Intelligence_ From Secrets to Policy - Mark M. Lowenthal [190]
This does not mean that human penetrations of terrorist cells are impossible. As with the Soviet Union, a walk-in may occur. This apparently was the case with Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, a Venezuelan-born terrorist better known as Carlos the Jackal. He apparently was betrayed either by someone in his organization or by his Sudanese hosts. Walk-ins remain fortuitous, although, as discussed later, they can come as a result of ongoing successes against terrorists.
Beyond HUMINT, the terrorist target puts a premium on several types of intelligence:• Signals intelligence (SIGINT): Very broadly defined, to include a wide variety of communications, including a presumed extensive presence on the Worldwide Web
• Open-source intelligence (OSINT): To collect and dissect the many public statements made by terrorist leaders and factions
• Measurement and signatures intelligence (MASINT): To collect against acquisition of various types of WMD
Finally, terrorism is an intelligence issue in which foreign liaison is very important, as is true for all transnational issues.
STATE SPONSORSHIP OF TERRORISM. State sponsorship of, or at least acquiescence to, terrorists makes the intelligence issue more complicated. The intelligence community must collect not only against the terrorists but also against other governments and their intelligence services. At one level this is easier than is the terrorist collection itself, as it falls within more common intelligence practice. However, it also puts an additional strain on intelligence resources. Liaison relationships may be questionable in such cases. For example, the government of Pakistan has been supportive of U.S. operations in Afghanistan up to a point, but the Pakistani intelligence service had been a longtime sponsor of the Taliban. State sponsorship also raises the issue of the failed states. Here it is useful to know if the terrorists are actually being hosted by the government, as was the case in Sudan and Afghanistan for bin Ladin, or whether the lack of internal order simply provides an atmosphere where terrorists can work relatively freely, perhaps without official sanction.
Closely related to state sponsorship is the even murkier question of relations between and among terrorist groups. For example, Libya had contact with factions of the Irish Republican Army. The Japanese Red Army worked with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Members of an Irish Republican Army faction were arrested after spending time with the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia, FARC). Such ties are both important and difficult to track or disrupt. The issue of ties among terrorist groups is important in the current campaign against terrorists both as a means of assessing threat and of assessing success. For example, most of the al Qaeda members who planned the September 11 attack are either captured or dead; al Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan has been overrun. One of the concerns raised by these successes has been the effect on al Qaeda’s command and control. Is it still a unitary group, planning and ordering attacks from wherever its leaders are, or has it, in effect, become a franchised activity, with like-minded cells inspiring one another and occasionally working together but not necessarily in direct command and control? Similarly, once an attack has occurred it is important to know if it has been planned or ordered by an external group or has been carried out by indigenous individuals. The September 11 attack clearly was carried out by terrorists who entered the United States. However, the attacks in Madrid (2004) appear to have been directed from terrorists in Morocco, for whom a direct connection to al Qaeda has not been proven. The 2005 attack in London also appears not to be connected directly to al Qaeda, although some of the bombers had been in Madrassas in Pakistan. A conclusion of this sort may be more troubling because it indicates an indigenous