Critics say the decline actually began during the last year of the Bush administration. In the mid-1980s the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and a series of high-profile hijackings exposed serious weaknesses in U.S. counterterrorism strategy, including turf battles among military and intelligence agencies. The Reagan administration created the State Department post of Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism, a job with ambassadorial rank and the clout to force warring bureaucracies to work together. Reagan’s first appointment to the job in 1986, L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer, enjoyed direct access to Secretary of State George Shultz. But Bremer’s Bush-era successors were not as influential, and the decline has continued. Secretary of State Warren Christopher plans to downgrade the coordinator’s position to that of a lower-ranking deputy assistant secretary. Whoever fills the slot will have to push through several layers of bureaucracy before even setting foot in Christopher’s office.
Budget cuts and turnover are also taking a toll. According to internal State Department figures supplied to NEWSWEEK, 80 percent o the seasoned experts in the counterterrorism office will be reassigned or replaced by this fall with less experienced personnel. “The institutional memory will be virtually erased by October,” predicts a State Department source. Other agencies are facing similar cutbacks and compromises. At the National Security Council, the top counterterrorism official now has multiple responsibilities, including the United Nations and drug policy. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Les Aspin has yet to even nominate the assistant secretary who will oversee counterterrorism. Insiders expect Aspin to follow Christopher’s lead and downgrade the position.
Judging from last week’s arrests in New York, the FBI is still very much on the case. But the bureau got lucky: an informer proved to be the crucial break. The harder work of counterterrorism is pressing the investigations abroad, where leads inevitably point. “We should fight as far forward as we can,” says Noel Koch, the Pentagon’s top counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration. “You have to be overseas.”
_B_Worldwide network:_b_Washington’s counterterrorism bureaucracy is arguably a victim of its own success. Strong performances in recent years by the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies have unmasked and dissolved many terror groups like the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy. And with the end of the cold war, some terrorist cells have lost their haven in Eastern Europe. Iraq’s worldwide network was broken up during the Persian Gulf War. International terrorist attacks declined to 361 in 1992, the lowest total in 17 years. With fewer headlines, political attention has focused elsewhere, forcing counterterrorism to cede part of its share to problems that are on the rise, like crime and drugs.
The evidence suggests that America won’t be able to stay out of the fight. More than 200 Pentagon officials and counterterrorism experts met in early June to consider future terrorist threats. They concluded that the proliferation of ethnic and regional conflicts will spawn new radical movements, leading inevitably to new terrorism. “We’re going to see a global increase in anarchy,” says one Defense Department analyst. Some at the meeting worried about what they term “mass terrorism,” like the ethnic cleansing rife in Bosnia. Others were more concerned about what they are calling “single issue” terrorism, attacks by radicals who share no ideology, only the hatred for a particular enemy.
Inevitably, such fears have brought pressure to tighten up the nation’s border controls. Congressional committees are investigating the loophole-ridden immigration regulations that allowed Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind Muslim cleric suspected of links to terrorist activity in New York, to slip into the country. Rep. Benjamin Gilman, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has attached an amendment to the State Department’s annual funding bill to restore the power of the counterterrorism office. After last week’s arrests in New York-and the strike against Iraq-the White House may think twice about thinning its counterterrorism ranks.
title: “Counterterrorism Victim Of Success " ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-04” author: “Diana Hinh”
Critics say the decline actually began during the last year of the Bush administration. In the mid-1980s the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and a series of high-profile hijackings exposed serious weaknesses in U.S. counterterrorism strategy, including turf battles among military and intelligence agencies. The Reagan administration created the State Department post of Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism, a job with ambassadorial rank and the clout to force warring bureaucracies to work together. Reagan’s first appointment to the job in 1986, L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer, enjoyed direct access to Secretary of State George Shultz. But Bremer’s Bush-era successors were not as influential, and the decline has continued. Secretary of State Warren Christopher plans to downgrade the coordinator’s position to that of a lower-ranking deputy assistant secretary. Whoever fills the slot will have to push through several layers of bureaucracy before even setting foot in Christopher’s office.
Budget cuts and turnover are also taking a toll. According to internal State Department figures supplied to NEWSWEEK, 80 percent o the seasoned experts in the counterterrorism office will be reassigned or replaced by this fall with less experienced personnel. “The institutional memory will be virtually erased by October,” predicts a State Department source. Other agencies are facing similar cutbacks and compromises. At the National Security Council, the top counterterrorism official now has multiple responsibilities, including the United Nations and drug policy. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Les Aspin has yet to even nominate the assistant secretary who will oversee counterterrorism. Insiders expect Aspin to follow Christopher’s lead and downgrade the position.
Judging from last week’s arrests in New York, the FBI is still very much on the case. But the bureau got lucky: an informer proved to be the crucial break. The harder work of counterterrorism is pressing the investigations abroad, where leads inevitably point. “We should fight as far forward as we can,” says Noel Koch, the Pentagon’s top counterterrorism official in the Reagan administration. “You have to be overseas.”
_B_Worldwide network:_b_Washington’s counterterrorism bureaucracy is arguably a victim of its own success. Strong performances in recent years by the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies have unmasked and dissolved many terror groups like the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy. And with the end of the cold war, some terrorist cells have lost their haven in Eastern Europe. Iraq’s worldwide network was broken up during the Persian Gulf War. International terrorist attacks declined to 361 in 1992, the lowest total in 17 years. With fewer headlines, political attention has focused elsewhere, forcing counterterrorism to cede part of its share to problems that are on the rise, like crime and drugs.
The evidence suggests that America won’t be able to stay out of the fight. More than 200 Pentagon officials and counterterrorism experts met in early June to consider future terrorist threats. They concluded that the proliferation of ethnic and regional conflicts will spawn new radical movements, leading inevitably to new terrorism. “We’re going to see a global increase in anarchy,” says one Defense Department analyst. Some at the meeting worried about what they term “mass terrorism,” like the ethnic cleansing rife in Bosnia. Others were more concerned about what they are calling “single issue” terrorism, attacks by radicals who share no ideology, only the hatred for a particular enemy.
Inevitably, such fears have brought pressure to tighten up the nation’s border controls. Congressional committees are investigating the loophole-ridden immigration regulations that allowed Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind Muslim cleric suspected of links to terrorist activity in New York, to slip into the country. Rep. Benjamin Gilman, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has attached an amendment to the State Department’s annual funding bill to restore the power of the counterterrorism office. After last week’s arrests in New York-and the strike against Iraq-the White House may think twice about thinning its counterterrorism ranks.
