This week, Congress will debate (and may vote on) the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012.
In an effort to bring scientific analysis to security policymaking, The Breakthrough Institute and partners from Third Way and Human Rights First - in cooperation with Representative Jan Schakowsky - will be offering a Capitol Hill panel briefing discussing which policies actually work to counter terrorism.
The event will be held in Cannon House Office Building room 122 from 1:00-2:30pm on Tuesday May 24th. Click here for details.
If you are in the D.C. area, please come by to hear Nick Adams present findings from "Counterterrorism Since 9/11: Evaluating the Efficacy of Controversial Tactics"
Other speakers will include veteran national security and counterterrorism policy advisor Suzanne Spaulding, Mieke Eoyang of Third Way and Dixon Osburn of Human Rights First.
If you are a member of the media interested in discussing this event or "CT Since 9/11," please email nick@thebreakthrough.org.
For almost ten years now, a small group of highly-placed men have repeatedly claimed that the U.S.'s counterterrorism victories have owed to getting rough with terror suspects during interrogations. They have come forward again, in the wake of bin Laden's death, to carry the banner of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' (EITs). But reports from CIA operatives, actual interrogators close to events, investigative journalists and national security experts in and out of the Bush and Obama Administrations have consistently cast doubt on or entirely debunked these claims. And to date, no hard evidence has demonstrated their truth value.
The stakes of the so-called "torture debates" involve much more than the prestige of the debaters, or even the moral and legal impacts of the policies in question. If EITs do not work, or counterproductively heighten detainee's resistance, or garner misleading and distracting information, policymakers need to understand that and invest more heavily in interrogation approaches that actually give us the information we need to duplicate the kinds of operations that found bin Laden.
A Connection Between EIT's and Bin Laden's Death?
Before any details were known about how U.S. counterterrorism agents tracked down Osama bin Laden; before anyone could have made any informed judgment about whom exulting Americans should thank for the banishment of their collective bogeyman, Dick Cheney, his daughter, Bill Kristol, Peter King, John Yoo, Karl Rove, and others in or close to the former Bush Administration already knew who deserved the credit: the Bush Administration officials and supporters who had the grit, foresight, and nerve to institute and publicly support EITs. As Cheney put it to Fox News before details were clear, "I would assume the enhanced interrogation program we put in place produced some of the results that led to bin Laden's ultimate capture."
John Yoo, a former Bush Administration lawyer, and one of the legal architects of the enhanced interrogation program, was not so circumspect as to use the word 'assume.' He closed his Wednesday Wall Street Journal opinion editorial on the bin Laden capture with the suggestion that President Obama "acknowledge his predecessor's role in making this week's dramatic success possible ... and restart the interrogation program that helped lead us to bin Laden."
The champions of EITs reported, through various media, that CIA officials learned about bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) who had undergone EITs during his detention. For these EIT advocates, early accounts suggesting KSM had provided any information about bin Laden's courier offered proof enough that it was the waterboarding that had made bin Laden's death possible (not any other interrogation tactic used by the skilled and sophisticated men and women comprising KSM's team of interrogators).
But over the last two days, more details have been clarified. First, it became clear that KSM did not offer useful information about al-Kuwaiti during or shortly after his waterboarding in 2003. At that time, he actually dug in his heels and just told interrogators that the courier was "retired" and of little importance.
Second, the actual lead to al-Kuwaiti came from a different man, Hassan Ghul, who had not been subjected to the waterboard or other harsh EITs. Ghul was captured in Iraq in 2004 and his interrogation was described to New York Times reporters by one CIA official as "quite cooperative" - one in which "rough treatment, if any, would have been brief." Ghul told his CIA interviewers that al-Kuwaiti was close to bin Laden, KSM, and Abu Faraj al-Libi, who was detained and interrogated later. This was the real lead.
Third, KSM never gave up al-Kuwaiti. In fact, KSM and al-Libi - both subjected to EITs - refused to acknowledge that al-Kuwaiti was anyone at all important. Clever investigators later worked out that these refusals - in conjunction with Ghul's testimony - probably indicated that al-Kuwaiti was, in fact, quite important. But they did not even put those pieces together until much later in 2005 - more than two years after KSM's waterboarding had ceased and interrogators had garnered troves of information from him by flattering his ego and winning his trust.
