[House Hearing, 107 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
COMBATING TERRORISM: AXIS OF EVIL, MULTILATERAL CONTAINMENT OR
UNILATERAL CONFRONTATION?
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
VETERANS AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 16, 2002
__________
Serial No. 107-187
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
86-195 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
STEPHEN HORN, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
BOB BARR, Georgia DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
DAN MILLER, Florida ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JIM TURNER, Texas
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
DAVE WELDON, Florida JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida DIANE E. WATSON, California
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia ------
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
------ ------ (Independent)
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International
Relations
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York TOM LANTOS, California
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
DAVE WELDON, Florida DIANE E. WATSON, California
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Lawrence J. Halloran, Staff Director and Counsel
R. Nicholas Pararino, Senior Policy Advisor
Jason Chung, Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on April 16, 2002................................... 1
Statement of:
Benjamin, Daniel, senior fellow, Center for Strategic and
International Studies...................................... 19
Carr, Caleb, military historian/author....................... 41
Kirkpatrick, Ambassador Jeane J., director, foreign and
defense policy studies, American Enterprise Institute...... 8
Perle, Richard, resident fellow, American Enterprise
Institute.................................................. 13
Scowcroft, Lieutenant General Brent, (Ret.), president, the
Forum for International Policy............................. 12
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Benjamin, Daniel, senior fellow, Center for Strategic and
International Studies:
Article dated December 20, 2001.......................... 21
Prepared statement of.................................... 33
Carr, Caleb, military historian/author, prepared statement of 44
Perle, Richard, resident fellow, American Enterprise
Institute:
Debate dated January 21, 1997............................ 88
Prepared statement of.................................... 16
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut, prepared statement of............ 3
COMBATING TERRORISM: AXIS OF EVIL, MULTILATERAL CONTAINMENT OR
UNILATERAL CONFRONTATION?
----------
TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 2002
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs
and International Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher
Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Shays, Kucinich, Schrock, Gilman
and Putnam.
Staff present: Lawrence J. Halloran, staff director and
counsel; R. Nicholas Pararino, senior policy advisor; Jason
Chung, clerk; and David Rapallo, minority counsel.
Mr. Shays. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on
National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations
hearing entitled, ``Combating Terrorism: Axis of Evil,
Multilateral Containment or Unilateral Confrontation?'' is
called to order.
In his State of the Union address, the President said,
``Nations harboring or enabling terrorists constitute an axis
of evil arming to the threaten the peace of the world.'' Since
then, both allies and antagonists have questioned the accuracy
and utility of so sweeping a description of the disparate but
growing peril posed by global terrorism and weapons of mass
destruction.
One fact cannot be questioned. The world changed on
September 11th; the global axes of political, diplomatic and
military affairs shifted along a fault line marked by more than
3,000 graves. The urgency of confronting state sponsors of
terrorism and nations developing weapons of mass destruction
reoriented the civilized world along moral not geographic
lines. This new perspective raises important questions about
counter terrorism programs and policies at home and abroad.
Should terrorist states be contained or confronted? How can
multilateral coalitions be sustained when no definition of
terrorism has been agreed upon? What consideration of
circumstances justify unilateral action on the part of the
United States against terrorism?
The most fundamental obligation of government is the
protection of its people. Transnational terrorism and the
proliferation of nuclear, chemical, biological, and
radiological weapons constitute grave and imminent threats to
lives of millions. Protecting U.S. citizens against these
extraordinary dangers requires extraordinary actions. As the
President observed, the price of indifference to the menace
upon us would be catastrophic.
To discuss the effectiveness, scope and implications of
U.S. counter terrorism policies in a world realigned by war
without boundaries, we are very fortunate to be joined by a
most distinguished panel of witnesses. They bring impeccable
credentials, impressive experience and a wealth of knowledge to
our ongoing oversight of these issues. We are grateful for
their time and look forward to their testimony.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6195.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6195.002
Mr. Shays. At this time, I would recognize the ranking
member, Mr. Kucinich.
Mr. Kucinich. In his most recent State of the Union
address, the President singled out North Korea and Iran and
Iraq as constituting an axis of evil, arming to threaten the
peace of the world by ``seeking weapons of mass destruction,''
he told the Nation ``these regimes pose a grave and growing
danger.''
There was considerable question whether this
characterization is fully accurate. Many intelligence reports
belie the President's claim that Iran aggressively pursues
nuclear weapons and in recent years, North Korea has grown
increasingly willing to cooperate with the world community.
Let us leave this debate aside momentarily and assume the
President chose to publicly and unilaterally vilify these three
countries for one major reason, to put their leaders on notice
that the United States will not tolerate any efforts to develop
or acquire weapons of mass destruction. Certainly it is not
unreasonable for the President to issue a strong warning to the
potentially wayward regimes.
The administration failed to anticipate at least two
ancillary effects of the President's comments. First, it has
derailed efforts to negotiate the termination of North Korea's
missile program and second, it has undermined efforts by
President Khatami, and other pro-reform Iranians to moderate
the policies of Islamic fundamentalists. The speech's effect on
relations with North Korea is perhaps most alarming.
In the waning days of the Clinton administration, the
United States had been on the verge of signing an agreement to
normalize relations and to provide substantial aid to North
Korea in return for a permanent end to its missile development
and proliferation programs. The current administration
initially declined to take up these talks but eventually
changed course and made tepid overtures toward the Kim Jong Il
government.
Since the State of the Union Address in January, North
Korea has dismissed U.S. requests for broad negotiations.
Pyongyang has even threatened to abandon a longstanding
agreement with the United States under which it is receiving
assistance to construct light water nuclear reactors in
exchange for attending its nuclear program.
Similarly, the President's comments have made it difficult
for President Khatami and other Iranian moderates to publicly
push for the Ayatollah to temper his virulently anti-western
stance. The State of the Union Address began a wave of anti-
American protests in Iran in which both moderates and
fundamentalists participated.
No one doubts this administration sincerely wants to rid
the world of weapons of mass destruction and enhance national
security but to date, the President's axis of evil speech
seemed to have the opposite effect. CIA officials long ago
coined a term for this phenomenon, ``blow back.'' International
affairs expert, Chalmers Johnson explores this idea in his
book, ``Blow Back, the Cost and Consequences of American
Empire.'' The term ``blow back,'' he writes ``refers to the
unintended consequences of policies. In a sense, ``block back''
is simply another way of saying what a nation reaps, it sows.
Whether it is the U.S.-led embargo of Iraq that has led to
the deaths of thousands Iraqi citizens and solidified Saddam
Hussein's hold on power or the CIA sponsorship of anti-Soviet
fundamentalists in Afghanistan that led to the rise of the
Taliban, or the U.S. backing of right wing military
insurgencies in Latin America that led to civil war and the
killing of civilians, history is replete with instances where
American policy has had disastrous consequences for both
Americans and others, according to Johnson. This I believe is
the most insidious consequence of American unilateralism and
adventurism. It has unintended consequences that undermine the
very policy goals we seek to promote in the first place and
thus makes the world and America less stable, less secure, less
peaceful.
The President's axis of evil comments have already had
significant impact and only time will reveal their full
implication but these are mere words. The world's geopolitical
trash bin is littered with treaties and agreements unilaterally
discarded by the United States under this administration and
certainly the implications of these actions will be far more
extensive than a provocative State of the Union address. What
will be the consequences of the United States' withdrawal from
the ABM Treaty. Might China augment its nuclear capabilities
forcing India and Pakistan to follow suit in a South Asian arms
race? Might the rush to develop anti-ballistic missile
technologies leave Americans vulnerable to attack via a
suitcase bomb or other crude alternatives? What will be the
consequences of the administration's plan to cast aside its
responsibilities under the comprehensive test ban treaty and
develop bunker busters? Without these treaty restraints, might
other nuclear nations and potential nuclear nations be
emboldened to resume or begin testing? If the United States
demonstrates its willingness to use nuclear weapons, will other
nations assume the same posture? What about the
administration's refusal to negotiate in good faith toward an
enforcement mechanism for the Biological Weapons Convention?
The proprietary interest of American pharmaceuticals may be
safe but will Americans be safe if other countries are able to
develop bioweapons programs without fear of discovery or will
the burgeoning small arms trade the administration has refused
to help control continue to play a part in the death civilians
and Americans at the hands of terrorists? Will land mines which
the United States has refused to renounce, 1 day maim American
servicemen? Will the American POW 1 day be mistreated because
our government has refused to fully grant the Guantanamo Bay
prisoners their Geneva Convention rights?
Chalmers Johnson writes, ``Even an empire cannot control
the long term effects of its policies. That is the essence of
blow back.''
Today, the United States stands unmatched as a global
military and economic super power. This brings both opportunity
and peril. American policies and actions can have disastrous
results for millions of people or it can uplift them. For
America's impact to be a positive one, this administration and
future administrations must be more than simply instruments of
U.S. corporations. The United States must have in mind the
interests of the American people and billions of other ordinary
people who inhabit our world.
Similarly, we must seek consultation from the world
community in developing American policy and involve the world
community in its implementation. Crafting policy based on our
own narrowly focused, short term interests invariably yields a
world less stable and less secure. That is the sort of world
that breeds terrorism.
I hope we can explore some of these themes in our
discussion today. I thank the Chair.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Gilman.
Mr. Gilman. Thank you for conducting this timely hearing on
a matter crucial to our national security. Our Nation's
prosecution of our war on terrorism has achieved wide success
to date, both at home and on the battlefields abroad. From
thwarting untold additional terrorist attacks on our own soil,
to disrupting and destroying terrorist infrastructures around
the world. Indeed the experience of recent history has taught
us the front line of the war on terrorism is not just here but
everywhere.
Accordingly, the gratitude of our Nation goes out to our
police, our firefighters, emergency responders and all of our
military personnel for putting their lives in danger in the
name of patriotic public service on a daily basis. Their
steadfast commitment to our national security is the greatest
deterrent against those who would do us harm.
The war on terrorism is one segment of a larger war that
our Nation is conducting against a number of often
interlocking, transnational security threats. In Latin America,
in Asia and at home we are engaged in an ongoing war, a war on
drugs which threatens our democratic neighbors and undermines
social stability here and abroad. Moreover, in various regions
around the world, we are working with our allies to stamp out
the insidious trade in human trafficking, sexual slavery,
forced child labor, and other illegal enterprises undertaken by
international criminal organizations.
Now our Nation is compelled to address the prospect of a
broader proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the
hands of rogue nations, including Iran, Iraq, Syria and North
Korea. As President Bush noted during his State of the Union
Address in January, ``These nations constitute an axis of evil,
representing a direct threat to the security of our Nation and
to our allies around the world.'' Accordingly, it is critical
that our Nation counter the clear and present danger these
terrorist sponsoring nations pose lest we become vulnerable to
their threats and demands as our global campaign against
terrorism moves forward.
To address the threat these states pose to our Nation, we
must maintain flexibility in our options, whether they be
military, diplomatic or economic. A comprehensive approach
which does not rule out any course of action will maximize our
effectiveness against the aforementioned states which seek to
acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, while the
support of our allies around the world is always welcomed, we
must be willing to act alone in the interest of our Nation when
compelled to do so.
Our national security and the continued viability of our
way of life should be viewed as a precondition to all other
considerations. In short, these are the complex issues which
require sophisticated approaches. Accordingly, Mr. Chairman, I
join in welcoming the opportunity to hear the views from our
distinguished panel before our committee today, Ambassador
Kirkpatrick, General Scowcroft, Fellow Richard Perle, Fellow
Dan Benjamin, and author, Caleb Carr.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Schrock.
Mr. Schrock. I am delighted you are here as well and I can
certainly align myself with what Mr. Gilman said. I don't think
there is a topic on Americans' minds more than terrorism today.
To have you all here to talk to us is a real honor. Thank you
for taking the time to be with us and I look forward to hearing
your testimony.
Mr. Shays. Let me do some housekeeping. I ask unanimous
consent that all members of the subcommittee be permitted to
place an opening statement in the record and that the record
remain open for 3 days for that purpose. Without objection, so
ordered.
I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be
permitted to include their written statements in the record and
without objection, so ordered.
Recognizing our witnesses, we have a wonderful panel:
Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick, director, Foreign and Defense
Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute; General Brent
Scowcroft (ret.), president, the Forum for International
Policy; the Honorable Richard Perle, resident fellow, American
Enterprise Institute; Mr. Daniel Benjamin, senior fellow,
Center for Strategic and International Studies; and Mr. Caleb
Carr, military historian and author.
If you would stand, we swear our panels and we will go from
there.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. I would note for the record that all our
witnesses responded in the affirmative.
Ambassador Kirkpatrick, I understand you are teaching a
class, so what time do you need to leave here?
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. By 2:30 p.m.
Mr. Shays. Then I had better have you go first.
STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK, DIRECTOR, FOREIGN
AND DEFENSE POLICY STUDIES, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. Thank you, Chairman Shays.
I regret I have a class to teach at Georgetown which makes
it important that I go first.
Mr. Shays. You can think of us as a class.
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. Thank you. My students need me
more, I think.
I am happy to be here today and testify. I believe your
subject is, as we all know, of the greatest importance, urgent
importance. The President has recognized that importance in a
series of powerful and persuasive speeches, I think. We have
all recognized its importance from simply being alive on
September 11th and being forced to think about those events,
but most of us on this panel were aware of the importance of
federalism well before September 11th because positions which
we have held have made us sensitive to terrorism.
I was asked, as I understood it, to take particular account
of the experience of the Reagan administration as I know about
it with terrorism and our efforts to respond to it. I think it
is important to state in the beginning that what defines a
terrorist I think is he is a person who declares total war on
the society which he attacks. He literally does. It is hard to
believe and it is hard to think about some person declaring
total war on us as individuals or on our society.
I think it is important to remember that terrorism began a
period of very rapid growth in the 1960's. As a matter of fact,
the President was inaugurated at the time that the American
Embassy had been seized in Tehran by those who were followers
of the Ayatollah Khomeni and our embassy personnel had been
seized and held prisoners after being humiliated, starved and
mistreated generally in Tehran.
This, by the way, was a very special horror to President
Ronald Reagan. He always said after that he could almost not
imagine anything worse for a President to have to face than to
have a group of Americans, public servants, seized, held and
mistreated in the way our employees were. He felt that
President Carter had been very, very unfortunate in having this
happen on his watch and President Reagan was very concerned
that it not happen on his watch.
The fact is terrorism was already spreading when Ronald
Reagan became the President. The rise of fanatical Islamism had
begun. The Reagan administration, including the President
himself, had quite a lot of contact with terrorism and was
forced to confront it.
It depends a little on how you define terrorism, whether
you want to count the effort to assassinate Ronald Reagan
himself an act of terrorism. I believe that it was an act of
terrorism myself but it was not a terrorist group who attacked
him, it was a terrorist individual. It was not done with so
much a specific political goal apart from his murder, just
that, but it was a dramatic introduction to the presence of
violence in our society aimed at our government.
The next contact of the Reagan administration with
terrorism came with the hijacking of the Achille Lauro which I
am sure everyone remembers which was the height of a pleasure
ship, a cruise ship that was hijacked off the coast of Egypt on
its way to Israel. It was transporting Americans, just
Americans. It was hijacked and the Americans on board were
treated in a very brutal fashion, and one of them was murdered.
That was Leon Klinghofer, a man whose name I think most of us
remember, I remember anyway, who was not only a man confined to
a wheelchair on a vacation cruise, but his wheelchair and he
were pushed overboard and he drowned. He was killed actually
before he was pushed overboard off the coast of Egypt.
That act of terrorism was carried out by a PLO group, by
the way, headed by one Abou Abass, who was a member of the PLO
Executive Committee and a close aide to PLO Chairman Yasser
Arafat. They had smuggled some quite heavy weapons on board the
Achille Lauro at the same time they boarded the group who
carried out these murders.
Not long after that, there were questions about whether the
hijackers would be turned over to the United States or whether
Egypt would try them, which Egypt chose to do. President Reagan
was quite unhappy about the way that developed and the fact
they were not extradited to the United States since the attack
had bene on Americans.
The next encounter I believe was when Libya bombed the U.S.
forces in the Gulf of Sidra and U.S. planes and the consequence
of that. Libya also bombed U.S. properties elsewhere. The
consequence of that was that President Reagan decided to bomb
Libya and he did. He bombed the living quarters where Muammar
Qaddafi and a number of his close associates and relatives
lived. It was said at the time, I don't know whether this was
true or not, but it was said at the time lived.
You may recall that this was a traumatic experience for
Qaddafi and he was transformed from a person who spoke all the
time with threats and promises of the damage he intended to
reek on the world to a person who was really quite quiet. He
remains rather quiet until today though I understand he is once
again active in the terrorist world.
The first responses, experiences the Achille Lauro and the
Libyan bombings of American property and Americans made clear
that President Reagan intended not to accept the attacks on
Americans passively and when Americans were attacked by violent
terrorists seeking them harm, damage and death, he would do his
best as the U.S. President to retaliate. He continued this
policy through his period as president. Muammar Qaddafi
continued also his efforts to cause various kinds of damage and
anxiety to Americans.
I might mention a personal experience which wasn't just
personal to me, it was personal to a number of members of the
Reagan administration. The period before the United States
actually bombed Libya, some events had occurred which were not
public and therefore were not fully appreciated as part of what
President Reagan was responding to when he bombed Qaddafi.
It involved the dispatching of some Libyan death squads. It
was asserted at the time--you may recall or you may not
recall--that there were two death squads, one dispatched to the
United States by way of Canada and one by way of Mexico, that
their intention was to wipe out Ronald Reagan and several
members of his Cabinet. They named the several members of the
Cabinet and included Ed Meese, Cap Weinberger and me, as a
matter of fact. They were called special friends of the
President which became an uncomfortable designation.
One consequence of this was, being designated a special
target, the security was greatly enhanced in our lives and one
lost of movement and the security that goes with a personal
sense of safety. It meant that whenever any of us were going to
travel abroad, we had to notify the government we were going to
visit in some depth and that government assigned security to us
for the period we were visiting and we really had to adapt our
lives to this proposition that we were in some danger.
From time to time, there were sitings of these people
because there were pictures and drawings of them. They could
take pictures of them when they thought they cited them and it
added a special spice, you might say, to life, to become a
target of these people.
It wasn't a great hardship but on the other hand, it wasn't
comfortable. The effort to make members of the Reagan
administration, several of them, uncomfortable personally, was
an attribute of the terrorist offensive against us.
There were other, much more serious attributes of terrorist
attack, one being the attack on American forces in Lebanon and
the occasion when there were 240 Marines killed while they
slept in their barracks in Lebanon when they were there as part
of an international peacekeeping force. They were killed in the
Bekaa Valley a favorite place for terrorists. These were
Iranians quite clearly. They were doing no one any harm, they
were not making war on anyone, they were peacekeepers in a
peacekeeping force with the British, the French and the
Israelis.
Mr. Shays. Because you are going to leave in 5 minutes, I
want you to address this issue and then we will go right to Mr.
Scowcroft.
I am taking the liberty of asking a question here, but I
would like you to address the issue of axis of evil. I would
like you to respond as to whether it is helpful or harmful,
what its consequences are by describing three countries as an
axis of evil. You basically have two descriptions here and I
know my colleague made a long statement that expressed his
concern about it, my ranking member. Could you kind of address
that before you leave?
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. I think the axis of evil is a
useful concept actually because I think it links the reality of
threats by governments against individuals and against groups
and against governments. It links those threats and attacks,
making clear there are diverse means by which they would be
attacked.
I think individuals and governments, heavy weapons and
medium heavy weapons are all capable of causing great harm and
destroying the pleasure and lives of individuals, but also of
destroying whole societies in their war against societies.
I think it was an appropriate concept for the President and
I was glad he used it.
Mr. Shays. I am going to let Mr. Kucinich ask a question
and then we will deal with the panel of four and not be able to
ask you some questions.
Let me ask you, why three, why not four? Do you get off and
on this axis of evil or do you stay on it, once on you are
always on? Once you are on this axis of evil, one of the three,
are you always on it? Do you have the ability to get off it? I
am trying to understand ultimately the consequences. Does it
encourage others not to become part of the axis of evil? What
will it lead to is what I am interested in knowing?
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. I don't believe anyone or any
person or an country controls their relationship to an axis of
evil. The axis of evil consists of governments which are headed
by dangerous, violent and expansionist persons who seek to do
harm in the world and who have targets. If you are targeted,
you can try to be safe but you can't eliminate the threat.
Mr. Shays. Let me let Mr. Kucinich ask a question if he
likes and then we will go to our panel of four.
Mr. Kucinich. I already made my statement, so I will pass.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much for coming, I appreciate it.
Ambassador Kirkpatrick. Thank you.
Mr. Shays. General Scowcroft.
STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL BRENT SCOWCROFT (RET.),
PRESIDENT, THE FORUM FOR INTERNATIONAL POLICY
General Scowcroft. I am privileged to appear before you to
discuss such an important subject. You asked me to comment
especially on U.S. terrorism policy under the first Bush
administration.
Let me say at the outset that it is somewhat difficult to
compare the policies of the Bush 41 administration with respect
to terrorism and states seeking weapons of mass destruction
with those of the present situation because circumstances were
significantly different.
Acts of terrorism involving the United States such as the
Pan Am 103 explosion were generally clearly state sponsored. A
global terrorist organization such as Al-Qaeda did not, so far
as we know, exist at that time, so there are some differences.
The general operational policy of the Bush administration
was to show a preference for multilateral response to acts of
terrorism. There were multilateral sanctions, for example,
imposed on Libya for the Pan Am 103 bombing, but Europe
rejected the inclusion of oil exports in those sanctions
probably the most effective sanctions against Libya, which is
always one of the problems with multilateral sanctions.
Were the Pan Am 103 sanctions a success? Opinions vary
widely. There was a trial, one of the perpetrators was found
guilty but in addition to that, for whatever reason, Qadaffi's
participation in terrorism seems to have declined dramatically
since that time.
Regarding potential weapons of mass destruction states, at
that time, Iraq and North Korea predominantly, the action was
likewise multilateral. With respect to Iraq, the Gulf War was
multilateral. The military coalition of some 31 states were
involved as were U.N. sanctions imposed in the aftermath of
that war. Those sanctions have at least delayed the acquisition
by Iraq of weapons of mass destruction but that chapter has yet
to be completed.
With respect to North Korea, we also moved in a
multilateral framework to encourage, indeed to succeed in
getting North Korea to accede to the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty and to inspections by the International Atomic Energy
Agency but before those inspections were to take place, North
Korea backed out of them. So those efforts were clearly a
failure and they led to a downturn in relations with increasing
pressure by the United States to the crisis of 1994 and the
present tenuous situation with regard to North Korea.
