condition of the Muslim community in Canada is far more like it is in the United States than

it is like the various Muslim communities of Europe, and therefore

Toronto carries one powerful message for us: A self-starter conspiracy on American soil is a genuine possibility.

It is true that as a group the self-starters have less experience

and are less skilled than, say, those who have gone through alQaeda training camps. However, we have seen a significant number of highly educated individuals show up in these cells. Just as

an aside, we saw one cell in Pakistan in which the leader was a

university-trained statistician and his brother who was a cardiologist, were the chief members.

If only a small percentage of these groups manage to carry out

attacks, we could still see a significant amount of damage and casualties. We should not make the mistake of believing that terrorists who begin as self-starters will not find the connections, training, and resources they seek.

We have to be careful about overemphasizing these categories

and overdefining them. Spanish officials have hinted that there

was a Zarqawi link to the Madrid bombings. The London bombers,

some of them traveled to Pakistan for training and evidently some

of the Toronto suspects had links to other individuals who themselves were linked to Zarqawi. We could well see a re-networking

of the threat, which would mean a further increase in the level of

danger.

Two other groups of terrorists are worth mentioning and they

have not received much attention this morning. Both of them are

centered in Iraq. The first group consists of the foreign fighters

who traveled there to fight against the United States and coalition

forces. Contrary to the expectations voiced by the administration at

the outset of the war, those who came to Iraq did not represent the

global remnants of al-Qaeda after its eviction from Afghanistan.

Rather, studies have shown foreign fighters are overwhelmingly

young Muslims with no background in Islamist activity. That is,

they represent another pool of the recently radicalized.

We know the effect that their violence has had on the insurgency

and especially in terms of the large-scale attacks such as the one

on the Golden Mosque in Samarra last February that pushed Iraq

to the brink of civil war.

It is also true that the foreign fighters could well become the

vanguard of a new generation of jihadists, much as the veterans of

the fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s were the founding generation of al-Qaeda. For an intimation of the mind-sets of

these individuals and what they are bringing back to their commuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:08 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COUNT.TXT mich PsN: mich
58

nities, I commend to you Anthony Shadid’s story on returnees to

the Lebanese city of Tripoli in yesterday’s Washington Post.

One last group that deserves attention is the Iraqi jihadists who

have emerged from the turmoil of the last 3 years. In such groups

as Ansar al-Qaeda Sunna and the Islamic Army of Iraq, there are

thousands of militants with a jihadist outlook. According to some

reputable sources, there could be more than 15,000 in their ranks.

These jihadists will likely have a durable sanctuary that also

needs to be observed in al-Anbar Province in western Iraq. They

will not be rooted out by military means. They will be rooted out

only when there is a capable Iraqi intelligence service, and since

that service is likely to be dominated by Shiites and Kurds there

are not going to be many operatives able to work in the hostile environment of the Sunni-dominated al-Anbar.

It is too early to say what the long-term orientation of these Iraqi

jihadists will be. Chances are they will be principally focused on

the fledgling government in Baghdad. But even so, the November

2005 bombings in Amman give us a taste of what might yet come

to be. Some Iraqis doubtless will have motivations for attacks outside Iraq. We have mentioned the Amman bombings. It is worth

noting that three hotels were hit and there was a fourth bomber,

a woman by the name of Sajida Mubarak. Her device failed to detonate and afterwards she was asked why she had undertaken this

suicide mission. She explained it was as an act of vengeance for the

death of her three brothers who had been fighting American forces.

Her statement carried a grim suggestion of how the devastation of

Iraq may come back to haunt us through the growth of an indigenous Iraqi jihadist movement. The most conservative tallies of

Iraqi civilian deaths puts the toll at about 40,000. I fear that we

can expect more Sajida al-Mubarak’s in our future.

Let me turn quickly to the issue of the geography of jihad. Here

the picture is one of metastasis. I mentioned Toronto already. Let

me talk about two regions—two other regions that cause particular

concern. The first is Europe and I was glad to have the opportunity

to testify before Senator Allen in April on this issue. With more

than 30 major failed plots across the continent in roughly 5 years,

Europe has become a central battlefield.

For an intimation of the size of the pool of potential recruits in

Europe, we need only to think back to last year’s riots in France.

The young Muslims who took to the streets were not motivated by

jihadist ideology, but acting out of the alienation and out of the

deprivation they felt, they clearly present an obviously ripe target

for recruitment. It is against this backdrop that we have seen the

emergence of many of the self-starter group, as well as the dramatic expansion of a network of operatives associated with

Zarqawi.

The second area for concern is the Middle East. Contrary to popular belief, radical Islamism had largely been suppressed or wiped

out in this region in the 1990s. Now, however, we have witnessed

a series of bloody attacks in the Sinai Peninsula, there are reports

of al-Qaeda activists in Gaza, we have had running gun battles and

a conspiracy within the Government in Kuwait. Syria, a country

that had waged a campaign of extermination against Islamists in

the 1980s, has seen Sunni radicalism re-emerge—and we could go

59

on down the list. Well, why have we seen the overall growth in this

threat? There are many different drivers of radicalism, but one

that we need to attend to is the failure at our level of strategy—

and Director McLaughlin alluded to this before—is that we need to

have a deeper understanding of the ideological nature of jihadist

terror. U.S. Government officials have often spoken of the terrorists’ ideology of hatred, but our policies have had the inadvertent

effect of confirming for many Muslims the essence of the bin Laden

argument.

