CIA operations: Eyes wide shut?

Manohar Malgonkar, The Statesman, Asia News Network, Calcutta

The United States of America spends US$30 billion a year on its secret services. The superstar of these services is the Central Intelligence Agency, which, over the years has built for itself a formidable reputation; of organizing revolts, promoting proxy wars, propping up obedient regimes even of tyrant dictators and even organizing raids to "take out" world leaders categorized as "rogues". Its public image: All-knowing, muscular, quick to act.

Not any more, though. The events of Sept. 11 have shown that the CIA was caught napping. There were a few signals that should not have escaped the notice of an alert intelligence.

In fact the terrorists had carried out a "pilot" project to bring down the towers as early as 1993. A bomb exploded in the WTC building, killing six and wounding, "more than a thousand". That stung the Federal Bureau of Intelligence into a flurry of action. All evidence pointed to a man called Ramzi Yousef, a Pakistani citizen. He was nabbed in a hotel room in Pakistan two years later, and his case officer from the FBI, Lewis Schiliro, went to Pakistan to escort Yousef to the U.S. to stand trial.

On a cold February night in 1995, he was flown to New York city in a helicopter, blindfolded, as seems to be the U.S. practice with dangerous captives. Yousef was unrepentant, even boastful. He told Schiliro: "My original plan was to plant enough explosives in one of the 110-story twin buildings to topple it, killing 250,000 people in the tower and on the ground". But that it was only because he didn't have enough money to buy the explosives, he had "settled for a much smaller blast".

The FBI men who formed Yousef's escort obviously could not resist the impulse to bring home to their prisoner the futility of such mad schemes. As their chopper flew over the Hudson river and Manhattan, they had his blindfold removed and taunted him: "See? It's still standing."

Yousef, it is reported, squinted in silence at the twin towers and then told them: "Next time. If I have more money, I'll knock it down".

Of course, for Yousef himself, there was no possibility of a "next time". But, as we now know, there were other Ramzi Yousefs waiting in line to take his place.

What they had done, was truly beyond belief -- to the extent that, paradoxically, the flawless manner in which the terrorists had carried out their plans, itself was sought to be made an excuse by America's intelligence services to explain away their own inadequacies and failures. Seymour Hersh, the investigative journalist has described the mood of the American intelligence- gathering organizations as being one of frustration and confusion. Some of the insiders he talked to just could not get over their feeling of disbelief. "Just taking out one jet and getting it into the ground, could have been a success", one of them told Hersh. These men had taken out four.

That things had gone wrong was only too clear. But whose fault was it? The terrorists -- as many as 19 of them -- all of foreign descent, some traveling on forged passports, one or two of them with earlier records of wrong doings, and virtually all of them fitting neatly into the computer-generated profile of a likely terrorist, had entered the country and had gone on living month after month in small-town America in neighborhoods of tightly- knit citizens allergic to outsiders!

How had these men managed to remain undetected in spite of their markedly unusual, almost eccentric preferences for food and music and, even more, their ability to spend money freely even though they had no sources of income? They were far from normal in their religious zeal too, to the extent that they were all martyrdom freaks: Men who knew to within minutes the moment when they were going to die.

"Spying is waiting", wrote John Le Carre, the creator of George Smiley, the "Master Spy". The 19 men who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks had had to wait for years for the right opportunity. And the longer an agent had to wait to finish his job the more difficult it became for him to lead his double life without betraying himself in some manner. Smiley who had made spying his life's work had a way of latching on to clues that no one else seemed to notice. He, surely would have found a clue to what these 19 men were up to by the peculiarities in their behavior as D-day and zero-hour approached. On their last flight, at least one group bought first class air tickets but traveled coach anyhow! The ticket-checkers at the airport did not so much as point out to these men that they were in the wrong class. Oh, just some Arab playboys with oil-money!

Now, in hindsight, the answer seems clear. First class tickets were there for the asking; in coach, there was a faint chance of overbooking. So why take the risk? -- when all that mattered to them was that they must not miss that flight. If they had been subjected to even the most cursory of body-searches, they would have found the knives which the team-members carried. That might have saved at least one of the targets.

All what would have happened if the FBI had only treated an even more timely warning with proper seriousness?

The owner of a Minnesota flying school had reported to their local branch that one of his students had made a bizarre request. He only wanted to be taught how to steer a jetliner, and did not want to learn how to take off or land it. And when the owner had reminded the student that he would nevertheless have to pay for the full course, $8,000, the student had not only agreed, but paid the money in cash.

Even that request now seems logical, if a little careless. Why should the man want to learn how to land a plane when this particular plane was not going to land anywhere at all but was to be rammed into its target? George Smiley, might just have been able to reason it out. But both at the CIA and the FBI, what is called "closework" meaning the deciphering of clues, is entrusted to electronic machines. The latest news on the subject is that the secret services have withstood the storm. George Tenet is still CIA's chief. The budgetary allotments for both services are to go up. Thirty billion is just not enough.