LOUIS FREEH SPEAKS UP FOR THE WAR

Gotta post this whole thing up.

Before 9/11--and After
Only a nation at war can properly confront terrorism.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BY LOUIS J. FREEH
Monday, April 12, 2004 12:01 a.m.

Al Qaeda was at war with the U.S. even before Sept. 11, 2001. In August 1998, it attacked our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In December 1999, one of al Qaeda's soldiers, Ahmed Ressam, entered the U.S. to bomb Los Angeles airport. In October 2000, al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in the port of Aden.

The question before the 9/11 Commission is why our political leadership declared war back on al Qaeda only after Sept. 11, 2001. Osama bin Laden had been indicted years before for blowing up American soldiers and embassies and was known as a clear and present danger to the U.S. So what would have happened had the U.S. declared war on al Qaeda before Sept. 11? Endless and ultimately useless speculation about "various threads and pieces of information," which are certainly "relevant and significant," at least in retrospect, will not take us very far in answering this central question.

On Jan. 26, 2001, at 8:45 a.m., I had my first meeting with President Bush and Vice President Cheney. They had been in office four days. We discussed terrorism, and in particular al Qaeda, the African embassy bombings, the Cole attack and the June 1996 Khobar bombing in Saudi Arabia. When I advised the president that Hezbollah and Iran were responsible for Khobar, he directed me to follow-up with Condoleezza Rice. I did so at 2:30 p.m. that day and she told me to pursue our investigation with the attorney general and to bring whatever charges possible. Within weeks, a new prosecutor was put in charge of the case and on June 21 an indictment was returned against 13 Hezbollah men who had been directed to bomb Khobar by senior officials of the Iranian government. I know that the families of the 19 murdered airmen were deeply grateful to President Bush and Ms. Rice for their prompt response and focus on terrorism.

I believe that any president and Congress faced with the reality of Sept. 11 would have acted swiftly and overwhelmingly as did President Bush and the 107th Congress. They are to be commended. However, those who came before President Bush can only be faulted if they had had the political means and the will of the nation to declare a war back then, but failed to do so. The fact that terrorism and the war being waged by al Qaeda was not even an issue in the 2000 presidential campaign strongly suggests that the political will to declare and fight this war didn't exist before Sept. 11.

All of this is not to say that the intelligence and law enforcement communities couldn't have done more to protect the nation from a Sept. 11. As FBI director I share in that responsibility. And I don't know of any FBI agents who would not have given their lives--two did--to prevent Sept. 11 from happening. The Joint Intelligence Committee and now the 9/11 Commission are properly seeking to understand how Sept. 11 was able to happen. But the grand failure to comprehend the contrast between the pre-9/11 fight against terrorism with the total war being waged since Sept. 11 blinds us to an immensely significant historical and political dialectic.

The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center by foreign-trained terrorists focused the FBI on homeland security and prevention as its counterterrorism priority. Excellent investigation and skillful prosecution effectively identified the terrorists involved. Those who were quickly captured were tried and convicted. Ramzi Yousef, a terrorist mastermind, fled to Pakistan along with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, now believed to be one of the architects of Sept. 11. The FBI's 1993 criminal investigation identified and stopped another plan by Sheik Rahman to blow up New York City tunnels, bridges and buildings (dubbed "Terrstop"). Important lesson learned: Good investigation is also good prevention. Two years later, FBI agents surprised Yousef at a guest house in Pakistan and brought him back to Foley Square, where he was convicted for two terrorist attacks. Besides the 1993 WTC murders, he was also convicted for his plot to blow up 11 U.S. airliners. His arrest and return to face justice was the result of long and painstaking investigation. Important lesson repeated: Investigation is prevention, and it also saves lives.

Yousef's arrest taught another valuable lesson. His apprehension was enabled by the fact that an FBI legal attach?, or "legat," was assigned to Islamabad in 1996. A legat is a "declared" FBI agent who serves as our liaison with the host country's law enforcement services. The expansion of our Legat Offices from 19 to 44 (from 1993-2001) was an integral part of the FBI's counterterrorism strategy. We determined in 1993 that the FBI needed legats in Tel Aviv, Cairo, Ankara, Riyadh, Amman, Tashkent and Almaty--to deter terrorists from murdering Americans. We later proposed legats in Tunis, Kuala Lampur, Jakarta, Rabat, Sana, Tbilisi and Abu Dhabi. The FBI and CIA narrowly missed grabbing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in 1996 as he was about to travel from Doha to the UAE. Only because we had an arrest warrant was capture an option. Legats in those countries would have improved our chances of success.

