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| GLOBAL THREAT | |
 June 6, 2000  |
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Gwen Ifill and guests Paul Bremer and Larry Johnson discuss a study that claims terrorism is an increasingly lethal threat to Americans and in the United States.
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| Is terrorism killing more people than it used to? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Larry Johnson, do you agree this problem is getting more lethal instead of less? LARRY JOHNSON: No. Actually, I think it has become less of a problem.
Part of that is due to the work Jerry did starting back in 1987. Look,
the number of deaths fell from 4,800 in the 80's to 2,500 this last
decade. People focused on is the number of people injured has climbed
from 12,000 to 19,000. But 70% of those injuries were caused in only
five incidents. That's out of 3,800 incidents in the last ten years.
What we've seen is, and Jerry is right it has become more diffuse, but
those groups willing to kill and cause mass casualties really are less
potent because they do not have the backing of the states which enabled
groups in the 80's to really cause a lot of damage to Americans. Right
now the largest loss of life in a terrorist incident remains the attack
on the Marine barracks in terms of U.S. lives, the |
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| The US counter terrorism budget | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Ambassador Bremer, what about that? In fact, the United States has doubled its counter terrorism budget to $10 billion this year. Is that money that's not being well spent? L. PAUL BREMER: We looked at that budget, and basically did not have time in the six months which Congress gave us to go into any detail. So we couldn't reach a judgment. The GAO has done several studies on it and thinks that there is probably money not being well spent. We didn't take a position on that. We do think that there is a need for greater resources to be spent, particularly to intelligence collection for CIA and FBI and for the National Security Agency. And we make that recommendation in our report. GWEN IFILL: How do you know that more money is needed if you don't know how the money that's currently allocated has been spent?
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| Recruiting CIA intelligence | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Let's talk for a moment about some of the findings one by one in the report. Larry Johnson, one of the things the report is calling for is that the CIA be allowed to recruit more heavily for intelligence purposes, even including people with what are called unsavory backgrounds. What's your thought about that?
GWEN IFILL: Ambassador Bremer, I just want to tell the world that your nickname is Jerry, so if everyone is wondering who is Jerry, I thought I'd let everybody know. L. PAUL BREMER: You just revealed a state secret. GWEN IFILL: I think your partner there just revealed it, but let's talk about that whole question of whether the CIA has enough support. Humans rights groups have complained that what you're doing is opening the door in this recommendation to allowing people who have a bad track record or a record as bad actors to suddenly take part in our intelligence function.
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| States which are not cooperating | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Secretary of State Albright, Ambassador Bremer, also expressed some concerns about another recommendation in your report, that's that you treat Greece and Pakistan, generally considered to be our allies, as... we should cite them and sanction them for not being fully cooperative in an anti-terrorism investigation.
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| Monitoring foreign-born students | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Larry Johnson, another part of the report suggests that we begin to more actively monitor students, foreign-born students studying in the United States. Is this something that you would support?
GWEN IFILL: Ambassador Bremer, Larry Johnson raises the point that Muslim Americans fear being demonized by this sort of stepped up vigilance, is this something you think it's your role to address? L. PAUL BREMER: Well, we addressed it in the fourth paragraph of the report, as a matter of fact. We said very clearly that we do not think the fight against terrorism should ever be an excuse for discriminating against or picking on any group on the basis of their ethnic or religious national background. We couldn't have been clearer. GWEN IFILL: How do you enforce something like that?
GWEN IFILL: Larry Johnson, overall is the United States simply too risk-averse, as the commission says, to mount an effective counter terrorism program?
GWEN IFILL: All of that is about the bare bones of how the US foreign policy is constructed. But Ambassador Bremer, you conclude in your report, you say, "an astute American foreign policy must take into account the reasons people turn to terror." What do you mean by that? L. PAUL BREMER: What we mean is that fighting terrorism is not just a question of dealing with the criminals and the crimes they commit, that there are reasons why some people turn to terrorism. There are political reasons, there are economic reasons. Some people are simply criminals. And an astute foreign policy would not ignore the context out of which terrorism springs. But we believe that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight terrorism any more than you would say, "well, we need to understand why people are committing crimes on the streets of Washington and New York. And until we can understand why they're committing crimes, we're going to let them continue to commit the crimes." No. You have to have a police force that tries to deal with the crimes, just as you deal with the underlying reasons people turn to crime. GWEN IFILL: Larry Johnson and Paul or Jerry Bremer, thank you both very much. |
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GWEN
IFILL: For more, we are joined by the commission's chairman, Paul Bremer,
and by Larry Johnson, who served in the State Department's and the CIA's
offices of counter terrorism during the Bush and the Reagan administrations.
He is now a consultant. The major premise, Ambassador Bremer, of this
study is that terrorism is an increasingly more lethal threat. Can you
tell us how you reached that conclusion? 
L.
PAUL BREMER, National Commission on Terrorism: Yes, I think there's
a pretty wide consensus among experts in and out of government that
the threat is becoming more deadly. In effect, what's happening is while
the number of international incidents is going down over the last decade,
the number of casualties per incident is going up. And one can quibble
about whether these statistics mean anything. The problem is that it
means the terrorists are looking at different motives. And in the 1970's
and 80's they tended to want to only kill tens or twenties of people.
Now we're concerned they may want to kill hundreds or even thousands
of people.
attack
on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and the single largest loss
of life was the downing of an Air India plane in 1986. So I think to
characterize it as it's getting worse is to ignore the good news in
quelling state sponsorship and confining these groups to a small number
of countries. 
