Dm B3 Correspondence- Etzioni Fdr- Entire Contents- Letter From Amitai Etzioni Re War On Terror And Nuclear Threat 236

W A S H I N G T O N

DC'

UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR

April 26, 2004

Daniel Marcus General Council National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States 301 7th Street, SW Room 5125 Washington, DC 20407

Dear Mr. Marcus, As a sociologist who has studied American society for the last 40 years, I am deeply concerned about the impact of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States on the public, federal agencies, and the White House. The cumulative and considerable effect seems to be to encourage one and all to better prepare themselves against the kind of attacks that we had faced in the past rather than focusing on the greatest dangers we next face. The 9-11 Commission hearings so far indicate that the Commission presumes a symmetry between what we lacked last time — for instance, open communication between the CIA and FBI and domestic spying of the kind MI-5 provides in the UK — and what we need to parry major new attacks. Thus, the Commission unwittingly is contributing to a malaise that military historians have long studied: fighting the last war rather than preparing for the next one. One may say that this is merely a set of hearings. However, let me remind that commission hearings constitute historical, formative moments. One such set of Congressional hearings in effect ended the McCarthy era; another not only drove Nixon out of office, but also led to major reforms in campaign financing. Most relevantly, the hearings of the Church commission, which found that the FBI greatly abused its powers by spying on American non-violent dissenters (including myself), resulted in the firewalls that were erected between the FBI and the CIA and in numerous regulations that made the surveillance of political clubs and places of worship (Mosques included) illegal. Moreover, commission hearings in the past have had effects that run much deeper

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than changes in regulations and budgets; they have profoundly changed the informal culture that greatly affects the behavior of both government agencies and the public. A major reason why information about the 9-11 hijackers did not reach those it should have, and why those it did reach refrained from acting, was that the pre-9-11 culture informed FBI agents that their careers were endangered if they were too active in such matters. The misdirected formative effects of the 9-11 Commission hearings are already evident: they are driving us to focus on improving domestic surveillance (the formation of an American MI-5 is seriously being considered). And the charge that the Bush administration wrongly focused on Iraq rather than Al Qaeda is pushing the Administration to pull all stops to find bin Laden before the elections, under the same magic belief that led it to hold that if we caught Saddam, Iraq would be pacified. The focus on past experience — which has other sources, but which is further fostered by the Commission's hearings — drives the government and the public to focus on two fronts in the war against terrorism while grossly neglecting the third and most important front. First, we are "hardening" domestic targets. Because airplanes were the last weapon of choice, we spend a giant portion of our domestic security budget on airports; the budget for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is set at $5.3 billion for 2005. And now that trains have been attacked, we are moving to better protect the rails. We seem to ignore that Al Qaeda rarely attacks twice in the same way or in the same place. Indeed, we just found out that the next target of the terrorists in Spain was going to be a shopping center. Furthermore, we have so many soft targets, from subways to water mains, from stadiums to places of worship, that most of what we do on this front is meant to assuage the public rather than truly protect us from the next attack. The second front, and a somewhat more promising one, is the effort to capture terrorists wherever they are, before they hit us. This is proving to be exceedingly difficult because, in some areas of the world, terrorists are supported by the local populations and protected by the terrain. For instance, Pakistan has just folded its drive in the northwestern provinces and the U.S. has been unable to maintain an effective control of southeastern Afghanistan. The U.S. is also having a hard time gaining the upper hand against a few hundred terrorists that roam the jungles of the Philippines and the somewhat larger number in the mountains of Columbia. Most important, even if the U.S. eliminates several hundreds of these terrorists, there are so many millions of young, ablebodied men (and women) who hate our guts that terrorist groups are finding it easy to refurnish their lines whenever they are thinned out. The third front, which was not involved in the last attack and which receives much less attention and many fewer resources, is the effort to ensure that terrorists will be unable to get hold of nuclear arms — the most effective means by which they could cause harm of an order of magnitude that would make 9-11 look like small potatoes. (Most