It is worth reiterating the fundamental story line at the heart of

their beliefs. In bin Laden’s formulation, it is that America and its

allies seek to occupy Muslim lands, steal their oil wealth, and destroy their faith. Through the invasion of Iraq, we inadvertently

gave the radicals a shot in the arm and handed them a tableau

that they could point to as confirmation of their argument. We

have seen polling in Muslim nations over the last 3 years demonstrate a precipitous fall in America’s image in the region.

Although most Muslims will not turn to violence in this environment, it is still notable that more are turning in that direction than

might otherwise be the case. Mr. Chairman, the United States and

its allies have shown a remarkable skill in tactical counterterrorism, as we have heard this morning and as the killing of

Zarqawi has reminded us. But the skillful application of force and

the expert use of intelligence and law enforcement techniques alone

will not allow us to prevail in the war on terror. At the level of

strategy, we need to—we are nowhere near where we need to be.

It is a central tenet of counterinsurgency that success depends on

separating moderates from extremists and tilting the balance

through that means our way. At the core of this challenge is a competition of narratives between radical Islamists and the West. I

have summarized our enemy’s story and I think intuitively most of

us know what the U.S. story should be: That we are a benign

power that seeks to help those who wish to modernize their societies improve their conditions, so long as they play by the international rules of the road.

Part of that story is that we harbor no enmity for any religion

or race or ethnic group, but instead recognize that our future depends in no small measure on improvements in their conditions.

Unfortunately, that story is not coming through. We are indeed in

a battle for hearts and minds and our story is not being heard. For

too many Muslims our actions, especially in Iraq, are at odds with

our professed values and we are blamed by the radicals, but also

many moderates, for the persistence of autocratic regimes in the

Middle East.

Until we have policies that match our rhetoric and demonstrate

our willingness to support positive and peaceful change in the Muslim world, we will not win over the moderates we need. That is

why we can continue to succeed tactically but slip strategically

with ever-graver consequences. A recognition of this situation

points the way to the necessary discussion of how to forge that

strategy and that I believe is where we must go next, and without

delay.

Thank you very much for this opportunity.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Benjamin follows:]

60

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DANIEL BENJAMIN, SENIOR FELLOW, INTERNATIONAL SECU- RITY PROGRAM, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, WASH- INGTON, DC

Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the issue of the evolution of the terrorist threat. With the fifth anniversary of

the attacks of September 11 approaching, this is an appropriate moment for reflection on this issue. The terrorist threat we face today is vastly changed from the one

that existed on that late summer day. Recent events also point to the necessity of

a review of this kind: The killing last week of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi represents a

signal achievement in the war on terror—in my view, the most important such blow

we have delivered since al-Qaeda was run out of Afghanistan in late 2001 and early

2002. But it is exactly this kind of dramatic, yet fundamentally tactical, achievement that invites misinterpretation of where we are in the struggle against radical

Islamist violence. I am therefore pleased that you have scheduled this hearing and

others that will follow so that we can try to discern where we stand in this conflict

and what needs to be done.

Today, the United States faces an unnerving paradox: For all the tactical successes—the terrorists arrested, plots foiled, networks disrupted—that have been

achieved, our strategic position continues to slip. The ideology of jihad is spreading:

A new generation of terrorists is emerging with few ties to al-Qaeda but a world

view soaked in Osama bin Laden’s hatred of the West, and new areas of the globe

are increasingly falling under the shadow of this growing threat.

Al-Qaeda, of course, still exists, and we would be foolish to assume that the group,

however degraded its capabilities may be, will cease to threaten us. Al-Qaeda’s

operatives likely remain the most capable ones in the field. A terrorist organization

is not an army, and while an army ceases to be effective once it has lost a certain

number of its units, a terrorist group can cause grievous damage if only one or two

cells can operate undetected.

It is not necessary to spell out the implications of this further, and I would rather

devote the time remaining to what has changed in the last 5 years. In particular,

I would like to address my comments to three new types of terrorists we face and

to the changing geography of terror. I do so mindful that we too often try to apply

a system of rigid categorization that is inappropriate to the phenomenon of contemporary terror.

The first group that should be noted is the self-starters, also often called ‘‘homegrown.’’ We have become familiar with them through such attacks as the 2004

bombings in Madrid, the 2005 bombings in London, the murder of Dutch artist Theo

van Gogh by a young Dutch Muslim militant also in 2005. These are individuals

who may have very little connection to al-Qaeda or other preexisting groups, but

they have been won over by the ideas of Osama bin Laden and his followers. These

terrorists are self-recruited and often self-trained, using the vast wealth of instructional materials available on the Internet. Self-starters have appeared not only in

Europe but also in Morocco, where they carried out a string of bombings in Casablanca, and in Pakistan, a country with a well-established jihadist infrastructure

which some of the new recruits deemed insufficiently aggressive. It is possible that

the string of attacks in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula is also the work of self-starters, but

we do not have sufficient intelligence at this point to say.

The most recent, and, from an American perspective, most worrisome development is the disruption just this month of a conspiracy involving self-starters in Canada. As has widely been noted, the 17 people involved sought to acquire 3 times as

much ammonium nitrate as Timothy McVeigh used to destroy the Murragh Building

in Oklahoma City. We have in the past too often paid heed to the conspiracies that

succeeded and not sufficiently to those that failed. The condition of the Muslim community in Canada is far more like it is in the United States than it is in Europe,

and therefore Toronto carries one powerful message: A self-starter conspiracy on

American soil is a real possibility.

