sack the spooks

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

Sack the intelligence chiefs who have failed us so badly
This crisis has revealed the incompetence of British and US spooks

Peter Preston
Monday November 5, 2001
The Guardian

There are, you may distantly recall, four horsemen to this pending
apocalypse: military action, financial action, diplomatic action - and
intelligence. But without intelligence, there is precious little
useful action of any kind. And that, two months in, is precisely where
we find ourselves. Without intelligence. Time to shape up and kick a
few equestrian butts.

Four in particular suggest themselves. They belong to George Tenet,
director of the CIA, Robert Mueller, director of the FBI, and
(downscale) to their British opposite numbers, Sir Richard Dearlove
and Sir Stephen Lander (otherwise known as the knights of the crossed
wires). As a disenchanted press begins to cry for ritual sacrifices,
for example, of poor Geoff Hoon, here's a quartet of sacrifices that
might actually do some good.

The war may be a misnomered, misbegotten one: the tactics lugubriously
resorted to may seem crude or counterproductive. What is not in doubt,
though, is that sometime, somehow there will have to be a turning
point that can reasonably be hailed as victory: for letting the master
perpetrators of September 11 run free to murder thousands more is not
an option.

It isn't Bush's face or Blair's poll rating that matters. It isn't
even the 43% of the British public who told the Observer yesterday
that they don't believe bin Laden will ever be caught. It is, at the
very least, stopping these killers as well as stopping the killing.
And we need to be clear-eyed about the critical failure so far: just
one damn intelligence debacle after another.

Would high-profile sackings help? Do you rationally ditch your
generals, overt or covert, in the midst of such a campaign? Only in
extremis, perhaps. But consider the intelligence record so far - with
extreme prejudice.

Osama bin Laden was not exactly a nonentity on September 10. He was
already America's (and thus Britain's) most wanted man, vainly
searched for over the years. He had warned floridly of a big coup
coming. Yet nobody was ready, nobody had a clue. Intelligence sat
stunned at the back of the class.

And since the twin towers imploded, things have grown worse, not
better. Outside America, in the hills of southern Afghanistan, Bin
Laden sits unscathed with his video camera. Why don't the "crack"
special forces teams go in and root him out? Because they have no idea
where he is. Because information on the ground (about almost anything
useful) is chronically deficient. Because the rising of the Pashtun
tribes against the Taliban that CIA analysts predicted simply hasn't
happened. Because the Taliban are tougher nuts than those fabled
experts in their cosy offices supposed.

The carpet bombing that is turning off the Arab world was never, of
course, a part of the plan. The weeks of collateral damage and
friendly fire were never strategic imperatives. They are there,
continuing, because nobody has a brighter idea or better information.
Thud and blunder replacing intelligence.

And inside America? You sigh for the FBI. Over a thousand of the usual
suspects rounded up - but not one breakthrough worth a damn. Nobody
who matters in custody, nobody talking. Anthrax letters potter through
the post - to Kenya, Argentina and Pakistan as well as Washington and
New York. Why? Mr Mueller's finest have no idea. There are general
alerts from time to time, awful warnings, but nothing specific enough
to be useful rather than merely alarming. Failure before the event has
turned to prolonged failure after it.

One grisly conclusion. In spite of the threat, openly signalled, in
spite of the billions of dollars spent - now topped up with a billion
more - America's intelligence forces had no Muslim expertise and no
key Muslim operators in the field. They start, literally, from ground
zero. They are as hapless and hopeless as their braided colleagues
ordering up the B-52s.

Sir Richard and Sir Stephen, by contrast, are far smaller sherries.
They, like Britain itself, stand on the peripheries of conflict. But
they, too, have served no apparent function thus far. The Arab
groupings we allowed to operate here because we could supposedly keep
an eye on them have yielded no gold. Any contacts that might go with
our colonial, subcontinental past are barren. We, like the Americans,
have our general alerts. The rest is silence. Mr Trimble has his peace
from a really useful Alliance. We don't even have the Real IRA.

Unfair? Good chaps doing their best now that rotter Shayler's under
wraps? Perhaps: you certainly wouldn't expect ministers to gripe in
public. It is not the done thing. But what goes for the CIA and FBI
also goes for our homegrown talent. After the cold war ended, they all
looked for new threats and new revenue streams. There was (remember?)
the war on drugs. How could that be waged without good sources in the
Afghan field? There was the threat of militant Islam. There was the
struggle against organised crime and its cash-covered channels.

Nothing, at first glance, could have prepared them better for the
pivotal task now thrust upon them, the underpinning of this entire
"war". Yet nothing, as September turns into mid-November, is what we
get. And the lightest skim through Stella Rimington's otherwise
unenlightening memoirs rings the same bell you can hear tolling in DC.
Just as Donald Rumsfeld's top brass likes a war that can safely be
fought from 30,000 feet, so the thoroughly modern spooks - the bright,
educated, ideal dinner party guests Dame Stella lauds - like scanning
electronic data gathered from the skies. Hands don't get dirty that
way.

Our lack of intelligence, in short, isn't bad luck, but bad judgment;
systemic rather than random. And that is why the issue needs airing
and why Messrs Bush and Blair ought to start kicking. George Tenet is
a hold-over from the Clinton area, retained for an "undetermined"
span. Why not make a determination? Why go on pretending that
"homeland security" can be guaranteed without homeland revolution?
Every bone in New Labour's body affirms that public targeting and
constant monitoring is the only way to run vast public service
operations like health and education and, even now, the police. Why
excuse boots for this most vital service of the lot?

In democratic life, politicians are paid to take the rap - and will
do, unless this man hunt succeeds. But the people who have let us down
most evidently are unaccountable, wrapped in their secrecies and
introversions. It doesn't make sense any longer.

We want to catch Osama bin Laden. We wish to dismantle his network.
Perhaps the Libyans and the Syrians, sotto voce, can help us. Perhaps
the Pakistanis could do more. But the central argument for a bombing
pause now is purely practical, as practical as the weeks spent
assembling aircraft carriers in the Arabian sea. When in doubt, stop
digging and start thinking. A fundamental intelligence test.

p.preston@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx