"This is a different kind of conflict," said General Richard B. Myers,chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a Pentagon briefing in October. He wasspeaking of the war on terrorism. "The closest analogy would be the drug war."Since September 11, comparisons between the two wars have been rife: Both aresaid to involve an elusive and resourceful enemy capable of inflicting tremendousdamage on the United States; both are cast as a long, drawn-out struggle thatrequires concentrated efforts on multiple fronts; and both are led by a powerful"czar" authorized to knock heads, challenge budgets, and mobilize resources.
Heaven help us. The war on drugs has been a dismal failure. Every year, thefederal government spends almost $20 billion to fight illicit drugs. It hastracked planes in Peru, sent helicopters to Colombia, installed X-ray machinesalong the Mexican border, and sent AWACS surveillance planes over the Caribbean.Yet drugs continue to pour into this country. Cocaine today sells at record-lowprices and heroin is available at record-high purity levels. And despite the 1.5million drug arrests made every year and the 400,000 drug offenders now inprison, the level of addiction in the United States remains stubbornly high. Soto the extent that the war on terrorism emulates the war on drugs, we're in bigtrouble.
Is there another way? Over the past 10 years, I've studied the drug war onvarious fronts: from the coca fields of the Andes to the smuggling zones alongthe Mexican border to the drug-ridden neighborhoods of New York and Washington,D.C. And that experience leads me to believe that the war on drugs offersvaluable lessons on how--and how not--to fight the war on terrorism.
Consider, for instance, the idea that in fighting terrorism we should focus onits "root causes." Such an approach was succinctly described by Philip Wilcox,Jr., the U.S. ambassador at large for counterterrorism from 1994 to 1997, in theOctober 18 New York Review of Books. To respond to the attacks on the World TradeCenter and the Pentagon with military force, Wilcox asserted, would simplygenerate more terrorism. Instead, he wrote, the United States should adopt aforeign policy that "deals not just with the symptoms but with the roots ofterrorism, broadly defined." America, Wilcox continued, should seek to moderatethe "conditions that breed violence and terrorism" through efforts to "resolveconflicts"--especially the one between Israelis and Palestinians--and through"assistance for economic development, education, and population control."
A similar case has frequently been made with respect to both the productionand consumption of drugs. The world's poor, who cultivate drugs for export, needbetter economic opportunities. And to reduce the level of drug abuse in America,we need to address the socioeconomic conditions that generate it. Studies suggestthat drug abuse is especially prevalent in disadvantaged communities and thatprograms to create jobs, provide housing, and raise the minimum wage could helpshrink the pool of potential addicts. Clearly, though, such programs would takemany years to bear fruit. In the meantime, drug abuse--and all its attendantharms--would flourish.
So, too, with terror. America does need to address the poverty and desperationthat fuel the fires of Islamic fundamentalism, just as it must overcome theforeign-policy legacy that makes the United States a target. Yet solutions tothese problems may take decades to unfold--and in the interim, the Osama binLadens of the world would be free to wreak their havoc. In the short run, a moredirect antidote is needed.
Stubborn Roots
For some, that antidote is "going to the source" of the problem. Here, too,there are clear echoes of the drug war. In the case of terrorism, the mostimmediate source, of course, is bin Laden and al-Qaeda. But as President Bush hassaid, the war on terror "will not end until every terrorist group of global reachhas been found, stopped, and defeated." And there has been general agreement thata revived Central Intelligence Agency should be a principal policy instrument.The agency's ability to gather intelligence and to carry out covert operations,it's said, makes it an ideal institution to combat terrorism. Writing in The WallStreet Journal, Herbert E. Meyer, a senior CIA official during the Reagan years,decried the agency's recent passivity and urged it to become more aggressive, asit was under William Casey, his former boss. "We smuggled weapons to freedomfighters throughout the world, we smuggled bibles into the Soviet Union itself,and we mined harbors in Nicaragua," Meyer wrote. Such tactics, he asserted,helped to bring about the collapse of communism and could vanquish terrorism,too.