It is true that as a group, the self-starters have a less experience and are less

skilled than, say, those who have gone through al-Qaeda training camps. However,

we have seen a significant number of highly educated individuals show up in these

cells. If only a small percentage of these groups manage to carry out attacks, we

could therefore see a considerable amount of damage and casualties. Moreover, we

should not make the mistake of believing that terrorists who begin as self-starters

will not find the connections, training, and resources they seek. Herein lies the danger of overemphasizing the new categories, as I mentioned before. Spanish officials

have hinted that there was a Zarqawi link to the Madrid bombings. It appears that

some of the London bombers traveled to Pakistan for training and evidently some

61

of the Toronto suspects had links to others linked to Zarqawi. We could well see

a renetworking of the threat, which could well mean a further increase in the level

of danger we face.

Two other groups of terrorists are worth mentioning, both centered in Iraq: The

first group consists of the foreign fighters who traveled there to fight against United

States and coalition forces. Contrary to the expectations voiced by the administration at the outset of the war, those who came to Iraq did not represent the global

remnants of al-Qaeda after its eviction from Afghanistan. On the contrary, studies

by the Israeli expert, Reuven Paz, and the Saudi scholar, Nawaf Obeid, both demonstrate that the foreign fighters are overwhelmingly young Muslims with no background in Islamist activism. That is, they represent another pool of the recently

radicalized. Although United States officials have repeatedly argued over the last

3 years that the Jordanian-born Zarqawi and his band of foreign fighters represented a very small percentage of the insurgents in Iraq, their violence drove the

insurgency—especially the large-scale attacks, such as the attack on the Golden

Mosque in Samarra mosque last February that gave the country a powerful push

toward an all-out civil war.

Perhaps with the death of Zarqawi, the threat posed by the foreign fighters in

Iraq will be diminished. It is undoubtedly good news that the most capable terrorist

operative in the world is no longer on the scene. If reports of numerous raids based

on the intelligence that was gathered in recent weeks—including after Zarqawi’s

death—are true, than perhaps his al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia has been dealt a sharp

blow, and that would certainly be good news for Iraq. We should recognize, however,

that Zarqawi’s work in stoking sectarian tension appeared to have run much of its

course, and increasing levels of violence demonstrate that plenty of other groups

have become active. According to several Western intelligence services, in fact,

Zarqawi was turning away new foreign fighters who wanted to come to Iraq. We

do not know how many of these foreign fighters remain, or how many have begun

to wind their way home. What we can say, however, is that they could become the

vanguard of a new generation of jihadists, much as the veterans of the fighting in

Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s were the founding generation of al-Qaeda. For

a first intimation of the mind-set these individuals are bringing back to their communities, I commend to Anthony Shadid’s story on returnees to the Lebanese city

of Tripoli in yesterday’s Washington Post.

One last group that deserves attention is comprised of Iraqi jihadists who have

emerged from the turmoil of the last 3 years. In such groups as Ansar al Sunna

and the Islamic Army of Iraq there are thousands of militants with a jihadist outlook—according to some reputable sources, there could be more than 15,000 in their

ranks.

They will likely have a durable sanctuary in al-Anbar province in western Iraq.

United States troops have fought repeated campaigns in this region, whether on the

Syrian border or in cities such as Ramadi. Yet terrorist attacks have often increased

because the militants shrewdly move out of town when troops arrive and return

after they depart. They will be rooted out only when there is a capable Iraqi intelligence service. Since that service is likely to be dominated by Shiites and Kurds,

there are not going to be many operatives able to work in the hostile environment

of al-Anbar.

It is too early to say what the long-term orientation of these Iraqi jihadists will

be—will they focus their violence solely on the fledgling regime in Baghdad, or will

some of them join the global jihad and seek to export violence beyond their borders?

Chances are they will be principally focused on Iraq, but even so, the November

2005 bombings of three hotels in Amman suggest that some will have other targets

in mind.

It is true that those attacks were ordered by Zarqawi, but the operatives themselves were Iraqi. The attacks were the first successful ones in Jordan and the most

stunning demonstration of the spillover effect of the turmoil in Iraq. Even if relatively small numbers opt for the global fight, it could make a significant difference

to the terrorists’ capabilities as has been seen by the actions of very small numbers

of individuals involved in the Madrid and London bombings.

Some Iraqis doubtless will have motivation for attacks outside Iraq: Although

three hotels were hit, there was a fourth bomber—an Iraqi woman named Sajida

Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, whose device failed to detonate. Afterward, she explained that she had undertaken the suicide mission as an act of vengeance for the

deaths of three of her brothers, who had died fighting American forces. Her statement carried a grim suggestion of how the devastation of Iraq may come back to

haunt us through the growth of an indigenous Iraqi jihadist movement. The most

conservative tallies of Iraqi civilian deaths, which have been compiled by the Iraq

62

Body Count Web site, puts the toll at around 40,000. We can probably expect more

Sajidas in our future.

Let me turn to the issue of the geography of jihad: Here the picture is one of metastasis. I have already mentioned Toronto. Not long ago in Australia, a major dragnet wrapped up at least 18 conspirators who appear to have been plotting an attack

on the country’s 1 nuclear power plant. In South Asia—especially in Bangladesh—

the incidence of jihadist violence has grown dramatically. In Southeast Asia, a number of regional conflicts in such places as the southern Philippines and southern

Thailand continue to raise fears of wider jihadist activity. In the Caucasus, the incidence of jihadist violence continues to be deeply alarming.

