Spying on al Qaeda

Washington Post:

A decade after al-Qaeda issued a global declaration of war against America, U.S. spy agencies have had little luck recruiting well-placed informants and are finding the upper reaches of the network tougher to penetrate than the Kremlin during the Cold War, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials.

Some counterterrorism officials say their agencies missed early opportunities to attack the network from within. Relying on Cold War tactics such as cash rewards for tips failed to take into account the religious motivations of Islamist radicals and produced few results.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said, al-Qaeda has tightened its internal security at the top, placing an even greater emphasis on personal and tribal loyalties to determine who can gain access to its leaders.

Alain Chouet, former chief of the security intelligence service of the DGSE, France's foreign spy agency, said it can take years for informants to burrow their way into radical Islamist networks. Even if they're successful at first, he said, new al-Qaeda members are often "highly disposable" -- prime candidates for suicide missions.

He said it might be too late for Western intelligence agencies, having missed earlier chances, to redouble efforts to infiltrate the network. "I think you cannot penetrate such a movement now," he said.

At the same time, those agencies have made their task harder by blowing the cover of some promising informants and mishandling others.

In January, Spanish police arrested 14 men in Barcelona who they suspected were preparing to bomb subways in cities across Europe. Investigators disclosed in court documents that the arrests had been prompted by a Pakistani informant working for French intelligence.

The revelation infuriated French officials, who were forced to withdraw the informant -- a rare example of an agent who had successfully infiltrated training camps in Pakistan. Spanish authorities expressed regret but said they had no choice; after they failed to find bombs or much other evidence during the arrests, the case rested largely on the informant's word.

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What the Spanish problem reveals is the downside to the lawfare approach to fighting al Qaeda. Your are always having to give up your best assets to prosecute a criminal case. That is why Gitmo is the better way to go about dealing with a terrorist organization.

I think the story understates our human intelligence capability against al Qaeda though. The recent targeted strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Pakistan suggest we have human intelligence sources tipping us off to terrorist war councils. One of the things that suggest this is the lack of reaction from Pakistani locals to the strikes. There is no claim of wedding parties being hit or the other victim railing's that used to follow such strikes. Instead, you have enemy forces reported as isolating the attack site and extracting their dead.

Democrats have done great damage to our signal intelligence capabilities with their ridiculous refusal to grant immunity to the telecoms who are helping find them. This absurd terrorist privacy rights stance is beyond reason. Signal intelligence can provide us leads where human intelligence can be applied, but Democrats would rather suck up to greedy trial lawyers.