The New Counterterrorism Strategy – Who Is Going To Do The Work?

“We face new categories and combinations of violent actors that make the established ways of doing counterterrorism insufficient or obsolete. We face a multiplicity of deadly threats from terror groups and non-state actors, often secretly supported by governments who wish to undermine us. Currently, we face three major types of terror groups: • Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs • Legacy Islamist Terrorists • Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists.”

That’s an excerpt from the new United States Counterterrorism Strategy. It is a welcome acknowledgement of the threats we face. They are real. They are immediate. They are growing. The question, of course, is – what are we actually going to do about all this?

“When it comes to counterterrorism, our resources specifically include intelligence agencies and units who, since 9/11, have become the world’s best at “Finding and Fixing” high value targets anywhere in the world. They also include Tier 1 and Tier 2 military units without peer anywhere in the world able to close with and “finish” these targets.”

New United States Counterterrorism Strategy

There is no doubt that our special operations forces have the capability to finish targets that have been identified. That identification is, unfortunately, the problem. Taking out a terrorist cell in an apartment in Brooklyn, preparing for an attack, is ultimately the “easy” part. It is the finding and fixing of that cell that is the problem.

In the murky world of counterterrorism, the key to success is human sources. Technical means can help a lot, but without people on the inside feeding you information, your chances of finding that terrorist cell in time are minimal. You are doomed to hunting them down after they have already killed.

We don’t have those sources. We have largely lost our capability to recruit them. Our human intelligence capabilities have withered away. Washington is not interested in the business of recruiting sources inside dangerous terrorist and narcoterrorist groups. That’s ‘messy’. That’s dangerous. And, worst of all, it’s cheap.

Washington revolves around contracts and contractors. Nobody makes serious cash by training an operations officer in CIA to go out, recruit a source inside Al Qaida, and provide key intelligence on pending terrorist operations. The amount of money involved in that kind of op is chicken feed.

Big Washington wants contracts for technical collection systems and new office buildings and spaces filled with flat screen computer monitors and “command centers.” It wants satellites and drones. If you play your cards right, you can make a fortune out of that kind of empire-building. And, in the end, the fact that the whole thing is a giant “self-licking ice cream cone” that may or may not produce anything of significance is irrelevant.

Everybody got something out of it. Everybody made money. Everybody made rank. No one cares that there is no actual threat reporting of any consequence coming out of the system. No one dares to even point that out.

Not so long ago, I was talking with a mid-ranking CIA operations officer who had decided to leave the Agency and go into teaching at the university level. We were discussing an operation I ran in the Middle East during which I recruited a senior member of Al Qaida and convinced him to go back inside his organization and spy for us. I described the process by which I had been able to gain this terrorist’s trust, convince him he was playing for the wrong team, and get him to work for CIA.

At the end of the discussion, the former CIA officer, who had just left CIA, said something to the effect of “Very interesting to hear how you guys used to do that kind of thing back in the day.” I was frankly confused. “What do you mean?” I asked. “How do you recruit terrorist sources today?”

The former CIA officer responded by explaining to me that such operations were now run based on a “team” concept. The officer in the field actually talking to the potential source was only one part of the process. Multiple other individuals, most of them in Washington, were also involved, and decisions about how to proceed were made by a group of individuals meeting over a period of time and mulling each move.

Memos were written. PowerPoint presentations were created. Many emails were sent. It often took weeks, if not months, to decide on each move in the process of recruiting a source.

“Does that work?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said the former CIA officer. “I never recruited a terrorist source. I don’t know anyone who has.”

I was momentarily unsure whether to laugh or cry.

It is all well and good to say that we need to take counterterrorism seriously. In and of itself, that declaration will accomplish nothing, however. The bureaucracy will take on board the new policy. Meetings will be held. Task forces will be assembled. Many documents will be created and, of course, requests for budget increases will be submitted. The likelihood that any of that will change anything in the real world will be close to nil. With such a bloated bureaucracy calling the shots, the officer in the field in actual contact with the target cannot possibly maintain any semblance of momentum, building a relationship capable of recruiting that target and turning them into a reliable source.

If you want to crawl inside the terrorist, anarchist, and Communist organizations threatening this country, you need to sharpen the spear and get back into the business of running actual human intelligence operations. You need to stop equating bigger budgets with results. You need to put people in charge at the key intelligence agencies who actually know their trade and empower them to do what is required to fix a broken system.

A new strategy is welcome. Now for the hard part. Who is going to do the work?