That's because Hamas, as an example, in 1997, was responsible for less than 1%of the terrorist attacks, but accounted for about 52% of the casualties thatyear. And because casualties play well on television, television leaves theimpression that these groups are more active and more powerful than they reallyare. And so, when you see body counts being generated by radical Islamicgroups, that ends up fueling this perception that radical Islamic groups arereally behind most terrorism. That's not the case. ...
[When did Osama bin Laden emerge to the intelligence community as a majorthreat?]
... When Ramzi Yousef was captured [as a suspect in the World Trade Centerbombing] in Pakistan in 1995, end of January, first of February, the moreinformation started to come out about Osama bin Laden ... . There were lots oftheories, not very good intelligence, and so the intelligence communityactually started generating a picture that Osama bin Laden was this, if youwill, sort of the Carlos the Jackal of the '90s. He was the new face ofterrorism. But the complete picture of what he was up to didn't start comingout until really the last couple of years. Now, when the bombings happened inAugust, CNN called me, I went on camera and I said that morning the mostlikely suspect was Osama bin Laden. I wasn't engaging in Arab or Muslimbashing, I was more going from the approach that if someone goes out andthreatens to kill another person and makes those threats twice in a six monthperiod, you would naturally go talk to that person if the fellow threatenedturns up dead. In this case, Osama bin Laden had issued two very public ...fatwahs against American citizens and against American installations. You haveto take the man at his word. He's not just doing that to generate publicity.In the course of that, there was also [an] intelligence operation behind thescenes, where key personnel in his organization either turned themselves in orwere captured, and in the course of that debriefing, a picture starts comingtogether and there's that "aha" moment that, "Oh, we do have a problem. We'veactually got someone who doesn't like us and is wanting to kill us."
The danger I think that has happened is we've tended to make Osama bin Ladensort of a superman in Muslim garb. I mean, he's 10 feet tall, he iseverywhere, he knows everything, he's got lots of money and he can't bechallenged. Actually, Osama bin Laden, in my view, represents more of asymptom of a problem, and the problem is this: the Saudi Arabian government,not just Osama bin Laden but many people in Saudi Arabia, have been sendingmoney to radical Islamic groups for years. ...
Isn't it a tradition in Saudi Arabia to pay off potential dangers to yourown regime?
Oh, absolutely. They've made it into an art form and that's exactly whatthey've done. So, in this case, Osama bin Laden is not unusual in that regard.I think what's made him unusual is he's gotten fed up with the US presence inSaudi Arabia and I attribute it to the passion of an idealist and someone who'srelatively young and when you're young and full of passion and you reallybelieve what you say you believe, you're going to do some things which, to therest of the world, may not appear terribly rational.
But back up for a second. He's fed up with US presence in Saudi Arabia. Tomost of us, we're in Saudi Arabia to defend them.
... Although the core of Islam is one of courtesy and politeness to others, thefact of the matter is that the United States culture and US society is viewedas the ... exact opposite of everything that Islam stands for, [particularlyin] the version [of Islam] practiced by Osama bin Laden. And so, as a result,he wants to purge his society, to cleanse [it] of this influence of theinfidels, and he sees the existing Saudi ruling family as allowing what wouldbe considered the most sacred shrines of the Islamic world to basically becontaminated because the US is there with its western ways, with its use ofalcohol, with its women who are running around not properly dressed and hiddenand so, it ends up being a real culture clash and he's appealing to afundamentalist view of taking society back to what it was.
But is he, from your estimation ... the guy we should really be after? Atleast that we should be publicizing in the way that we're publicizing?
When you look at who's killed Americans in the last 10 years, the individualshe's supported and backed--I'm basing that upon the initial information that'sbeen released in the indictments and conversations with others in theintelligence communities--Osama bin Laden has been the one killing Americans.No other terrorist group in the world has been out killing Americans except forOsama bin Laden. Where Americans have been killed, they've been collateraldamage. They haven't been the target, they've been in the wrong place at thewrong time. It's not like in the mid-80s when you had a variety of groupstargeting Americans, attacking Americans at the Rome and Vienna airports and ata cafe outside the Italian embassy and blowing up Pan Am 103 and putting a bombon a TWA--it was incident after incident after incident where Americans wereclearly in the cross hairs of several different terrorist groups. Fortunately,we're in a situation now where those groups are largely inactive, they'vestopped targeting Americans, and Osama bin Laden remains out there as the onereally targeting us.
So, we recognize that he's the threat. He's serious about wanting to killAmericans, but as long as he's in Afghanistan, as long as he doesn't haveaccess to a cell phone, as long as he can't just hop on a plane and travelwherever he wants without fear of being arrested, his ability to plan andconduct terrorist operations is extremely limited. We have to recognize [that]he would like to do a lot of damage. He would like to kill Americans, butwanting to is different from being able to, having the full capabilities inplace.
But did he have more of a capability when he was in the Sudan?