David Ignatius, in a Washington Post column, praised the CIA'sCounter-Terrorism Center in Langley, Virginia, for its covert capability "rangingfrom paramilitary operations to the sort of dirty tricks and political subversionthat can overthrow governments supporting terrorism." Even Seymour Hersh, who haswritten so extensively about U.S. misadventures abroad, blamed the U.S.government's failure to detect September 11 largely on a weakened CIA. Ruing a1995 directive that discouraged the use of recruits with unsavory records, Hershwrote in The New Yorker that "hundreds of 'assets' were indiscriminately strickenfrom the CIA's payroll, with a devastating effect on anti-terrorist operations inthe Middle East." In recent years, an unnamed senior general told him, "we'vebeen hiring kids out of college who are computer geeks. This is about going backto deep, hard dirty work, with tough people going down dark alleys with goodinstincts."
According to the Post, the administration has already added more than $1billion to the CIA's antiterrorism budget--much of it for new covert actions,including the killing of specified individuals. "The gloves are off," one seniorofficial told Bob Woodward. "The president has given the agency the green lightto do whatever is necessary. Lethal operations that were unthinkablepre-September 11 are now underway."
For those of us who have covered the drug war, this also sounds depressinglyfamiliar. For nearly three decades, the United States has attempted to fightdrugs by attacking them at their "source": the countries that cultivate, produce,and smuggle them. Leading this effort has been the Drug EnforcementAdministration. In the mid-1980s, the DEA's main target was Pablo Escobar and theMedellin cartel; together, they were said to control as much as 80 percent of thecocaine entering the United States. In 1993, after years of wiretaps, spying, andraids, the Colombians, helped by U.S. operatives, finally managed to corner andkill Escobar. And the Medellin cartel disintegrated along with him.
Their demise did produce some short-term benefits. In the world of Colombiandrug traffickers, Escobar stood out for his brutality, and his death led to atemporary fall-off in the number of car bombs and political assassinations. Yetthe vacuum left by the Medellin cartel was quickly filled by the rival Calicartel. So the DEA went after it. In a few years, it, too, was destroyed--andquickly replaced by a host of smaller but no less efficient syndicates. What'smore, the campaign against the Colombian cartels created an opening for Mexico'sdrug traffickers, who, newly enriched, formed violent syndicates along America'ssouthern border. Meanwhile, cocaine kept cascading into the United States.
The Terrorist Hydra
A similar result seems likely in the war on terrorism. The campaign againstal-Qaeda and the Taliban may be necessary as an act of self-defense. Butthousands of young fanatics throughout the Arab world are eager to becomemartyrs, and every terrorist who's hunted down and killed is likely to bereplaced by others. Indeed, the covert actions undertaken against terrorist cellsabroad could themselves generate new recruits for the cause.
Furthermore, there's a limit to what the CIA can realistically achieve. It'snot easy for Americans to work undercover in the Middle East. And it's nearlyimpossible for them to penetrate terrorist cells. In The Atlantic Monthly lastsummer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, who for nearly nine years worked for the CIA onMiddle Eastern matters, described what it was like to walk through the Afghanneighborhoods of Peshawar, Pakistan, where bin Laden does much of his recruiting.
Even in the darkness I had a case officer's worst sensation--eyes following meeverywhere. To escape the crowds I would pop into carpet, copper, and jewelryshops... . No matter where I went, the feeling never left me. I couldn't see howthe CIA as it is today had any chance of running a successful counterterroristoperation against bin Laden in Peshawar, the Dodge City of Central Asia.More generally, Gerecht went on,
Westerners cannot visit the cinder-block, mud-brick side of the Muslimworld--whence bin Laden's foot soldiers mostly come--without announcing who theyare. No case officer stationed in Pakistan can penetrate either the Afghancommunities in Peshawar or the Northwest Frontier's numerous religious schools,which feed manpower and ideas to bin Laden and the Taliban, and seriously expectto gather information about radical Islamic terrorism--let alone recruit foreignagents.