The present situation regarding terrorism has quite
different characteristics. The struggle is against global
terrorism and states which harbor global terrorists. The most
military part of this campaign may already be over. It is my
sense that not many states are likely to volunteer to be the
next Taliban. So our efforts are likely to be focused on global
terrorist networks themselves rather than on states which
harbor them. That primarily is a war of intelligence. Every
time the terrorists move, every time they talk, every time they
spend money, every time they get money, they leave traces and
indications. It is our task to pick up those traces and to put
together a concept of the organization of the terrorists and
cleaning them out once we know where they are, is a relatively
simple job.
In order to do that, we need allies, we need friends. We
cannot cut our finances, we cannot do much of this intelligence
job without cooperation from our friends.
What about the axis of evil? Let me say I am not privy to
any special interpretation of the term itself, but those three
countries have at least two things in common. They intensely
dislike the United States and they are seeking weapons of mass
destruction, especially of concern to us, nuclear weapons.
Our rationale for those countries seeking to nuclear
weapons and a delivery capability to be a threat to the United
States is those weapons would mostly likely be used to
blackmail the United States against taking actions we might
otherwise want to engage in. If that is true, and while it is a
hypothesis, it is a plausible thesis, why would those states
turn their nuclear weapons over to terrorists, putting them
completely out of their hands and control and likely to be
employed for very different objectives, gratuitous terror.
It seems to me that weapons inadequately secured in Russia
are a far more likely source for terrorist organizations than
are those of the axis of evil and yet we do not seem eager to
increase the size of the non-nuclear program designed to
provide security for Russian nuclear weapons and even use the
funds for that program as leverage on other issues with the
Russians.
In conclusion, I would say the countries of the axis of
evil are certainly a problem for the United States, perhaps a
threat. They do not wish us well but their threats to the
United States and its interests do not seem to me to be
primarily related to terrorism itself.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, General.
Mr. Perle.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD PERLE, RESIDENT FELLOW, AMERICAN
ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
Mr. Perle. Thank you for including me in these important
deliberations on how the United States can best deal with
terrorism. I think that is the ultimate objective, to gain some
insight into that difficult question. I will make only three
brief points.
First, I believe President Bush was not only accurate in
his description of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an axis of
evil, but he was wise to use that memorable phrase in his State
of the Union message.
I know others disagree. The French Foreign Minister
considers the President's points simplistic. Chris Patten at
the European Union Commission sitting comfortably in Brussels
has warned us against ``taking up absolutist positions and
simplistic positions.''
I must say frankly that when I came here, I was focused on
European disapproval of the President's remarks. I had no idea
that Mr. Kucinich is even more vigorous in his opposition to
what the President had to say.
Mr. Kucinich. Mr. Chairman, is the witness here to
characterize what Members of Congress say?
Mr. Shays. Yes--be loose. You have been too up tight. He
can say whatever he wants and then you can question him and say
whatever you want.
Mr. Kucinich. I just wondered how this committee proceeds.
Thank you.
Mr. Shays. We proceed with grace and honesty. We are going
to have an honest dialog with each other.
Mr. Perle. I now understand the opposition is not confined
to those abroad who do not face the terrorist problem that we
face.
All of this reminds me of the reaction to President
Reagan's use of the phrase ``empire of evil'' as a description
of the Soviet Union. There was handwringing all around when he
said that, much of it in the same allied capitals from which we
now hear criticism of President Bush's candid, straightforward
characterization of Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
The Soviet Union was indeed an empire and it was certainly
evil and Ronald Reagan's willingness to say it straight out
contributed mightily to the political assault that ultimately
brought it down. The critics didn't realize it at the time, and
some may not accept it even now, but Ronald Reagan's much
derided words had historic political consequences that I
believe he anticipated when his critics did not.
The axis of evil may well prove to be of similar
importance, albeit on a lesser scale. Recognizing the lines of
cooperation that now exist among these three regimes, focusing
attention on their collaboration which is not free of
differences to be sure, is necessary if we are to come to terms
with the threat posed by those regimes supporting terrorism
which also possess or are working to acquire weapons of mass
destruction.
Second, I believe President Bush's response to September
11th which has been to go after regimes supporting terrorism is
exactly right and long overdue. It represents a fundamental and
brave shift in policy. It is this essential new approach that
accounts for much of the misgiving about American policy among
our feint-hearted allies.
Unless we take the war on terror to the terrorists and to
the states that offer them sanctuary and all manner of
assistance, we will lose this war. I very much hope that
General Scowcroft is right, that others who now offer sanctuary
to terrorists will cease doing so and it is certainly true that
until now, it has been cost free to offer hospitality to
terrorists and the example of the Taliban may well produce the
result General Scowcroft anticipates but it may not.
We are an open society and if we wish to remain one, as we
surely do, we must deny terrorist the freedom to scheme and
organize against us by making sure they are on the run.
Terrorists who must sleep in a different place each night out
of fear they will be apprehended by the authorities will be far
less able to carry out acts of terror than they are now,
comfortable in Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus and elsewhere and they
are comfortable despite Khotemi's feeble government in Iran and
they are comfortable under Saddam's tutelage in Baghdad and
they are comfortable under Ashir Basad in Damascus and they are
certainly, if they wish to go there, as comfortable as you can
be in Kim Jong Il's North Korea. That is why it was essential
to destroy the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and it is why we
must support a regime change in Iraq.
While we will always prefer to operate in close
collaboration with our friends and allies, our interests are
not identical to theirs. It is understandable that governments
in Paris, Berlin, Brussels and The Hague do not feel the same
sense of danger that September 11th elicited among Americans.
They are not reading daily intelligence about threats to their
citizens as are we. They were not the victims on September
11th, we were.
The rhetorical cliche that September 11th was an attack on
civilization may be true in a sense, but those who died were
here on our soil. We must be careful about the weight we attach
to our own lofty words. Most of our closest allies are not
threatened as we are and it is natural that they will not
happily accept the risks that we must accept to cope with that
threat.
There may be times when we have to be prepared to act alone
for no government can base its most fundamental self defense on
a show of even friendly hands. That, I believe, Mr. Chairman,
is the essential point about the tension between acting
unilaterally and acting multilaterally. It would be fine if our
friends, by voting with us, could somehow magically secure our
territory but they cannot and because they cannot, the job will
fall ultimately to us and possibly to us alone.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Perle follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Benjamin.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL BENJAMIN, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR
STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Mr. Benjamin. Thank you very much for the invitation. I am
honored to be on such a distinguished panel, and particularly
honored and delighted to appear before your subcommittee since
you were for many years my representative and continue to be
that of my family. It is also good to see Representative Gilman
again who we had the opportunity to spend several days together
discussing terrorism. He and his gracious wife took
exceptionally good care of my 6 month old son, and I want to
thank him for that.
I served on the National Security Council's staff during
the Clinton administration as Director for Transnational
Threats and most of my responsibilities were focused on
international terrorism. I think it is safe to say that during
President Clinton's time in office concern about terrorism in
general and terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction
rose rapidly and became one of the foremost areas of activity
and innovation.
I would agree with the judgment of the Washington Post
which Barton Gellman wrote on December 20, ``By any measure
available, Clinton left office having given greater priority to
terrorism than any president before him. His government doubled
counterterrorist spending across 40 departments and agencies.
The FBI and CIA allocated still larger increases in their
budgets and personnel assignments.''
I would add those increases took effect against a backdrop
of flatline budgets at a time when we were working to balance
the Federal budget and I don't think there is any other area in
Federal spending of comparable size in which such a trend was
visible.
Nothing concerned the Clinton administration more than the
dangers of WMD proliferation and the possibility of the
terrible weapons falling into the hands of rogue states and
terrorists. We could talk about all the various measures that
were taken regarding Iraq, Iran and North Korea, some have
already been mentioned. I would like to skip to the question of
WMD falling into the hands of terrorists.
This was something it was believed was not likely to happen
precisely for the reasons that General Scowcroft outlined and I
believe the general understanding he outlined was correct and
continues to be basically correct for major states.
However, things changed in the mid-1990's, first with the
Aum Shinrikyo attack in Tokyo and with the rise of al-Qaeda. As
you all recall, on August 20, 1998, the Clinton administration
ordered the destruction of terrorist training camps in
Afghanistan in response to the Embassy bombings and also the
al-Shifa plant in Khartoum. I believe that sent as clear a
signal that has ever been sent by the United States that this
country would not tolerate WMD falling into the hands of
terrorists.
I think it is safe to say that in the aftermath of that,
the administration took what might charitably be called a
shellacking for its efforts. It was widely alleged that there
were other motivations at work in the decision to attack
Khartoum. What has not been widely discussed is the vindication
of that strike that appeared during the embassy bombing trial
last year in New York when an al-Qaeda defector noted
repeatedly on the stand that in fact Osama bin Laden's
organization was working to produce chemical weapons in
Khartoum. This testimony was completely overlooked by the press
and most experts.
I have entered into the record an article I wrote about
this in the New York Review of Books which appeared last fall.
I think it is not going to far to say that if the al-Shifa
attack had been taken more seriously, the public would have had
a better notion of what al-Qaeda is about well before September
11th.
[The information referred to follows:]
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Mr. Benjamin. I want to echo much of what General Scowcroft
said about the multilateral approach to terrorism. I think it
has enormous value much of the time and I think General
Scowcroft in the first Bush administration showed great wisdom
in following the course they did involving Pan Am 103. The
determination of responsibility for that bombing came months
after the act itself and after several rounds of tit for tat
retaliations that were going no where with a country we had no
intention going to war with by choosing a multilateral approach
based on law enforcement and U.N. sanctions, the Bush
administration laid the groundwork and the Clinton
administration followed through in getting Libya out of the
business of terrorism, however unsatisfactory some of its other
behavior remains.
I share the General's concerns about the need to keep
allies in the game, that is to say, keep them working with us
to cut our terrorist finances, to dry up safe havens and to
provide the kind of intelligence cooperation is absolutely
essential to make further operations impossible.
About the evil axis, I have to say I am uncomfortable with
the phrase. An axis, according to the dictionary, means an
alliance or partnership. I don't think there is any evidence of
a serious alliance or partnership between these countries. They
all have, as Mr. Perle said, a great dislike for the United
States and a desire to develop weapons of mass destruction. For
that reason alone, they deserve the greatest vigilance and very
proactive policy to deter them, change their behavior and in
some cases, change the regime.
However, I don't think they all deserve a cookie cutter
approach. Iran and Iraq are very different and in fact, the
conflict between them probably cost as many lives as any other
in the last quarter century.
The last point I would like to make is that there is a
significant difference between terrorism in the shape of al-
Qaeda and terrorism of the state sponsored sort that we were
familiar with and continue to be. There was a predominant
paradigm in terrorism certainly up to the embassy bombings in
1998.
As General Scowcroft said, most states sponsors are not
willing to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists
because of good prudential reasons. The terrorists we confront
now are ones who have the wherewithal to find those weapons
themselves and unlike the state sponsors, the rogue states, the
members of the axis of evil, however you want to call them,
these new terrorists are prepared to use these weapons. They do
not want them for blackmail, they want to use them against us.
They are not deterrable.
The countries in the axis of evil may very well be
deterrable and require a different policy but we should not
make the mistake of thinking these terrorists, al-Qaeda in
particular, exist because of the sufferance of these state
sponsors. They do not. The evidence is very, very slim of
connections between them. It is enough to be worrisome, it is
enough to be worried and vigilant but the record is fairly
clear that al-Qaeda is its own creation. We need to take it on
those terms and we need to destroy it.
I will stop there.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Benjamin follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Carr.
