Sept. 25, 2001

In the Face of Terror

Three Faculty Members Discuss Sept. 11

From the Airwaves is a transcript of “The GW Washington Forum,” the weekly public affairs radio program produced by GW, hosted by Richard Sheehe, and broadcast on WWRC-AM 1260 in Washington. This conversation with George Fidas, Leon Fuerth, and Peter Raven-Hansen comes from a recent program.

Richard Sheehe: Terrorism has struck American soil. Three GW professors with distinguished backgrounds and experiences in this arena share their thoughts: George Fidas, intelligence officer in residence with the Elliott School of International Affairs; Leon Fuerth, Shapiro Professor of International Affairs, ESIA, and national security adviser to former Vice President Al Gore; and Peter Raven-Hansen, professor of law. Did these attacks come without warning?

George Fidas: I wouldn’t say quite without warning. There have been indications that Osama bin Laden, in particular, was planning a major action someplace in the world. It wasn’t at all clear that it would be in this country.

RS: How organized does this attack appear to you?

Peter Raven-Hansen: This is a systematically well-organized event. The pilots were apparently training for more than a year, and they now think there’s a network involved. They must have had some navigation skills, as well, to find their targets, some engineering advice about where to hit, and what the impact would be. So, this is an organization on a scale that transcends anything we have seen before. It raises the possibility of state-sponsored terrorism because state intelligence agencies might have this capability, but it’s also possible and frightening to think that a network like bin Laden’s might also have achieved this level of organization.

Leon Fuerth: If there was no information whatsoever in our intelligence collection systems about this, nothing that rose above the normal noise level/background level, then the question is how could they have planned this without emitting something loud enough, in effect, for us to have heard? If, on the other hand, we heard things, knew things that rose above the normal level of background noise, then the question is, why didn’t the pattern click?

RS: Professor Fuerth, you worked as former Vice President Al Gore’s national security adviser not that long ago. I know there are some things you can’t talk about, but was there anything rising above the usual static and noise that would point to this when it was on your watch?

LF: There’s nothing that I can recall that points toward this, but there were moments in our time when information came across that definitely did rise above the noise level. For example, information which led us to a major campaign to frustrate what we knew was going to be an effort to use the millennium celebrations as an opportunity to wreak havoc on Americans here and abroad.

RS: Is it difficult to think of this as a war when we don’t know exactly who did this or what states or nations might be involved?

PRH: I don’t think attribution is as important before action as others have said in the press, because we know bin Laden has been involved in prior episodes and he’s taken the credit on videotape for the USS Cole bombing. We know he has the means and the intent to do it in the future. So, it isn’t clear to me why we need to pin this particular episode on him before going after him. I think the war rhetoric is correct, given the scale of the casualties and the risk future terrorism poses. It remains to follow up with legal authority for conducting this war and planning this strategy for it. I think it’s appropriate rhetoric given what we’ve experienced.

RS: President Bush has received some criticism for not coming back immediately to Washington after the attacks. Is this valid criticism?

LF: I don’t want to second-guess the security arrangements around the president. For those of you interested in this, I recommend you read Bill Safire’s commentary in the Op/Ed page of The New York Times, which contains the message that the White House wants to put out about why it did what it did.

RS: The focus on the recovery effort will only take us so far. So, more and more, we’re going to be looking at who did this and what kind of response the United States will prepare. How do we fashion and blend a response among military, diplomatic, and legal options?

PRH: I think first of all, we shouldn’t be just fashioning a response to this particular episode. What this is, is an awakening to the need for a long-term response against all terrorism and sanctuary states for all terrorists. That’s why I said I’m not sure that determining attribution is necessary to going forward against some sanctuary states or other terrorist groups. To some degree, our national security establishment has picked him as the boogeyman unwisely because they’re giving the public the sense that if we take him out, we’ll have the problem cured. In fact, there are three or four organizations that have nearly his resources, as well as states that may still be in the business, but not fully known to us.

RS: Was it encouraging that President Bush said we will make no distinction between the people who committed this and the states or individuals who harbor them?

LF: I’m not particularly reassured by it. He either has the legal authority to do what he wants or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, he needs to resort to the Congress to get the necessary authority in a formal fashion and get it fast. It’s a very bad idea to use the rhetoric of war unless you are legally at war because there are certain facts that flow from that distinction. What I am more interested to find out is whether the president is going to act in accordance with the rhetoric. We won’t know that until we see exactly how much retribution he’s prepared to bring against whomever he considers to have been harboring terrorists. In particular, one will have to see whether he is prepared to come close to exacting retribution at a biblical level or whether, because of various factors including the concern for the deaths of innocent people, he will withhold the full measure of an American response. Those are terrible choices.

