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THE THREAT: DEFINING THE PROBLEM

Terrorism is not the enemy, terrorism is a tactic.1

Lorry M. Fenner

The US government and military have not yet fully transitioned from Cold War and
Industrial Age thinking and postures to face Information Age, transnational threats
effectively. Catastrophic terrorist attacks are not the only significant challenges we face,
but the attacks of September 11, 2001 have shown us in dramatic terms that we can no
longer adjust gradually to globalization and the new era. We must move much more
rapidly to posture and equip our people, our government and the intelligence community
to combat this challenge as well as other transnational challenges (those known and
those not yet anticipated).

Hypothesis: The Intelligence Community (1C) and policy makers did not understand
the threat to US national security in the late 1990s. We focused too narrowly on Usama
Bin Laden (UBL), and then incrementally enlarged that focus to al Qa'ida senior
leadership (AQSL). The narrow focus and ad hoc changes made creating a
comprehensive and appropriate US Government (USG) strategy difficult. This, in turn,
made the development of an effective intelligence strategy nearly impossible. Since
9/11 our focus has changed. Now it is too broad - a global war on terrorism (GWOT).2
Our strategy must be grander than one that only addresses a tactic; terrorism.
Although others reject this notion, we posit that the threat is ideological -violent Islamic
extremism. We do not posit a "clash of civilizations", however whether our adversary is
one group, al Qa'ida, or a network of groups, we must address this ideology, and we
must analyze the adversary's goals and strategy.3 Only then can we truly understand
why the US is a target. Only then can we design a strategy or set of strategies with
effective campaign plans and tactics to defeat our adversaries.4
First, this paper posits our adversary's strategy including notional "ends, ways,
and means." Next, is a review of the security environment and terrorism and the
intelligence attempts to assess and respond to these. While we had a general National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and an update, in the absence of a comprehensive
assessment specifically of al Qa'ida, the Counterterrorism Center worked from a
narrow, DCI approved "plan". The paper ends with a call for an appropriate assessment
of the threat and proposes possibilities that would bring us closer to being able to
design an effective strategy.

1 Many books have been written about the threat, terrorism, and strategy. This is not meant to be
a comprehensive review or overview, but a thumbnail sketch of our framework for analysis.
2 Jeffrey Record, "Bounding the Global War on Terrorism," Strategic Studies Institute, December
2003.
3 Bard O'Neill, Insurgency & Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, Brassey's Inc.,
Washington, 1990. O'Neill provides a framework for analysis.
4 Combating Terrorism in a Globalized World, National War College, May 2002 is one example of
an analysis of a "pansurgency" and designing ends, ways and means to respond.

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Ends. Some do not agree with the notion that we can use an analogy to International
Communism and the Cold War to analyze our current problem.5 Although our
adversaries do not now have a national base like the Soviet Union or China, we can
make a useful if not perfect comparison to communist insurgencies in their movement
phase. This challenge is "an international"; Al Qa'ida and its affiliates (GAI, EIJ, ASG,
etc.) form a larger, world-wide group that has loyalty to a movement. UBL's February
1998 fatwa announced the formation of the "World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the
Jews and Crusaders" and calls for attacks to continue until Jerusalem and Mecca are
"liberated" from the United States and its allies and US troops "move out of all the lands
of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim." Their goals are explicit; they
want to claim nation-states as bases with clients, proxies and possibly a bloc. Their
collective strategy is long term, attritional and, possibly, annihilationist (at least towards
Christians and Jews in their regimes and regions). Their enemies include secularist
Arabs, moderate Muslims, and leaders of Muslim majority states who do not support.
As they seek to overthrow the current world order, first they want the United States and
other non-Muslim powers out of the states they wish to claim. Next, they want Islamic
regimes as neighbors; Israel must be destroyed. Finally, they want to emasculate
international organizations and disrupt non-Muslim states worldwide (the US, Canada,
Australia, other western democracies, Russia) so they will never be a threat to their
extremist regimes or their people in the future.