FBI terrorist "cases" are designed to collect maximum information, evidence and intelligence in order to prosecute and pre-empt such activities. U.S. v. bin Laden, et al., tried successfully in New York from January through May 2001, was just one byproduct of an international program that targeted bin Laden/al Qaeda, ongoing since the 1993 WTC bombing when his name first surfaced as an organizer and financier of military training camps in Afghanistan.

FBI investigators seek to pursue all leads to their logical end, and follow those leads wherever they take us. Leads are unfortunately developed in the wake of terrorist attacks; but more often they are developed proactively, through sources and cooperators. In multiple instances, FBI investigations have disrupted planned attacks in the U.S. Moreover, FBI investigation has significantly contributed to the identification of al Qaeda's leadership, organization, methods, training, finances, geographical reach and intent. Through the pursuit of leads, the FBI's investigation of bin Laden and al Qaeda can be credited with having "jump-started" investigations in other parts of the world, Europe in particular. The FBI is extremely effective in conducting interviews, and putting together both criminal and intelligence cases. Information obtained through law-enforcement channels--whether testimony, documents, records, photographs, forensic evidence or the results of interviews--provides the purest form of intelligence.

Short of total war, the FBI relentlessly did its job of pursuing terrorists, always with the goal of preventing their attacks. But the FBI's pre-9/11 Counter-Terrorism (CT) resources were finite and insufficient--3.5% of the entire government's CT budget. In 1993, we had fewer than 600 special agents and 500 support positions funded for CT. By 1999, we'd more than doubled our personnel and trebled the FBI's CT budget to $301 million. We knew it wasn't enough. For Fiscal Years 2000, 2001 and 2002 the FBI asked for 1,895 special agents, analysts and linguists to enhance our CT program. We got 76 people for those three critical years. FY 2000 was typical: 864 CT positions at a cost of $380.8 million requested--five people funded for $7.4 million. This isn't a criticism of the DoJ, White House or Congress--that's how Washington makes its budgets, balancing competing needs against limited resources. The point is: The FBI was intensely focused on its CT needs but antebellum politics was not yet there. By contrast, after Sept. 11, the FBI's FY 2002 Emergency Supplemental CT budget was increased overnight by 823 positions for $745 million. The al Qaeda threat was the same on Sept. 10 and Sept. 12. Nothing focuses a government quicker than a war.

Before Sept. 11, the FBI relentlessly pursued criminal investigations, renditions and prosecutions of terrorists, particularly bin Laden and al Qaeda. This was an integral part of two administrations' CT strategy. This course wasn't pursued because we believed indicting bin Laden and issuing warrants for al Qaeda leaders would stop their war against us. In fact, we always viewed this law-enforcement action as limited in scope and completely secondary in terms of national security. Yet aside from cruise missiles, armed Predators and invading countries which harbored terrorists, this was our chosen path.

Sometimes it worked. Yousef's arrest didn't happen without an active warrant. After Mir Aimal Kansi's murders of CIA personnel in Langley, Va., it was his indictment that led to his arrest by FBI agents in Pakistan and murder convictions back in Fairfax County. We continue to pursue the arrest of Hezbollah's military commander for the murders of our Marines in Lebanon and Navy diver Robert Stethem. His capture may rest on an FBI arrest warrant. The al Qaeda terrorists who destroyed our African embassies and almost sunk the Cole have all been indicted and are now hounded by FBI agents as well as by CIA officers and our armed services. Even the administrators in Iraq have gone after Muqtada al-Sadr with an arrest warrant.

The FBI was relentless in indicting and pursuing the terrorist agents of Iran who blew up Khobar Towers. Why were we pursuing this case? Certainly not because we thought that arrest warrants for 13 fugitives protected by Iran was the best way to stop that country from sponsoring terrorist attacks. A poll of FBI agents would show a preference for a military operation against Iran as the more effective action. But short of "warring back," there's a fundamental but misunderstood notion about why it's a good thing to at least have an arrest warrant. Experience has taught the FBI that we never know the place and time--it's not of our choosing--when one of these terrorists is suddenly found traversing an airport, or is within-the-grab of a country that will remit him to us or to a "friendly" place only because we have a warrant. Hence the FBI always wanted to be in a position where--as with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed--we could capture a high-value target in a rare chance because we'd taken the trouble to get an indictment and a warrant. We don't think the American judicial process is always the best defense against terrorism--it's not; but it does give terror victims another means for justice.