STATEMENT OF CALEB CARR, MILITARY HISTORIAN/AUTHOR
Mr. Carr. Thank you also for your invitation to appear here
with a group of people for whom I have the greatest respect.
I have been asked here today as a military historian who
spent much of the last 20 years studying terrorism to
illuminate several principles that I believe can be derived
from our past encounters and applied by the Bush administration
to our present circumstances.
To this end, I will limit my opening remarks to those
principles leaving more detailed discussion of their
application to specific situations for the discussion to
follow. I will note here that all these points underlay our
first truly effective antiterrorist action which was the Reagan
administration's 1986 raid on Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi
already mentioned but then went into a period of dormancy so
severe that it made a cataclysmic attack on the United States
not only possible but likely. That dormancy only came to an end
with our recent campaign in Afghanistan. I submit that we
cannot afford another such period of inattention to this the
most serious threat to the lives of American civilians since
that of totalitarianism.
The first principle I would recommend may come as something
of a surprise to many for it is nothing more or less than that
we define the problem in a way that is unarguable and binding.
Strange as it may seem, most discussions of terrorism even now
are undertaken without the parties agreeing to a clear
definition of just what terrorism is. With this in mind, I
offer the only definition that is consistent I believe with the
full course of military history, that terrorism is the
contemporary name given to and the modern permutation of
deliberate assaults on civilians undertaken with the purpose of
destroying their will to support either leaders or policies
that the agents of such violence find objectionable.
I am fully aware that there are those who are not
comfortable with such a nonideological definition but I
maintain that terrorism can be put to the service of any
ideology and until we accept that fact, we have no hope of
eradicating it.
Terrorism is the contemporary name given to and the modern
permutation of deliberation assaults on civilians undertaken
with the purpose of destroying their will to support either
leaders or policies that the agents of such violence find
objectionable.
This philosophy leads logically to my second point which is
that this or any administration must always refuse to answer
terror with what amounts to more terror. Our own experience
during the 1990's with various antiterrorist actions that were
less than discriminate in their blanket targeting of civilian
areas in sponsor states, the current Israeli failure to make
similar tactics work and the history of warfare over the last
2,000 years generally show that deliberate attacks on civilians
are more than just immoral, they are ultimately
counterproductive, especially when undertaken in retaliation.
Our recent campaign in Afghanistan on the other hand shows
what dramatic success can be expected when extraordinary
efforts are made to avoid such civilian casualties but that
campaign has also echoed our earlier antiterrorist success, the
Libya raid in emphasizing a third point which is that we need
to maintain constant offensive readiness.
One of the clearest lessons of the last 20 years, as well
as of September 11th, is that when the United States is
perceived as relying on primarily defensive or reactive
measures to meet the terrorist threat, the intensity of
terrorist attacks only increases. As is now painfully apparent,
terrorism is indeed a form of warfare, not crime, though it may
be criminal warfare.
Such being the case, we will increase our chances for
success by giving priority to offensively oriented strategies
and tactics as indeed we will if we emphasize our ability to
achieve surprise. It is well within the power of the United
States to turn the tables on major terrorist organizations and
their state sponsors by making them the ones to feel perpetual
insecurity. Yet to do so, we must make sure that we base our
efforts on progressive military principles rather than
legalistic initiatives. By progressive, I mean discriminatory,
capable of confining insofar as is humanly possible, the
casualties we inflict to actual terrorist operatives.
Before Afghanistan, there were many who said this was
impossible but our daring special forces operations at the
opening of that campaign prove such critics wrong and what gave
those units the edge they needed was surprise, the principal
tool by which appropriate targets can be designated and caught
unawares.
My fifth recommendation proceeds directly from this point.
It is that we give greater priority to discriminatory tactical
operations than to indiscriminate strategic campaigns. So-
called strategic bombing does not discriminate among targets on
the ground enough to advance the American antiterrorist cause
by limiting civilian casualties. In Afghanistan, it has not
been our bombers but our special forces units that have done
the most critical work. To do that work, the United States will
often find itself in situation where it cannot pause for
lengthy consultation with allies and so in the interest of
consolidating this new style of warfare, it is vital that we be
willing to act alone if necessary to achieve our objectives.
Along with a host of other American responses to military
threats throughout our Nation's history, the 1986 Libya raid
would have been impossible had we taken the time to publicly
and slowly build a coalition of allied forces. Coalition
building is a fine and admirable thing, but it is also a
luxury, a luxury that like so many others may be prohibitively
expensive in the post-September 11th world.
Should we find, however, that we can safely act in concert
with other powers and forces, we nonetheless must not employ
questionable agents or regimes in our cause simply because they
are nominally antiterrorist. From the time of ancient Rome
through the muslim and British empires and on into our own
global fight against communism, history offers few clearer
lessons than the philosophy which states that to fight a dirty
enemy, one must become dirty oneself.
We need look no further than the example of Osama bin
Laden, former in the opinion of some, an Afghanistan freedom
fighter, for evidence of this truth. As our antiterrorist
umbrella continues to broaden, we must be increasingly
circumspect about who we allow to take shelter beneath it.
I will conclude with the suggestion that we ought in the
current highly fluid state of affairs be prepared to negotiate
with former state sponsors of terrorism when events on the
battlefield change diplomatic conditions.
As a result of our successful efforts in Afghanistan to
execute a strategy of eliminating a terrorist regime without
causing massive, counterproductive civilian casualties, new
diplomatic opportunities have been made available to us in the
Middle East vis a vis long time antagonists and is always the
case with war, we must recognize when to exploit these
opportunities rather than pursue perpetual military action.
I realize the subcommittee would also like us to express
our views on how the Bush administration should approach what
he has dubbed the axis of evil nations. I think that is best
left, as I said, for your questions. I will just note as one or
two speakers have already said, while it is true that history
is unkind to those who ignore it, it is also true that it can
be even more unkind to those who draw fallacious historical
parallels.
Personally, I find the phrase ``axis of evil'' a misleading
one. Axis, as just said, calls to mind, as I think it is
intended to, the combination of totalitarian powers during the
Second World War but no such formalized concert of effort
exists among the three countries named by President Bush. North
Korea, Iran and Iraq do each present the United States with
undeniable problems but they are separate and distinct sorts of
problems requiring separate and distinct approaches.
We can safely say, however, that all such approaches must
reflect our newly, reenergized emphasis on tactics that are
both aggressive and progressive, that seek to both protect
American civilians and to limit the impact of confrontation on
civilians and enemy countries.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carr follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you to all four of you.
We are going to start with Mr. Gilman. I am going to just
express an interest that my hope is that we will have some
extensive dialog among all of you with regards to when is it
appropriate--and you mention it in your presentations--to act
unilaterally, when is it appropriate to work on a multilateral
basis.
I think we could debate this issue of axis and I think the
axis part does raise some other interesting questions but if
you take axis out, the issue I hope we focus on is identifying
a Nation as evil and therefore a target, what does it enable us
to do and what does it prohibit us from doing? Ultimately what
does is the benefit of identifying these nations? I hope we
will have the ability to have some dialog about that.
I also want to thank Mr. Putnam for coming. He is the vice-
chairman of this committee and quite often has taken over when
I haven't been around and unfortunately does a better job,
according to everyone who watches him. I limited his time in
the chair recently.
Mr. Gilman.
Mr. Gilman. I want to thank the panelists for their
testimony.
Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Syria have been contributing
arms and funds to terrorists in the Middle East. How best can
we curb that support of terrorism? What is the most effective
thing we can be doing? I address that to the whole panel?
Mr. Shays. We will have 10 minutes as we gave our speakers
5 minutes.
Mr. Perle. Congressman Gilman, I think the best way to
discourage them is to increase the price they pay for what they
do. Until now, they have paid a very small price, if any. Take
Syria for example. Syria has been in one way or another
supporting terrorism for a very long time. There are any number
of terrorist organizations if you want to meet them, you go to
the Bekaa Valley which is under Syrian control or even to
Damascus itself.
I think it is time, long overdue for us, to say to Mr. Asad
that this isn't tolerable because the war against terrorism is
a global war. If we start choosing between those terrorists we
will oppose and those that we will turn a blind eye to, in the
end we will be consumed by terrorists. I think we ought to put
it very squarely to Asad.
With respect to Iran, I don't think there is any question
about Iran's involvement in fueling instability in the Middle
East and encouraging attacks on Israel and others. I think when
all the evidence is in front of us, we will find Iran, working
with terrorist organizations, has directly attacked American
interests and killed Americans. The same holds for Saddam
Hussein.
North Korea bears a relationship to these others as a
supplier. I don't know that anyone at this table would disagree
that the North Koreans are assisting the Iraqis and assisting
the Iranians in development of their weapons. We know some of
that--my guess is there is a great deal of assistance of that
sort that we have not yet seen.
At the end of the day, I think we have to raise the price
for this sort of indulging in the support of terrorism and up
to now, we haven't done that.
Mr. Gilman. What sort of a price are you suggesting?
Mr. Perle. We have destroyed the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan. I hope, as I indicated earlier, that we will go on
to make sure that Saddam Hussein's regime is destroyed in Iraq.
At that point, the message to Syria ought to be, you are next.
That is to say, we will not tolerate regimes that support
terrorism and precisely how we go about raising that price is
going to vary from one case to another. I don't know anyone who
is suggesting a cookie cutter approach. Iran is different from
Iraq which is different from North Korea and Syria, to be sure,
so in each case, the approach must be a different one.
If you look at Syria, its military capabilities are
concentrated in a very small number of highly vulnerable
installations. I might couple the words, you are next, with
some vision of how quickly those military capabilities could be
obliterated.
Mr. Gilman. Thank you. Any other panelist? General
Scowcroft.
General Scowcroft. I have a slightly different perspective,
Mr. Gilman. All of the regimes we are talking about are
problems, there is no question about it but I think we have to
set priorities. We cannot do everything at once. We now have
troops in Bosnia, we have troops in Kosovo, we have troops in
Afghanistan, we have troops in the Philippines, we gave troops
in Georgia. We do not have unlimited capability and it seems to
me we have to focus on those tasks that need to be done first.
My sense is that the four countries you talk about are
problems but they are not problems primarily because of
terrorism. Syria might be an exception to that but remember,
the President, when he declared war on terrorism, he declared
war on terrorism with a global reach. If we go after Irish
terrorists, Colombian terrorists and all the other terrorists
that have limited regional goals at once, we are going to
drown. We cannot do it.
We have a tremendous job ahead of us to deal with al-Qaeda.
It is going to take years, it is going to take hard, patient
work to root out that bunch of terrorists. If in the meantime
we have a problem with Iraq, with Iran or something, we would
have to deal with it but I think we cannot take all of these on
simultaneously or we will not do any of them satisfactorily.
Mr. Gilman. Thank you, General Scowcroft.
Any other panelist? Yes, Mr. Carr.
Mr. Carr. I wanted to add to echo the sentiment that I
think there are specific ways in which each of these policies
should differ. We have had more luck in some of these cases
with different kinds of policies. With North Korea, we have had
more luck with using a carrot and stick approach than we have
with using purely the stick. It is a very truculent society and
government and they don't tend to respond well to pure threats.
The other ruling factor about North Korea is that they are
starving. They need things from us besides threats and we can
use that against them.
In the case of Iran and Iraq, that is not quite the case.
In Iran, I do think, as Mr. Perle said, we have to paint a very
clear picture for Iran of what exactly militarily could be the
consequences of continued behavior. I also think we have to
realize that in Iran, we are experiencing something, as we are
experiencing around the world, that we are perhaps too little
appreciative of, the unofficial cultural penetration that we
are achieving in the country which needs to be allowed to
continue, especially among younger Iranians. That is a slightly
different approach.