Ways. Our adversary has taken the strategic offensive with terrorist acts worldwide,
even while they entice us to challenge their strong, tactical defensive stance with hit-
and-run attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. A campaign of widely separated,
shifting, surprise attacks strategically and tactically gives them the initiative. But this is
not the whole of it. Terrorism is only one tool or tactic. Among other tools, they use
diplomacy, public diplomacy/propaganda and educational programs/support, economic
support for like-minded groups or opportunistic allies, and efforts to undermine other
cultures.6
A lot of paper and ink is spent on this problem. While we have found many alerts
of possible attacks; many intelligence reports of terrorist activities and personalities; and
many assessments of terrorist leaders' intentions and goals; we do not find evidence
that our 1C has conducted a comprehensive analysis of our adversaries' as part of a
pansurgency or ideological movement nor of their strategy. While the 1995 National
intelligence Estimate (NIE) and 1997 update assessed many things correctly, neither
took a broader view of our adversary. In addition, even after the 1998 East Africa
Embassy bombings and the two year limit of the 1997 update, the 1C failed to update
the Estimate even as our understanding of UBL and al Qa'ida was changing. Even as
the 1C gained an understanding that UBL championed an ideology that was inimical to
our interests, called for worldwide jihad against American civilians and others, and that
participated in planning strategy and operations, our evidence so far shows the
Community only communicated this new understanding to policy makers in piecemeal
fashion. The large numbers of documents the 1C produced did not suffice to capture the

5 Record.
6 There is evidence that al Qa'ida and affiliates make money from the drug trade; and that the
leadership has recognized the additional benefits of fostering a drug culture.

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attention of decision-makers. Policy makers' attention would have been necessary to

cause them to mandate an integrated and comprehensive government strategy to
combat the larger phenomenon of a global, violent, extremist Islamic movement. Their
attention would have been necessary to insure that such a strategy was implemented
quickly and with energy and efficiency. In the midst of other valid high priorities (there
were many reports produced during this same period on Russia, China, Weapons of
Mass Destruction, Proliferation, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, etc.), the signal to noise ratio
on UBL and al Qa'ida was badly skewed in favor of noise.

Means. UBL has his family finances and legitimate financial market activity as well as
gaining resources through some Islamic charities. Al Qa'ida uses legitimate and
criminal markets to gain as well. The movement is able to recruit not just the desperate
and destitute, but also the well-educated, the scientists and engineers and medical
doctors, the middle-class and well off (many middle-class young men have few
prospects for viable professional or political careers in their societies). Many of the
latter bring monetary as well as intellectual capital to the fight. UBL and his cohort have
trained thousands of mujahedin. They are able to use and ally with rogue regimes and
non-Islamic terrorist organizations as proxies and affiliates.
We need a comprehensive assessment of how and who they recruit if we are to
be able to counter them successfully. While we target the "vanguard" or leaders, we
must recognize that they are in many ways quite different from the "workers" and
"farmers" who commit suicide or act as facilitators. The movement can afford to lose
19/3000 in ratios for suicides, but they will still need a mass of followers to move to the
next constructive phases of their strategy. The organization needs these footsoldiers if
it is to graduate into a mass movement and achieve its larger goals. We need to prevent
that. We also need to prevent other groups and proxies from joining, or split those
already joined apart which are necessary to achieve their larger goals.
As our National Security Strategy (NSS), September 2002, and our National
Strategy for Combating Terrorism (NSCT), February 2003, recognize, we must fight "a
war of ideas" and win the "minds and hearts", but we did not, and have not yet,
articulated the threat as an ideology with a mass of followers [or an aim to build such a
movement/pansurgency] and our current strategy seeks to transform the
international/transnational warriors back into state confined criminals who can be
countered by national law enforcement.

The Security Environment: The global environment is increasingly complex and

changes at an ever increasing rate. While state actors may continue to threaten US
national security with both nuclear and conventional arms, none are assessed today as
having both the capability and intent to threaten us globally or at home. US Intelligence
must dedicate some attention on emerging threats and opportunities relative to state
actors and a number of international challenges such as mass migrations, failed and
failing states, extreme poverty, health emergencies and natural disasters. On the other
hand, violent Islamic extremists have the will and capacity to inflict enormous damage
on the US and our interests at home and abroad. The information revolution and
globalization of economics and travel, along with the openness of democratic nations,
allow non-state actors to operate transnational^ with unprecedented ease. These

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phenomena have erased the domestic/foreign divide which has been an organizing
principle of US national security and law enforcement for many years. In order to
respond and reform appropriately, in order to organize our structures and processes
effectively, we have to understand the threats and opportunities of the 21st Century.7
We address only one here.

