Officials here and overseas say U.S. alerts and release of
information could hinder broader investigations.
By Jeffrey Fleishman
Times Staff Writer
August 11, 2004
BERLIN — Heightened terror alerts and high-profile arrests of suspected
Islamic extremists have international security experts and officials
concerned that the Bush administration's actions could jeopardize
investigations into the Al Qaeda network.
European terrorism analysts acknowledge that the U.S. and its allies
are under threat by Al Qaeda, but some suggest that the White House is
unnecessarily adding to public anxiety with vague and dated
intelligence about possible attacks. Some in Western Europe suspect the
administration is using fear to improve its chances in the November
election.
Terrorism experts say too much publicity about
possible plots and raids of Islamic extremist networks, including the
arrest of 13 suspects in Britain last week, could hurt wider
investigations. American politicians have called for an examination of
that contention. Officials in Pakistan reportedly said Tuesday that
Washington's recent disclosure of the arrest of a suspected Al Qaeda
operative, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, allowed other extremists under
surveillance to disappear.
"It causes a problem. There's no
doubt about that," said Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies.
"The moment you make any announcement, you tell the other side what you
know. As a rule of thumb, you should keep quiet about what you know."
British security officials are angry over recent U.S. revelations of
terrorist threats and arrests, said Paul Beaver, an international
defense analyst based in London. He said the attitude among some
British intelligence officials was that the "Americans have a very
strange way of thanking their friends, by revealing names of agents,
details of plots and operations."
Along with such criticism,
the administration faces questions at home about how it handles
terrorism investigations and alerts. It insists it hasn't used the
alerts to further Bush's political campaign, but some Democrats
disagree.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked the White
House, in a letter to national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, to
explain how Khan's name was made public and whether the disclosure had
jeopardized any investigations.
Rice said over the weekend
that she did not know whether Khan was cooperating with Pakistani
authorities, and she said his name had not been disclosed publicly by
the administration. The administration has tried to find a middle
ground between informing the public and keeping investigations secret,
she said.
"We've tried to strike a balance," Rice said. "We
think for the most part we've struck a balance, but it's indeed a very
difficult balance to strike."
Several senior U.S.
counterterrorism officials have expressed concern in the last week
about the amount of information leaking out, saying it has begun to
have a direct and negative effect on efforts to round up suspects and
gain insight into any conspirators.
"It is really hurting our efforts in a very demonstrable way," said one
official, who declined to elaborate.
Larry Johnson, a former senior counterterrorism official at the State
Department and CIA, said Tuesday that the leaks were part of a pattern
in which the administration had undercut its own efforts to fight
terrorism by divulging details when doing so was deemed politically
advantageous.
The administration "has a dismal track record in
protecting these secrets," said Johnson, deputy director of the State
Department's Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993.
"We
have now learned, thanks to White House leaks, that the Al Qaeda
operative was being used to help authorities around the world locate
and apprehend other Al Qaeda terrorists," Johnson said, citing reports
that the disclosures "enabled other Al Qaeda operatives to escape."
"Protecting secrets and sources is serious business," he added.
"Regrettably, the Bush administration appears to be putting more
emphasis on politicizing intelligence and the war on terror. That
approach threatens our national security, in my judgment."
Officials in Western Europe are reluctant to speak even off the record
on intelligence matters. Most governments here are more circumspect in
announcing possible terrorist threats and are concerned that Washington
is acting too quickly on intelligence that has not been thoroughly
analyzed. Germany, France and Britain have not raised their terror
alerts during the August vacation season.
"The Code Orange
disaster in the U.S. last week was quickly followed by raids in
Pakistan and arrests in Britain, which all help the Bush administration
show there is a global terrorist network," said Kai Hirschmann, deputy
director of the Institute for Terrorism Research in Essen, Germany.
"But I think there's a bit of politics behind it.
"What makes
it complex is that we know there are dangers out there, and that makes
it difficult to tell fact from fiction," he said. "With all this media
attention, one has to wonder what else is at work."
But other
countries, such as Italy, one of the closest U.S. allies on Iraq, have
followed Washington's lead. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's
government has issued numerous terrorist warnings. Thousands of extra
Italian police have been deployed after threats on an Islamic website
said terrorists would strike if Rome did not withdraw its troops from
Iraq by Aug. 15.
Europeans discovered in March that terrorists
like to attack at symbolic times: The Madrid train bombings that killed
191 people sent a shudder through the continent just days before
Spanish elections. But skepticism toward Washington means many in
Europe are wondering if the threats recently reported in the U.S. are
genuine or political spin.
In Britain, the recent raids
followed last month's seizure in Pakistan of computer files belonging
to Khan. The disclosure of his arrest and identity allowed some Al
Qaeda suspects under Pakistani surveillance to slip away, officials
told Associated Press in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
The
files also led to Britain's arrest of Abu Eisa al Hindi, who U.S.
authorities allege was enlisted by Khan to spy on financial
institutions in New York and Washington. Hindi had been under
observation by British security officials for months. There were
indications that the British government, forced to act after
Washington's disclosures about Khan's files, felt stung by the exposure
of his sudden arrest.
"It looks as though there has been some
irritation at fairly high levels in both Pakistan and Britain" over
U.S. revelations, said Timothy Garden, a security analyst at the Royal
Institute of International Affairs.
British Home Secretary
David Blunkett, echoing concerns raised by U.S. lawmakers about
identifying suspects, said he would not divulge intelligence to "feed
the news frenzy." The British government, he added, does not want to
"undermine in any way our sources of information or share information
which could place investigations in jeopardy…. We don't want to do or
say anything that would prejudice any trial."
The U.S. has
been less forthcoming with intelligence when it comes to Germany's
attempts to prosecute suspected terrorists. It is refusing to allow
alleged Al Qaeda operatives in its custody to testify at a retrial of a
suspected extremist that began Tuesday in Hamburg. Saying it would harm
ongoing intelligence gathering, the U.S. is denying the court access to
Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
In a letter this
week to German authorities, the State Department said it would provide
only unclassified summaries of interrogations with certain suspects.
The decision, German prosecutors say, jeopardizes the case against
Mounir Motassadeq, a Moroccan accused of having links to the Sept. 11
hijackers. A second Moroccan in Germany was acquitted this year on
similar charges after a judge found he could not get a fair trial
without access to Binalshibh or his interrogation transcripts.
The Bush administration is "creating an overall tension that has both
tactics and politics around it," Hirschmann said. "When I hear things
about concrete targets such as airports and stock exchanges, I am less
worried something will happen there. You don't publicize things. You
don't communicate what you know through the media."
In Italy,
terrorist alerts have created an atmosphere similar to that in the U.S.
The Berlusconi government and the Italian media have heavily reported
threats made by militant groups to attack the country unless Rome
withdraws from Iraq.
In a front-page editorial last week, La
Repubblica said Italy was in a "poisoned climate." It said the threats
had "to be weighed carefully. It would be irresponsible to ignore them,
but it would also [be wrong] to exaggerate them to create panic and … a
psychological war."