Add in the CIA's much-publicized dearth of agents who know the Middle Eastand speak its languages and it's clear that the agency is many years away frommaking any real inroads into the terrorist underworld.
What's more, unleashing the CIA could have many dire side effects. Just lookat its past: From the Congo, where the agency helped to assassinate PrimeMinister Patrice Lumumba, to Chile, where it helped to overthrow PresidentSalvador Allende, to Central America, where it worked with death squads,America's covert operations often were ugly and often produced backlash. Ourcurrent troubles in Afghanistan are partly an unintended consequence of the CIA'ssecret program to arm the mujahideen there. Even with a worthy goal like quashingterrorism, freeing the CIA to play dirty again seems likely to backfire.
If addressing the root causes of terrorism seems too vague and drawn-out asolution, and if going to the source seems too difficult and dangerous, what isto be done? Is there no alternative that offers more promise?
In fact, there is one--and the war on drugs can help point the way. Myresearch on drugs suggests that of all the ways to reduce drug abuse in America,one stands out: cutting the demand for drugs through treatment. Where terrorismis concerned, however, there is no equivalent of demand or of treatment to reduceit. Any solution must take place on the supply side.
Here, too, there is a drug analogy. From watching police actions on adrug-infested block in East Harlem and from interviewing police officers,drug-enforcement agents, and drug traffickers, I concluded that domestic lawenforcement represents the best way to combat the drug trade. Far more thanstalking traffickers in Colombia or seizing drugs at the border, collaringdealers on the street and dismantling local drug gangs seemed to reduce the crimeassociated with drugs and to restore a sense of neighborhood safety. Mayor RudyGiuliani's campaign to squash drug dealing in New York City has in many ways beenshortsighted, for it has not been accompanied by a parallel campaign to reducethe demand for drugs; but I have grudgingly come to believe that it haseliminated some of the more egregious aspects of the city's drug trade. All inall, the closer enforcement gets to the point where drugs do the most harm--thestreet--the more impact it seems to have.
A 1994 study by the Rand Corporation supports this. Rand researchers comparedthe cost-effectiveness of four different types of drug-control programs:suppression at the source, interdiction along the border, domestic lawenforcement, and treatment of addiction. How much, they asked, would the UnitedStates have to spend on each approach to reduce national cocaine consumption by 1percent? Applying a mathematical model to the available data, the researcherscalculated that by relying solely on disrupting production at the source, theUnited States would have to spend an additional $783 million a year; relying juston interdiction, $366 million; on domestic law enforcement, $246 million; and ontreatment, just $34 million. The precision may be exaggerated, but the basicinsight is surely right: Treatment is the most cost-effective solution. Of thethree strategies for reducing supply, however, domestic law enforcement seems themost efficient.
Might not the same be true with terrorism? There is no treatment analogy, ofcourse. But if our main goal is to prevent future terrorist attacks, wouldn't itbe more effective to concentrate our enforcement efforts here, in the UnitedStates, instead of operating on the hostile terrain of the Middle East? In allthe talk about unleashing the CIA, it's often overlooked that the perpetrators ofSeptember 11 had been living in this country for years. In detecting and rootingout terrorists, shouldn't we tend primarily to our own backyard?
The Home Team
Emphasizing prevention at home would offer a number of advantages. First, it'smuch easier to carry out undercover work here than abroad. Agents face fewerhazards in San Diego, Trenton, and Boca Raton than they do in Beirut, Cairo, orPeshawar. And we have many more resources here. In addition to the FBI and otherfederal agencies, thousands of local police officers are working on terrorism incities across the country. In the drug war, the local police have led the way indismantling drug gangs, and they could make a similar contribution towarduprooting terrorist networks. Furthermore, when it comes to obtaining"HUMINT"--the critical "human intelligence" collected by investigativeagencies--the millions of loyal American Muslims living in this country wouldseem a far more fruitful source than Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East.Finally, concentrating on domestic law enforcement would avoid the types ofcovert actions that have proved so costly and embarrassing in the past.