Terrorism: Terrorism is a very old tactic used by state and non-state entities—some
criminal and some motivated by powerlust or ideology. It is used predominantly by
those who are not as powerful militarily and technologically as their adversaries, i.e.
insurgents. Because terrorist targets can include civilians and non-combatants, it has
over the years been criminalized or outlawed by governments and international
protocols. Still, there are many and varied specific definitions of terrorism. The 2002
NSS says, "The enemy is terrorism - premeditated, politically motivated violence
perpetrated against innocents." Bard O'Neill explains that "[i]nsurgent terrorism is
purposeful, rather then mindless, violence because terrorists seek to achieve specific
long-term, intermediate, and short-term goals. The longer term goal is, of course, to
change the political community, political system, authorities, or policies. The
intermediate goal of terrorism is not so much the desire to deplete the government's
physical resources as it is to erode its psychological support by instilling fear into
officials and their domestic and international supporters."8 O'Neill continues that
"though the general purpose of terrorism has been to alter the behavior and attitudes of
specific groups, this has not excluded the simultaneous pursuit of one or more
proximate objectives...." Jane Holl posits that even the 9/11 attacks on the United
States were aimed at the Saudi regime.9 By itself, terrorism is rarely successful in the
long term. In the short term, if governments respond too weakly, or instead too violently
or indiscriminantly, populations might side with terrorists creating a popular revolution.
If the government provides adequate security and accomplishes needed reforms, it will
gain favor with the population and take motivating grievances away from the terrorists.
Because the 1C (primarily the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the DCI's
Counterterrorism Center (CTC)), and therefore the USG, identified the threat to the
nation's security as terrorism - even though terrorism is merely a tactic - our response
has been skewed. What we required was for the 1C to go beyond notice and warning
that there was a growing use of this tactic by a variety of groups, to a sharper and more
comprehensive assessment of these groups' underlying motivations and intentions. We
have responded intuitively, with all the attendant tendencies to mirror-image the threat,
instead of intellectually to this challenge. According to many we have interviewed, the
1C was too busy responding to multiple complex and conflicting challenges in the 1990s
from the wars in Iraq and Kosovo to watching China, Iran and North Korea closely to the
hunt for proliferators and WMD. According to a senior UBL/al Qa'ida analyst at the Joint

7 Discussions with Gordon Lederman, Lloyd Salvetti, and Kevin Scheid (9/11 Intelligence Task
Force).
8 O'Neill, pp. 24-25. O'Neill acknowledges others in defining insurgency as "a struggle between a
nonruling group and the ruling authorities in which the nonruling group consciously uses political
resources (e.g., organizational expertise, propaganda, and demonstrations) and violence to
destroy, reformulate, or sustain the basis of legitimacy of one or more aspects of politics," p.13.
9 Staff Director for the Carnegie Commission on the Causes of Violent Conflict. Currently the UN
Assistant Secretary General for Mission Support, Department of Peacekeeping.

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Intelligence Task Force-Counter-Terrorism (JITF-CT) of the Defense Intelligence

Agency (DIA) terrorism was too dynamic a target for an in-depth assessment to be
useful. According to many at CIA, a well-considered assessment and strategy, as well
as stronger and more consistent management, was inimical to their needed creativity
and flexibility.
Management would certainly be confounded by the problematic structure. There
was no National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for CT or Islamic Extremism because the
CTC was meant to serve this function. And the NIO for Warning was not supposed to
engage on terrorism or the groups that were increasingly using it because the CTC was
meant to serve this function through its Interagency Intelligence Committee on
Terrorism (IICT), Community Counter-terrorism Board (CCB), and the Terrorism
Warning Group (TWO). But the DCI and CIA/DDO watched, and the DDI stood by, as
the CTC focused on operations and special activities instead of marshaling and
integrating all the 1C resources to serve a broader strategy against a bigger and
different threat than a terrorist financier and a tactic.

