Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda (8 page)

“People at the time thought that terrorists weren’t deterrable, that they were irrational, that we had no control over the things they valued, so we couldn’t threaten to hold it at risk,” Kroenig said. “But terrorists are deterrable. While they may have a preference structure that’s different than ours, they do value things—things that we could hold at risk—and we can, therefore, influence their decisions.”

Kroenig argued that terrorists value operational success, personal glory, their reputation and honor, and their support in the broader Muslim population. Undermining or sowing doubt among those motivated by any one of those values, or a combination of them, could help dissuade terrorists, or the people helping them, from carrying out an attack. But the efforts to advocate for such strategies encountered several roadblocks. Skeptical midlevel Pentagon bureaucrats refused to pass the “new deterrence” concept up the chain of command. Partly, it was fear of the new; it was also obvious that this proposed strategy contradicted the Bush administration’s public line, that is, until Rumsfeld exploded one day. In the midsummer of 2005, the defense secretary had received a briefing from top military commanders on how many megatons of nuclear bombs they could drop on an array of targets. Rumsfeld, furious at what he said was Cold War thinking, cut short the briefing and threw the generals out of his office. “Isn’t anyone doing anything relevant, like thinking about deterring terrorists?” Rumsfeld bellowed at his aides.

The next morning, Feith, who was aware of Pavel and Kroenig’s work but had not read the latest drafts, asked to see the current version. He liked it and ordered the briefing, with a few changes, sent to Rumsfeld as soon as possible. “I just remember it intellectually being a very good piece of work—creative, well presented, rigorous, just good stuff,” Feith said.

Perhaps he was pleased because the work followed a path that Feith himself had started to explore three years earlier in a speech in April 2002 to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the nation’s major pro-Israel lobby. In that address, Feith spoke of what terrorists hold dear and what they hope for: “a perverse form of religious hope,” “earthly glory and reward,” and “political hope” for the creation of a greater Palestinian state. Within that toxic mix, Feith saw the potential to exploit an unusual opportunity: “This suggests a strategic course for us: attack the sources of these malignant hopes.”

Reviewing the Pavel-Kroenig brief, Feith suggested a few changes to tighten and polish the new deterrence proposal, putting it into one-paragraph briefing slides, the way Rumsfeld liked to digest new ideas. Seven weeks after walking in the door of the Pentagon, Kroenig had completed a PowerPoint briefing that was on its way to the secretary of defense.

Rumsfeld could be a hard man to read, but Feith surely knew that the briefing had a good chance of appealing to him. One of Rumsfeld’s favorite axioms is “When you can’t solve a problem, expand it.” He describes his most-favored posture as “forward leaning.” As secretary of defense, he terrorized those who came to staff meetings unprepared but was impressed by those who stood up to him. Rumsfeld truly had hoped to be a “change agent” within the ossified Pentagon, so he appreciated those with fresh, transformational ideas. It was therefore no surprise that he was pleased by the presentation of a “new deterrence” against terrorism. Pavel and Kroenig had identified the specific “territory,” physical and virtual, that terrorists hold dear:

■
Calculus of chances for success of their attacks

■
Personal glory

■
Personal reputation

■
Support among Muslim populations

■
Publicity

■
Network cohesion and dependability

■
Trust in fellow cell members

■
Well-being of their family

■
Enhancement of the Muslim community

■
Material assets

■
Growing membership for the movement

■
Strategic success

The United States needed to impose costs on that “territory,” put it at risk, and deny terrorists the benefits they expect to receive—that was the essence of the “new deterrence.” As was the case with traditional deterrence, the idea was to take steps to alter the behavior and thinking of your adversary while simultaneously taking steps to reduce his ability to alter your behavior and thinking.

The challenge to the new deterrence became one of cracking the organizational DNA of constantly evolving militant networks, especially as Al Qaeda adopted a new business model, franchising out activities and becoming as big a threat as an inspirational idea as in its operations. That would require the U.S. government to focus not solely on bin Laden and Al Qaeda’s senior leadership but also on a proliferating network of cells in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the rest of the Middle East, along with much of Africa, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The original slides for the Pavel-Kroenig concept for deterring and dissuading terrorist networks listed nine functions required by militant networks to survive, thrive, and operate. Here is the air and water and land of terrorism:

■
Leadership

■
Safe havens

■
Intelligence

■
Communications

■
Movement

■
Weapons

■
Personnel

■
Ideology

■
Finances

This was the presentation that Rumsfeld took to his meeting with President Bush at Crawford. According to participants at the session, the president was not exactly dismissive of the concept, but he was openly skeptical. Kill or capture—those were the tactics of the Bush war on terror, and the concept briefed by Rumsfeld did not resonate. “Bush listened to it,” said one senior official. “He was reflective. But it was clear he was not really buying into it.”

In an opportune coincidence, also present at Crawford was General James E. Cartwright, the top officer of the Strategic Command, which has custody and control of the traditional tools of nuclear retaliation: the long-range bombers and the warhead-carrying missiles in land-based silos and aboard submarines. Cartwright was on hand to brief the president on missile defense. Bush turned to him and asked his opinion of applying Cold War deterrence theories to counterterrorism. Cartwright had not been briefed on the Feith-Pavel-Kroenig proposal but had been thinking through these issues in parallel. He discussed how if one believes missile defense adds to deterrence—and Bush was a huge advocate of that—then the application to counterterrorism followed naturally. In missile defense, you hope to inject a high level of doubt into the mind of a potential attacker that a first strike will be successful and certainty that it will provoke retaliation. Ditto with deterrence and terrorism. “If you can remove a certainty of success in striking an objective, if you make the price too high, then you increase the opportunity the adversary will not strike,” Cartwright said. “Ambiguity and uncertainty: That is the calculus of missile defense as contributing to an overall deterrence strategy.” He applied it to terrorism: “If you can convince a suicide bomber that he most likely will only kill himself, then you have increased chances you can influence his thinking to not strap on the vest. Applying deterrence theories to terrorism may not eliminate the threat, but you can increase your chances of influencing an adversary’s behavior, his cost-benefit analysis—and perhaps deter an attack.”