With Iraq, I am afraid I have unqualified agreement with
Mr. Perle, I don't think there is any picture you can paint for
Iraq except a forceful response. I think it is one you don't
have to paint, you have to carry through. The only
qualification would be is it Iraq you are talking about or
Saddam Hussein? Again, I think definitions are hugely
important. Saddam Hussein is not Iraq, vice versa. We have seen
the cost of making the Iraqi people pay for Saddam Hussein's
mistakes. We have created a lot of new enemies there over the
last 10 years.
Mr. Gilman. Mr. Benjamin.
Mr. Benjamin. Mostly I would like to echo or align myself
with what General Scowcroft said. I would like to elaborate by
saying it is very important as we go forward that we have our
concepts and categories clear in our minds. There are countries
that pose long term challenges that are problem countries that
we need to deal with and there are problems that are
existential that face us here and now. al-Qaeda is an
existential problem.
Were the United States to experience another terrorist
attack along the lines of September 11th, it would have a
devastating impact on morale in this country. Were al-Qaeda to
pull off the kind of attack they have talked about, multiple
attacks in the United States over a short period of time, it
would really be incalculable the kind of effect it would have.
We have policies for dealing with these three countries of
varying suitability. We may want to finetune them, we may want
to change some of them. The issue of regime change in Iraq is a
very serious one that I believe is being debated in the country
right now. Wherever we come out on those individual policies, I
think we need to recognize those countries are in a different
category from al-Qaeda.
Mr. Gilman. Mr. Perle.
Mr. Perle. Just to be clear about a point that has emerged,
I yield to General Scowcroft's wisdom here. I am not suggesting
that we strike out in some way against a long list of countries
simultaneously. I think the right approach was to deal with
first things first and that was the Taliban which turned
Afghanistan into the world's largest facility for the
nurturing, support, recruitment, training and dispatch of
terrorists. We had to do that.
In destroying the Taliban regime, we sent a message of
great importance that if you allow your country to be used in
this way, your regime is at risk. And I think others are now
reconsidering whether it is in their interest to be hospitable
to terrorists. Even Yemen is now asking what they can do to
demonstrate that they really are not friendly to terrorists.
So the direction is correct. I think Saddam will add, the
removal of Saddam, and it is Saddam and not Iraq, the removal
of Saddam will add significantly to the momentum of the anti-
terrorist tide. So I think that's very important.
I would finally just say that I agree entirely with Mr.
Carr, what is going on in Iran today is very interesting. I am
certainly not suggesting we launch military action against
Iran. What we should be doing is encouraging the young people
of Iran who are fed up with the miserable regime that dominates
their lives. There are a variety of ways in which we could
support and encourage them. I think there's a reasonable chance
we will see a new and much more civilized regime in Iran.
But I don't think the way to do it is to pretend that
Khatami is going to prevail over the mullahs who are now
running Iraq.
Mr. Gilman. Mr. Carr.
Mr. Carr. I just wanted to clarify one related point, about
the Afghan campaign, which I think this has been under-
appreciated in the press and everywhere, I think. The
revolutionary nature of what we've done in Afghanistan is to
state to these regimes that we can now, we have found a way
that we can remove your regime without punishing your
population.
That is the key to this whole campaign, because that's what
brought the Afghan people onto our side, and that's what's made
people like Saddam and the leaders of Iran and in Syria worried
now. They suddenly realize that we no longer, they've been
hiding behind their civilian populations for years, allowing us
to punish civilians. They don't care what happens to their
civilians. We end up punishing their civilians.
We've now told them, we no longer have to punish your
civilians.
Mr. Gilman. Thank you, panelists, and thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. We'll get another round.
Mr. Putnam.
Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to open with a question beginning with General
Scowcroft, but throw it open to the entire panel. We face what
I would characterize as the Saudi paradox. We have one of the
more advanced economies of the Middle East, a tremendous
supplier of the Nation's oil and home base for our troops in
the region, versus this hotbed of militant Islam and home of
the vast majority of the hijackers involved in the September
11th attacks.
How do we deal with the Saudi government? What is the best
posture for our future relationship with that nation?
General Scowcroft. Thank you, Mr. Putnam. We have among our
friends and allies some very complicated regimes. I think we
need to look carefully and deal with them each one according to
the character of its regime. The whole region of the Middle
East is in a state of transition. If one looks at the growth
rates of the region, one finds that despite the tremendous oil
income, growth rates are very, very poor.
The states of the region are having great difficulties
grappling with representative democracy. And I think we need to
encourage the evolution of these societies, both in terms of
genuine market economies and in terms of participative
democracies. But with due regard for their own cultural
differences and with a pace at which they can sustain these
changes.
I think one of the fundamental problems that we face, and
that encourages terrorism, is the fact of rapid change in the
world, of globalization, in fact. In 1945, there were 51
members of the U.N. There are now 190 members of the U.N. Most
of them are weak, poor, unable to cope with the forces around
them, the forces of information technology and so on are
swamping them. We need to figure out better ways to help
countries make this adjustment. I don't know what they are.
But I think the Saudi regime is one which has in a way made
a deal with radical or fundamental Islam, that they can preach
whatever they want as long as they don't act inside Saudi
territory. That in the long run of course is a destructive
bargain. And we ought to encourage the Saudis to look objective
at their situation and to draw a conclusion from it.
Mr. Perle. I certainly agree with what General Scowcroft
has just said. For a number of years now, the Saudis have been
funding pretty lavishly a network of institutions, religious,
educational, foundations that have been preaching violence and
hatred against the West and against the United States. If you
do that year after year, and if thousands of people pass
through those facilities, you will ultimately create a
significant population of potential terrorists.
That unfortunately is what has happened. In the Madrases in
Pakistan, many of which are financed by the Saudis, these young
men, boys, really, 17, 16, 18, enroll and they spend the next 4
to 5 years living on bread and water and getting 18 hours, 24
hours a day of the most violent, anti-Western, anti-democratic,
anti-non-Muslim indoctrination. They have no contact with
women, virtually none with the outside world.
By the time they leave those places, these are deformed
personalities, capable of violence, indeed, intent on violence.
They return to the countries from which they have come, which
includes a significant fraction of the 190 members of the
United Nations. They are time bombs in every one of their
societies, waiting to explode.
We had better understand that, and understand it now. And
as a minimum, we must appeal to the Saudis and the other
sources of funding to recognize that in the end they will be
consumed by the flames that they have been feeding. But whether
they accept that explanation or not, we should be using every
instrument available to us to discourage the perpetuation of
this massive training ground for potential terrorists.
Mr. Benjamin. I agree with a great deal of what has been
said. I think it's important to keep in mind, that the Saudi
state has had something of a contradiction at its heart, it is
dedicated to two goals. One is the Saudi royal family, or the
flourishing and the future of the Saudi royal family, and the
promulgation of Wahabbi Islam. Those two were going on, in a
sense, in two very different channels.
As a result, the authorities were not spending the time
necessary, or had developed the regulatory apparatus necessary
to monitor what was going on, which was the funneling of large
amounts of money through state supported NGO's all over the
world. As a result, we have the Al-Qaeda threat and we have
radical Muslimism in many different countries.
I think that most of the ruling authorities in Saudi Arabia
have come to recognize that they have potentially sown the
seeds for their own destruction. We need to encourage them to
continue improving their oversight of these NGO's and of
schools and the like within the kingdom as well. I think that
one place where the United States has not done as well as it
could have is in talking to the Saudis about what appears in
their press and what appears in their textbooks. Both of these
are a source of enormous radicalization, if you will.
For many years, and quite understandably, we in the United
States have made a sort of bargain with what we call the
moderate Arab regimes in the region, and that is if they would
support the Middle East peace process, we would not make too
many noises about democratization and about incitement, the
newspapers and what goes on in the schools. I think now we
realize that we can no longer afford to shortchange the second
set of issues, because what has been fanned is not just anti-
Israel sentiment, bad as that might be, but anti-Western
sentiment that ultimately poses the long term threat to a
peaceful world.
Mr. Putnam. Mr. Carr, you in your fourth principle of
counterterrorism, emphasizing the ability to achieve surprise,
you say that to achieve this goal we would be forced to forego
legal niceties in order to effect the kind of surprise that
permits greater discrimination in operations. Most of the
discussion today has centered on the roots of terrorism,
predominantly in the Middle East. But when you have terror
cells in the homeland, which legal niceties would you recommend
that we forego, and which would you say----
Mr. Carr. I would have to say that when we deal with
domestic questions and international questions, we're dealing
with two entirely different animals. I think that we saw and
experienced this fall with the preliminary, what some people
characterized as breach of constitutional rights, but which
really was just experimentation with new methods of trying to
secure a country in what was understandably an atmosphere of
panic, I think we saw very quickly that most of the legal
institutions domestically that are in place right now are
sufficient to handle the greater part of the problem of
terrorists within this country.
And indeed, something that I've written quite a bit about
is the notion of the fall roundup of anyone even suspected of
involvement in terrorist cells undid a great deal of work that
was done over the last 20 years by the FBI, a great deal of
infiltration work, a great many terrorist cell operatives went
to ground, a great many double agents had their cover blown by
it. And we to date have exposed exactly zero cells in this
country through that method.
So I think that domestically, we're talking about a
different animal. When I say not observing legal niceties, I'm
talking about in the international realm. I think it's very
important to make a distinction there.
If I may just address your question for 1 second on Saudi
Arabia, I think it continues to be one of the most fatuous
pieces of diplomatic imagination to keep characterizing Saudi
Arabia as a moderate Arab regime. Even a cursory examination of
the history of the Islamic empires and kingdoms shows that
Islamic fundamentalism has always come out of Saudi Arabia.
They have always been engaged, Mr. Benjamin just mentioned the
Wahabbi sect, which has existed for hundreds of years. They
have always been at the center for this kind of philosophy, and
they've always lied very well about it to a succession of
antagonists, and most recently us.
I think at the same time that there are complaints that the
average Saudi, and indeed the average Muslim, has about our
presence in Saudi Arabia that are very legitimate and require
attention. The presence of U.S. soldiers so close to what is
holy ground for all Muslims is a deeply troubling question that
doesn't get enough attention, I feel, among American
policymakers.
Mr. Putnam. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, gentlemen.
I am thrilled you all are here, and I am thrilled that
we've having this hearing. Because I've done a lot of thinking
about the concepts that you all have done absolutely a
tremendous amount of thinking about. I've tried to understand
the impact. I basically think we are in a race with terrorists
to shut them down before they use weapons of mass destruction.
I believe it's not a question of if, it's a question of when,
where and of what magnitude.
I believe that the administration has to prepare the
American people for the potential that weapons of mass
destruction will be used in this country, so that if they
happen, we can absorb them in a mature way, and also because it
helps explain to people why we've made arrests, why we've had
wire tapping, why we negated the attorney-client privilege, and
why we made tribunals to not disclose sources and methods.
But you did kind of jar me, Mr. Carr, because I had been a
fan of the arrests, because I know we did it during the Gulf
War, I know we did it during the millennium and I know we did
it now. I always viewed it as putting the terrorists on defense
rather than offense. You arrest someone in the cell, even if
you don't know what cell they're a part of, and the rest of the
cell has to hide. So don't you think if we hadn't made those
arrests that we would be dealing with terrorist attacks today?
