Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On A Citizens Guide T

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On A Citizens Guide To Terrorism And Counterterrorism 20140309

Thank you for coming on such a chilly day, and im delighted to present perhaps 25, 30 minutes of comments and the interaction with you on the questions you have. Im also very glad to see jim phillips here. Ive worked on terrorism issues with jim for it must be a quarter century now, and there are very few people that write with the intelligence and prudence that jim phillips does. Heres a couple reasons why i wanted to write this book, with the way terrorism encounters the citizen. I remember back in 1980 reading some clippings many newspapers, it was in newspapers, it was in the chicago area. And a woman was looking out her window near her home, and she saw a van pull up. And in that van there proved to be some nine different people. And they looked rather like an athletics team, you know . The jogging uniforms and the bags. But as she looked out her window, this lady, mrs. Walter jacobson, decides that she should be a little nervous about this. Thered been some robberies in the area by the faln who were puerto rican separatists, and she noticed a but things that were odd to her. First of all, these athletic bags seemed much heavier hand she was used to seeing heavier than she was used to seeing, and some of the guys were smoking. She thought for a minute, and she called the police. And more effect she interrupted an Armed Robbery that was plotted by the faln, and there was a cache of weapons and a sawedoff shotgun and all that. And these all went to jail, these people. Although oddly enough at the end of his tenure, president clinton pardoned a bunch of them. One of the policemen who was there at the time said, just trying to be cheery, that they all felt lucky that day. And one of the others, a newspaper reporter wrote this happened during a i routine traffic stop. And both of those accounts were really incorrect. It was really mrs. Walter jacobson ive been unable to even find her first name, a completely obscure case now but is she broke an attempted robbery. Of the greatest importance by hardened terrorists who all went to jail thanks to her intervention. So you know that phrase now, it started in new york and its now kind of a nationwide push by department of Homeland Security that if you see something, say something. I like the phrase, and i think it captures well the sense that we as citizens have both a duty and an opportunity to be citizens in cases that do touch on civics security. I like the slogan more than i do some which have more emphasis. For example, youll often see signs around military bases that say if you see anything that looks at all suspicious, immediately report to authority x or y. I would think its better, really, for the public to think a little bit, to contemplate a little bit, to ask themselves what theyre seeing and not to jump to any conclusions too quickly. But i like the notion of this sort of a responsiveness among citizens. I cothink that by and i do think that, by and large, citizens have some understanding that they are involved in some ways. And i wrote in part to tell the book, to tell the stories of some citizens who have been involved and in good ways. In the spirit of mrs. Jacobson, for example, there was another person who was part of the lack wanna community in new york, and no one ever has reported who this person is, although theres a good book on the case. The person suspected in watching some of the many men whod come back in mid 2001, a por ten white house time, from overseas. She the el that they were up to some she felt that they were up to some bad things. And she wrote in somewhat troubled english to authorities and said they ought to look into this half dozen young men who had come back. Pause this person who wrote because this person who wrote seemed to feel those men were a threat to the community, and he or she was absolutely right. Authorities did look into it, and those people had not only been abroad to southwest asia, they most of them had been in a camp run by afghan, run by afghanis and Osama Bin Laden, and they were there for training. Now, i found another kind of category besides these persons who act privately and quietly, and another sort of group that we have among us is those who really have tremendous physical courage and may not be looking for trouble but seem to show the right attitude this response when they, when the alarm bell sounds. If we think back to 9 11, it is astonishing the way those men charged down the aisle of the United Airlines flight over pennsylvania. They knew from cell phone traffic what had happened in new york city when they did that, and they were sort of, you know, minute men more our day for our day, except the analogy fails really, momentum it, from doesnt it, from concord and lexington commonalities because they didnt have muskets, but they were willing to charge. And we think that thats pretty unusual, and it is especially in airplane situations. For decades the counsel from authorities was always the same, stay very calm, stay uninvolved, dont make eye contact can, do what they tell you. But these people, knowing what they did on that day, made a different decision, and it was very heroic. And it wasnt freakish in the sense that since then 2001 and 2009 weve had passengers subdue other terrorists, richard reed and fra rook alabama lab, and both of them had clothing treated with explosive material, youll remember, and hoped to blow up the planes. Now, my favorite, actually, man on spot is a woman, and thats ulie derekson, and this does go back a ways, but she was central european, she was an american citizen, 40 years old. It was her fate to be the lead stewardess on twa 847, on that flight. So shiite thugs had attacked the plane, taken people hostage. They were working a kind of perverse psychological approach to break down the passengers, whip saw everybody into confusion and submission. She was fright ped, actually, who wouldnt be, but gradually her composure returned, and she began thinking about what she could do to moderate this impossible situation. So, for example, it emerged that she spoke german, and some of the hijackers did as well, and that became the only common language, actually, that all the parties had x. She sewer screened intervened sometimes psychologically, sometimes physically. They once asked her to sing german songs to her to them, believe it or not, in the long, long drama of this hijacking, and she did so. Very strange. She and the pilot, john tesdrake, both showed amazing courage in the twa 847 hijacking. Remarkable. I suppose we all admire this kind of thing, we wonder or whether wed ever be up to it ourselves. These people on the day proved themselves up to the level of events. Extraordinary persons. Third category i found to look at is sort of measure predictable. The tried and true professional. The persons trained to do the kind of intervention that sometimes happens, and its not very often. But they are involved. We saw someone shot at los angeles airport not too long ago. Not everybody in the business of security, private or public, might be top of the line. Some might seem to us as Airline Passengers a little bit disengaged, or someone might be very good but only in five years will they really know all their trade. But otherwise we meet in public life, many people involved in the security business who prove themselves very capable. They rise to the moment. Maybe it takes you back too far, but in 1988 a remarkable occasion in new jersey is one of the things that makes the book for a paragraph or two. A trooper nameed robert suplinski took notice of a driver as theyre trained to do and he pulled him over for moving violation, but he saw through windows that there were materials on the backseat which he distrusted. So simply a traffic stop turned into an arrest. The man he caught that day was a member of the Japanese Red Army which had trained with libyans and many other international terrorists, and he was there on his way to new york to hit a Navy Recruiting station. And this was going to be the two Year Anniversary of the bombing of libya in 1986. And it was only suplinskis intervention that saved that recruiting station from being bombed by yu. 995 you 1995 you may remember that Timothy Mcveigh came very close to escape over a state line after bombing the Oklahoma City building. He was caught by a oklahoma highway patrolman nameed charles hangar. Hangar noticed that simplest of things, that he didnt have proper plates on his vehicle. And he noticed it when they were passing like this on a highway at a very high speed. So he swung around, and he stopped mcveigh. He was a trained patrolman, so rather quickly he assessed that a slight bulge within the jacket of or of mcveigh suggested a pistol, and so they had a little talk about that. And the terrorist said that my side arm is loaded, and the fbis john oneill was one man who did so. Remarkable, well trained, thoughtful. For years he had believed that alqaeda was coming back to his city. John oneill was a kind of cassandra, he knew it was coming, and he kept warning of it. Eventually, he got discouraged, and he retired from the fbi, and he took a new job. He took a job as head of security in the World Trade Center in new york city. And so he turned up for work there in august of 2001, and he kept that job only for a few days. And he was on scene when it all happened, and he died in the rubble. So that kind of citizen is one reason i wanted the write the book. Another one is a very different reason. I wanted to write this short book to talk about the way we do have a grand strategy in our fight against terrorism. I dont think a lot of americans know that, or they dont see all the pieces. And i tried to lay some of those out to help the citizen reader kind of develop a fuller perspective on what public business has done by all parts in this drama. This that respect in that respect then a couple of assumptions. The book starts with terrorism is a real thing, a definable thing and a bad thing, and in the academy those arent all accepted propositions. I use a definition from a think tank. This is not mine, but its always guided my scholarship, that terrorism is the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends. The character, terrorist threat that we face, is explored in the book, and certainly it starts with alqaeda but is also broadened enough to wig in wing in of the other hostile and political groups that we see. Its a premise of the book that we are, in fact, at war with core alqaeda. Now, we can find quotations from the white house saying that they agree with that, but i would argue that in the last year there had has been some doubt oe question of whether were at war with core alqaeda. I argue that we are and that we ought to be, and i think its a bad thing that its become an open question of just how long in this fight will occur, for reasons ill get into. The central part of the book tries to look at our strategy, what are the components of it, how does it work. I suppose the white house and the National Security council will always have that central coordinating role in making all the agencies Work Together if they can and all the bureaucracies respond if they can. And its not easy. So a sort of candid account in the book of how hard it is to do this, no matter what partys in office or whos in charge. So you might have, tradition, Commerce Department for example, Commerce Department in the business of promoting exports. Very reasonably, we would want them to do that. And yet there could be tension with the Treasury Department which might be very eager to put sanctions on a particular business, a particular powerful individual, maybe a state sponsor of terrorism like iran at a time when its not convenient with respect to diplomatic initiatives. Our intelligence agencies certainly differ legitimately. They can quarrel about assessments in priorities. Theres a fine new book called treasurys war by