The Senate is pushing forward legislation to allow the US military to detain US citizens indefinitely as enemy combatants. But the Department of Defense does not want that power. Neither does the CIA. Nor the Department of Justice. Strange.

Spencer Ackerman reports:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta opposes the maneuver. So does CIA Director David Petraeus, who usually commands deference from senators in both parties. Pretty much every security official has lined up against the Senate detention provisions, from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to FBI Director Robert Mueller, who worry that they’ll get in the way of FBI investigations of domestic terrorists. President Obama has promised to veto the bill.

When the security state declines to accept rights-infringing powers offered by the people's Senate, the centuries-old understanding of an adversarial relationship between the power hungry state and the defiant governed is turned on its head.

I am reminded of Frederick Doglass's quote -- one that often inspired me:

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both."

I wonder if old Frederick is smiling in his grave right now.

Somehow I missed Jack Goldsmith's Times piece explaining that Cheney's War on Terror policies were ultimately counterproductive even for the purposes of bolstering executive power. In it he cites both Bush and Rumsfeld expressing regrets for taking Cheney's advice to secretly and unilaterally create CT policy.

Cheney, of course, is "'not inclined to make any mea culpas."

As Goldsmith writes:

He has instead deflected the failures of his philosophy by maintaining that Barack Obama embraced his policies. Obama did continue many of the Bush administration counterterrorism policies as they stood in January 2009. But the 2009 policies Obama inherited were not Cheney policies. They were the products of a four-year pushback against those policies...

After the killing of al-Awlaki, Cheney and his daughter stepped up to the mic to demand an apology from Obama. Their logic: Obama had criticized some of their policies, but was also using some of their other policies (sort of). And that's not fair.

John McCain responds with readily apparent exasperation to a question about whether Obama owes Cheney or Bush an apology: "About what?" He also notes that the so-called 'enhanced' interrogation program netted no valuable information.

Ali Soufan's book chronicling his insider account of the hunt for al Qaeda, The Black Banners, is now available.

Robert Baer, former CIA agent, describes it as "Superb. An education. And best book on al Qaeda out there, bar none."

Soufan discusses some of its contents on last nights's episode of 60 minutes.

And here's more from the New York Times review:

The War on Terror lives on today only as political theater. Policymakers, from President Obama to Members of Congress, continue to fear the accusation of being "soft on terror," and hence continue to describe contemporary counterterrorism efforts in martial terms. Congress continues to legislate War on Terror approaches that the security establishment, for the most part, hasn't asked for and, in some cases, has even explicitly rejected.

But while the political class remains stuck in the past, the security establishment has moved on. Virtually all of the progress that U.S. authorities have made in dismantling al Qaeda and countering terrorism has been accomplished in spite of, not because of the War on Terror. As we consider the future of U.S. counterterrorism after Bin Laden, we would do well to consider what we have learned from the evolving security response to the 9/11 attacks, and how those lessons might keep us safer in a world where the War on Terror may be over but the threat of terrorism still remains.

Read our whole piece at The Atlantic.

In an op-ed published in ROLL CALL, 'The Newspaper of Capitol Hill,' Breakthrough asks: "What is the purpose of Congress’ oversight role if not to evaluate (and regulate as necessary) such controversial and consequential executive activities?"

"Congress ... has done little to promote the kind of sustained and systematic inquiry into the effectiveness of counterterrorism practices that could not only settle questions about EITs but also improve our ability to combat terrorism more generally."

"As the debate over enhanced interrogation techniques has proved, too little about what works in counterterrorism is settled knowledge — in or out of government."

"Congress is the only entity with the constitutional authority and the wherewithal to really change that fact."

"With the Arab Spring and the death of bin Laden likely altering the future shape of the threat posed by terrorists, now is a particularly opportune time to expand our capacity to clearly and methodically evaluate the challenges we are up against and how best we can face them down."

To read the full op-ed, click here.

In a beautifully written op-ed, here, David Shipler advances an argument the Breakthrough Institute has been pushing for some time -- that the founding fathers who framed our constitution "handed down a system in which liberty and security were fused, one inseparable from the other," and that the conventional wisdom that the two are at odds is simply belied by a wealth of evidence from history, especially since 9/11.

Citing our report, "Counterterrorism Since 9/11: Evaluating the Efficacy of Controversial Tactics," Shipler also points out that the surveillance regime implemented in the wake of those horrible attacks has contributed in no measurable way to our safety since, though it has eroded a sense of identity and cooperation between the governed and their leaders.

Take a look and pass it along. Americans need to understand the truth that group security and individual liberty improve together, so they can avoid policies that jeopardize both.

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.

Continue reading "There They Go Again: Latest Claims about the Effectiveness of Enhanced Interrogation also Proven False " »

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.