To an extent. ... It was about '94-'95 period that the United States reallystarted putting pressure on Sudan to get him out of there because he was thenseen [as] a factor in things such as the World Trade Center bombing. Even then,with all of his hatred and the amount of money he has--I've heard everythingfrom $30 million to $800 million, so pick your number--but even with all ofthat money, we do have clear evidence right now from two different cases, fromthe case of Ramzi Yousef and from the case of the individuals who blew up theembassies in Tanzania and Kenya [that his operatives did not have unlimitedresources.] In both cases, those operatives, if you will, for Osama bin Laden,they were not lighting cigars with $100 bills. They weren't staying at thebest hotels. They weren't eating at the best restaurants, they weren't drivingaround in Mercedes and they weren't passing out dollars like packets of candyto cops and buying their influence. They had limited resources. So, limitedresources limits your ability to conduct operations. ...
... I find it very interesting that even though Osama bin Laden, who representsa very narrow majority of the Islamic world--I mean, his views are at theradical fringe--he's ... issued this fatwah, "kill Americans." He's sort oflike almost a 21st century version of Lenin. Instead of calling for, "Workers ofthe world unite," it's "Muslims of the world unite." And they're not uniting.They're ignoring him. I would have more confidence in his ability to reallyrepresent the vision of Islam if in the aftermath of his public calls and hisattack on US targets, you saw Muslim groups moving out and attacking UScitizens ... attacking US targets ... American bodies piling up. That's nothappening. You're not even having a good protest at a US embassy anywhereexcept maybe in Syria after we bomb Iraq. ...
So ... we need to put it back in perspective. Yes, he does not like Americans,he does not like the United States. If he had the wherewithal to killAmericans and attack US targets, he would do so, but he doesn't. He is not inthe position, he's not an army. He doesn't have an arsenal of nuclear weapons,he doesn't have an arsenal of chemical/biological weapons. He doesn't havemilitary forces in place ready to launch, because then he'd also needtransportation to move them from point A to point B and once they get to pointB, then he's gotta figure out how to get them back to point A. He doesn't likeus. He would like to conduct operations. He'd like to make our lifemiserable, but thank God, he's been limited by his ability to do that, in partbecause his people are in jail, in part because he's holed up in Afghanistanand no other country out there is willing to open its arms to him and say,"Come sit down and work with us." ...
[Is it] ... fair to say what you're saying is that the president of theUnited States, his national security advisor, his deputy national securityadvisor for counter-terrorism, are basically blowing smoke [about the dangerposed by bin Laden] and his followers]?
They're grossly exaggerating the problem. They are hyping it. They shouldn'tbe talking about rising terrorism. Instead of saying "terrorism's rising,"it's not. "Terrorism is spreading," it's not. "More people are dying fromterrorism," not the case. But what they should be saying is, "There's oneindividual out there that really doesn't like us, and he's made it his missionin life to kill Americans, and we've gotta deal with him." But we need to havea voice of reason in that process instead of putting ourselves out crying wolf,because this is essentially what's taking place right now. They call it theadministration that cries wolf.
On the streets in Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, in Khartoum, it seems to usthat all this publicity is making [bin Laden] into a folk hero.
I'm sure he's sort of becoming the Che Guevara of the Muslim world, an icon, asymbol of where you get to rebel against your parents and make a statement, butit hasn't translated yet into people actually being willing to take up arms andput their lives at risk to go out and kill others and incur the possible threatof retaliation. ... We like to portray the radical Muslims as suicide bombers.Well, Hamas has not been out there doing suicide bombings every day, everyweek. And it's not just a matter of not being able to find recruits. That'sone of the problems that you face with suicide bombers. You only get to usethem once. But once you use them, they sit back and look and [ask], "Is thisan effective approach? Are we accomplishing what we want to accomplish?"
If all you're interested in doing is killing people without regards for theconsequence, then that, in my view, would be the ultimate dangerous terrorist.We see even with Osama bin Laden, that's not how he's operating. He's not justwanting to kill for killing's sake. He wants to put pressure on the UnitedStates to get out of Saudi Arabia and to leave the Muslim world alone. And tothe extent that the United States takes policy actions that either increase theperception that we're tarnishing Islam or decrease the perception that we'retarnishing Islam, that will have a heavy influence, in my view, on whether wesee increased terrorist attacks or diminished terrorist attacks. ...
[One source we've spoken to] says that ... it [is] a mistake to identify binLaden as some all powerful figure, that's not the way it works. He says thateven if you get rid of him, you jail him and kill him and do what you're goingto do him, there will be another Ali, Mustafa, someone who will step in hisplace.
He sounds like he's very naïve and hasn't had a lot of experience ineither politics or in organization. The fact of the matter is leadership makesa difference. That's one of the reasons that when you look at the lack ofdomestic terrorism in the United States from skinheads and neo-Nazis, theyhaven't had an effective leader. You've got lots of knuckleheads out there whohate other people for racist reasons and they spew invective and they talktough and they want to do violence and if they get the chance they may dosomething but they've never really coalesced or brought together because theylack that kind of twisted visionary. That's fortunate. ...
There's not another Ali or Mustafa out there at this point and Osama bin Ladenin my view has not been a very effective organizer or leader. He talks a greatgame and puts out terrific threats as far as stirring the passions in theUnited States and maybe firing up the imaginations of some young Muslimsthroughout the world. But when push comes to shove, can he get a group ofpeople who are together who will say: we are going to plan an operation, we'regoing to put our lives on the line, we're going to go out and try and killpeople and we don't care what the consequence is? It hasn't happened. ...
Have we pinned too many incidents on Osama bin Laden? It seems that oncehis name become public, he was responsible for these bombings in Saudi Arabiaor somehow linked to those, to Ramzi Yousef, to this, to that. It's almostlike he was the convenient suspect.
I can understand how it certainly appeared that way because you hadn't heardanything about this guy before unless you were reading the New York Times andJeff Gerth's piece from a couple of years ago. But there was also an influx ofintelligence of some defectors and the arrests of key people came in, providedadditional intelligence, the picture started becoming clearer of what this guywas up to. When you look at all of the groups that conducted attacks in thelast ten years, Osama is the one far and away that is appearing to attackAmerican citizens and US targets. Most of the other things that could beclassified as attacks against the United States tend to be collateralattacks.
But is he attacking or is it just that he provides some money or someguidance?
I would say money and guidance. Osama himself is not out leading the charge.He's not building the devices. He's the leadership core. I come back to theissue of leadership. These groups can be dangerous if they have someone who isa bit of a visionary and a bit of a leader. Osama does fit that category. Inmy view he's not a very effective leader, he's not a very effective organizer.He certainly has the passion, but he hasn't had the ability to rally andmobilize and really create a political movement that becomes, if you will, atrans-Islamic political movement.
So when the president of the Sudan, for instance, tells us that the problemis that you - the United States - made us push him out of the Sudan and now heis dangerous. Now he wants to attack you. When he was here in Khartoum, wehad him under control...
I think he's probably a good politician in trying to find justification forwhat they did before and a way to shift the blame. The fact of the matter is,Sudan's got its own problem in harboring lots of bad groups that if they didn'tharbor those groups, their ability to conduct attacks - even though they'vebeen limited - would be even less. Sudan has to make a choice whether it wantsto be part of the civilized world or the part of the world supportingterrorism. I think in this case the United States made a real error in bombinga plant without the right evidence because that ends up figuratively blowing upin our face when we blew up the plant.
We shouldn't take as credible their claim that when they had Osama inKhartoum, he was basically building roads and--
No, absolutely not. I think that's ridiculous because the fact of the matteris that if he was absolutely up to charitable works and constructive publicprojects, he wouldn't have been an issue. ... If the Sudan was so convincedthat he was not engaging in anything harmful, I think he would have put up moreof a struggle. ...
In the Nairobi bombing, in terms of the issue of coordination anddissemination of information [among the US intelligence agencies], there seemedto be some prior warning about the bombing.
Well, see, the real flaw with what the US government has done goes back toAdmiral Inman. This was the negative side of the Inman report [released in]the aftermath of bombings of US embassies in Beirut [which] recommended asubstantial upgrading of the physical plans to make them hardened targets soterrorists couldn't attack it. That was a great suggestion. It needed to bedone; wasn't done completely. ...
The problem is we don't have Kreskin the Mind Reader in the US government topredict what terrorists are going to do. In my experience you rarely hadadvance notification that some group of individuals are going to carry out anattack against some target. ... The threat warnings, when you get them, are sovague and difficult to act upon that it lulls people into complacency. ...
But what we do know is that if you will simply follow the recommendations thatAdmiral Inman made about hardening facilities, building walls up, set back fromthe street, that there's a physical limit to how many explosives someone canpack into a van or a truck. Laws of physics take over; unless they've got anuclear weapon in there, set-back is going to increase your chance ofsurviving, decrease their chance of dying. The US government--particularlyState Department--from 1988 on did not make embassy security a priority. Infact, when I was there in 1992, the State Department started on a major effortto get rid of diplomatic security officers and to downgrade embassy securityoverseas. ...
Counter-measures put in place end up being an effective deterrent because thethree things you need to do terrorism: You've got to have a motive, you've gotto have the capability -- the know-how how to build the bomb -- but you've gotto have the opportunity, the access to the target. We've seen in the world ofaviation when you put in measures that prevent people from getting onboardplanes with guns and knives, guess what? Hijackings go down. When you put inplace measures that make it more difficult to put bombs onboard planes, bombsdon't blow up on airplanes. When you put in place security measures which makeit more difficult for people to put a vehicle next to a building and leave itunattended, car bombs don't happen. ..