This is not to say that foreign intelligence gathering has no role. JimDempsey, an analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington,D.C., who previously monitored the FBI for the House Judiciary Committee,observes that the FBI receives hundreds of tips every day about possibleterrorists and that it's impossible to sift through them all. In the case of theSeptember 11 hijackers, he notes, "nothing they did in the United States broughtthem to the attention of U.S. agencies." To make sense of all the informationflowing into the FBI, Dempsey says, the bureau needs leads from abroad: "Througheither electronic or human sources or through liaison relations with foreignservices, you develop overseas the information that says that so-and-so is comingto the United States."
Needless to say, a domestic antiterrorism strategy would raise some concerns."Unleashing" the FBI, for instance, could lead the bureau to engage in the sametype of domestic spying that so marred the tenure of J. Edgar Hoover. Althoughthe federal government does need expanded powers in this new era, the potentialfor abuse of civil liberties is clear. Any domestic crackdown, then, would haveto be accompanied by vigilant oversight.
Another problem is the culture of the FBI. The recent string of scandals atthe bureau--from the Waco cover-up to the Wen Ho Lee investigation--does notinspire confidence. And the bureau's reluctance to share information with otherfederal agencies and with local authorities has hindered many investigations. Inthe first case of anthrax to hit New York City, at NBC, the FBI did notimmediately inform the city about the letter that was thought to besuspicious--an oversight that infuriated Mayor Giuliani. At a congressionalhearing in late October, Giuliani called for legislation that would increase thesharing of information between federal and local law-enforcement agencies.
Such bureaucratic fragmentation has generated fresh ideas about newinstitutional arrangements for fighting terrorism. Despite their qualms about thenew police powers legislated in the name of antiterrorism, even some civillibertarians support consolidating federal intelligence efforts in a singleagency. Morton Halperin, a longtime leader of the American Civil Liberties Union,told an October 16 forum sponsored by The American Prospect that he favoredcreation of one agency that would be both more effective and more accountable.
Jack Riley, a counterterrorism specialist at the Rand Corporation, adds that"when you start looking at where the gaps are in U.S. efforts to fight terrorism,they are probably easier to fill here than overseas." The CIA could still supplythe FBI with foreign intelligence. As long as the two agencies continue tofunction separately, however, it's hard for them to piece together acomprehensive picture of how terrorists operate both here and abroad andcoordinate forces to confront them.
What is needed, Riley says, is a seamless new organization that bringstogether counterterrorism specialists from these two institutions as well as fromother federal organizations. Investigators, intelligence analysts, financialwizards, customs specialists, communications whizzes, immigration experts,liaisons to foreign and local police departments--they all need to be joinedtogether in a new agency with one overarching goal: preventing future terroristattacks in the United States. In the end, Riley adds, we need "a terrorismequivalent of the DEA."
My initial reaction on hearing this was to shudder. For in fighting the drugwar, the DEA has been singularly ineffectual. Despite the huge increases in itsbudget and staff over the past 20 years, it has failed in its mission to reducethe supply of outlawed drugs in this country. That's because the drug problem inAmerica is at heart a public-health problem--one that no amount of arrest andprosecution can contain.
But terrorism is different. It's a highly lethal threat directed bycalculating criminals at America's very core, and it must be confronted withevery available weapon. The new Office of Homeland Security, whose duties seem toencompass everything from stocking smallpox vaccines to bolstering airportsecurity, is too diffuse and weak to carry out the task at hand. For that,America needs an entirely new and independent body--a Terrorism PreventionAgency. And given the hopelessness of the war on drugs, frustrated agents fromthe DEA could be assigned to it. At a new TPA, they might actually be able to dosome good.
