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September 27th, 2006 - Backing
Policy, President Issues Terror Estimate |
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Backing Policy, President
Issues Terror Estimate By Mark Mazzetti New York Times September 27, 2006 Washington, Sept. 26 - Portions
of a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism that the White House
released under pressure on Tuesday said that Muslim jihadists were
“increasing in both number and geographic dispersion” and that current trends
could lead to increasing attacks around the globe. The report, a comprehensive
assessment of terrorism produced in April by American intelligence agencies,
said the invasion and occupation of Iraq had become a “cause célèbre” for
jihadists. It identified the jihad in Iraq as one of four underlying factors
fueling the spread of the Islamic radicalism, along with entrenched
grievances, the slow pace of reform and pervasive anti-American sentiment. The intelligence estimate
said American-led counterterrorism efforts in the past five years had
“seriously damaged the leadership of Al Qaeda and disrupted its operations.”
But it said that Al Qaeda continued to pose the greatest threat to American
interests among terrorism organizations, and that the global jihadist
movement overall was “spreading and adapting to counterterrorism efforts.” The estimate predicted that
over the next five years the factors fueling the spread of global jihad were
likely to be more powerful than those that might slow it. The White House ordered
portions of the intelligence estimate declassified to counter what it
described as mischaracterizations about its findings in news reports. The Bush administration had
initially resisted releasing the document but changed course after being
pressured to declassify the report by Republicans, including Senator Pat
Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and by the
conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. At a news conference on
Tuesday where he announced the release of portions of the document, President
Bush suggested forcefully that news reports in the past two days about the
document had been based on politically motivated leaks. “You know, to suggest that
if we weren’t in Iraq we would see a rosier scenario, with fewer extremists joining
the radical movement, requires us to ignore 20 years of experience,” Mr. Bush
said. He added: “My judgment is: The only way to protect this country is to
stay on the offense.” The intelligence estimate
says that if jihadists who leave Iraq perceive themselves, or are perceived
by others, to have failed, fewer fighters will be inspired to keep fighting. Democrats seized on the
document’s conclusions as proof that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. “The war in Iraq has made us
less safe,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top
Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee. Mr. Rockefeller said the
judgments contained in the intelligence estimate “make it clear that the
intelligence community - all 16 agencies - believe the war in Iraq has fueled
terrorism.” The estimate was the first
formal appraisal of the terrorism threat by American intelligence agencies
since the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003. The public release of any
portion of such a document is highly unusual. The White House declassified
fewer than 4 pages of what officials described as a document of more than 30
pages, saying that to release more of it would endanger intelligence sources
and methods. The release of the findings
added fuel to an intense political debate about the administration’s record
in combating terrorism. Mr. Bush used the news conference to reassert his
view that the Iraq war was not to blame for the growth of Islamic radicalism. He also attributed the
disclosure of some of the assessment findings to what he said were government
officials leaking classified information to “create confusion in the minds of
the American people” weeks before an important Congressional election. The first article on the
findings was published Sunday in The New York Times after more than five
weeks of reporting. More than a dozen United States government officials and
outside experts were interviewed for the article, including employees of
several government agencies and both supporters and critics of the Bush
administration. Democrats also criticized
the White House for only declassifying part of the report, and the House
minority leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, tried and failed to persuade
Republicans to agree to a vote that would have shut the doors of the House of
Representatives to allow members to read the entire classified report. Officials who have read the
entire document said the still-classified portion contained a more detailed
analysis of the impact of the Iraq war on the global jihad movement.
Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House
intelligence committee, said that what the White House released Tuesday was
broadly consistent with the classified portion of the report. National intelligence
estimates are the most authoritative documents that American intelligence
agencies produce on a specific national security issue. They represent the
consensus view of the 16 intelligence agencies in government, and are
approved by John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence. The release on Tuesday of
portions of the document was the second time that the Bush administration had
come under political pressure to declassify a national intelligence estimate. In July 2003, the White
House released the principal judgments of an October 2002 National
Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s weapons programs in an attempt to address
a furor over the origins of President Bush’s statement, made in a State of
the Union address, that Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy nuclear materials
in Niger. In recent months, without
disclosing the existence of the intelligence estimate on terrorism, some
senior American intelligence officials have given glimpses into its
conclusions. During a speech in San Antonio in April, Gen. Michael V. Hayden,
who was then Mr. Negroponte’s deputy, said new jihadist networks and cells
were increasingly likely to emerge. “If this trend continues,
threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could
lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” General Hayden said, using the exact
language of the intelligence assessment made public on Tuesday. General
Hayden is now director of the Central Intelligence Agency. But the intelligence
assessment paints a starker picture of the role that the Iraq war is playing
in shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders than that presented either
in recent White House documents or in speeches by President Bush tied to the
fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The intelligence report
specifically cited the role of the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
who led the Iraqi group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, in attracting new recruits
for the jihad cause in Iraq, and stated that “should al-Zarqawi continue to
evade capture and scale back attacks against Muslims, we assess he could
broaden his popular appeal and present a global threat.” He was killed by American
forces in June. Frances Fragos Townsend, the
president’s homeland security adviser, suggested to reporters on Tuesday that
the killing of Mr. Zarqawi might ultimately help dampen the appeal of jihad
in Iraq. At the same time, the report
concludes that the increased role of Iraqis in managing the operations of Al
Qaeda in Mesopotamia “might lead veteran foreign jihadists to focus their
efforts on external operations.” To be successful in
combating the spread of a radical ideology, the assessment states, the United
States government “must go well beyond operations to capture or kill
terrorist leaders.” External link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/27/world/middleeast/27intel.html |