National Security - Not Quite! By HJS

National Security – Not Quite!

National security is absolutely critical to us now, moreso than at any other time since the War of 1812. In that earlier era, unfortunately, too many people in the Northeast United States welcomed the British effort to take back the United States. However, once the meager American put-together defenders with almost no support from the Federal government came close to quickly annihilating the superior forces of the “Army that defeated Napoleon”, the entire nation ceased being former British colonists and for the first time actually became Americans.

If we Americans see and understand that national security is so critical, it is difficult to understand why Congress does not see it the same way—after all, they are supposed to represent us. They seem to pay only lip service to the concept of national security; indeed, many of one party continually interferes in and tries to eliminate almost any program we develop to enhance our security and rebuild our national intelligence structures. Case in point: even the Council of Foreign Relations recognizes the seriousness of not closing our borders and the unforgivable invitation we make to terrorists of all nations just to walk in and make themselves at home. Not only do officials who seem to care more for their petty politics than the security of their people not appear concerned about who saunters into our country, but they also seem to have no real concern about how to find terrorists or any other unwelcome visitors while they are here.

In my last article I talked about new challenges for even the best anti-terrorist intelligence analysts: independent teams of jihadists with no top-down supervision, selecting and attacking targets themselves. Their chief weapons are security, giving them independence of action and continuity—little or no training of replacements; and invisibility, operating below anyone’s radar. The internet provides some degree of general guidance, including how to make the explosives needed for each target. Even the best anti-terrorist organizations would have a tough time scanning endlessly for signs of this type of activity. Only with patience and luck can these invisible people be found out. But bringing them to justice and scooping up their comrades may turn out to be more challenging. To make matters worse, the Islamists do not preclude using other terrorists for linked and coordinated long-range strategic targets while the independent rogues are hitting minor targets piecemeal. So, one can not be certain of what comes out of the next suspect that seems to be engaged in suspicious activity or how long or how far the investigation may go.

Once a scan or tip produces something suspicious, another problem begins: what best results to produce from a new suspect and what options must be reviewed. The following scenario* might ensue:

Agent 1:
Chief, we have a person that looks good for a terrorist. We believe he has purchased everything needed for suicide belts. He does not have prior arrests. We want to sit on him for awhile to see what is going on.

Chief:
Do you have enough evidence to arrest him for dealing in explosives?

Agent 1:
Need just a little more; but shouldn’t we spend more time and develop something? There might be more people involved. It is obvious someone must be recruiting and motivating these people. Maybe we are looking at the tip of a big iceberg—a martyr brigade or something. Maybe they are working out of a local mosque. Two more agents could…

Chief:
No, it is simple, find out who the other people are and arrest them. If we can’t find others within a few days, we arrest who we have. Look we are in the arrest business and our numbers are down. We need to maintain numbers or our budget drops. If we can prove criminal intent, we arrest.

Agent 2:
We have already found four people in our sector and may have a local shop providing laundered funds. If you give us what you have on your suspect, we will put it together and see how deep this team goes. It would be great if we could find who is behind it and where they get training. We suspect a local bookshop, but don’t have anyone to look into it. But as Agent 1 says, we need to find out where they are being recruited. We know about prison recruitment; if there is another recruitment avenue, we need to know about it.

Chief:
We are not giving you any of our cases so you can take the credit for handling something from our sector and expand at our expense to get a bigger budget and more turf. You work your sector and we’ll work ours.

Agent 2:
But the team may be working in two or more sectors. If you just go for one or two arrests with all the publicity and other nonsense, these people will scatter, go deeper, and you may not find them again until they blow up something. Together we have a chance to develop a bigger case. With a little more effort, maybe we can save many lives and hurt the terrorists badly. We are desperately looking for their recruiting and financing sources.

Chief:
Forget it! You work your cases, we’ll work ours. I have a sector to run and I will do it the best way I can according to the book.

Agent 1:
But chief, What if it could turn out to be a region-wide or even a nation-wide team of terrorists planning to put dozens of suicide bombers in malls or subways or city halls across the country all at the same time? Wouldn’t it be a better idea to spring a trap and get them all?

Chief:
You do not seem to understand. You and the other agent may be thinking in terms of intelligence and long-term investigation and scooping everyone up before they send up their balloon. I cannot tie up people like that for one investigation that might take months or even years. That is intelligence, but that is not me, nor is it most of the people working here. If the wheels that turn wanted us in that business, then they would not give us budgets and staff based on our individual arrest statistics. My job depends on numbers; I do the job the way it is laid out and the way I was trained. I was always an arrest and evidence person. When I had enough evidence to convict for a crime, I turned everything over to a U.S. Attorney and that was it. And I am the person who they hired for this job. Besides, if we arrest one or two, the others may get the idea and give up their plan.

Agent 2:
So what you are saying is that one or two individual arrests are more important than developing the entire enterprise and stopping it?

Chief:
I am only saying that I am tasked with producing arrests with enough evidence to convict but not enough evidence to confuse the cases. The more such arrests I show, the longer I stay in the job and the more budget we are given to do the same job the same way.

* Note: Of course, such a scenario is purely fiction and over-simplified at that; however, the fiction is based on an analysis of one of the problems facing homeland security intelligence as identified in Uncertain Shield, (Chapter 4, The Crisis in Domestic Intelligence), by Richard A. Posner, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge and lecturer at University of Chicago Law School.

HJS