Pre-9/11, the FBI used all the means at its disposal to capture bin Laden and to prevent future attacks against America. The FBI and CIA actively targeted al Qaeda and bin Laden beginning one year before the East Africa embassy attacks on Aug. 7, 1998. Together, they were able to indict bin Laden prior to Aug. 7 for a plot to murder U.S. soldiers in Yemen. In November 1998, he was indicted a second time for the embassy bombings and put on the FBI's Top 10 list in April 1999. In 1999, a dedicated "bin Laden Unit" was established at FBIHQ and the CIA-FBI "bin Laden station" began to operate covertly on an international basis. Of course, our arrest warrants, by themselves, were pieces of paper. The U.S. armed forces provided a means to execute a warrant to the FBI and DEA in 1988 by invading Panama in order to allow agents to arrest Manuel Noriega. Similar means to capture bin Laden did not become available until October 2001, when Afghanistan was so successfully invaded by our forces.

Before then, diplomacy and other means were tried. The U.S. brought political pressure on the Taliban to turn over bin Laden--but to no avail. The CIA and FBI sorted through a series of proposed, covert actions designed to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan and bring him to justice. None of the plans appeared to have any chance of success and were not approved. Finally, on April 6, 2000, after consultation with the national security adviser and the State Department, I traveled to meet Pervez Musharraf and requested his personal assistance in capturing bin Laden. Gen. Musharraf was polite but unhelpful. He explained that he had personal assurances from Mullah Omar of the Taliban that bin Laden was innocent of the East African bombings and had abandoned terrorism. We gave Gen. Musharraf and his military leaders an extensive briefing of our evidence against bin Laden and al Qaeda and followed up our meeting by sending FBI agents and an assistant U.S. attorney from New York to Pakistan to make the case for arresting bin Laden. It was clear that short of the U.S. declaring war against bin Laden and his Taliban accessories, Pakistan was not going to help us get this terrorist out of Afghanistan.

Protecting our homeland from attacks by foreign terrorists had long been the FBI's priority. Back in September 1994, I recommended to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick that the DoJ strengthen investigative powers against suspected "undesirable aliens," accelerating deportation appeal proceedings and limiting U.S. participation in a visa waiver pilot program under which 9.5 million foreigners entered the U.S. in 1994. I also recommended that we include provisions for the detention and removal of undesirable aliens, under a special, closed-court procedure. I also criticized alien deportation appeal procedures which often took years to conclude. Finally, I recommended legislation to provide the FBI with roving wiretap authority to investigate terrorist activities in the U.S. President Clinton requested that authority in 1996.

The FBI was also active in focusing on the terrorist threat to Americans overseas, our first line of defense. This was the centerpiece of the dramatic expansion of legat offices. The FBI must have this foreign capability to carry out effective CT, especially prevention. When I left the FBI, I'd proposed that we establish an FBI training facility in Central Asia, as we'd done in Budapest in 1995, and had begun in Dubai, to enhance our ability to establish liaison and critical points of contact in those important regions. There is absolutely no substitute for these liaisons. Without them we risk being blind.

The FBI's expansion overseas paid immense dividends. The U.S.'s rapid response after Sept. 11 was based in part on this infrastructure. And during our examination of the forensic evidence from the Cole case, it was discovered that the explosive used was possibly manufactured in Russia. Because the FBI had been working in Russia since 1994, I was able to call the FSB (Russian intelligence) director and ask for assistance. His response was immediate. Russian experts provided us with all the information requested, helping immensely.

Everyone understands why and how some of our basic rules, beginning with provisions of the Patriot Act, changed after Sept. 11. America declared war on al Qaeda and bin Laden, and the Congress and president put the country on a war footing. It's important to remember that war changed these rules and the FBI, CIA and the rest of the government can only be judged prior to Sept. 11 by the pre-existing rules.

The FBI and CIA working together have accomplished much in fighting terrorism, but it is a continuing battle. These agencies should remain the primary counterterrorism agencies. But al Qaeda-type organizations, state sponsors of terrorism like Iran, and the threats they pose to America, are ultimately beyond the competence of the FBI and the CIA to address. America must maintain the will to use its political, military and economic power when acts of war are threatened or committed against our nation by terrorists or their state sponsors. We have now seen how war is declared and waged against terrorists who attack our nation. The painful lesson is that fighting terrorism without such a declaration of war is unlikely to be successful.

Mr. Freeh, a former FBI director, is scheduled to testify before the 9/11 Commission tomorrow.