Why the Spooks Screwed Up

By J.F.O. McAllister

Those who fight terror for a living know the deal. Success is expected. Failure is intolerable. Last Tuesday was intolerable. Not just because of the volume of destruction and loss of life, but because anyone who has ever tried to keep a secret had good reason to wonder: Given the obvious scope of this terror operation--the number of perpetrators/potential leaks, the elaborateness of the preparations/potential money trails--how could thousands of spooks who supposedly had Osama bin Laden in their cross hairs for a decade miss every single moving part?

At some point, when the nation has moved beyond grief and vengefulness, CIA Director George Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller will have to explain how the $10 billion-a-year anti-terror system failed, and how they can ensure it won't fail again. The answer is not a lack of effort. In 1995 Bill Clinton signed a top-secret order authorizing the CIA to run covert operations against bin Laden. Since then his every word has been analyzed, his international network has been diagrammed by computers, his movements have been tracked in hopes--all vain so far--of capturing him.

Members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network keep electronic communications (which the U.S. is famously good at intercepting) to a minimum. They are encrypting more, and when they do use cell phones, it is often in an attempt to smoke out surveillance. "They say things on their phones, then watch us react," says a U.S. intelligence official. The decentralized design of bin Laden's network also makes it much harder to penetrate than previous terrorist groups. Many of the countries in which it operates have less than adequate police and intelligence services to provide assistance. It is imbued with a messianic ideology that makes it relatively immune to the lure of cash, the counterspy's usual inducement.

The CIA's self-improvement could begin with what most experts consider the best if most arduous and dangerous way to disrupt terror: so-called human intelligence, provided by informants and agents. The CIA has long been criticized for its reliance on diplomatic cover for its main officers, which stymies attempts to recruit locals in countries like Afghanistan, where the U.S. has no embassy, or Pakistan, where the native spooks keep close tabs on official Americans. Ever since a 1995 uproar about the CIA's use of Guatemalan informants linked to torture and murder, the agency has been required to perform "human rights" checks on its assets. Last week George H.W. Bush criticized the restriction. "We have to free up the intelligence system from some of its constraints," he said. The spy game is "kind of a dirty business, and you have to deal with a lot of unsavory people." But a senior intelligence official counters that no one proposed from the field has ever been turned down because of a human-rights check.

The FBI, which monitors al-Qaeda inside the U.S., has been slammed for lacking deep Muslim contacts, showing excessive caution in penetrating radical groups for fear of violating First Amendment rights, and tolerating office politics that has driven out many of its savviest counterterrorism agents.

A senior intelligence official, asked to think big about how to improve the fight against terror, says, "I'm not sure what can be done other than give us more money and people." Americans won't be satisfied with answers like that.

--By J.F.O. McAllister, with reporting by Massimo Calabresi and Elaine Shannon/Washington

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi and Elaine Shannon/Washington