Two regions in particular cause great concern. The first is Europe, and I want

to thank Senator Allen for allowing me to testify in April on this issue. With more

than 30 major failed plots across the continent in roughly 5 years, Europe has become a central battlefield. Much of Europe’s problem owes to the fact that the individual Muslim’s identity is sharply tested there. Most of the continent’s Muslims arrived in the 1950s and 1960s as workers to fill postwar Europe’s labor shortage, and

they stayed on in countries that, for the most part, neither expected nor wanted to

integrate them into their societies.

It soon became apparent, however, that there was no easy way to send these

workers back or to stanch the flow of family members seeking reunification with

loved ones—let alone to stop them from having children. As a result, Europe has

sleepwalked into an awkward multiculturalism. Its Muslim residents, many of them

now citizens, live for the most part in ghetto-like segregation, receive second-rate

schooling, suffer much higher unemployment than the general population and those

who do work are more likely than their Christian counterparts to have low-wage,

dead-end jobs. (For an intimation of the size of the pool of potential recruits, we

need only think back to last year’s riots in France. The young Muslims who took

to the streets were not motivated by jihadist ideology, but they clearly presented

an obviously ripe target for recruitment.) It is against this backdrop that we have

seen the emergence of many of the self-starter groups as well as the dramatic expansion of a network of operatives associated with Zarqawi. How the Jordanian terrorist’s death will affect this network is difficult to predict, but at a minimum, there

are now convinced jihadists with terrorist connections in approximately 40 countries.

The second area for concern is the Middle East. Contrary to popular belief, radical

Islamism had been largely suppressed or wiped out in the regions in the 1990s, but

it is now resurgent. We have witnessed a series of bloody attacks in Egypt’s Sinai

Peninsula, and there are reports now of al-Qaeda activists in Gaza. Kuwait, a country with no history of jihadist violence, experienced running gun battles between authorities and militants and discovered plotters within its own military. Recent visitors to Lebanon speak of a significant spike in jihadist activity. Syria, a country that

waged a campaign of extermination against Islamists in the early 1980s, has seen

Sunni radicalism reemerge. Qatar experienced its first vehicle bombing. Saudi Arabia suffered a series of bombings and attacks, and while the authorities have gained

the upper hand against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group continues to

exist. The discovery of Iraqi-style bombs in the kingdom may well be a harbinger

of worse to come once veterans of the fighting to the north return home—Saudi Arabia has contributed the largest number of foreign fighters to the Iraqi insurgency.

The potential for increasing volatility and destabilization is growing in the region,

and that ought to be a cause for great concern.

Why have we seen the overall growth in the threat? The chief reason for this failure is at the level of strategy and it concern a misunderstanding of the ideological

nature of jihadist terror. Although U.S. Government officials have often spoken of

the terrorists’ ideology of hatred, our policies have had the inadvertent effect of confirming for some Muslims the essentials of the bin Laden argument. It is worth reiterating the jihadists’ fundamental storyline. At the heart of it is a belief, handed

down from the revolutionary Egyptian Islamist writer Sayid Qutb, that the West is

the preordained enemy of Islam. In its most barebones formulation, the ideology

holds that America and its allies seek to occupy Muslims’ lands, steal their oil

wealth, and destroy their faith. Radical Islamists interpret much of history through

this prism: The drawing of borders in the Middle East after World War I was aimed

at dividing Muslims and destroying their historic unity. The creation of Israel was

another step in this direction since it, too, placed a western foothold in the region

and was designed to weaken and subjugate Muslim nations. The United States deployment to Saudi Arabia and the invasion of Iraq in Operation Desert Storm

marked another stage in this tale of woe. Radical Islamists believe, moreover, that

United States supports the autocrats of the Muslim world as a way of keeping the

believers down and undermining the faith.

63

Thus, through the 2003 invasion of Iraq, we gave the radicals a shot in the arm,

handing them a tableau that they could point to as confirmation of their argument.

Polling in Muslim nations over the last 3 years has shown that America’s image has

plummeted to historic lows. Although most Muslims will not turn to violence, in this

environment, it appears that more are turning in that direction than might otherwise be the case. It is clear that Iraq was a major part of the motivation of the Madrid and London bombers as well as Mohammed Bouyeri, the murderer of Theo van

Gogh. In countries such as Pakistan, it is also clear that anti-Americanism grounded

in the invasion of Iraq is increasingly being used as a tool of mobilization for radicals.

The missteps of the occupation of Iraq opened a new ‘‘field of jihad’’ for militants

who were more than eager to take on United States forces in the Arab heartland.

For the radicals, killing Americans is the essential task; by doing so, they demonstrate that they are the only ones determined to stand up for Muslim dignities.

Through their violence, they have also created a drama of the faith that disaffected

Muslims around the world can watch on television and the Internet. Thus, the

jihadist movement’s show of its determination to confront American and coalition

forces as well as those of the fledgling Iraqi regime has boosted its attractiveness.

However benign our intentions were in going into Iraq to liberate the populace there

of an evil dictatorship, in the context of the culture of grievance that exists in much

of the Muslim world, the extremists have benefited from our missteps and their narrative has had a profound resonance. Again, terrorism is a game of small numbers,

and a small number of recruits can make a great difference. The events of the last

few years have helped the jihadist movement sign up those recruits.