The Counter-terrorism NIEs: The widely-coordinated and disseminated 1995 National

Intelligence Estimate (NIE) discussed the issue of terrorism and warned of conning
domestic attacks from non-state sponsored, loosely networked, Islamic extremists but
strangely claimed they were "non-ideological." It covers many avenues we would have
wanted to see in such a document and warns that while intelligence can provide
strategic warning, it will be weak on tactical warning. By the time of the 1997 Update,
the intelligence community recognized the growing danger from terrorism but only
identified UBL as a terrorist financier who operated abroad. The NSS of these years
addressed terrorism similarly, which makes sense because national strategies should
be based on challenges and opportunities identified by our nation's best intelligence.
The 1999 National Security Strategy barely mentions terrorism and calls on the
intelligence community merely to attempt to warn and, more importantly, rapidly assess
culpability after an attack.

Without an comprehensive strategic assessment or NIE: Between 1995 and 2001

we correctly identified groups that used terrorism and had global reach; those that were
of greatest danger to Americans and American interests. But we did not return to our
1995 and 1997 Estimates to revise our assessments. While we were finding that in
addition to Hezbollah, the group al Qa'ida and its affiliates meant to do us great harm,
we did not have a national estimate of them specifically - their goals and their
strategies. We focused on their tactics and their leadership. While this focus has led
the 1C to be relatively successful in supporting the pursuit of leadership targets, it has
prevented the 1C from tackling the real enemy operationally and strategically. The lack
of an strategic assessment that would capture the attention of policymakers and spur
them to action first resulted in there being no appropriate USG strategy. We understand
there was a draft NIE being prepared in the spring of 2001 that was finally completed in
2002 but we have not yet seen it (since it is "outside our scope"). And now we have a
2002 NSS and a 2003 NSCT that are helpful but still miss the mark. We have been told
that the CTC has a new strategy, but it has not yet been approved by the DCI, and we
have not been afforded a copy. It will be interesting to see how the threat is articulated.

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It presumably is built on the NSS and NSCT which are both problematic. Still, it is
critical that it address the entire 1C and the links to the National Strategy for Homeland
Security and other USG and state and local intelligence and law enforcement support
for decision makers.

The DCI's Plan: Until 2004, according to Joint Inquiry and our own interviews, CTC
was working from "a Plan." It was not a CIA plan and it was not an 1C plan, much less
was it a USG strategy. It focused on a tactic. It focused on terrorism as a crime and
UBL and his senior lieutenants as criminals. It focused overseas where these particular
criminals lived, trained, and operated before 9/11 (leaving aside for the moment the
question of their involvement in the first World Trade Center (WTC) bombing in 1993).
Even the FBI, which had responsibility for domestic intelligence and criminal
investigation on terrorism, was focused overseas on capturing and prosecuting these
criminals. Relatedly, but not comprehensively or synergistically or in full coordination,
the State Department and Department of Treasury pursued stopping state support for or
acquiescence to UBL and to contain his finances. Little was done, despite the WTC 93
attack or the Ressam Millenium arrest and other warnings of possible domestic attacks,
to effectively and appropriately bring in State (consular affairs), Justice (INS, Border
Patrol), airport and port security, the FAA or commercial transportation. UBL and his
senior lieutenants moved, but not that widely (as far as we knew) outside the Middle
East and South Asia.11 The USG focus was on responding to the catastrophic results of
the use of WMD or cyber attack in the United States, but besides a "forward defense"
(deter, disrupt, render overseas) little was done to consider prevention of them. Further,
little if anything was done to consider the psychological and economic effects of a high
explosives attack or numerous smaller attacks on the homeland.12
One can look at the many successes of the 1C from 1995 - 2003 in preventing or
delaying terrorist attacks and in capturing terrorist groups' second tier leaders and
functionaries and from these successes decide that the few attacks that have affected
Americans are the price of living in the world. In other words, there has been no real
failure. If so, we could judge our approach, even without a USG-wide and IC-wide
strategy as a general success to be capitalized on and expanded. On the other hand,
one might conclude that we have been extremely lucky (despite our lack of sound
management and integrated approach) that these groups have been relatively timid and
resource poor. Then we might judge that our structure and approach are really
ineffective and that it is only a matter of time before they attack again. In fact, we might