PRH: I just want to add that I agree completely with Professor Fuerth about the need for clear legal authority, but President Bush has some. In 1996, Congress expressly found that the president should use all necessary means, including military force and covert action, to take out the international terrorist infrastructure, including training camps and supplies. That doesn’t authorize him to go after the political leaderships such as the Taliban, but it’s a part of the authority that he’s seeking and President Clinton invoked it when we last attacked Afghanistan.

RS: How much does President Bush need Congress? By going to Congress, will he be tipping his hand as to what he wants to do?

LF: No, he doesn’t have to tell Congress what he’s going to do, and he shouldn’t tell anybody what he’s going to do until he’s made his decision and communicated it to the command structure with as much provision for secrecy as he can possibly build into the operation. He needs the legal and moral authority to back him for actions that possibly may be larger in scope than any we have recently seen.

RS: Is there somewhere we have to indicate who we’re at war with?

PRH: We always have and I would be very leery of an open-ended declaration given the other domestic legal authorities that it activates. But as I was saying before, I’m not sure at this stage if we’re in a new phase of the anti-terrorism game that we need to specifically identify this culprit. Afghanistan has given sanctuary to bin Laden for some time and maybe we are ready to go against sanctuary states that have supported any terrorists.

RS: What will we likely see as a response?

GF: In the diplomatic area, and I’m assuming we’re talking about Osama bin Laden, then Pakistan plays a major role because it is one of the few states that recognizes Afghanistan.

RS: One of only three. Is it encouraging to you that the head of Pakistan came out and said he would cooperate with the United States?

GF: Yes, but on the other hand, it’s a next door neighbor and can suffer the consequences of any major actions in terms of refugees and so on.

LF: I have a slightly different take on it. I’m not encouraged by it. We’ve had these kinds of noises from him (Pakistan Gen. Pervez Musharraf) before. The only thing that matters is what he does. If (US Secretary of State) Colin Powell has communicated to him that we want bin Laden dead or alive, then dead or alive is how we want him served up by Pakistan. Anything else is just lip music.

PRH: I agree with that. I don’t think we should spend two months dickering about whether people should extradite on this term or that term, or whether the evidence is sufficient for Afghanistan. If it’s sufficient for us, then we want his head on a platter.

GF: We are focusing on Osama bin Laden, but as people are coming to know, we’re talking about a global network of people — terrorists, supporters, front organizations, and the like. Again, this gets to the very nature of 21st-century war and conflict. Taking out Osama bin Laden may not necessarily end the activities of that network, certainly not other terrorist organizations.

RS: That’s true. One of your colleagues, Jerrold Post, has been on this show before and he’s made the point that terrorists these days are much better at creating different cells, any one of which could operate if the other is taken out.

LF: War can be prosecuted on many different levels. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are using armadas of aircraft or an invading army or navy. But, it does raise the question of whether in going after these networks, we will continue to operate according to ground rules we have had previously. In other words, are we interested in finding these people and serving them subpoenas or serving them death.

RS: It seems apparent that, in some sense, Americans are going to have to change the way we go about our business, starting with the airlines. What can we do differently to keep this from happening again?

GF: In terms of the intelligence community, our focus is overseas, so we need to step up our efforts to determine who and what types of people are planning and plotting outside the country and what their intentions are. The new element, at least as far as the United States is concerned, is the element of suicidal terrorism. We’ve seen it practiced extensively in the Middle East and Sri Lanka. If this is the beginning of a trend, and all signs are that it is because increasingly these people seem willing and able to die for the cause, and there are any number of them, it becomes very difficult to do.

RS: Should the FAA fall more into the category of national security?

LF: That’s an exceedingly specialized question. I do not know the degree to which the FAA is operating internally 24 hours a day on the subject of preventing terrorism. I know that they don’t sit in the National Security Council, and there’s no need for them to be present there 24 hours a day. I’ve seen them brought in on occasions like this to discuss the measures that they’re taking. But frankly, I do not know that there is a way to prevent a reoccurrence of this in the United States. I believe that in an effort to reduce the probability, there are issues that are going to arise much greater than airport security and which go to the fundamental balance point of surveillance and personal freedom.

 

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu