[108044] in Cypherpunks
The Secret Man of Power
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jei@zor.hut.fi)
Tue Feb 2 12:02:36 1999
From: jei@zor.hut.fi
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 1999 18:43:07 +0200 (EET)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: jei@zor.hut.fi
http://jya.com/terr-spin.htm
The New York Times, February 1, 1999
The Man Who Protects America From Terrorism
By TIM WEINER
WASHINGTON -- Richard Clarke is the White House terrorism czar. His
stock in trade is the stuff of techno-thrillers -- biological bombs in
the Wall Street subway, chemical clouds of death in the Pentagon
parking lot, cyberwar attacks crippling the nation's computers.
Pale as skim milk, his once-red hair gone white at 48, he works long
days and nights in Oliver North's old office at the National Security
Council, keeping a profile so low that almost no one outside his
top-secret world knows he exists.
As chairman of the government's chief counterterrorism group for the
past seven years, he has become what John le Carre calls an
"intellocrat" -- a gray baron who seems to command nothing more than
his desk, yet waves a wand and sends soldiers, guns, money and spies
around the world.
Clarke inspires ferocious loyalty from friends and fierce enmity from
foes inside the government. He wins praise for getting things done in
secret -- and criticism for exactly the same. At the National Security
Council, where he landed in 1992 after losing his State Department job
in a bitter battle over Israel's misuse of American military
technology, he can operate without outside oversight so long as he has
President Clinton's confidence.
He has it. The president recently named him the nation's
counterterrorism coordinator, a new and powerful post. He has to try
to coordinate everything from the Pentagon and its evolving plans to
defend the United States against terrorists down to local police and
fire departments. Despite years of effort to pull it all together,
this has never been accomplished. There is no 911 number for the
nation.
The mission of protecting Americans from attack, whether by states or
rogue groups, is "almost the primary responsibility of the
government," Clarke says. He is trying to raise the fear of terrorism
in the United States to the right level -- higher, not too high -- as
he girds the nation against the possibility of an assault from nerve
gas, bacteria and viruses, and from what he calls "an electronic Pearl
Harbor."
He has to walk a fine line. "You want people to understand the peril
without panicking," said Anthony Lake, his boss at the National
Security Council from 1993 to 1996.
Clarke has a reserved seat when Cabinet officers gather at the White
House on national security issues. "My name is on the table next to
Madeleine Albright and Bill Cohen," the secretaries of state and
defense, Clarke said. His vote carries the weight of those cast by the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of central
intelligence.
He helped drive the decision to fire cruise missiles at Afghanistan
and Sudan in August, trying to strike at Osama bin Laden, overpowering
dissenters at the State Department and the CIA. Now he is helping to
steer secret operations aimed at capturing the Saudi exile, who is
accused of bombing two American embassies.
Clarke also has written at least four classified presidential
directives on terrorism. They helped expand the government's
counterterrorism cadres into the $11 billion-a-year enterprise he now
coordinates, stifling some protests at the Justice Department and the
Pentagon, which saw him as a competitor for money and power.
In his office, where a small sign reads "Think Globally/Act Globally,"
he spoke passionately about the threat of cyberwar, invisible attacks
on the nation's computers, a terror so insidious, so arcane he has
trouble convincing corporate chieftains and political commissars it is
real. But it is out there, somewhere, he says, even if he can't prove
it.
"There is a problem convincing people that there is a threat," he
said. "There is disbelief and resistance. Most people don't
understand. CEOs of big corporations don't even know what I'm talking
about. They think I'm talking about a 14-year-old hacking into their
Web sites.
"I'm talking about people shutting down a city's electricity," he
said, "shutting down 911 systems, shutting down telephone networks and
transportation systems. You black out a city, people die. Black out
lots of cities, lots of people die. It's as bad as being attacked by
bombs.
"An attack on American cyberspace is an attack on the United States,
just as much as a landing on New Jersey," he said. "The notion that we
could respond with military force against a cyber-attack has to be
accepted."
Why would anyone want to mount such an attack? "To extort us," he
said. "To intimidate us. To get us to abandon our foreign policy --
'Abandon Israel or else!'
"Imagine a few years from now: A president goes forth and orders
troops to move. The lights go out, the phones don't ring, the trains
don't move. That's what we mean by an electronic Pearl Harbor."
Enemies and allies alike say Clarke wins battles by working longer
hours and twisting more arms. "I like Dick so much for the same
reason that some people have not liked him: He has a passion for
getting things done," said Lake. "That can be abrasive."
When thorny questions entangle political, military, diplomatic and
intelligence issues, Clarke cuts the knot. Are there human rights
concerns over sending helicopters to Colombia's army? Send the
choppers. Does the State Department want to reopen its embassy in the
Sudan, after reports of terrorist threats proved empty? Keep it
shuttered.
"He's a hammer," said Leslie Gelb, who gave him his first job at the
State Department 20 years ago.
"If there is something to slam through, that's his task -- to get
people to do things they don't want to do," said Gelb, now president
of the Council on Foreign Relations, and formerly a reporter and
columnist for The New York Times. "You don't expect the highest
quotient of political sensibility from Dick. They didn't hire him for
that."
Under President Reagan, Clarke was the second-ranking intelligence
officer at the State Department. His boss was Morton Abramowitz. "Dick
is aggressive," Abramowitz said, "a man with strong views, with a
great ability to tell people what the issues are without spending 10
years doing it. He's a low-profile guy. He has mixed feelings about
having a profile at all."
Clarke's profile first surfaced in 1986. He was an intellectual author
of a plan to use psychological warfare against the Libyan leader,
Moammar Gadhafi. Under his plan, flights of SR-71 spy planes set off
"sonic booms over his head, to tell him his air defenses couldn't stop
us," and mysterious American rafts floated up on the shores of
Tripoli, Clarke said. The operation backfired when the Reagan White
House was caught planting a false report in The Wall Street Journal
about Libya's support of terrorism.
Under President Bush, Clarke served as assistant secretary of state
for political and military affairs. In 1992, he was accused by the
State Department's inspector general of looking the other way as
Israel transferred American military technology to China.
"There was an allegation that we hadn't investigated a huge body of
evidence that the Israelis were involved in technology transfers,"
Clarke said. "In fact, we had investigated it. I knew more about it
than anyone. We found one instance where it was true. The Israelis had
taken aerial refueling technology we sold them and sold it to a Latin
American country. We caught them, and they admitted they had done it."
He added: "The administration wanted to put heat on the Israeli
government to create an atmosphere in which the incumbent government
might lose an election. The bottom line was I wasn't going to lie. I
wasn't going to go along with an administration strategy to pressure
the Israeli government."
Sherman Funk, the inspector general who accused Clarke, remembered the
case differently.
"He's wrong," said Funk, the State Department's inspector general from
1987 to 1994. "He's being very disingenuous. Dick Clarke was
unilaterally adopting a policy that was counter to the law and counter
to the avowed policy of the government. It was not up to him to make
that determination. Almost all the people in his own office disagreed
with him. In the end, he had to leave the State Department."
Clarke joined the National Security Council staff under Bush. He was
one of the only holdovers embraced by the Clinton administration.
After seven years, he has placed proteges in key diplomatic and
intelligence positions, creating a network of loyalty and solidifying
his power.
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999; From WK
Cohen seeks Anti-Terror Task Force
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - [February 1, 1999] Defense Secretary William
Cohen is seeking creation of a permanent task force to coordinate the
military's response to a domestic chemical or biological attack, the
Washington Post reported Monday.
The Post quoted defense officials as saying the task force would help
the Defense Department better prepare to offer logistical, medical and
enforcement assistance if the United States was attacked.
Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre acknowledged that ``most
Americans'' are ``apprehensive'' about the military getting involved
in domestic policing and crisis management. ``But we know we're being
asked to be involved because we do have the only part of the
government that has resources that can be mobilized,'' he told the
paper.
Concern has grown in recent years about the possibility that extremist
groups or enemy states could attack U.S. cities with biological or
chemical warfare agents. Ultimate authority for responding to most
such emergencies, would rest with civilian authorities. But given the
Pentagon's ability to mass such things as cots, protective suits and
decontamination equipment, and to marshal large numbers of medical
units and other troops quickly, defense officials expect to be called
on to play important supporting roles.
The new task force, if approved by President Clinton, would have the
authority to draw resources from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine
Corps and to coordinate activities with overseas military commands and
other federal agencies.
By assigning a senior officer and a new staff the job of planning for
a terrorist attack in the United States, defense officials hope to
provide for a more systematic and coordinated approach to the problem.
They expect that any troops, at least for the military's initial
response teams, would be drawn from National Guard and reserve units.
Defense officials plan to present details of the new task force to
Clinton for approval as early as this summer.
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999; From WK
Canada Slashes Counter-Terrorism Budget
Source: http://www.apbonline.com
NEW YORK (APB) [January 29, 1999] -- As the world's major terrorist
groups continue to set up operations in Canada, funding for that
nation's counter-terrorism and intelligence services
has been slashed.
The cuts have left Canada poorly equipped to deal with one of the
world's most virile collections of terrorist organizations, according
to a report released this month by a Canadian Senate committee.
America's friendly northern neighbor is home to more terrorist groups
than any other nation in the world -- with the possible exception of
the United States itself, according to the Canadian Security
Intelligence Service (CSIS).
CSIS reports state that some 50 terrorist groups have chosen Canada as
a prime launching pad for infiltration and attacks on the United
States.
Funding down 28 percent
But while the quasi-military organizations set up shop in Canada,
agencies like CSIS have been weakened by loss of personnel and
funding. In fiscal year 1993-'94, CSIS received $244 million in
Canadian funds and counted 2,760 employees. By 1997-'98, CSIS lost
more than 700 employees and $90 million of its funding.
In the past decade, funding for Canadian security or intelligence
agencies fell 28 percent, dropping from $464 million in fiscal year
1989-'90 to $333 million in 1997-'98. At the same time, many of the
intelligence services' "best and brightest" seniorpersonnel have
departed, the report states.
Can't keep up with technology
The cuts leave Canadian intelligence poorly equipped to keep pace with
technology used by organized crime and terrorists, including
encryption, computer networks, economic espionage, satellite imagery
and communications, and electronic funds transfers, according to the
Report of the Special Senate Committee on Security and Intelligence.
The Canadian report notes that last year's $2 billion increase in
United States' security and intelligence spending "is more than four
times the total current budget for Canada's security intelligence
community."
"We're managing with the current resources that we have, but with the
rapid changes and technological advances, our resources will become
increasingly stretched," said Marcia Wetherup, a CSIS spokeswoman.
"It's much more costly to continue to do the activities we've done in
the past," Wetherup said. "It's going to be more costly to fulfill
our mandate."
Help from allies
With less funding, CSIS relies on closer contacts with foreign
counterparts and Canadian law enforcement agencies such as the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) -- which also suffered budget cuts,
Wetherup said.
"Canada gets a lot more out of arrangements with foreign security
agencies than we put in," said Don Gracey, counsel to the Senate
Committee on Security and Intelligence. "If we continue to cut back,
our allies are going to say, 'We're going to cut backon what we give
you.'"
While Gracey said Canada is "master of its own house" on
counter-terrorism within its own borders, the nation relies almost
completely on foreign intelligence to screen potential immigrants.
"We do not have an offensive foreign intelligence capacity," he said.
Amid the cuts, however, the RCMP actually saw the security and
intelligence portion of its budget increase slightly last year, said
Superintendent Tom Burns, who heads the RCMP's Criminal Intelligence
Directorate.
The RCMP hired 50 new officers to enhance security at Canada's major
international airports, Burns said.
A rogues' gallery
The roster of quasi-military groups lodged in Canada reads like a
who's who in world conflagrations. The list includes Islamic groups
Hezbollah and Hamas, the Provisional IrishRepublican Army, the rebel
Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, the Kurdistan Worker's Party and all of the
world's major Sikh terrorist groups, said CSIS Director Ward Elcock.
Elcock's revelations became public in a June 1998 speech before the
Canadian Senate Committee on Security and Intelligence. In April, the
CSIS released its annual report, which contained similar blunt
revelations.
"Most of the world's terrorist groups have established themselves in
Canada, seeking safe haven, setting up operational bases, and
attempting to gain access to the USA," states the CSIS report, titled
simply 1997 Public Report.
The report suggests Canada's permissive immigration laws and generous
refugee resettlement policies have inadvertently given safe haven to
terrorists. Elcock estimated one million immigrants will enter Canada
legally in the next five years.
A 'venue of opportunity'
For the terrorist, Canada is a "venue of opportunity," where
paramilitaries raise funds, purchase arms, and conduct other
activities to support their organizations and their terrorist
activities elsewhere -- mainly in the United States, the Senate report
states.
But the presence of terror-based organizations on Canadian soil may
endanger Canadians more than they realize. "Considerable complacency
("it can't happen here") persists among the public-at-large," the
report alleges.
"Deportation of known or suspected terrorists, Canada's role in
peacekeeping and peacemaking missions, ... the presence in Canada of a
large number of foreign diplomatic and other facilities, the fact that
we are largely a nation of immigrants ... mean Canada cannot presume
to be immune from terrorism," the report states.
While officials in Washington declined to discuss the Canadian
counter-terrorism budget or its ramifications toward U.S. security, it
is well-known that the two countries commonly share information.
Mayhem in the 1980s
Canada suffered its last major terrorist attack in 1986 with the
bombing of an Air India jetliner that killed 380 people, many of them
Canadian. But in the late 1980s, Gracey said, a series of
foreign-authored attacks occurred inside Canada, including the
assassination of an Armenian diplomat, an armed attack on the Turkish
embassy in Ottawa in which the ambassador was injured leaping from a
window, an assault at a Bahamian installation in Ottawa and the
attempted assassination of an Indian minister in Vancouver.
"It's settled down substantially in the last 10 years," he said.
Beefing up the border
In Washington, Canada's long, mostly unguarded border with the United
States is being eyed as a weak link, authorities say. For the past
four years, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has
steadily upgraded its detection technology and equipment along the
northern border, said INS spokeswoman Eileen Schmidt.
The new equipment, put to use by the U.S. Border Patrol, includes
seismic ground sensors, night vision scopes, light aircraft, patrol
boats, helicopters, snowmobiles and other vehicles -- mainly the
Border Patrol's ubiquitous light-green Ford sport-utility trucks.
Investigations under way
In Canada, Elcock said the CSIS counter-terrorism branch is
investigating the presence of more than 50 terrorist organizations and
some 350 individuals believed to be members of terror groups. He said
terrorists already in Canada have had direct or indirect association
with the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, suicide
bombings in Israel, assassinations in India, the murder of tourists in
Egypt and the bombing campaigns of the IRA.