juan zarate who has a lot of experience in this, and he brings up one case in which intelligence is closely watching a whole Terror Network someplace, but at the same time they have to have a meeting with justice because justice i is eager to wrap these pell las up and fellas up and make arrests. One or the other has to stand down. Certainly, state and dod have their differences, and those are famous. I think for citizens we dont see always how many overseas personnel we have that are not military or not cia. So, for example, the Drug Enforcement agency has a remarkable International Network which is very active, very smart people. They go through many of the same fine schools in the states that other experts in security do. And the fbi, you would know, has some legations overseas as well and deploys on a spot basis, ad hoc basis to a lot of crime scenes. And they are extremely important, so theres some stationed overseas and many who go there overseas in a contingency. Even the new York City Police department, to go back to new york for a minute, has a remark bl Intelligence Organization remarkable Intelligence Organization that probably was con itsed initially by folks like fbi and cia. But they felt if the federal government wasnt going to defend them very well, after 9 11 they needed to set out their own defense, so they sent tent calls out, and theyre trying to keep pulse on parts of the world which they think are dangerous. And they do this through the appropriate channels, but theyre trying to watch the world before the world comes again to new york in a way that they dont like. So nsc, if theyre doing well, will sort of moderate some of these turf problems when theyre federal. The book has then several page groups on each of the major elements of our strategy, so diplomacy, Public Diplomacy, economic tools, law, Law Enforcement, the military. Diplomacys probably a good place to start. We know terrorisms very political. We know its usually international. Diplomacy, therefore, has some prospects. And diplomacys done well in some cases. In multilateral diplomacy i think most folks regard the Irish Settlement which took from, oh, maybe 1997 onward til 2007, but that was an impressive product from multilateral diplomacy involving a lot of the irish and british players, but a lot of outsiders including some americans like mr. Clinton, like george mitchell. A lot of others from around the world. Bilateral also has some successes, bilateral diplomacy ill mention in a minute with respect to the libya problem where we worked with the United Kingdom on that. But i also in the book draw some cautionary notes, because in going to conferences as you do and sort of listening to discussion and watching the way, quote, talking to terrorists has now become one of the hottest fields in my own business in terrorism, i have a lot of reservations about the way in which diplomacy can succeed, just how far it can go. So im more reserved this that a respect, but i in that respect, but i look, for example, at some of the false negotiators, abbas back in the famous Achille Lauro case where an american was murdered. He positioned himself visavis resident governments as a kind of intermediary who could step this and be help helpful. There was an absolute classic by colonel gadhafi. One of his last cases i find of deliberate export of international terrorism, about 99, 2000 there was a crisis with abu saef taking multiple hostages, foreign hostages. So out of the philippines this group asked. Gadhafi steps in in a grand yoalings way as a mediator, and he offers a fantastic amount of money 20 million is whats referenced by a filipino dip plo mat and it was marvelous. 20 million, thank you, but he also e americas as the classic emerges as the classic diplomat which was good for the image he was seeking back in 2000. It was highly skillful stuff. So theres a lot to be wary about in diplomacy, of course, and theres not always an easy payoff. A lot of groups like, say, the l2te tigers went for decades with many attempts at intervention which all pailed, and they had to be simply crushed. Economics is a important tool. You know, we know, everybody, every College Graduate knows that if your going to do economic sanctions, its important to have as many people in the mix as you can and also to hold them with some patience for some time, pause sanctions take because sanctions take a long time to work. But, you know, sometimes they do work. Ill bet you if you think about it, most of you will think that sanctions had some role in the resolution of south africa with its apartheid regime. Certainly, my studies made me believe that libyan behavior was changed by sanctions. It was changed some this the 1990s in the 1990s, and it was dramatically changed in about 2003 and 4. Some of the people are right here in town who did this. An intelligence man, steve kappas, and ambassador robert joseph, they worked with the United Kingdom to press the libyan authorities to get them to divest themselves of wmd. Not only the supplies, but the actual machinery. The machinery this is kind of prelude to what youre seeing with syria the machinery for making that wmd was put on a ship and brought to the United States. It was the solution to a long standing problem with the gadhafi regime, and that was through diplomats from two different countries. And its an extremely good story. Well, i go then into the questions of the strategy, so i need to mention a few of these. Mr. Bush then writes the First National counterterrorist strategy that we have, right this and he actually did two of them. And his principles were to defeat the terrorists and their organizations, deny them sponsorship and sanctuary, diminish the underlying conditions that terrorists exploit and defend the u. S. At home. His government did a superb job of that. He got himself a very broad congressional authorization which is now, im sorry to say, being prematurely questioned. He argues in his strategy that terrorists are truly evil

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