The Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism

McConnell's recent testimony both expanded on and amplified the NIE's basic conclusion that al Qaeda is alive and well and plotting high-profile terrorist attacks much as it did before 9/11. "Al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates continue to pose significant threats to the United States at home and abroad, and al Qaeda's central leadership based in the border area of Pakistan is its most dangerous component," McConnell warned. He went on to explain how al Qaeda continues to exercise top-down direction and guidance even though it "has lost many of its senior operational planners over the years. . . . The group's adaptable decisionmaking process and bench of skilled operatives have enabled it to identify effective replacements." Finally, McConnell's observation that members of al Qaeda in Iraq have been dispatched "to establish cells in other countries" casts further doubt on Sageman's claims regarding al Qaeda's bottom-up organizational structure.

These "alarmist" assessments are not confined to the U.S. intelligence community. In a landmark public speech in November 2006, Eliza Manningham-Buller, then the director general of the British Security Service, or MI5, was unequivocal in her evaluation of the threat posed by a resurgent al Qaeda with still functioning command-and-control capabilities. "We are aware of numerous plots to kill people and to damage our economy," Manningham-Buller stated. "What do I mean by numerous? Five? Ten? No, nearer 30 that we currently know of," she continued. "These plots often have links back to al Qaeda in Pakistan, and through those links al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale."

Sageman also employs historically groundless parallels in order to bolster his case that today's terrorist threat is an exclusively bottom-up phenomenon. The Irish Republican Army did not, as Leaderless Jihad maintains, begin "in a pub in Boston" and cross "the ocean to Ireland during World War I." The IRA was the product of a series of underground associations that were formed in Ireland in the eighteenth century, migrated to the United States in the middle of the following century, and then gave rise to the terrorist campaigns of various successive organizations, such as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Fenian Brotherhood, and Clan na Gael. Even more egregiously inaccurate is Sageman's claim that the anarchist movement was responsible for starting World War I. While Sageman is correct that "the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand triggered World War I," his assertion that the "anarchists carried out these killings even though there was no central organization to coordinate their actions" is ludicrous. Those more familiar with either the history of terrorism or the origins of World War I will know that the assassin, Gavrilo Princip, was neither an anarchist nor one of a "bunch of guys" who had serendipitously gravitated toward one another and decided to commit a terrorist act. Rather, he was a dedicated member of the militantly anti-Hapsburg organization Young Bosnia, which was in turn connected to the infamous clandestine Serbian organization the Black Hand, which itself received aid and training from the intelligence department of the Serbian army's general staff.

MADNESS TO THE METHOD

Sageman's historical ignorance is surpassed only by his cursory treatment of social networking theory, which forms the foundation of the scientific methodology he claims to employ. Leaderless Jihad's first chapter, titled "How to Study Terrorism in the Twenty-first Century," takes exception to much of the literature on terrorism, which, in Sageman's opinion, is unscientific, relies too much on narrowly explanatory case studies and profiles of leading terrorist figures, is too heavily dependent on information gleaned from government sources, and amounts to "nothing more than arguments made for the sake of scoring political points."

Such criticism of the field is neither new nor unjustified. Thirty years ago, the world's preeminent authority on military strategy, Michael Howard, complained that the field of terrorism studies had "been responsible for more incompetent and unnecessary books than any other outside . . . of sociology. It attracts phoneys and amateurs as a candle attracts moths." But Sageman's own critique of the contemporary literature appears sniping and petulant. It would seem less so if Sageman had provided specific examples and citations of the studies that he believes have contributed so little to the understanding of terrorism, explained exactly why they are so wanting, and demonstrated how his approach is superior.

Indeed, Sageman's analysis would have been clearer and more scientifically rigorous had he employed essential and basic tools of social science research and built on the core theories of social and terrorist networks, including the pathbreaking work of Stephen Borgatti, Kathleen Carley, David Krackhardt, and Jeffrey Reminga on covert social networks; Aparna Basu, Valdis Krebs, Ami Pedahzur, and Arie Perliger on the structural and sociological characteristics of terrorist social networks; and David Jones, Shaul Mishal, and Michael Smith on how terrorist networks operate. No references to any of these authors of standard studies are found in Leaderless Jihad's citations.