Mr. Chairman, the United States and its allies have shown great skill in tactical

counterterrorism, as the killing of Zarqawi has reminded us. But the skillful application of force and the expert use of intelligence and law enforcement techniques

alone will not allow us to prevail in the war on terror. Of course, they are essential,

and they have surely saved the lives of many innocents in many countries around

the world.

Yet at the level of strategy, we are nowhere near where we should be. It is a central tenet of counterinsurgency that success depends on separating moderates from

extremists, and thereby tilting the balance our way. At the core of this challenge

is a competition of narratives between radical Islamists and the West. I have summarized our enemies’ story. I think most of us intuitively know what ours should

be—that the United States and its allies are a benign power that seeks to help all

who wish to modernize their societies and improve their material conditions so long

as they play by the international rules of the road. Part of that story is that we

harbor no enmity for any religion or race or ethnic group but instead recognize that

our future depends in no small measure on improvements of conditions for people

around the world.

Unfortunately, that story is not coming through. We are indeed in a battle for

hearts and minds, and we are not winning. For too many Muslims, our actions, especially in Iraq, are at odds with our professed values. We are also blamed by the

radicals—but also many moderates—for the persistence of the autocratic regimes of

the Middle East. Until we have policies that match our rhetoric and demonstrate

our willingness to support positive and peaceful change in the Muslim world, we

will not win over the moderates we need. This is why we can at once succeed

tactically but slip strategically, with ever graver consequences. A recognition of this

situation points the way to the necessary discussion of how to forge that strategy,

and that, I believe, is where we must go next and without delay.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak here today.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Benjamin, for your

testimony. Let me begin the questioning by amplifying a point that

you have just made, Mr. Benjamin, but that you have also certainly

touched upon, Mr. McLaughlin. That is that some of the jihadists

or those at least who are fighting against us decry, as you have

suggested, Mr. Benjamin, that we—that is the United States, are

occupying their lands and that one reason for this occupation is

that we have designs upon their oil resources; and then finally,

that in the course of this occupation and this misappropriation, as

they would see it, of their oil resources, we are undermining their

faith, that there is a confrontation with the Muslim religion.

64

Some would say that beginning perhaps with the agreements

with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Saudi king back

in the 1930s that there was a strategic agreement of sorts, or an

understanding, that Saudi oil in particular, but not exclusively

that, but that is a very large part of the world’s reserves, is tremendously important to our country and likewise to worldwide

commerce, in which we were increasingly involved; and from the

Saudi standpoint those rulers certainly felt capable of providing security for their resources, but not overconfident of that, given all

of the potential predators. So they welcomed the United States’

thoughtfulness about them.

Now, from that embrace has come a good number of developments which may have been misinterpreted by many in this country as well as in the Middle East. But finally I recall that during

the time of the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, on the one hand we argued that aggression should not stand. The first George Bush indicated that very clearly. In some testimony on occasion, Secretary

Jim Baker, when pressed said: Well, it is about oil. Now, he did

not mean exclusively, but nevertheless he was honest that there

clearly was a problem here in terms of disruption of life as we

know it in the United States as well as life in Japan.

For example, President Bush went to the Japanese and suggested a giant United Way campaign of paying for this conflict,

that this was of great importance to Japan, and the Japanese leaders agreed, and we remember their contributions to the financial

aspects of this. The Saudis likewise were generous contributors.

Some would claim that almost the entire conflict was paid for by

contributions from other countries that saw their interest and recognized our mobility of sending 500,000 people in a way no other

country could do. Now, given this background, some would then

carry the argument further and say that in more recent times

Osama bin Laden, as a one-time resident of Saudi Arabia, and a

part of a great family there, having very devout ideas with regard

to his faith and the principles that you have enunciated earlier,

deeply resented the fact the United States not only came with

500,000 people, but a good number stayed in Saudi Arabia. In due

course they moved their location after attacks, but they stayed. As

a matter of fact, the American military presence seemed to be more

pronounced and permanent in this situation.

As a result, we should have anticipated at some point this resentment. Given now what you have both described as an extreme

form of Islam perhaps, this would lead to an attack upon the

United States in the event you could pull together the international

means to do this, the financial means, the network means, and finally the technical aspect of flying aircraft into the World Trade

Center or into the Pentagon.

Now, I outline all of this because some would say the end of this

conflict is unlikely ever to happen. In other words, the first panel

characterized that the war on terrorism might last until our grandchildren. But why just to our grandchildren? Why not our greatgrandchildren? Where is any potential end to this in the event that

there still is a feeling of resentment that the United States and its

allies are occupying territory and squeezing the resources, as some

may see it, and undermining religion by our very presence and our

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advocacy of what we see to be human rights and the role of women,

for example, and democracy?

How in the world does this fit with the aspirations of persons

who may be extreme, but maybe even some not so extreme, who

simply are resentful of all of this? Is the end of the war on terrorism or the end of, say, worldwide dependence on oil, for example, in which people in a very cavalier way, equally misguided,

would say that we really do not care what happens to the oil wells

in Saudi Arabia, that is up to the Saudis, and they will have to

work that out; or at least we are not going to be occupiers, we are

not going to come into Saudi Arabia and suggest, for example, that

their governmental system has great deficiencies; as a matter of

fact it would be helpful if they learn some democracy, had local

elections, then national elections and govern themselves in a very

different way, treated women in a very different way, and lots of

other things.

