Counter Terrorism

By Walter PincusMonday, August 18, 2008; A09The Defense Intelligence Agency's newly created Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center is going to have an office authorized for the first time to carry out "strategic offensive counterintelligence operations," according to Mike Pick, who will direct the program.Such covert offensive operations are carried out at home and abroad against people known or suspected to be foreign intelligence officers or connected to foreign intelligence or international terrorist activities -- but not against U.S. citizens, said Toby Sullivan, director of counterintelligence for James R. Clapper Jr., the undersecretary of defense for intelligence.Sullivan and Pick, who is chief of the agency's Counterintelligence Human Intelligence Enterprise Management Office, spoke to reporters during a Pentagon briefing this month.These sensitive, clandestine operations are "tightly controlled departmental activities run by a small group of specially selected people" within the Defense Department, said Sullivan, who exercises authority over all Pentagon counterintelligence activities. The investigative branches of the three services -- the Army's Counterintelligence Corps, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service -- have done secret offensive counterintelligence operations for years, and now DIA has been given the authority.The purpose of an offensive counterintelligence operation is not criminal prosecution, which would be the goal if the target were an American recruited by a foreign power to be an agent in this country. In such an investigation, DIA officers would work with the FBI to gather evidence for use in an indictment and a trial.In strategic offensive counterintelligence operations, a foreign intelligence officer is the target, and the main goals most often are "to gather information, to make something happen . . . to thwart what the opposition is trying to do to us and to learn more about what they're trying to get from us," Sullivan said. In the case of terrorists, the object would be to identify people who might be "trying to do harm, collect information about us, and keep them from doing that."With foreign intelligence officers, the end could be having them declared persona non grata and thrown out of the country. "There have been situations where . . . the embassy has been asked to remove the diplomat from the country in the past," Sullivan said.But other operations have run so smoothly that the targeted foreign intelligence officer did not know he had been discovered, or even that he had been manipulated by having been fed false information to send back to superiors. "Depending on the nature of the operation," Sullivan said, "the guy could finish his or her job in the U.S. and be allowed to go wherever they're going."Two years ago, the DIA asked then-Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone for authority to run offensive operations along with a newer Pentagon intelligence agency, the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA). Cambone agreed to a two-year trial, during which those involved "performed admirably," according to Sullivan. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently approved the merger of CIFA into the new DIA center.Senior Defense Department officials and the combat commanders overseas will now decide what to do with the DIA's new offensive operational authority. "These operations are based on national or DoD security requirements," Sullivan said."We are an arrow in somebody's quiver," he said. "We identify the possible threat; we work with those who are feeling the focus of the threat; and they give us some ideas about objectives, at least in the operational areas, what we're trying to accomplish."Asked by a reporter if he could tell of some past successes, Sullivan replied: "No, I cannot. We're talking about classified operations."National security and intelligence reporter Walter Pincus pores over the speeches, reports, transcripts and other documents that flood Washington and every week uncovers the fine print that rarely makes headlines -- but should. If you have any items that fit the bill, please send them tofineprint@washpost.com.From Washington Posthttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/17/AR200808... 

Current U.S. strategy against the terrorist group al Qaida has not been successful in significantly undermining the group's capabilities, according to a new RAND Corporation study issued today.

Al Qaida has been involved in more terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, than it was during its prior history and the group's attacks since then have spanned an increasingly broader range of targets in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, according to researchers.

In looking at how other terrorist groups have ended, the RAND study found that most terrorist groups end either because they join the political process, or because local police and intelligence efforts arrest or kill key members. Police and intelligence agencies, rather than the military, should be the tip of the spear against al Qaida in most of the world, and the United States should abandon the use of the phrase "war on terrorism," researchers concluded.

"The United States cannot conduct an effective long-term counterterrorism campaign against al Qaida or other terrorist groups without understanding how terrorist groups end," said Seth Jones, the study's lead author and a political scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "In most cases, military force isn't the best instrument."