Mr. Carr. As I said, Mr. Chairman, I find the motivation
for the arrests extremely understandable. I have to judge by
result. The administration itself is willing to admit, in the
pages of Time Magazine, which I found rather extraordinary,
that they've been able to crack exactly zero cells in the time
that they've been making these arrests. Whereas, the policy
before, we had a lot more progress.
Mr. Shays. Well, but see you, believe what you read in the
press.
Mr. Carr. I believe Karen Hughes.
Mr. Shays. But you know, I believe that the smartest thing
they could say is they've made no progress. But I do think that
it has put them on defense. Because the cell can't order them,
if their members have been arrested, they go into hiding.
That's kind of like a basic tenet. Now, how long we can stretch
that out, but it has given us, I thought, a little breathing
room. Any of you have a view? Mr. Benjamin, then we'll go to
the General.
Mr. Benjamin. We're in some ways uncharted territory in
terms of dealing with a foreign terrorist in the United States.
Because the evidence to date is that the perpetrators of
September 11th never connected with the local infrastructure.
This is what the FBI is telling us, they've conducted thousands
of interviews, in addition to all the people who were detained.
This is, to my mind, an enormously worrisome development.
Mr. Shays. What is the worrisome development?
Mr. Benjamin. That we had the operators, the 19, come into
this country, live off the land and carry out their terrorist
attacks without the support of an indigenous infrastructure,
without there being any cells in place. That's a revolution in
trade craft. And to carry out something like that suggests that
the terrorists are a couple of steps ahead of our abilities
when it comes to intelligence and law enforcement.
Mr. Shays. Or it makes an assumption that the terrorists
have been at war for 20 to 30 years and we just didn't know it.
Has that base been in a university of terrorism, they've been
practicing without our paying attention.
Mr. Benjamin. This group has been practicing or thinking
about these kinds of attacks for a decade. I think we know that
from both the intelligence and the law enforcement records.
This particular attack was of course something that no one had
imagined before, and I don't think anyone really imagined it
before the late 1990's.
But I think that the critical fact here is that in an era
of globalization, of open borders and the movement of people,
ideas and capital, if they can come into our country and do
that with that kind of ease, without being detected, we have an
enormous amount of catching up to do in terms of our law
enforcement techniques.
Mr. Shays. General.
General Scowcroft. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think it's
dangerous to assume that our structures seem to be OK for
operating domestically. I think it's instructive that on
September 10th, we knew almost nothing about any of the people
who were active on September 11th. By September 13th, we knew a
great deal about them. The information was there, we didn't
have it. And I think that's partly due to our structures. We
have a handoff between the CIA and the FBI about when you cross
the borders of the United States.
Now, the FBI does a wonderful job in crime, in law
enforcement. But law enforcement is not an intelligence
operation. And these people existed in the United States for
several years because they didn't do anything to bring them to
the attention of the FBI. They didn't violate any laws, they
didn't do anything which would make them a target for the FBI.
An intelligence operative, on the other hand, looks for
signs, looks for indications around and puts them together into
a pattern which helps you anticipate what might happen. Law
enforcement starts when something happens and backs up and
says, who did it. I think we have a problem here that we have
not dealt with adequately yet.
Mr. Shays. I do not disagree with that. I think that's
true. I believe, though, just based on the hearings we have had
that if we had listened to what they said in Arabic, we would
have been aware that we were under attack, that there were
people designed to target the Twin Towers and so on, I mean,
how they did it. I think that as we just simply take what has
been on TV and in the Middle East, written documents, we would
have known a heck of a lot.
General Scowcroft. But that's not the job of the FBI. The
job of the FBI is to enforce laws, primarily. Now, they've
turned, their national security division is responsible for
intelligence like that. But they're trained in law enforcement
and they do not have the cast of mind that a CIA analyst, for
example, would have. And that is a problem that, we need to
fuse our collection domestically in a way that enables us to
use the talents of intelligence analysts rather than law
enforcement.
Mr. Shays. Let me just start with you on the questions that
I was going to begin. When Chairman Gilman and I were here
during the Gulf War, we watched the President just begin to
bring nations together. But my recollection is that in order
for the administration to get this group of nations and group
of members, Republicans and Democrats, to support the effort,
there was basically a pledge that our effort was to get Iraq
out of Kuwait, but not to go into Baghdad. And that there was
in a sense an agreement that we would not go into Baghdad.
Is my recollection correct?
General Scowcroft. I don't think so, Mr. Chairman. There
was no--the mission given to the United States by the United
Nations was to free Kuwait. There is no question about that. It
did not go beyond that. But it did not certainly prescribe us
going on to Baghdad. I think had we done so, there would have
been a lot of consequences.
Mr. Shays. I know that some members voted on the condition
that we would not. In other words, they were going to support
the effort of getting Iraq out of Kuwait. And the reason I'm
asking the question is that I get a sense that this President
is willing to make no agreement that in any way inhibits us
from taking unilateral action if we need to.
General Scowcroft. Well, let me just say, I don't know what
was in the mind or even in some of the debate on the
resolutions which passed authorizing all necessary means. But
if you remember, I believe it passed the Senate by seven votes,
even with the very narrow understanding of had the President
said, I'll do what I want and whatever I want. That was one of
the hardest struggles that I remember in the administration,
was to get the votes in the Senate.
Mr. Shays. I gave a very moving speech to me at 3:30 in the
morning, to no one else, though. I remember being on the Floor
because this was an issue that was deeply troubling for me,
having not been in Vietnam and trying to sort this out, and
voting with conviction that we needed to do it, by the time I
voted, but listening to all the members. It was clearly a sense
that we had an objective and we would achieve that objective
and then we would get on with it.
Mr. Perle, do you have anything to add to this issue?
Mr. Perle. I think there clearly was a very substantial
intelligence failure prior to September 11th. As General
Scowcroft has observed, a great deal of information was
available to us, it simply wasn't analyzed effectively,
properly and in a timely fashion. And I'm not sure we've fixed
that problem.
With respect to 1991, my own view is that we should have
continued a little longer. I don't think it was necessary to go
to Baghdad. I think it was necessary to destroy the Republican
Guard as a cohesive military unit. My recollection is we had a
significant element of the Republican Guard in such a position
that had we chosen to do so, they would have been forced either
to abandon their mechanized forces and walk back to Baghdad, or
we could have destroyed them, and we chose not to do so.
I think one of the reasons is that we wrongly assumed that
Saddam Hussein couldn't survive the defeat that had been
inflicted on him. Hindsight has some benefits. I don't know how
General Scowcroft feels, but I know others who were involved at
the time, had they known that Saddam would be here in 2002,
might well have been willing at least to exert that additional
pressure on the Republican Guard.
Mr. Shays. Before I recognize Mr. Gilman, I want you to
speak to the concept of multilateral versus unilateral, any of
you. I want to know should we always preserve the ability to
act unilaterally and do you anticipate that we will have to?
General Scowcroft. My general rule would be act
multilaterally whenever you can, act unilaterally when you
must. That is not a sharp dividing line.
Our friends will understand if sometimes we have to do
things that they are not in full accord with but we don't want
to have to operate in a world which is generally hostile to the
United States in anything it does because we act with arrogance
and unilateralism and pay no attention to our friends.
It was a pain in the neck to have 31 coalition members
assembled for the Gulf War that we had to care for, feed, so on
and so forth. Was it worth it? I think it was highly worth it
because for the time we needed, we had a very effective
coalition. Could we have held it together a long time? I don't
know but there are benefits to multilateralism that with the
exception of a few cases, are worth the restrictions on the
freedom of action over the long run.
Mr. Shays. Your definition is helpful to me. Mr. Perle.
Mr. Perle. I certainly agree that wherever we can act in
concert with friends and allies, we should. We must be prepared
to act alone or we will never be able to form coalitions for
the purposes we intend. Coalitions are a means to an end, they
are not an end in themselves.
Mr. Shays. Is the implication in your answer that if they
know we are going to act unilaterally, we might get
multilateral cooperation?
Mr. Perle. I think we are more likely to get multilateral
cooperation, particularly where others believe if we act
unilaterally, that could be worse for them than if they
collaborate with us. So in a sense it is a matter of exerting
leverage on potential partners.
At the end of the day, there are two driving factors you
mustn't forget. One is their interests are never going to be
identical to ours. They may be similar, they may be very close
but they are not identical. The citizens of Rotterdam are not
threatened in quite the way the citizens of New York are
threatened today. So other governments are going to react
differently, particularly in their willingness to accept risks
because even if their willingness to take risk is identical to
ours, if the threat is less, then their actual behavior is
going to be less forward leaning, if I can put it that way.
There is a second difference and it is a very troubling
one, and it is getting worse. That is as American military
capabilities improve, and they are improving dramatically and
we have seen only the beginning. Mr. Carr was right to refer to
our ability with great precision to target only the things we
wish to destroy, something we have never been able to do in the
history of warfare, never been able to see the battlefield
clearly enough, much less confine lethal effects to very
precise targets with a real economy in force.
As our ability to do that grows, and it is growing daily,
and that of our allies doesn't, our ability to fight alongside
one another when it comes to military action, is very limited.
Even now we can conduct air operations with minimal risk to our
pilots because we have stealthy aircraft. Some of our allies
don't. If they fly over the same battlefield, they have a much
higher risk of being shot down than we do. So this gap in
military capabilities is ultimately a real challenge to our
ability to maintain coalitions when it comes to military
action.
Mr. Shays. I want to get to Mr. Gilman, but I would like
both you, Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Carr, to respond.
Mr. Benjamin. The points that have been made are very good
ones and interoperability, for example, is a growing problem in
U.S./Allied military cooperation. We have looked thus far at
the question of multilateral strictly or primarily through a
military lens. I think one thing we need to keep in mind when
we are dealing with terrorism is that military considerations
are not the only ones.
The coalition that was built to liberate Kuwait was built
primarily I believe, and General Scowcroft can correct me if I
am wrong, to confer as much possible legitimacy on the
operation as possible. That is a very important matter but when
we talk about building coalitions for combatting terrorism, we
are also talking about the safety of Americans because if the
terrorists continue to base themselves with impunity in
continental Europe or in London, which is really the capital of
Jihad today outside of Afghanistan, then Americans are not
going to be safe because they can have access to our country
from there. If they can use European banking systems without
there being adequate surveillance, Americans are not going to
be safe.
It is very important that we work on building these
coalitions. I think it is also important that America invest
the time and effort to make it clear that the citizens of
Rotterdam are threatened, if not as immediately as those of New
York right now, they will be over the long term because the
west is the enemy as far as al-Qaeda is concerned and as
America becomes more difficult to attack, Europe will become a
riper target.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Carr.
Mr. Carr. I think I can use, as I think I should in my role
here, historical examples that we have been discussing, I think
with a comparative acting unilaterally with a comparative
handful of tactical aircraft, the Reagan administration was
able to produce a more profoundly inhibiting effect on Muammar
Qaddafi than was produced on Saddam Hussein with an armada and
an expeditionary force.
I think there is a central flaw in a lot of alliance
politics with these kind of military actions in that we refuse,
to the public, I don't know what went on behind closed doors,
but the public was not made aware during the Gulf War of who
exactly the enemy was. We were told we were against the
invasion of Kuwait but you can't really go to war with an
action, you have to go to war with either a people or a leader.
We were told we were not at war with the Iraqi people but we
don't go to war with particular leaders. That didn't leave
anything except an action. We needed to be told that we were at
war with Saddam Hussein. If we had gone on that basis, I
believe we could have achieved something closer to what we
achieved in Libya in 1986.
Mr. Shays. General Scowcroft.