10 All these Departments and USG agencies had representation on the CTC's IICT and
levied/vetted requirements and warnings.
11 The January hearings pointed out that, although individual agencies had some efforts
dedicated to terrorist travel, the 1C did not have a comprehensive strategy to track the travel of
leaders overseas and "footsoldiers" to the US and Europe. We see the results of a new CTC
operational approach to doing so in the arrest, over the past two years, of a number of al Qa'ida's
senior leadership.
12 It appears little was done to think of or counter the myriad other possibilities except for one occasion
reported on in the Joint Inquiry report. During the Reagan administration INS tried to enlist the assistance
of the FBI to find student visa abusers who were studying in certain sensitive subjects who were from
countries on the state-sponsors of terrorism list. The FBI was non-responsive.

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reason that we have not experienced more domestic attacks because our adversaries
have concentrated on spectacular and suicide attacks. What if they change their tactics
and decide to attack us at home on a smaller but more continuous basis? We can posit
that they would have even more success and we would not at all be prepared to counter
that strategy with our current approach. If they have learned something from the 2001
anthrax attacks or the DC area sniper or successful but smaller scale attacks in Israel,
we are in deep trouble.

"The Plan" is not enough: Focusing on encouraging the world to criminalize terrorism
is an old requirement and a good one as far as it goes. It is appropriate that we work
this with all the tools of national power with renewed and constant attention. It is not
enough.
Tracking down criminals for arrest and prosecution is an old requirement and a
good one. It is appropriate that law enforcement, the military, and intelligence and
special activities work this with the help of all the tools of national power with renewed
and constant attention. We must also enlist our allies and friends and international
organizations; we must help maximize their efforts and leverage them in our own
strategy. It is not enough.
Preventing groups and states that use terrorist tactics from obtaining WMD or
advanced conventional weapons is an old requirement and a good one. It is
appropriate that we, our allies and the international community use our best law
enforcement, intelligence, and military capabilities in this effort. It is not enough.
Obstructing the flow of money and other material resources to terrorists and their
proxies as well as states who support them is an old requirement and a good one.
Again, it is appropriate that we use all the tools of national power and enlist the help of
the international community for this endeavor. It is not enough.
It is not enough because even though we are finally talking about addressing the
root causes of terrorism, we have not fully addressed the ideologies and strategic goals
of the groups that are increasingly using this tactic. We know why people resort to
terrorism - they are either sadists or revolutionaries or messianic murderers who either
relish the harming of the unarmed and unsuspecting, or they believe it is the only means
they have of gaining their objectives against more powerful adversaries, or they feel
they must kill all those who are not them by whatever means they have. It is not
enough to know this.

We need a strategic assessment of the threat: Only then can we design a

comprehensive and integrated strategy and associated and tailored campaign plans
(operational approaches) and appropriate tactics.
Outside experts have pointed the way to a framework for this analysis, but our 1C
has been disjointed and focused on operations for so long that strategic analysts have
not stepped back far enough to take the widest view for a truly fulsome Estimate. Such
as estimate should move beyond fighting the last war (aircraft as weapons) and beyond
the necessary attention to WMD and cyber-attack to lower level attacks with "mass
effects". Such an estimate must also move beyond our tendency to mirror image our
adversaries and our ego-centric view to assess whether our opponents strategy is really
focused on another "center of gravity" and that we are only collateral targets as Jane

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Holl and others have suggested. We already understand that this enemy does not
respond to traditional Cold War incentives, deterrents, and containment. Have we
considered what incentives and punishments they might respond to beyond arrests and
destruction of their sanctuaries when it is politically palatable?