The comprehensive study analyzes 648 terrorist groups that existed between 1968 and 2006, drawing from a terrorism database maintained by RAND and the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism. The most common way that terrorist groups end -- 43 percent -- was via a transition to the political process. However, the possibility of a political solution is more likely if the group has narrow goals, rather than a broad, sweeping agenda like al Qaida possesses.

The second most common way that terrorist groups end -- 40 percent -- was through police and intelligence services either apprehending or killing the key leaders of these groups. Policing is especially effective in dealing with terrorists because police have a permanent presence in cities that enables them to efficiently gather information, Jones said.

Military force was effective in only 7 percent of the cases examined; in most instances, military force is too blunt an instrument to be successful against terrorist groups, although it can be useful for quelling insurgencies in which the terrorist groups are large, well-armed and well-organized, according to researchers. In a number of cases, the groups end because they become splintered, with members joining other groups or forming new factions. Terrorist groups achieved victory in only 10 percent of the cases studied.

Jones says the study has crucial implications for U.S. strategy in dealing with al Qaida and other terrorist groups. Since al Qaida's goal is the establishment of a pan-Islamic caliphate, a political solution or negotiated settlement with governments in the Middle East is highly unlikely. The terrorist organization also has made numerous enemies and does not enjoy the kind of mass support received by other organizations such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, largely because al Qaida has not engaged in sponsoring any welfare services, medical clinics, or hospitals.

The study recommends the United States should adopt a two-front strategy: rely on policing and intelligence work to root out the terrorist leaders in Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East, and involve military force -- though not necessarily the U.S. military -- when insurgencies are involved.

The United States also should avoid the use of the term, "war on terror," and replace it with the term "counterterrorism." Nearly every U.S. ally, including the United Kingdom and Australia, has stopped using "war on terror," and Jones said it's more than a mere matter of semantics.

"The term we use to describe our strategy toward terrorists is important, because it affects what kinds of forces you use," Jones said. "Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."

Among the other findings, the study notes:

• Religious terrorist groups take longer to eliminate than other groups. Since 1968, approximately 62 percent of all terrorist groups have ended, while only 32 percent of religious terrorist groups have done so.
• No religious terrorist group has achieved victory since 1968.
• Size is an important predictor of a groups' fate. Large groups of more than 10,000 members have been victorious more than 25 percent of the time, while victory is rare when groups are smaller than 1,000 members.
• There is no statistical correlation between the duration of a terrorist group and ideological motivation, economic conditions, regime type or the breadth of terrorist goals.
• Terrorist groups that become involved in an insurgency do not end easily. Nearly 50 percent of the time they end with a negotiated settlement with the government, 25 percent of the time they achieved victory and 19 percent of the time, military groups defeated them.
• Terrorist groups from upper-income countries are much more likely to be left-wing or nationalistic, and much less likely to be motivated by religion.

"The United States has the necessary instruments to defeat al Qaida, it just needs to shift its strategy and keep in mind that terrorist groups are not eradicated overnight," Jones said.

The study, "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qaida," can be found at www.rand.org.

The report was prepared by the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center that does research for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the unified commands and other defense agencies.

OUTSIDE GARMSER, Afghanistan - U.S. Marines in helicopters and Humvees flooded into a Taliban-held town in southern Afghanistan's most violent province early April 28, the first major American operation in the region in years.

In the first edition of CTW for Homeland Security Leader, I discussed the importance of and the need to focus some of our GWOT resources on Yemen.

For more visit:
http://homelandsecurityleader.com/homeland-security/law-enforcement/coun...

The Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at the U.S. Miliatary Academy at West Point launched their new online journal dedicated to terrorism and counter-terrorism issues. Erich Marquardt, formerly with the Jamestown Foundation, is leading the project.

For more visit:
http://homelandsecurityleader.com/homeland-security/al-qaeda/counter-ter...

It is a shame such thinking as is put fourth by the authors in terms of how to counter the Al-Qa'ida's strategy has not reached decision-makers in the Bush Administration