To be clear, neither KSM nor al-Libi gave up al-Kuwaiti - at least not verbally. And certainly not because of waterboarding or other harsh treatment. The man who offered up the courier to the world's most wanted terrorist gave him up to skilled interrogators who inspired his cooperation, not tormentors who beat, or 'attention slapped,' or 'walled,' or half-drowned the information out of him.
A Familiar Story
If Yoo and Rove and Cheney and all the others pushing this narrative just got it wrong this one time, they might be forgiven for jubilant self-celebration of what must feel like a win for them, too. No doubt, they put a lot of effort into tracking down bin Laden and it is understandable that they might seek to place their names on the victory trophy. But this is not the first, or the second, or even the twentieth time these men and their colleagues have attempted to claim that EITs have been responsible for successes that owe entirely to other counterterrorism tactics and strategies.
Shortly after president Obama's inauguration, former vice president Dick Cheney took the offensive in the battle to define the policy legacy of the outgoing administration, publicly criticizing the new president for weakening the country's defenses with his executive order banning the CIA's use of EITs. Sitting CIA Director, Mike Hayden, joined Cheney's side, arguing that the tactics had been necessary to gain information that had prevented American deaths. Cheney, along with his daughter Liz and her advocacy group Keep America Safe, steadily beat the drum on this point throughout the spring and summer of 2009, eventually securing the public disclosure of CIA documents they claimed would prove that EITs had produced life-saving information out of otherwise tight-lipped detainees.
Audrey Kurth Cronin is a professor of war and statecraft the U.S. National War College and also continues as a non-residential Senior Research Associate at Oxford. Before that, Dr. Cronin was Specialist in Terrorism at the U.S. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, where she advised Members in the aftermath of 9/11. She has taught at numerous other universities including Columbia, the University of Maryland and Georgetown, where her long-standing graduate course on terrorism was featured in the New York Times shortly after 9/11. In addition to her academic expertise, she has served periodically in the U.S. government, including positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. She regularly consults with agencies in both the Executive and Legislative branches. We were pleased to have the opportunity to speak with her two days after the death of Osama bin Laden to clarify the impact of his death.
Audrey Kurth Cronin: Well, first let me state that I’m speaking only for myself, as an academic.
Al Qaeda has many parts, so the term 'al- Qaeda,' is often overly broad, over-used and over-generalized. Every time we use 'al-Qaeda' to refer to this movement as if it were a seamless monolith, we give it more credit than it deserves. It is better to talk about al-Qaeda as being comprised of three levels: al-Qaeda the core, specific al-Qaeda affiliates, and local individuals inspired by the broader movement. The various parts aren't necessarily all working seamlessly with the core and, indeed, sometimes we find they are working at odds.
Beginning with the last, the third level, individuals in small cells or even on their own are responding to messages, images, blogs and chat rooms on internet sites. For them, “al-Qaeda” is more like a social movement, driving them to be inspired and even hatch plots, with sometimes tenuous operational links to the central organization.
At the second level, you have numerous affiliates, some of whom have been associated with al-Qaeda for a long period of time and some of whom are groups with quite distinct local agendas who have only adopted the al-Qaeda “brand” in recent years.
And then we have Al Qaeda central. With heavy military pressure on the core, including the recent campaign of drone attacks, we have seriously weakened the central leadership in the last 2-3 years especially. By killing bin Laden, we have greatly advanced that process by dealing a devastating blow to the core of al- Qaeda.