In other words, perhaps we say that is not our mission any more,

we are not going to be democracy nation-builders everywhere, everyplace, on the basis that that is our role and their destiny. Or

finally, we might say that, as a matter of fact, we are stretched in

any event. As you have all mentioned, the multinational aspect of

the war on terror is of the essence. It requires the cooperation of

intelligence services, the cooperation of all the territories, not just

the Middle East but throughout Africa, now Europe, which as you

say is a major battle ground, even Canada, perhaps the United

States. Ultimately the question that I raise is, to what extent are

our policies with regard to the Middle East contradictory to the

point that they almost engender this problem? Or is this inevitable? Is the fight of Israel against all comers, as we try to bring

about independence there, something that, even if we solve the

problem of occupation in Saudi Arabia and the oil, would still generate such resentment that people would say you, the United

States, still are the occupying predominant power and you are trying to rearrange the situation out in our territory?

Under those circumstances, does this war or conflict ever come

to an end? This is a broad set of questions, but address that if you

can for my help.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I think that is the toughest question I have

heard asked in this hearing, Mr. Chairman, but I will take a shot

at it because you have put this in a very large strategic scope. I

do not think there is a crystal-clear simple answer to what you

have raised, but let me think out loud about it on a couple of

scores.

First, I do not think the war on terror or, as I called it in my

testimony, the campaign against Islamic radicalism, is fundamentally about oil, although some radicals define it that way. Of

course, as you know better than anyone, states calculate their policies on the basis of interests. Well, we have not found a substitute

for oil. World oil demand is projected to rise by 50 percent over the

next 20 years, as contrasted with 34 percent in the 2 decades previous to that. China’s demand alone is projected to rise by 150 percent. Our own demand is rising. We are still the largest consumer

of oil in the world per capita. And 70 percent of the world’s exportable oil is in the Persian Gulf.

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So this is not about oil. No one went into Iraq for oil. We did not

combat Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Kuwait exclusively

about oil. But in realistic terms, oil is a factor in everyone’s interests. China has just concluded multibillion dollar deals with Iran

about oil and access and so forth. So that is all in the mix.

So perhaps ending our dependence on oil would in some way ease

the tensions that translate into the struggle against Islamic extremists. But on the other hand, it is important to realize that to

some degree they use this as an excuse, I think to a large degree.

The origins of their ideology, this particular part of the Islamic ideology, go back to a scholar named Taymiyya in the 13th century,

long before people knew about oil, and the dispute within the Islamic world is essentially between those who interpret the Koran

in one way, to justify killing of ‘‘infidels’’ and nonbelievers and everyone they want to kill, and those who accept what the Koran

says about the illegitimacy of murdering civilians and so forth. It

is a dispute that goes back to the Crusades.

So I suspect even if we ended our dependence on oil this dispute

would go on, and even our departure from a place like Saudi Arabia would not end it because their ambitions extend beyond simply

getting us out. Their ambitions extend to controlling that territory

themselves as a platform for extending their control. It is a wild

dream they have, but it nonetheless is what motivates them to create this caliphate that would extend in their mind from somewhere

in Southeast Asia all the way to North Africa.

It is also worth remembering that they attacked us on 9–11, long

before we were in Iraq. They attacked the Australians in Bali, long

before the Australians were in Iraq with us. And they attacked us

at a time when the Palestinian-Israeli dispute was not an intifada;

it was, if anything, not exactly calm, but it had been through 2 or

3 or 4 years of relative progress leading up to the Camp David

summit with President Clinton and so forth.

So these are largely excuses they use, but I would not dispute

your view that our presence and our dependence on oil injects a

certain tension into this whole relationship, which if eliminated

would make the problem clearer—would crystalize it more.

You asked how will it all end. Well, in my testimony I say that

it will not end until we have—and if I dig back into the paper I

wrote—we have to basically take away their oxygen. We have to

disrupt the things that give them global reach: Their communications, their financing, their ability to seek guidance from a central

command structure, which still exists even though it is back on its

heels, and isolate them to the point where these pieces of the network become manageable on a local level, and at the same time

combat the ideology to the point where a few people still believe

in it, just like you can find a few communists in the world, but no

one takes them seriously any more.

The CHAIRMAN. John, on that point, how do you dry up this oxygen in the sense that, picking up one of the points that Dan Benjamin said, there are self-starters among potential terrorists out

there? Now, they can, on the Internet or on American TV, gain oxygen. In other words, if you are a person who for some reason has

taken on a suicidal bent or a feeling somehow that your religion

impels you not only to commit suicide, but to take a lot of other

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people along with you as you die, you can do this in Holland or in

Spain or in Canada or the United States without really much of a

support network at this point.

In the event that the thing that excites you is that you still see

a conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians or you still see

Americans in Iraq or threatening Iran or wherever may be, these

may be apparitions that are inaccurate, but that is why I wonder,

given the self-starter business and the indigenous arrangements, or

even the foreign fighter concept, that you suddenly take on this

complex that this is your mission, this is your life, and you just go

wherever because you are a soldier of fortune.

So long past Osama bin Laden has been lost, the financing by

caravans dried up and so forth, why are we not fated to have the

rest of our lives the existence of people and existence people engaged in suicidal terrorism who for some reason or other are stimulated by whatever they believe are perverse trends in life somewhere?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. That is why I say we have to attack their ideology, and it has to come from the Muslim, from the Islamic community, because we are fated to fight this battle——

The CHAIRMAN. They would be convinced by other Muslims that

they are on the wrong track?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. It has to be—there is a wonderful study I

would commend to everyone, done by the U.S. Institute for Peace,

on the terrorist uses of the Internet. It talks about eight different

ways in which terrorists use the Internet. It is impressive—everything from psychological warfare on up to the more serious things

like terrorism manuals about how to make bombs and stuff like

that, and also planning operations, just as the 9–11 crew did.