chemical and biological agents are much more difficult to weaponize and employ than are nuclear weapons, although these two should also get much more attention than box cutters, pocket knives, and nail clippers). Fortunately, this front is much more delineated. The number of nuclear devices that float around on the black market is limited. The number of sites in which they are poorly protected is small and well known. The list of experts who may illicitly help develop nuclear weapons is much shorter than that of garden variety terrorists. The 9-11 Commission would greatly contribute to re focusing the national attention on the greatest threats if it asked: a) why the U.S. has done so little to shut down the black market in nuclear bombs and the machinery and material needed to build them; b) why have the corporations that violated our laws and basic security needs not been properly punished; c) why have the various programs that aim to purchase nuclear bombs and material to remove them from loose hands been given such low national priority, attention, and budgets; d) why have the various programs that aim to retrain or provide alternative employment to nuclear scientists (and those who specialize in weaponized biological agents and developing chemical weapons) been given such low national priority, attention, and budget; e) was the U.S. wise to look the other way when Pakistan fed the nuclear black market and left its nukes poorly guarded, while focusing instead on pushing Pakistan to fighting garden variety terrorists; f) what can be done to vastly increase the scope and effectiveness of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI); and g) would the U.S. be well served by the creation of a special center for coordinating intelligence concerning nuclear attacks so that relevant information will not be lost among the endless streams of other information about terrorists? (This center could be a division of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center.) Although the preceding questions have been formed in terms of why things were not done in the past, the deliberations should focus not on parceling out blame but on finding ways to enhance these efforts in the future. Otherwise, the next 9-11 Commission, following a terrorist attack using nuclear weapons, would list among the factors that left us underprepared, the current 9-11 Commission misfocused hearings and their formative effect.

Amitai Etzioni AE/jlf

LOS ANGELES TIMES

MONDAY, APRIL 26, 2004

A13

Commentary

The 9/11 Panel Looks the Wrong Way By AMITAI ETZIONI

F

ast-forward three years. A bipartisan commission is conducting hearings in Washington to determine why we were asleep at the wheel when terrorists set off a nuclear device in one of our major cities. The attack killed 300,000. It shook the nation's confidence so profoundly that the Constitution was "temporarily" suspended; all civil liberties were waived to prevent future attacks. The new commission has established that one of the reasons we failed to prevent this tragedy was the impact of an earlier commission and an earlier set of healings: the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a.k.a. the 9/11 commission. The problem was that the 9/11 investigation spent too much time assigning blame and looking backward. When it came to recommending safeguards for the future, it encouraged the public, federal agencies and the White House to plan for the kinds of attacks we had faced in the past rather than foreseeing dangers to come. It unwittingly contributed to a malaise that military historians have long studied: fighting the last war rather than preparing for the next one. Could a mere congressional commission really have such a long-reaching effect? Indeed. A similar set of hearings spelled the end of the McCarthy era. Another drove Richard Nixon out of office and led to campaign finance reform. And the Church Commission, which found that the FBI improperly spied on domestic dissenters during the 1960s, strengthened the wall between the FBI and the CIA — the same wall that is now under attack for its role in our 9/11 failures. Consider the buzz emerging from the 9/11 commission now. In reaction to our

Probing the past won't do. The gravest threat is nuclear attack. intelligence miscues, it's pushing public opinion toward approving something like an American MI5, a domestic spying agency similar to Britain's. By highlighting Bush's inattention to terrorism before Sept. 11, it is no doubt abetting an administration desire to recoup politically by dispatching Osama Bin Laden before the elections. These actions might have merit, but they don't block the gravest of the foreseeable dangers posed by terrorIsm — nuclear weapons. In much the same way, our current anti-terrorist strategies also miss the point. Because airplanes were the previous weapon of choice, weVe earmarked $5.17 billion in 2005 (out of $5.3 billion budgeted for the Transportation Security Administration) for airports. Now that trains have been attacked in Madrid, we are moving to better protect the rails. But we seem to ignore that Al Qaeda rarely attacks twice in the same way or in the same place. We're also spending billions trying to eliminate terrorists — in Afghanistan, in the Philippines and Indonesia, in Colombia and in Europe — before they can hit us. This could be effective, but it is also exceedingly difficult. Terrorists are mobile, hidden and often protected by local populations. And there seems to be an unending supply of fresh recruits for every cell we take out. As for preventing terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear weapons, it's a strategy that by comparison gets little attention and few resources. Approximately

$1 billion is set aside for the purpose, just one-fifth of what we're spending to find shoe bombs, box cutters and nail clippers at airports. (Eliminating chemical and biological weapons is also important but less so, because those agents are much more difficult to weaponize and employ than nuclear material.) Yet the nuclear threat can be met. The number of nuclear devices floating around on the black market is limited. The number of sites where they are poorly protected is small and well known. The list of experts who might illicitly develop nuclear weapons is relatively short. The 9/11 commission, which is charged not just with investigating the past but preparing us for the future, should fix this strategic imbalance. It should recommend a substantial budget increase for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which provides for the supervised destruction of nuclear weapons, the removal of "loose" plutonium from global circulation, and alternative training and employment of nuclear weapons scientists. It should also recommend an increased commitment to the administration's Proliferation Security Initiative, a set of international agreements that allows the United States and its allies to search planes and ships that are suspected of carrying nuclear weapons and material. And finally, it should call for the creation of a special center for coordinating intelligence concerning nuclear attacks so that it will not be lost among the endless streams of other information about terrorists. Amitai Etzioni teaches sociology at George Washington University. His book "From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations" (Palgrave) will be published in May.