But you have asked what will happen as a result of “decapitation,” by which I mean the capture or killing of the leader of a group that uses terrorism. It is indeed a long-established way of damaging or ending a group—states often try to eliminate the central inspirational figure. The historical record shows that it works best with certain types of groups. And unfortunately, al-Qaeda does not match all the classic characteristics of those groups. First, groups that have ended by decapitation have generally been hierarchically structured. But, as I have explained, since 9/11 al-Qaeda has evolved through various stages, becoming more horizontal and layered. Second, groups that end through the capture or killing of a leader don't tend to have a clear succession plan. And Osama bin Laden was very careful to designate a successor and plan for the group's survival after him. Third, groups that end through decapitation tend to be younger than other groups. Having existed for at least 20 year, al-Qaeda is not young by the standards of terrorist groups: most struggle to make it beyond the average lifespan of 5-8 years. Finally, groups that end through decapitation have a strong cult of personality attached to their leader. Although bin Laden in his rhetoric insisted that the movement is not about him--that he expected to die and welcomed his own martyrdom, because the movement is much bigger than one person--Osama bin Laden has definitely developed a kind of cult of personality. So, from that perspective especially, this is a serious blow—though one not likely to END al-Qaeda.
Incidentally, looking at local groups and individuals, there's already a lively response to bin Laden’s death on the three to four thousand so-called ‘jihadist’ internet sites, chat rooms and blogs. On the whole, they are insisting that they are still dedicated to the cause and that bin Laden's death will not end of the movement.
AKC: Some of it is. But al-Qaeda the core has not been cutting edge on the use of technology in recent years. al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been more inventive, and they have their own followers and participants. And they will continue without bin Laden.
by Nick Adams
Thanks to what Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, called the most "remarkable example of focused integration, seamless collaboration and sheer professional magnificence" he'd witnessed in his half century career, Osama bin Laden is dead. The men and women who have made this moment possible have the well deserved gratitude of a nation.
But bin Laden's death does not accomplish the fatal decapitation of Al Qaeda some may have hoped for, only the amputation of one of its many (if most symbolically prominent) operational arms. And while there may be some advantages to be gained for counterterrorism operations as Al Qaeda's lieutenants jockey for position to fill bin Laden's shoes, the largest long-term threat to the terror network may be the pro-democracy movements throughout the Middle East, which in many countries are making Al Qaeda seem ineffectual, tiny and irrelevant by comparison.
Though bin Laden remained the most wanted man in the world for nearly a decade, his influence within Al Qaeda and affiliated movements had been waning for some time. Yes, he was the titular head of that organization and the movement of loosely-networked smaller organizations it helped to spawn. Yes, bin Laden held a hero status among the hundreds (or maybe thousands) who swore bayat to him and his cause. Yes, those adherents will revere him as a martyr.
But, since Operation Enduring Freedom destroyed half his organization in 2001/2002, bin Laden has controlled an ever-shrinking share of Al Qaeda operations. Killing him does not accomplish the defeat of Al Qaeda, and there are plenty of lieutenants eager (if not yet ready) to take up the mantle of leadership for the group. Bin Laden was not just operationally crippled by the initially successful U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, his escape into Pakistan tarnished his image in the eyes of many of his followers, according to Peter Bergen's recent book The Longest War.
Surrounded and outgunned in Tora Bora, bin Laden prepared for his own death, and then in an unlikely gambit abetted by U.S. bobbling of a command decision/order, he used a misdirection endangering his own men to escape under the cover of darkness. Not exactly a profile in courage. While many of his operatives understood the move as necessary to preserve their leader, others witnessed a shaken bin Laden, at least temporarily unable to muster the resolve of his more trenchant diatribes.
Many others in the Taliban and throughout bin Laden's network immediately questioned the wisdom of greenlighting Khaleid Sheikh Mohammed's brazen 9/11 attacks in the first place. Injured, on the run, second-guessed, and with his organization decimated, bin Laden laid low while other strategists charted a new course for the irhabi movement -- one seeking to establish multiple operational nodes that would allow the movement to survive even if a significant portion of the network was damaged or destroyed. This new course has directed the activity of Al Qaeda since early 2002. The terrorist network now has a stronghold in Yemen, a robust organization in Algeria, thick and growing ties to the Shabab in Somalia, and variously committed adherents self-organizing in small groups around the world.
Unfortunately, Al Qaeda is not finished because of this small victory. That is not to say the organization is on the rise, either.
Continue reading "Al Qaeda and Counterterrorism After Bin Laden" »
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