Bush was the most important skeptic but hardly the only one. Pavel and Kroenig had to crack institutional resistance throughout the Pentagon. Some initial push-back came from the community of traditional deterrence strategists, who argued that Pavel and Kroenig were misappropriating a powerful historical term simply because it resonated and was a persuasive bumper sticker. “Don’t define deterrence so narrowly,” Kroenig said to these skeptics as he shopped around the new concept. “During the Cold War, deterrence meant threatening unacceptable damage on an adversary. No other use was allowed. But an expansive concept of deterrence can be used today to restrict an enemy’s actions in the world of counterterrorism. It contributes to a national objective.”

*   *   *

In March 2006, Bush signed the twelve-page National Security Presidential Directive 46; an accompanying strategy document was released with great fanfare six months later. The work by Barry Pavel and Matt Kroenig, under Feith’s leadership, was incorporated into the final documents. During the review process overseen by the National Security Council, the following text was approved: “A new deterrence calculus combines the need to deter terrorists and supporters from contemplating a WMD attack and, failing that, to dissuade them from actually conducting an attack.” The emerging belief that terrorists could be swayed and dissuaded from action by various forms of deterrence marked a stunning change of direction in the government’s thinking on dealing with terrorists.

A new notion of deterrence was finding its way into the daily business of the Pentagon and the rest of the national security agencies. On February 3, 2006, a month before NSPD-46 was formally approved, the Pentagon briefed reporters on another significant planning effort, the Defense Department’s quadrennial review of defense priorities and policies. In his opening statement, Ryan Henry, one of Feith’s top deputies, explained, “We will selectively be able to enhance our deterrence anywhere of our choosing around the globe, but that deterrence will not be a one-size-fits-all of massive retaliation that we’ve built up over the last fifty years. It’ll also be augmented by an ability to deter rogue powers and also terrorists and their networks.”

Al Qaeda soon responded to the new American strategy of deterrence but in an unexpected way. In September 2007, Sheik Abu Yahya al-Libi, a top Al Qaeda official, released a videotape offering the United States several unsolicited tips on how to defeat the terrorist organization. Abu Yahya recommended that the United States fabricate stories about jihadist mistakes and exaggerate real Al Qaeda missteps. He advised the West to discredit prominent Islamic clerics who back Al Qaeda’s goals in their Friday prayers. In short, he said the best way to defeat Al Qaeda was to tie it in knots and degrade its appeal and legitimacy among Muslims. Although the narrative fit perfectly with the concepts emerging from Pavel and Kroenig, American counterterrorism officials were at first puzzled. Why would a senior Al Qaeda leader hand his enemies the very means to destroy the group? Was this a disinformation campaign? American officials now believe that Abu Yahya’s effort was a clever attempt to inoculate Al Qaeda and the terrorist movement from the very criticisms they were already encountering from within their own ranks and to attribute anything that came from such criticisms as the handiwork of American propaganda. It was a concrete sign that the information war between the terrorists and the terrorist hunters was heating up.

A growing number of influential Islamic clerics and imams who once supported bin Laden were indeed denouncing Al Qaeda’s violence, particularly its killing of civilians. Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, gave a speech in October 2007 warning Saudis not to join unauthorized jihadist activities, a statement directed mainly at those considering going to Iraq to fight American troops. Al Qaeda relies on public support within the Islamic world to recruit new fighters to dispatch to the battlefields of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, and to help finance a network of new franchises, from the deserts of North Africa to the far reaches of northern Iraq. Terrorism experts know that splits within the jihadist world threaten to undermine the terrorists’ power and incline more moderate Muslims to speak out against their tactics.

*   *   *

It is one thing to disrupt terrorists’ messages, but it is another to dissuade insurgents from even considering an attack with unconventional weapons. Counterterrorism specialists agree that for the “new deterrence” strategy to succeed, it is crucial to counteract the militant and fatalistic culture of martyrdom of terrorist leaders. To do so, they are examining aspects of the militants’ culture, families, and religion. Jeff Schloesser, the general tapped to lead a new counterterrorism planning cell in the Pentagon, said that soon after 9/11, American officials considered whether seizing some or all of Osama bin Laden’s wives and other extended family members, many of whom lived in Saudi Arabia, would deter him from plotting other attacks, possibly with unconventional weapons. “We decided that wouldn’t change him one bit,” Schloesser said. “It’d just cause him to be more brutal.”

Suicide bombers believe they will enjoy seductive “heavenly delights” as a reward for martyrdom, and so the U.S. government is seeking ways to amplify the voices of respected Muslim religious leaders who warn that suicide bombers will not enjoy the heavenly rewards promised by terrorist literature and that their families will be dishonored by such attacks. Those efforts are aimed at undermining a terrorist’s will, since without foot soldiers willing to die, there is little for an organization like Al Qaeda to do.

Terrorists hold no obvious targets for American retaliation—targets like Soviet cities, factories, military bases, and missile silos—so it is harder to deter terrorists than it was to deter a Soviet attack. The U.S. government and the American military knew exactly where the offices of the Politburo were in those years. It is all but impossible to deter attacks by credibly threatening a retaliatory strike when you cannot pinpoint the location of a terrorist group’s leadership. And they know it.