General Scowcroft. Just a short comment. What we achieved
in 1986 was hardly as wholesale as Mr. Carr suggests. In 1988,
Pan Am 103 was perpetrated by Qaddafi.
Mr. Carr. It was perpetrated by Libyans and we don't know
exactly. General Scowcroft knows far more than I do.
Mr. Shays. Are you going to defer to his wisdom like Mr.
Perle has?
Mr. Carr. It was perpetrated by Libyans, we know.
Mr. Shays. I think one of the phrases that will ring in my
ear, I am going to teach my daughter, defer Mr. Perle to Mr.
Scowcroft's wisdom, so I will teach my daughter to defer to my
wisdom. Good luck.
Mr. Perle. It doesn't work with offspring. [Laughter.]
Mr. Shays. Mr. Gilman, thank you for your patience.
Mr. Gilman. One last issue. General Scowcroft pointed out
the problems of not having adequate intelligence or quality
intelligence. The Afghanistan attack I think focused on the
need for better human intelligence. Have we cured that? What
more should we be doing to get better quality intelligence? We
have so many nations out there harboring terrorists, exporting
terrorists, exporting arms and finances to terrorist
organizations. What should we be doing to improve our
intelligence basis if we are going to contain all of this?
General Scowcroft. I think first of all, we need to
significantly rebuild our human intelligence capabilities
within the CIA. They have been attacked and let erode for a
long, long time. Indeed, in many respects, people said that is
an activity that has passed. It has not passed, it is extremely
important in our ability to get inside these terrorist
networks.
It won't be done quickly though. It is long and it is hard
and we have to have patience and we have to be prepared to do
things and work with people that perhaps are less savory than
Mr. Carr suggests we always ought to deal with.
Mr. Gilman. Mr. Perle, what are your thoughts about what we
should be doing with the intelligence?
Mr. Perle. I believe that we could have done better with
greater focus. Richard Reed managed to do his time in
Afghanistan and so did the young American, I have forgotten his
name. You could as well have inserted an American who was in
fact working for us.
I don't want to be cavalier in the criticism but I think it
was a lack of focus, frankly. I think it was a failure to
appreciate the magnitude of the problem. I am afraid the sad
truth is until September 11th, as a Nation, we believed that
the investment we were making in combatting terror, the money,
the organization, the inconvenience we accepted on our own
citizens, was about appropriate to the magnitude of the threat.
That is the only way you can interpret a policy which had
existed for many years.
Now we know that we gravely underestimated how much damage
could be done and in retrospect, it looks as though we should
have done a great deal more before September 11th but we were
content with what we were doing at that time by and large and
did not believe it was necessary to take more aggressive, more
costly, more intrusive action.
I debated this issue and if there is any interest, we can
insert it in the record, with Stansfield Turner almost 5 years
ago and the topic was, should we do more, should we be more
willing to use military force to combat terrorism? He was dead
set against it. He thought what we were doing was about right
and he had some years of running the CIA. I think that was the
prevailing attitude in the intelligence community. The number
of people at the CIA who were working on counterterrorism is
probably a classified number but you would be shocked at how
small it was before September 11th.
Mr. Shays. We will insert that for the record.
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Mr. Gilman. Mr. Benjamin.
Mr. Benjamin. We undoubtedly need to improve our human
intelligence capabilities. I think as we do it, we need to keep
a couple of things in mind. One is that although there was one
lost American in al-Qaeda in the Taliban, I don't think it
would have been that hard to get someone into the Taliban but
it certainly is very, very difficult to get someone into al-
Qaeda.
There is a difference between spying on religiously
motivated groups and spying on governments which is what we
have very good experience at doing. Governments have buildings,
ordinary people who can be bought, who may have ideological
sympathies with us, who have any number of reasons for wanting
to cooperate with us.
People who are motivated by a belief that the United States
is waging war against their religion are not likely to be as
easily acquired as assets. So this going to be very difficult
and in this regard, the Israeli experience is very relevant.
Hamas has been there for 15 years and they have had a terrible
record of penetration. It is just very difficult to do. It is
not going to be easy.
That means in addition, we have to compensate by serious
investment in upgrading our signals intelligence because the
modes of communications are constantly exploding. We now have
throwaway cell phones that are very hard to track and that
means a lot of money and a lot of innovation is going to have
to go into all of this.
Mr. Gilman. Mr. Carr.
Mr. Carr. I would say three simple words in addition to
improving things, stop rewarding failure. I was very distressed
after September 11th at the great deal of talk that there was
about throwing a lot more money at places like the Central
Intelligence Agency since they had managed to overlook warning
signals that were quite plain and easily accessible even to
common researchers like myself. We had warnings.
Mr. Perle, I think, sells himself a bit short in not
recognizing how long ago he was aware of the direct possibility
of a threat to the domestic United States, I know Secretary
Rumsfeld, who I have had the opportunity to talk to, was aware
very early on. Our intelligence agencies seems to have had a
concerted determination to give secondary importance to
terrorism. So long as we keep throwing money at people who
think that way, I think you have to look at who brings in the
job. It is like contractors, who brings in the job well done
and make them the recipients of funds.
The CIA has fallen down. This is the latest in a series of
major failures starting with, for me on this level, the Berlin
blockade in 1948 that they failed to predict and the invasion
of North Korea. I cannot see continually rewarding them for
doing badly.
Mr. Gilman. I want to thank are panelists again for your
astute analysis today. You have given us a lot of food for
thought.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. I just have a few more questions myself and we
will let you get on your way.
Is it important that we have a definition of terrorism?
Mr. Perle. Could I say I think there is a definition that
almost everyone of good will would recognize. It is not as
elegant as Mr. Carr's definition but it is roughly terrorism is
the killing or the attacking of civilians to achieve a
political purpose. I think Mr. Carr said it more elegantly, but
everyone understands that is what terrorism is. People who want
to debate that really want to protect some terrorist activity
because they associate themselves with the political objective.
Mr. Shays. Do you all have 15 more minutes? Let me go to
Mr. Putnam and then I am going to finish up.
Mr. Putnam. I will ask one more question beginning with
General Scowcroft. Under the Hart-Rudman Commission, which
exhaustively reviewed a number of these threats, they
identified the task of managing resentment of being one of the
great challenges of this decade that some of the demographic
and sociological factors you pointed out in the last round,
General, this breeding ground of unrest among the youth,
limited economic opportunities, have fostered a hostile
attitude toward the United States, some of it perhaps justified
and some of it not.
How do we wage this two front war both in eradicating
terrorism with a global reach and reinforcing to the civilians
through our economic and diplomatic policies that we are a
benevolent power and that we are not out to create a hegemonic
force of American culture? That is kind of like asking you to
solve the Middle East crisis in 25 words of less.
General Scowcroft. That is a really tough one. To me that
is the essence of leadership. That goes to the question of the
chairman about unilateralism versus multilateralism. We need to
act whenever we can in such a way that people want to emulate
us, that they want to associate with us, that they want to
support us. That is not always possible but to the extent that
we can behave that way, then that truly is the way we try to
behave, we don't seek any territory, we don't seek hegemony.
Indeed, we would prefer to be left alone but to the extent that
we can be an attractive world power, we will have succeeded.
Mr. Perle. Mr. Putnam, I am not at all sure that we will
ever achieve the goal of persuading everyone that we are a
benign force in the world. I don't think there is any question
that we are and anyone who looks at us objectively, I think
will come to that conclusion. We are not perfect, but we are a
benign force in the world.
I think it is a mistake to believe that we have to do that
in order to cope effectively with terrorism. What seems to be
more important is to focus on what sadly is the most intense
source of terrorism today and the foreseeable future and that
is radical Islam.
We are not being attacked by Latin Americans, broadly
speaking we are not being attacked by South Asians. We are
being attacked by people who hold a view of the world that is
by and large indifferent to the facts, indifferent to the
reality. Indeed, when they understand us best, they seem to be
most motivated.
Some of the people involved in September 11th lived in this
country. They were under no misapprehension about how we treat
our neighbors, about what kind of a society we are but they
came to this country intent on doing damage and by the time
they arrived, there was no potential to convert them by
persuasion.
I think we have to turn unfortunately to the poisonous
infrastructure that has been developed that creates people who
hate our way of life. It has very little to do with our actual
behavior.
Mr. Benjamin. You have asked the $64,000 question and we
could spend months talking about it. We will never convince
everyone of our good character and benign intentions. We are
condemned to fight this kind of hatred I think for a generation
to come.
I think one of our chief goals, however, should be to limit
the pool of potential recruits to this kind of terrorism. The
demographic outlook at that we face is horrifying, the highest
population growth rates in the world are in the Arab world and
at the same time, the worst economic growth rates, worse than
even sub-Saharan Africa, and this is not going to be solved
easily.
Two things I do think need to be done, one which the
administration has begun to step forward on is recognition that
our assistance levels need to come back up and we need to
invest where we can to show America's desire to be a positive
influence in the region.
The other is one of the problems in Islam today is that
there are very few scholars who are considered to be respected
if they are supported by the government. As a result, that has
opened up a lot of room for radical clergy to preach this kind
of hatred. There are more moderate clergy out there and I think
we should speak with our interlocutors in other countries and
in this country as well and do what we can to support them so
that it does not become the hard and fast doctrine that a
suicide bomb is an act that glorifies God.
Mr. Perle. I don't think there is any correlation at all
between how much we spend on foreign assistance and the pool of
potential terrorists in the world. For one thing, we don't
spend the aid very well. We have a very difficult time figuring
out how to turn aid dollars into real progress for the
societies on which we confer it and often it actually sets them
back by creating dependency.
I hope we don't go down the path of throwing a lot of money
at ill-conceived aid programs because we have some idea that is
going to help us deal with terrorism. It isn't.
Mr. Putnam. Let us get Mr. Carr.
Mr. Benjamin. Very quickly. Clearly there are different
philosophies at work here. I am not saying that aid is a
panacea but it did turn South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and any
number of other countries into thriving democracies with a lot
of prospects for contributing to a globalized world.
We need to reinvent aid and we need to do that sort of
thing from time to time with a lot of our programs that deal
with the rest of the world. I see indifference as really the
enemy here, not just what we have to deal with in looking out
at a vast expanse and saying we can't do anything.
Mr. Putnam. Mr. Carr.
Mr. Carr. I guess I would agree with elements of both of
the last two remarks. I am not sure the amount of aid is the
question. I think it is more the attitude of the aid and
picking which country it can be effective in. Your examples of
where aid does a good job are well taken but in Somali, we saw
exactly what happens to aid that is badly used. Our food aid
was used effectively as a weapon for deliberate starvation. So
it is really not a question of how much aid, it is how a
question of how it is used and that leads to attitude and that
gets me back to things like the stationing of troops in
sensitive places in the Islamic world. We don't take that
seriously enough.
Part of the reason al-Qaeda is so attractive throughout the
Muslim world is because that is one of their central issues. A
lot of muslims take that very serious.
Mr. Putnam. Didn't the Saudis have some role in selecting
where we built that base?
Mr. Carr. That leads back also to my remarks about the
Saudi Government. I don't think we should be dealing with them
as if they are telling us the truth by any means.
One thing I also wanted to say to return to the Afghanistan
campaign, we have also seen in this campaign in addition to the
military advances, a way to reach the civilian population. When
Secretary Rumsfeld and his people deliberately designed a
campaign that showed respect for the civilian population of the
country in which we were going into action, that had an
enormous effect that we are continuing to feel right now in
that we are still welcome there and they want us to stay there.
That is not something that has happened in a very long time.
Military action is not precluded by attitude.
Mr. Putnam. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your indulgence.
