[Mb-civic] White House has Terrorist Experts Worried

[Michael Butler]

    Go to Original 

    White House Has Some Terror Experts Worried
    By Jeffrey Fleishman
    Los Angeles Times

     Wednesday 11 August 2004
 Officials here and overseas say U.S. alerts and release of information
could hinder broader investigations.

    Berlin - Heightened terror alerts and high-profile arrests of suspected
Islamic extremists have international security experts and officials
concerned that the Bush administration's actions could jeopardize
investigations into the Al Qaeda network.

     European terrorism analysts acknowledge that the U.S. and its allies
are under threat by Al Qaeda, but some suggest that the White House is
unnecessarily adding to public anxiety with vague and dated intelligence
about possible attacks. Some in Western Europe suspect the administration is
using fear to improve its chances in the November election.

     Terrorism experts say too much publicity about possible plots and raids
of Islamic extremist networks, including the arrest of 13 suspects in
Britain last week, could hurt wider investigations. American politicians
have called for an examination of that contention. Officials in Pakistan
reportedly said Tuesday that Washington's recent disclosure of the arrest of
a suspected Al Qaeda operative, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, allowed other
extremists under surveillance to disappear.

     "It causes a problem. There's no doubt about that," said Charles
Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies. "The moment you make any
announcement, you tell the other side what you know. As a rule of thumb, you
should keep quiet about what you know."

     British security officials are angry over recent U.S. revelations of
terrorist threats and arrests, said Paul Beaver, an international defense
analyst based in London. He said the attitude among some British
intelligence officials was that the "Americans have a very strange way of
thanking their friends, by revealing names of agents, details of plots and
operations."

     Along with such criticism, the administration faces questions at home
about how it handles terrorism investigations and alerts. It insists it
hasn't used the alerts to further Bush's political campaign, but some
Democrats disagree.

     Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked the White House, in a letter to
national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, to explain how Khan's name was
made public and whether the disclosure had jeopardized any investigations.

     Rice said over the weekend that she did not know whether Khan was
cooperating with Pakistani authorities, and she said his name had not been
disclosed publicly by the administration. The administration has tried to
find a middle ground between informing the public and keeping investigations
secret, she said.

     "We've tried to strike a balance," Rice said. "We think for the most
part we've struck a balance, but it's indeed a very difficult balance to
strike."

     Several senior U.S. counterterrorism officials have expressed concern
in the last week about the amount of information leaking out, saying it has
begun to have a direct and negative effect on efforts to round up suspects
and gain insight into any conspirators.

     "It is really hurting our efforts in a very demonstrable way," said one
official, who declined to elaborate.

     Larry Johnson, a former senior counterterrorism official at the State
Department and CIA, said Tuesday that the leaks were part of a pattern in
which the administration had undercut its own efforts to fight terrorism by
divulging details when doing so was deemed politically advantageous.

     The administration "has a dismal track record in protecting these
secrets," said Johnson, deputy director of the State Department's Office of
Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993.

     "We have now learned, thanks to White House leaks, that the Al Qaeda
operative was being used to help authorities around the world locate and
apprehend other Al Qaeda terrorists," Johnson said, citing reports that the
disclosures "enabled other Al Qaeda operatives to escape."

     "Protecting secrets and sources is serious business," he added.
"Regrettably, the Bush administration appears to be putting more emphasis on
politicizing intelligence and the war on terror. That approach threatens our
national security, in my judgment."

     Officials in Western Europe are reluctant to speak even off the record
on intelligence matters. Most governments here are more circumspect in
announcing possible terrorist threats and are concerned that Washington is
acting too quickly on intelligence that has not been thoroughly analyzed.
Germany, France and Britain have not raised their terror alerts during the
August vacation season.

     "The Code Orange disaster in the U.S. last week was quickly followed by
raids in Pakistan and arrests in Britain, which all help the Bush
administration show there is a global terrorist network," said Kai
Hirschmann, deputy director of the Institute for Terrorism Research in
Essen, Germany. "But I think there's a bit of politics behind it.

     "What makes it complex is that we know there are dangers out there, and
that makes it difficult to tell fact from fiction," he said. "With all this
media attention, one has to wonder what else is at work."

     But other countries, such as Italy, one of the closest U.S. allies on
Iraq, have followed Washington's lead. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's
government has issued numerous terrorist warnings. Thousands of extra
Italian police have been deployed after threats on an Islamic website said
terrorists would strike if Rome did not withdraw its troops from Iraq by
Aug. 15.

     Europeans discovered in March that terrorists like to attack at
symbolic times: The Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people sent a
shudder through the continent just days before Spanish elections. But
skepticism toward Washington means many in Europe are wondering if the
threats recently reported in the U.S. are genuine or political spin.

     In Britain, the recent raids followed last month's seizure in Pakistan
of computer files belonging to Khan. The disclosure of his arrest and
identity allowed some Al Qaeda suspects under Pakistani surveillance to slip
away, officials told Associated Press in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

     The files also led to Britain's arrest of Abu Eisa al Hindi, who U.S.
authorities allege was enlisted by Khan to spy on financial institutions in
New York and Washington. Hindi had been under observation by British
security officials for months. There were indications that the British
government, forced to act after Washington's disclosures about Khan's files,
felt stung by the exposure of his sudden arrest.

     "It looks as though there has been some irritation at fairly high
levels in both Pakistan and Britain" over U.S. revelations, said Timothy
Garden, a security analyst at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

     British Home Secretary David Blunkett, echoing concerns raised by U.S.
lawmakers about identifying suspects, said he would not divulge intelligence
to "feed the news frenzy." The British government, he added, does not want
to "undermine in any way our sources of information or share information
which could place investigations in jeopardy.... We don't want to do or say
anything that would prejudice any trial."

     The U.S. has been less forthcoming with intelligence when it comes to
Germany's attempts to prosecute suspected terrorists. It is refusing to
allow alleged Al Qaeda operatives in its custody to testify at a retrial of
a suspected extremist that began Tuesday in Hamburg. Saying it would harm
ongoing intelligence gathering, the U.S. is denying the court access to
Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

     In a letter this week to German authorities, the State Department said
it would provide only unclassified summaries of interrogations with certain
suspects. The decision, German prosecutors say, jeopardizes the case against
Mounir Motassadeq, a Moroccan accused of having links to the Sept. 11
hijackers. A second Moroccan in Germany was acquitted this year on similar
charges after a judge found he could not get a fair trial without access to
Binalshibh or his interrogation transcripts.

     The Bush administration is "creating an overall tension that has both
tactics and politics around it," Hirschmann said. "When I hear things about
concrete targets such as airports and stock exchanges, I am less worried
something will happen there. You don't publicize things. You don't
communicate what you know through the media."

     In Italy, terrorist alerts have created an atmosphere similar to that
in the U.S. The Berlusconi government and the Italian media have heavily
reported threats made by militant groups to attack the country unless Rome
withdraws from Iraq.

     In a front-page editorial last week, La Repubblica said Italy was in a
"poisoned climate." It said the threats had "to be weighed carefully. It
would be irresponsible to ignore them, but it would also [be wrong] to
exaggerate them to create panic and ... a psychological war."

  

  -------

   Jump to TO Features for Thursday August 12, 2004   


 © Copyright 2004 by TruthOut.org