So we are fated to fight this battle in the age of the Internet, and

that is a technology and it is a method, but it is only alive and vital

and powerful so long as the ideas moving along the Internet are

alive and vital and powerful. There are a lot of nutty things on the

Internet too that no one pays any attention to. Somehow, I do not

know how this is done—this is probably the subject for a hearing

in and of itself—how do you change the way people think about

their future if they kill themselves in these operations? I think it

has to come from the Muslim community.

I struggled in my testimony to sort of understand how we could

help the Muslim community do that. I do not really have a good

answer because I do not think they welcome our help in the way

that you recall anticommunists welcoming our help. That is a

tough one, but I think that is the only way we prevent this from

being something we are dealing with 20, 30 years from now, is to

dry up the ideology that supports it.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Benjamin, will you pitch into this conversation and make a comment?

Mr. BENJAMIN. Yes, gladly. I agree with much of what John has

said. Let me throw out a few more ideas. We do have legitimate

national interests in terms of oil. In fact, what counts most about

oil in this context is the symbolism. It is interesting to note that

the symbolism has changed somewhat. If you look back before

2001, bin Laden actually usually never spoke about attacking oil

facilities and yet now it is very much in vogue and he has endorsed

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attacks on oil facilities. The reason was that before it was viewed

as the patrimony. Now it is viewed as a way of attacking the West.

I think that part of this is because of the appearance that we—

and I emphasize, the appearance—that we are after the oil, after

occupation of Muslim lands. One of the things that we forgot in the

last few years is the colonial heritage of a lot of these nations and

the extent to which they feel that their natural resources have

been exploited and that they have been exploited.

Now, that is why the story right now has particular resonance.

Whatever we view our mission in Iraq as being—and I agree that

it was not about oil—it is being distorted and seen that way. Oil

is important in this equation, it seems to me, because our own dependence on oil, our desire for oil, has led our policymakers over

a long period of time to emphasize stability over democracy in the

region, and I give President Bush credit for having pointed that out

in what was a very path-breaking speech some time ago.

A lot of this is about bad governance and a feeling of illegitimacy

about the governments of the region, and bin Laden and his followers have been able to capitalize on that sense of illegitimacy

and of blighted futures by drawing this picture of autocrats who

are supported by the West and autocrats who, in turn, sell out

their nations for oil and who are themselves apostates and not supporters of the true faith.

The CHAIRMAN. Just on that point, to what extent do you agree

or disagree with the thought that the attack on 9–11 was, in fact,

bin Laden’s response to say to us: We are going to attack you, and

the proper response on your side would be to keep out of our business. In other words, the reason why we are interested in you, even

to the point of coming to the United States, is to get your attention;

get out, leave the area to us.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Well, this has been a recurrent theme in jihadist

violence for a long time. When Ramsey Youssef, the architect of the

first bombing of the World Trade Center, was being debriefed, he

said: Well, we figured we had to kill a quarter of a million people

to show America that it was in a war. In other words, America is

too big and too insensitive to recognize that this is going on. And

bin Laden has made the exact same argument. I do not think it

is just about getting out. I think it is actually about a fundamental

redrawing of the global order. In that regard I think we do need

to distinguish between what the radicals think and what their appeal to moderates is. The radicals do think that this is about fundamentally restoring the greatness of Islamic civilization and redrawing the global international order so that the realm of Islam

is dominant. I am not sure that most ordinary people feel that way,

but they certainly do have sympathy—many of them have sympathy—when they see someone standing up for Muslim dignity in

a way that they feel that their own leaders have not done over the

years, and then they have very ambivalent, if not downright negative, feelings about those leaders.

So this explains a lot of the attraction and it explains why, in

countries like Pakistan and Jordan, bin Laden is enormously popular and the jihadist cause has considerable support. So that it

seems to me explains the importance of oil in all this and why over

the long term that democracy may cause us even more trouble in

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the near term. Over the long term it is an important part of the

solution because when people are invested in their societies and

cannot claim that they have imposed leaders from another part of

the world then they will feel responsible for their own fate and that

will make a big difference.

I do think that we are going to be seeing suicide bombers for a

very long time. You said is this going to go on forever and I think

that this is an ideology that is very durable. But it will be, it seems

to me, a tolerable threat and one we can manage once we have

given moderates a strong reason to oppose it, to isolate the extremists, reduce the space they have to operate, and, as John suggested,

deprive them of oxygen.

When we do not have to worry about a suicide bombing every

day, when we do not have to worry about a threat from a weapon

of mass destruction, then I think we will be in a much better position and we will be in a place where we can say we have got it

under control.

The CHAIRMAN. Finally, I would just add weapons of mass destruction. Is there ever a possibility that we will be able to deny

weapons of mass destruction to these groups? For example, despite

all of our work, say, with Russia, quite apart from others outside,

there are still unsecured facilities or less well-secured situations.

Anyone studying this is going to be unnerved by the prospects, including Russians, as they took a look at the Chechens or others,

that they feel are terrorists with regard to their situation.