Mr. Shays. Thank you for your good questions and very
interesting answers.
When our embassy employees were taken in Iran, we had day
one, day two and it was really a country held hostage. In my
own simple mind, I thought if Hitler had taken prisoners, we
wouldn't consider them hostages, we would consider them
prisoners and we wouldn't have allowed Hitler to hold us
hostage.
When Iran didn't like the coverage of western news people,
he kicked them out and the western news stopped reporting day
one, two and three or maybe day 300. So the Iranians invited
our western news people back in to report and again, we seemed
to be held hostage.
I like the fact that when President Reagan took office, he
basically said in so many words, this is an act of war an we
are going to deal with Iran accordingly and we got our people
back.
What I have been wrestling with is the whole concept of are
there good terrorists and bad terrorists? This gets to the
issue of Arafat. In my simple mind, my mind is saying to me we
know he has funded terrorist activities, we know the PLO was
responsible for the 50 tons of material from Iran, we know Iran
has funded Hamas, etc. We know what they have been teaching
their kids in school, etc.
That is a long lead-in to the question of--that is why I
was interested in the definition and General Scowcroft shook
your head but when I asked was a definition of terrorism
helpful or important, Mr. Perle, you gave us Carl light and it
was basically not as elegant as you said. You shook your head
so for the record, General Scowcroft, you don't believe we need
to have a definition?
General Scowcroft. No, I agree with Mr. Perle that we have
a generally understood definition of terrorism. I think if we
get into legalism and say this is and this isn't, we get into a
morass we can't get out of.
Mr. Shays. I misread you. A definition is not unimportant.
General Scowcroft. I wouldn't pursue it now.
Mr. Shays. Just as I believe these aren't criminal acts,
they are acts of terror, they are acts of war. In other words,
we can get into big battles of try someone for acts of
terrorism as if they were criminal acts and we will be in the
courts for 20 years. I don't mean to put words in your mouth. I
am getting a little off field here.
What I am wanting to do though is say I feel Arafat is in
fact a terrorist. I feel what we need to do is say very simply,
until the bombing stops, there can be no dialog with you, until
you stop teaching your kids to hate Jews and the western world
and preach it and until you stop funding these terrorist
activities, we can't interact with you. Maybe we can't ever
interact if I consider him a terrorist. Help me sort out this
one. How do we decide good terrorists and bad terrorists?
General Scowcroft. I am not sure I can sort it out but Mr.
Carr had a wonderful definition of terrorism and I wrote down
the United States is terrorist because of the Dresden bombing
in World War II. There isn't any question about it according to
his definition.
I think we have to be flexible and I don't think we ought
to be legalistic. Our goal in terrorism is not whether we try
somebody according to criminal law or terrorist law. Trying
individuals is not the goal, wiping out terrorism is the goal.
I think when we get too legalistic about it, we will trip over
our own legalisms.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. Mr. Perle.
Mr. Perle. At the risk of validating the criticism of Chris
Patten and Foreign Minister Vetrine being simplistic, I think
this is a case where a simple formula consistently applied is
the only way we can expect to take and hold an essential moral
high ground.
Terrorism is the attack on civilians to achieve a political
purpose. That is true whether you are sympathetic with the
purpose or not. Most of the time I think we tend not to be
sympathetic with the purposes of groups who apply violence to
civilian populations. In that regard, I agree with you that
Yasser Arafat's organization has been behaving as a terrorist
organization and I think we ought to be very clear about that.
It may be diplomatically inconvenient at one moment or another
but when we start making excuses for diplomatic convenience, I
think we are on very precarious ground.
If I could add one small suggestion to that, Yasser
Arafat's organization, the Palestinian Authority has received I
think now something on the order of $2-$3 billion in recent
years from the anti-simplistic French and other members of the
European Union. The European Union has been writing checks for
Yasser Arafat and to the best of my knowledge has never made
one Euro of that contingent upon an end to suicidal bombing or
even the verbal renunciation of suicidal bombing. I think it is
a disgrace. I think the Europeans have been aiding and abetting
terrorism by continuing to fund the Palestinian Authority
without ever demanding their support be tied to a cessation of
that sort of terrorism.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Benjamin, do you want to jump in?
Mr. Benjamin. Just quickly. On definition, there is a
perfectly workable definition that is not as elegant as Mr.
Carr's in the Federal Code about use of violence to advance
political ends. I think it works fine.
General Scowcroft is right, if we open the floor for a
lengthy debate on what is terrorism and what isn't, we will
find ourselves confronted with 180 countries that all have
their own carve-out that they want to achieve on some
particular grievance for which if someone were to use violence,
it would be OK.
I think the United States actually has been consistent and
really impressively so when the MEK, the group that opposes the
Iranian regime, had carried out attacks against Iran, we have
condemned them. When there was an attack if you can believe it,
several years ago, against Mullah Omar, of unknown authorship,
probably Iranian, we condemned it, because we condemn
terrorism.
So I think that is an important stance to maintain. At the
same time, we do need to have flexibility of mind, because at
the end of the day, there are terrorists who need to be put out
of business, and there are people who they may need to make
diplomatic arrangements with once they have given up terror.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Carr.
Mr. Carr. Well, I'm obviously going to say, because I've
written a book on it, copies of which have been supplied to
your subcommittee, but I gather haven't arrived in your hands
yet, since I've written a whole book on why we absolutely need
a definition of terrorism, the one that I gave to you. I think
for the last century, exactly what we've had is 180 voices
saying that their version wasn't terrorism, and that one man's
terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and that underlines
the point that we need an absolutely binding and specific
definition of terrorism in the international community. Without
it, we have what we've had for the last century, every side can
claim that they aren't terrorists and everybody else is.
General Scowcroft is right, the strategic bombing of
Germany in the Second World War did amount to terrorism. And
like all terrorism, it was completely counterproductive. It led
to a rise in German industrial production and a rise in the
German armed forces. It never should have been undertaken. It
made the job of winning the Second World War harder.
We need this definition badly.
Mr. Shays. President Bush has said, you're either with us
or against us. I saw him do it even at a very enjoyable St.
Patrick's Day celebration with the prime minister of Ireland.
Then there was some reference to the IRA. Obviously the time
that some had with Colombia and the narcotics trade and the
terrorists in Colombia.
I thought it was significant that he was using his time to
even tell a great friend, you're either with us or against us.
It was said. And I'm going to start with you, Mr. Carr, because
we've ended up with you each time. But it strikes me that this
is a helpful thing to do. And I'd be curious to know what each
of you think. And then I'm just going to close with one last
question.
Mr. Carr. Speaking of making his point to friends as well
as enemies, I think it's vitally important. Your point about
Arafat is very well taken. However, we had Arafat a great deal
more on the ropes a month ago than we do right now, thanks to
the actions of the Israeli defense forces, which also in the
last few weeks on many occasions amount to terrorism. We need
to make that point very strongly to the Israelis, that actions
which are undertaken knowing that they will result in innocent
civilian deaths amount to terrorism as well. And we should have
been much stronger. And we've hurt our diplomatic position. A
lot of the diplomatic advantage we gained as a result of
Afghanistan we've lost because we did not stand up to Israel
fast enough and what they were doing on the West Bank.
Mr. Shays. Mr. Benjamin.
Mr. Benjamin. I think the phrase are you with us or are you
against us is----
Mr. Shays. No, you either are with us or against us.
Mr. Benjamin [continuing]. Is a useful phrase and a catchy
one. I think that we need to beware of ever harnessing our
entire foreign policy to one principle. In the past, that has,
I think, led us astray. I think the greatest virtue of a great
statesman is his flexibility of mind. And I think that it is
useful, but we should never go on auto-pilot.
Mr. Shays. No formulas.
Mr. Perle. I think if you say you are with us or you are
against us, we will find there will be many more people with us
than if we don't say it. So I think it's very blunt, it's very
direct, it's one of the great virtues of this President that he
has abandoned some of the obscurances, conventions of our
normal diplomacy. And I think it's going to produce results.
Would you forgive me if I just said that I don't want the
record to leave uncontested Mr. Carr's assertion of Israeli
terrorism. I don't know what he's referring to. To the best of
my knowledge, the Israelis have gone to enormous lengths to be
as precise as they can in the way they've conducted military
operations in the West Bank. They have gone into communities
that might more readily have been bombed in order to avoid
unnecessary civilian casualties.
There will certainly be civilian casualties, but I think
the numbers are modest, and I think the Israelis deserve
enormous credit for the risks they've taken, and even some of
the losses they've taken, in order to be as discriminating as
possible in going after a terrorist infrastructure that has
just become an intolerable threat to everyday life in Israel.
I'll end with that.
Gen Scowcroft. I don't mind the phrase, I'm not sure what
the practical significance is, other than that I think everyone
ought to be against terrorism in principle. And I think we
focus on that statement of the President more than we focus on
his statement that we're going after terrorism with a global
reach. It seems to me that is at least as important a statement
that the President made, and it focuses our attention where it
needs to be focused.
Mr. Shays. I'll tell you what it said to me. It said, to a
country like Yemen that was on both sides of the equation, they
had to make a choice. They couldn't be right down the middle.
It said to me that ultimately, Saudi Arabia has to sort out its
equivocating back and forth, and that's obviously going to be a
bigger decision for Saudi Arabia.
But in Yemen, they've decided to be with us. They've
invited us in. And it seems to me, the gist of the
determination on the part of the President, is that he is going
to carry this out and he is going to--I mean, he has given
examples where he said, elected government officials would come
in, and they've said, we want to help you, and he's brought out
some of the intelligence people to show these country leaders
what is happening in their own country. And then he's said,
you're either with us or against us here, and they've said to
him, well, help us clean it up. Yemen in particular, but that's
an example.
So that's kind of how I'm reacting to your comment.
I would end with your comment in which Mr. Perle said, I
want to yield to General Scowcroft's wisdom, and that was the
issue of not taking on too many enemies. You seem to define
terrorism as global and regional. I would agree, I feel foolish
saying I would agree as if I'm some expert here.
But I will react to it and say to you that an analogy I had
was the prosecutor in Connecticut learned that all of New
Britain, police and fire, the only way they became officers and
moved up the ladder was a pay off, every one of them. But they
only went after one or two. He told me, if he turned over every
stone, they're already united against him, and his
investigation would have stopped and his prosecution would have
stopped. So he did one or two or three, and then others knew he
was coming. Then they came to him to tell him before he went
after them and exposed things to him and so on.
So if you are saying in essence that we can't turn over too
many stones at once, I feel very comfortable with your comment.
If in the end you're saying that there won't be a day of
reckoning for even some of the regional terrorism, I wonder if
we ultimately are going to succeed. I'd like for you to react
to it.
General Scowcroft. I think it's principally a matter of
priorities. I think we have a start on Al Quaeda. I think if we
really are, really succeed on Al Quaeda, and I think if we
stick to it, we can, it will have a salutary effect on a lot of
regional terrorism. It won't eradicate all of them. But there
are dozens, if not hundreds, of regional kinds of terrorism.
And if we declare wholesale war and active opposition to all of
them at once, we're not going to get rid of any of them. That's
what I worry about.
Mr. Shays. Fair enough. Do any of you wish we had asked a
question that you were prepared to answer that you want to put
on the record? Any closing comments that any of you would like
to make?
This has been a really enjoyable hearing for me. I thank
each of you for participating. I know with four people it
requires a little more patience on your part. But thank you all
very much. You really provided a very interesting and helpful
afternoon. Thank you.
With this, the hearing is closed.
[Whereupon, at 3:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned,
to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]