Counterterrorism in Retrospect

Small wonder, then, that for a long time other challenges seemed more pressing. Sometimes the competing issues were domestic. In the foreign policy arena, they invariably concerned traditional interstate relations and conventional military threats. In that environment, only two features could bump terrorism up to first-order status: state sponsorship, which turned terrorism into a tactic of traditional and recognizable warfare, or the possible use of WMD, which made the threat far too frightening to ignore. (A hybrid concern -- the prospect that a state might provide WMD to terrorists -- would also set off alarms in Washington.) But otherwise terrorism was often viewed as a nuisance that complicated the management of more important issues, particularly the Arab-Israeli conflict. Even today, some are concerned that terrorism may be taking a back seat to the war in Iraq.

A general aversion to risk taking also informed the decision-making of past administrations. Its causes were multiple. One lesson some observers undoubtedly drew from the Carter and Reagan administrations was that presidents who handled terrorism themselves risked serious embarrassment, if not political disaster. White House staffs preferred not to elevate the issue for fear of creating public expectations they could not meet. Avoiding blame became all-important.

Before 2001, even the military establishment was reluctant to use force in response to terrorism. After 1998, even when the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, the Pentagon resisted using Delta Force to capture him. As Naftali notes, memories of the failed rescue operation in Iran in 1980 discouraged other such interventions. Even under Reagan, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had put a brake on the ambitions of Secretary of State George Shultz. The fear of public disapproval made presidents gun-shy. The Reagan administration, for example, did not repeat the 1986 bombing raids against Libya partly because it did not think the public would tolerate it. Likewise for Clinton after the United States attacked suspected terrorist bases in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998.

A slew of public scandals, some linked to terrorism, others not, also inhibited the government. Various efforts to check abuses of power by the government reduced its leeway to fight terrorism. The 1975-76 Church Committee investigations reined in the intelligence agencies and made them wary of covert operations. In the aftermath of the Iran-contra affair, the role of the National Security Council (NSC) staff was diminished, and the implementation of the counterterrorism recommendations put forward by the vice president's task force was complicated. The controversy surrounding the FBI's 1988 investigation of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador restricted domestic intelligence gathering. Even the Monica Lewinsky scandal had an adverse effect on Clinton's antiterrorism policies. There is no evidence that the retaliatory strikes in Sudan in 1998 were meant to divert public attention from the president's domestic problems. But Clinton and his advisers became particularly sensitive to the charge and to media criticism. The result of the scandal was to reinforce a preexisting tendency to avoid risk. Since September 11, the opposite has become true: the Bush administration is now perhaps too willing to break the rules and use force preemptively and unilaterally.

TURF WARS

Institutional wrangling, Naftali aptly shows, came to shape counterterrorism strategy more than it should have, to the detriment of efficiency and long-term planning. As the White House tried to maintain control of terrorism policy, it would bypass routine channels, sometimes with poor results. During quiet periods, principals would downplay the warnings of midlevel officials with valuable experience and information; during crises, they would continue to ignore the specialists and handle matters themselves. (When U.S. hostages were seized in Iran in 1979, for example, the State Department's counterterrorism office was brushed aside.) People with less expertise and greater political inhibitions thus often became responsible for formulating the response, and terrorism was once again relegated to the back burner when the crisis ended. It did not help that the State Department and the CIA preferred to treat terrorism as an offshoot of regional politics to be handled by area experts; back then, specializing in counterterrorism would not have boosted anyone's career.

Tensions between the CIA and the FBI, the NSC and the State Department, and the State Department and the Federal Aviation Administration hampered the progress of the interagency working groups charged with formulating counterterrorism policy. The communication failures reported by the 9/11 Commission predated the Clinton and Bush administrations; Naftali's account makes clear from the outset that they were often the unfortunate side effects of petty turf wars. The history of U.S. counterterrorism efforts is replete with the creation of new bodies and institutional overhauls. But as the number of relevant players grew, so did overregulation, friction, and poor coordination. Extensive reorganizations now under way are designed to correct these deficiencies, but they could add an unwelcome layer of bureaucracy.