Continue reading "Q&A, with Audrey Kurth Cronin " »

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" »

As the nation's new suspicious activity reporting fusion centers come online this year, observers are beginning to notice a major problem: there is a significant gap between the demand for and supply of experts able to train local police officers who will be charged with the difficult task of sniffing out terror suspects in their communities.

Unmet demand means lucrative teaching and training appointments for those who are able to fashion themselves as CT experts. But it also seems to mean that local police forces are taking what they can get in terms of tutelage, even if the curricula on offer are inaccurate or unhelpful.

According to an NPR story, Army Lt. Col. Reid Sawyer, a career intelligence officer who heads the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, "has been watching with alarm the phenomenon of officials with limited experience selling themselves as terrorism instructors."

"You've got a lot of individuals who are not academically qualified to be instructing in these venues, and more importantly they are speaking with authority, which empowers the audience with knowledge that is not necessarily accurate," said Sawyer, adding that these short courses tend to stereotype Muslims in a way that just isn't helpful as officials redouble their efforts to fight homegrown terrorism and radical Islam."

A more detailed interview study by Meg Stalcup and Joshua Craze, published in the Washington Monthly, highlights the mentality of some of the (mostly) men making the rounds training local law enforcement. For instance, "the trainer Joe Bierly, based in Riverside County, California … doesn’t think American law enforcement is ready for the next terrorist attack. At the end of the day, he said, the question is this: 'Can you run fifteen yards on a blood-slicked floor, take aim, and still hit the target?'”

"Richard Hughbank, another counterterrorism trainer, is a fourth-generation combat veteran on his father’s side. 'Honestly, I kinda fell into it,' Hughbank told [Stalcup and Craze] when [they] interviewed him in November 2009.'“I think most of us did.'”

Another self-made CT trainer, John Giduck writes, “'I think the first thing we need to do is pass federal legislation exempting law enforcement from any civil or criminal prosecution, any liability at all, for what they do if there is a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.' … 'In attempting to prepare the American psyche for the worst possible terrorist act—the taking and killing of children—we must all shed the veil of civility and luxury in which we conduct our lives.'”

"Despite their different backgrounds, the counterterrorism trainers [Stalcup and Craze] interviewed have a remarkably similar worldview. It is one of

Continue reading "Unqualified, Self-appointed CT Experts Training Local Law Enforcement " »

The White House announced today that it will be trying terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo using the Military Commissions created by Obama's predecessor and ratified by Congress in 2005.

The President was not pleased with the move, saying that "he remains committed to closing Guantanamo some day and to charging some terrorist suspects in civilian criminal courts," which have a proven track record compared to the rarely used and institutionally weak military commissions. But his hand was forced by a Congress that refuses to allow any Guantanamo detainee to be tried on U.S. soil.

Mr. Obama has already pointed out the irrationality of any concern that a terrorist might escape one of the U.S.'s maximum security prisons (which have never been breached), but Congress has not budged. He might also have cited the ample evidence suggesting that military trials reinforce terrorists' attempts to paint themselves as heroic global warriors who sit on par with the American military officers comprising the "jury of their peers" in those courts.

He could even have offered examples illustrating how military courts have produced shorter sentences than traditional criminal courts. A driver and weapons transporter for Osama bin Laden (tried in a military commission) is walking free today while the driver of a low-level Pakistanti extremist who transported paintball equipment is still serving a 15 year sentence handed down by a civilian jury. Similarly, David Hicks (sentenced in a Military Commission) walks free today, while John Walker Lindh continues to serve out a 20 year sentence (meted out by a civilian jury) for essentially the same crime.

Obama could debate all day with Congress about these issues, and show all the ways in which our constitutional system of due process rights produces surer and more exacting justice outcomes than military courts. But that would only be worthwhile if the U.S. Congress was interested in evidence. On this issue, for now, the politics of keeping "the bogeymen" off of American soil continues to hold the day.

"Recommendation: The burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially enhances security and (b) that there is adequate supervision of the executive's use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties. If the power is granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine its use."

-- The Final Report of the 9/11 Commission

While several Inspectors General and Government Accountability Office analysts have evaluated whether CT tactics implemented after 9/11 were being overused or abused, (and found that they too often were), few in or out of the government have seriously endeavored to measure whether those tactics were even effective in the first place.

Instead, most authors have assumed (a) that the government powers expanded after 9/11 have "materially enhance[d] security" and gone on to argue about (b) the prudent implementation of those measures. Heymann and Kayyem's much lauded Protecting Liberty in an Age of Terror is an excellent case in point.

In "CT Since 9/11" we begin and end with evaluations of some of the most debated and litigated tactics used since 9/11. Reviewing hundreds of government documents, media reports, and works of social science, we get to the bottom of what works and what does not to counter terrorism. You can download the report here.