Our Cold War strategies of deterrence and containment, as well as transparency

and confidence building measures, will likely not work against many 21st century
adversaries. But like the Cold War, our fight against violent Sunni Extremism promises
to be long; it will be cooler and hotter at times; we will have to sustain vigilance and
motivation, we must be focused globally, and we must understand the adversaries'
ideology. Frankly, our NSS and NSCT posit that we have a crime that became a war.
Both incorporate an approach to push it back into the bottle, to force it back into the
mold of low-level crime, so that it is "unorganized, localized, non-sponsored, rare." The
successful strategy would push this back into a law enforcement arena, largely
overseas.13

We still need an effective assessment to capture policymakers' attention: We

should not plan our strategies in a vacuum. Each of the following possible simplistic
assessments of our adversaries has repercussions for our national strategies and our
intelligence strategy:
(1) They are simply crazy and there is no rationalizing with them. They have no
particular animus toward the US; they only attack Americans because we are as
good a target as any for a rabid, irrational group. The only answer is to capture
or kill them all and to try to prevent the craziness from spreading. Since this
assessment is unlikely, we should stop acting like this is a viable basis for our
strategy.
(2) They are strictly criminals after money or power for its own sake. If this is the
case, we must tailor our strategy and approach. Americans are attacked
because they have both money and power, they may aim to raise money and
gain legitimacy/power by attacking us even if we do not believe that they gain
enough of either to achieve their end goal. However, the fact that many Sunni
Extremists live in primitive conditions, deny themselves basic comforts, take on
immense hardship, and some are willing to commit suicide for their goals; belies
this explanation.
(3) They want to destroy the regimes that currently control their nations and install
their own. They are fighting an insurgency globally for local purposes. If their
issue, in part, is a disparity of economic and political power within their country,
we could probably countenance their envisioned regimes, but we cannot tolerate
their terrorist tactics. We could work to co-opt current rulers or moderate publics
with an evolutionary rather than revolutionary appeal. But we would have to
work faster and more obviously for this to help. Subtle, private engagement and
patience with abusive or authoritarian regimes is not enough.
(4) On the other hand, if their issue is more one of the proper interpretation of
religion, then economic or political reforms will not be enough. If, as we suspect,
the leaders want to replace secular Arab or moderate Islamic regimes with more

13 NSCT, 2003, Figure 3, "Operationalizing the Strategy, Desired Endstate," p.13.

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fundamentalist or extreme Islamic governments, can we countenance their

coming to power at all? What if their coming to power within their states was
achieved peacefully and democratically? If so, we would want to send explicit
signals and work to those ends. If not, we need a better answer. If either of
these two (3 and 4) are correct assessments, why do they attack Americans and
America? Because we appear to support the regime they oppose either
politically or economically. When we have a presence we defile their religion. In
other words, they do not attack us because we believe in the rule of law or
democracy or are irreligious. If this is true, can we countenance withdrawing
economic or political support, or exiting the territory in question? If not, can we
develop another constructive way to respond?
(5) They want regional dominance for their political or religious ideology; they want
to destroy Israel and the US out of the Middle East. They want the US and
maybe China and other secularist or non-fundamentalist Muslim regimes out of
South Asia, the "Stans", and Asia/Oceania. Europe and the Americas might be
safe if politically, ideologically, and economically we could countenance such a
situation. In this scenario, they attack America and Americans because we
support those who are in power in these regions and support regional secular
organizations, not because we believe in the rule of law and democracy, listen to
pop music and wear revealing clothing.
(6) They want global freedom of action at a minimum and world domination at a
maximum for a fundamentalist Islamic world order. America and Americans are
attacked because we are both the symbol and power behind the existing world
political order, economic order and popular culture, all of which are antithetical
and offensive to radical Islam. Our allies, other democracies and international
organizations are attacked as part and parcel of the current secular and
pluralistic world order.

Our nation needs an NIE or other special intelligence product that assesses
which of the above (or combination) is most likely. We continue to shy away from
the religious identity of our attackers, but if ideology is really the root, we must
name it and devise our strategy accordingly. The threat is ideological. Whether it is
one group or a confederation of groups with interests each in their own states, or in their
own region, or in the world, we must address the ideology and their strategy for
achieving their goals (and, specifically, why we are their targets). Only then can we
plan a strategy or set of strategies with campaign plans and tactics to defeat them.14
Only then can we devise a truly comprehensive and integrated intelligence strategy to
support the President and executive departments (Defense, Homeland Security, State,
etc.) to successfully address the threat.

14There are some psychological assessments or particular leaders and lieutenants of al Qa'ida
and affiliates, but we have not yet seen an assessment of UBL's ideological geneaology,
schooling, thoughts, writings, etc.

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