L.
PAUL BREMER: We looked at the particular budgets of those three agencies
rather carefully. And in the case of CIA, the problem is that the budget
appropriation system has been a little bit haphazard. It's been sporadic
and not even. It makes it hard for CIA to plan and deal with the increased
operational tempo they've been faced with. In the case of the FBI, They
need higher technology, and in the case of the National Security Agency,
we were very impressed by a study that the Senate Select Committee on
intelligence had commissioned that showed there's a real danger of NSA
not being able to keep pace with the changes in technology. 
LARRY
JOHNSON: I think there needs to be additional effort on that front.
The problem is now that the CIA Is not equipped or geared up to penetrate
those groups. It's one thing to try to penetrate Soviet diplomats at
a cocktail function in a foreign country. It's a different matter to
go after people that are religious fundamentalists, and the case of
Aum Shinrikyo in Tokyo, they weren't hanging out at diplomatic cocktail
functions. It requires a different orientation for the CIA to go after
that. I agree with Jerry, the money needs to be spent there. The problem
with the money is right now every government bureaucracy in Washington
is finding a mission in combating terrorism. This is utter nonsense.
It is a misallocation of resources. There are some areas where money
needs to be spent, but just doubling the budget so everybody can go
up to the Hill and say, we're going to combat terrorism, there's not
a member on the Hill that will vote against that. Who is going to vote
against protecting American lives in an election year. 
L.
PAUL BREMER: Well, what we're saying is this: For decades the CIA had
a set of procedures which allowed the CIA to make a judgment before
it hired a terrorist spy. That's what we're talking about -- to make
a judgment about the spy's access to information, his reliability, and
the value of the information to the US Government. We believe that those
procedures should be re-instituted in a case of engaging informants
within terrorist groups. The fact is if you're going to find out what
a terrorist group is planning so you can stop them from killing Americans,
you have to have somebody in that group who is spying for you, and by
definition, those people are not going to be very savory. They will
probably have committed crimes. They may even be murderers, but after
all, every city police department in the United States does the same
thing, gets informants into organized crime and uses them as a way to
try to catch bigger fish and stop other crimes. We're just suggesting
the CIA ought to go back to that procedure and not be so overly cautious
as they've become in the last five years. 
L.
PAUL BREMER: What we did was deal with the fact that before 1996, the
law in the United States essentially was a black or white law. You either
were a state which supported terrorism or you got a good housekeeping
seal of... a good house keeping seal of good housekeeping. It was either
you were on the list or not. Congress recognized this was an inflexible
system and in 1996 established a third category called states which
are not fully cooperating. The administration has not made good use
of that category, and we looked around and said, "here are a couple
countries which you ought to consider." We did not make a judgment
they should be put in that category, but they should be considered.
In both the case of Greece and Pakistan, there's a lot more they could
do in terms of fighting terrorism; and we suggested the administration
consider it. I understand the secretary has said they don't intend to.
I hope when she has a chance to reflect on the report, she'll see that
it's worth at least thinking about it. 
LARRY
JOHNSON: As long as it's applied equally across the board. I think the
Arab Americans have a legitimate complaint. I mean, one of the... we
had no problem as a country sanctioning Hezbollah and Hamas, but one
of the terrorist groups that was left off the list of designated terrorist
groups, prohibit them from raising money was the Irish Republican Army.
The message we sent to the world is if you're Irish Catholic, it's okay
to be a terrorist. If you're a Muslim, that's bad. If it is applied
equally across the board, irregardless of religion or ethnic background,
then it's worth doing. But, again, we need to keep it in context. We're
not looking at a burgeoning of incidents, rising death toll. I think
we've got to manage a policy that has been successful. 
L.
PAUL BREMER: Well, how do you enforce any law or any guidelines? You
enforce it by basically saying, that's the rule. In the case of the
students, for example, we did not propose anything new. The law in 1965
established that every university must keep the immigration authorities
informed of foreign students in this country, basically to be sure that
they're still obeying their immigration status. They come as students
and they're supposed to remain students. Until 1996, this was done in
a 19th century style with pieces of paper and for all I know shoe boxes.
In 1996, the Congress said, "isn't it time for the INS immigration
authority to come into the 20th century before we reach the 21st century
and make this an automated computerized data bank?" That's all
we're calling for. We're that saying the same information which universities
have been required to report on all foreign students, irrespective of
nationality, for more than 30 years should now be put into an automated
computer data bank. It's not discriminatory against anybody. It's not
collecting any new information that hasn't been collected for 30 years.
It's simply automating it. 
LARRY
JOHNSON: We've got the equivalent of Alzheimer's Disease when it comes
to looking at our counter terrorism policy. Back in the mid-80's, you
could not go three weeks without a major attack against the United States.
And I'm talking about airplane hijackings, bombings of airplanes, attacks
at the Rome and Vienna Airport -- hijacking of the Achille Laurel. What
we've seen is the last major attack against this country, thank God,
was August of 1998. We have a very sound system in place. What has happened
is once the threat of the Soviet Union disappeared, we've got a lot
of national security bureaucracies and other bureaucracies that are
looking for a way to justify their existence, and many are scrambling
to get the counter terrorism bonanza. Frankly, I think it's not so much
throwing more money at the problem, it's more effective management.
On that front I think we're lacking. 