This is why I do not really have a pessimistic inevitably about

all of this. In answer to one of Mr. McLaughlin’s questions, we

have talked about Pakistan a good bit today. We have had testimony before our committee about the madrassa schools. These are

not all incubators of terrorism; very few are probably. But nevertheless there is testimony from Jessica Stern in her book and others who have talked, interviewed people going to some of these

schools who came out of it almost like a fraternity meeting. They

were all one together and looking toward another life and really

working as to how they would effect this, even for themselves, leaving aside a broad scale of Pakistan as a whole or Osama bin Laden.

So the entire change in educational facilities or the possibilities

really of hope for many people is of the essence. But that is a broad

scope and, as John McLaughlin has said, there has been resentment on the part of many of our coming in and saying, we would

like to help you, we would like to set up a public school system.

But if there is resentment of our philanthropy in this case, that is

going to be difficult to do.

Getting to these moderates that you are speaking of to effect

these reforms is really of the essence in diplomacy. We must work

toward identifying them, quite apart from finding the resources

that would make them effective within their own societies.

Well, let me cease for the moment because we are going to have

a vote very shortly. Senator Nelson has come and I want to give

him opportunity for some questions.

Senator NELSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I

would like to explore the parallels between Somalia and Afghanistan. So to either one of you, I would like you to talk about the

comparisons and the mistakes that we made in Afghanistan when

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we left and saw the rise of the Taliban. Are we seeing parallels in

the way that we are handling Somalia now?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Well, I think the situation in Somalia is still

very cloudy. I was looking at it just this morning and trying to get

a fix on this group of Islamists who have taken over there. But the

parallels are striking in some respects.

Somalia is a failed state. It is in recent years ungoverned. A variety of tribes hold sway who fight among themselves. For anyone to

establish control over that country, if it is a country, is difficult.

That is somewhat parallel to the situation in Afghanistan after the

Soviets left and there were then successive battles among rival factions, ending with the installation of the Taliban in the mid- to

late-1990s.

I think there is a legitimate worry here. This is saying that I do

not know everything about this new crew that has come to power,

but they are Islamists. Ambassador Crumpton, this morning, said

that they have kind of put a little olive branch out toward us, but

I suspect we do not know what that means yet. I think we need

to have legitimate concern that in that place we could see the

emergence of a terrorist safe haven if these crew of people—this

crew of people who have taken over—are of the wrong persuasion,

and I think there is a strong likelihood they are.

Now, that said, they are going to have trouble establishing control there because the warlords they have displaced for the moment

will not sit idly by and allow someone to set up a government.

There is also this transitional government which tries to establish

itself there.

So bottom line, Senator, I would say yes, our Government needs

to worry about the emergence of a terrorist safe haven there, and

that means gathering a lot more information than I have at my fingertips here today to give you a confident estimate of the likelihood

of that. But it is in a part of the world, East Africa, which is not

as heavily resourced as I understand it in our counterterrorism efforts as some other parts of the world.

Senator NELSON. And yet it is geographically in a very key location.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. It is in a key location, and it is of course from

there that we saw the Africa bombings in 1998 in August. As Ambassador Crumpton pointed out, one of the fugitives from that operation apparently is still in Somalia.

So as I stressed in my testimony, we need to put very heavy relentless focus on parts of the world that are either ungoverned or

less governed, and this is one of them. So that would be my take

on it.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I do not have much to add to that except that I

would point out that Somalia has not been an inhospitable environment for radicals for a long time. I am not sure how much of a difference the fact that this group appears to be in power in

Mogadishu will make, and that is something we need to look at

carefully over the long term.

One of the interesting things is that we have not seen more of

a growth of radicalism in Somalia during this long period of anarchy. There has been a persistent threat in the southern part of the

country and it has been seen in the East African embassy bombVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:08 Apr 19, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00074 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COUNT.TXT mich PsN: mich
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ings and in the Mombasa plot of 2002. We should also be careful

about now imagining that all our mistakes are the last mistakes.

By the last mistake I mean leaving Afghanistan to degenerate in

the way it did during the 1990s and become a safe haven for alQaeda. Frankly, I worry a lot more about what is going on in Europe than I do in East Africa. We do have to be vigilant, we do

need to get a very good idea of what is going on there, and we do

need to prevent that from becoming exploited as a real safe haven.

But there are so many different places in the world we need to

keep an eye on and, frankly, right now, I worry more about radicalism in some other parts of the world.

Senator NELSON. What do you think the Government’s position

ought to be, to reach out to the new government in Mogadishu or

to isolate them in Somalia?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Well, neither of us are policymakers, but we

are both private citizens now, so if I were——

Senator NELSON. With a lot of experience, I might say.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN [continuing]. If I would advise our Government, I would say reaching out is better than isolating, because we

do not know who these guys are yet. I do not think anyone confidently knows that. We would have to sort out our relationship

with this transitional government that we have had contact with.

But you know, it is always better to know who you are dealing with

and in some situations, as Churchill said, jaw-jaw is better than

war-war.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I completely agree with that, and I would add

that we have suffered in the past from refusing to talk to people

we did not like or have been suspicious about. I would add that one

of the main issues that we are going to have to grapple with in the

years ahead is who are the Islamists who we can do business with?

This is something that we have not sorted out at all and we will

not sort out except through long discussions and analysis of their

positions and their actions.

Senator NELSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have a vote.

The CHAIRMAN. We do indeed. Thank you, Senator Nelson.

We really thank both of you for remarkable papers, as well as

your forthcoming responses to our questions. It is obvious that we

would continue the dialog for some time if we were not constrained

by the fact that you have other responsibilities and we have ones

as well, the vote on the Senate floor. Thank you so much for coming.

So saying, the hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:22 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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