PoliticalWarfare.org

A sound psychological warfare effort emerges

The New York Times is reporting on a new military effort to exploit the enemy's ideological and cultural weaknesses in a new mode of attack.

This is an exciting development, because it shows adaptation of a much more sophisticated approach that a handful of psychological warfare experts have been promoting for years. The very report in the Times is almost a psychological operation in itself, revealing what is almost surely a tiny effort and magnifying it into something big - and playing on the paranoia inherent in ideological extremist movements.

While I don't claim credit for any of the developments, as others were working on them apart from my efforts, it's striking to see how the details in the March 18 New York Times article closely parallel the policy recommendations in my book, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War, and in the early drafts which circulated through the Pentagon and CIA since 2004. The ideas in the Institute of World Politics-sponsored book aren't new: They date from the times of the ancient Hebrews, Aristotle and Sun Tzu, and as the Times says, were practiced during the Cold War. But they're new to the war effort.

Here are some of the points in the article that the book advocated. The quotes are taken from the March 18 NYT story. The numbers in parentheses are the corresponding pages in the book.

• Sow confusion, dissent and distrust among the enemy. "To counter efforts by terrorists to plot attacks, raise money and recruit new members on the Internet, the government has mounted a secret campaign to plant bogus e-mail messages and Web site postings, with the intent to sow confusion, dissent and distrust among militant organizations, officials confirm." (65, 74, 130-131)
• Amplify voices of certain Islamic authorities. "At the same time, American diplomats are quietly working behind the scenes with Middle Eastern partners to amplify the speeches and writings of prominent Islamic clerics who are renouncing terrorist violence." (70-73, 122, 139)
• Plant seeds of doubt in terrorists' minds to exploit cultural shame and religious beliefs. ". . . if the seeds of doubt can be planted in the mind of Al Qaeda’s strategic leadership that an attack would be viewed as a shameful murder of innocents — or, even more effectively, that it would be an embarrassing failure — then the order may not be given, according to this new analysis." (123, 132)
• Fight the terrorists in their battlespace: Online. "Terrorists hold little or no terrain, except on the Web. 'Al Qaeda and other terrorists’ center of gravity lies in the information domain, and it is there that we must engage it,' said Dell L. Dailey, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief." (30-31, 144)
• Establish combat teams to exploit terrorist computers for propaganda purposes. "Some of the government’s most secretive counterterrorism efforts involve disrupting terrorists’ cyberoperations. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, specially trained teams have recovered computer hard drives used by terrorists and are turning the terrorists’ tools against them." (122)
• Make better use of captured intelligence to humiliate and demoralize the enemy. "Other American efforts are aimed at discrediting Qaeda operations, including the decision to release seized videotapes showing members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group with some foreign leaders, training children to kidnap and kill, as well as a lengthy letter said to have been written by another terrorist leader that describes the organization as weak and plagued by poor morale."
• Exploit local cultures and rhetoric against the enemy. "Even as security and intelligence forces seek to disrupt terrorist operations, counterterrorism specialists are examining ways to dissuade insurgents from even considering an attack with unconventional weapons. They are looking at aspects of the militants’ culture, families or religion, to undermine the rhetoric of terrorist leaders." (38-75)
• Amplify local voices to sow doubts and break the enemy's will. "For example, the government is seeking ways to amplify the voices of respected religious leaders who warn that suicide bombers will not enjoy the heavenly delights promised by terrorist literature, and that their families will be dishonored by such attacks. Those efforts are aimed at undermining a terrorist’s will. "'I’ve got to figure out what does dissuade you,' said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the Joint Chiefs’ director of strategic plans and policy. 'What is your center of gravity that we can go at? The goal you set won’t be achieved, or you will be discredited and lose face with the rest of the Muslim world or radical extremism that you signed up for.'" (32-34, 138-144)
• Widen rifts between terrorists and their friends. "Efforts are also under way to persuade Muslims not to support terrorists. It is a delicate campaign that American officials are trying to promote and amplify — but without leaving telltale American fingerprints that could undermine the effort in the Muslim world. Senior Bush administration officials point to several promising developments. Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, gave a speech last October warning Saudis not to join unauthorized jihadist activities, a statement directed mainly at those considering going to Iraq to fight the American-led forces. And Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, a top leader of the armed Egyptian movement Islamic Jihad and a longtime associate of Mr. Zawahri, the second-ranking Qaeda official, has just completed a book that renounces violent jihad on legal and religious grounds. Such dissents are serving to widen rifts between Qaeda leaders and some former loyal backers, Western and Middle Eastern diplomats say." (123)
• Peel away at the concentric rings of support around the terrorists. "'Obviously, hard-core terrorists will be the hardest to deter,' [Pentagon special operations policy planner Michael G.] Vickers said. 'But if we can deter the support network — recruiters, financial supporters, local security providers and states who provide sanctuary — then we can start achieving a deterrent effect on the whole terrorist network and constrain terrorists’ ability to operate." (34-35, 76, 120-123)

Footnote: This is a very productive piece of journalism. I would be remiss in not pointing out that one of the co-writers, Eric Schmitt, was also a co-writer of the February 19, 2002 New York Times report that falsely branded the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) as a disinformation unit. That careless report was the product of a turf battle in which Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke leaked the false story to the Times with the intent of inflicting political damage on OSI and forcing it to be shut down. This is indeed what happened. Clarke has never been held accountable for this action (nor has Schmitt or the New York Times), which set back psychological and ideological warfare operations by three years or more.

How did FBI/CIA infiltrator color US understanding of the enemy?

After looking at the mess the FBI made of part of the Hanssen espionage damage assessment, it might be too much to ask for the Bureau to make a proper assessment of how former Special Agent Nada Nadim Prouty may have warped US understanding of the Islamist enemy.

Prouty is the illegal alien who became one of the FBI's only Arabic-speaking special agents in the 1990s and went on to become what agency insiders are pooh-poohing as a mere "mid-level official" at the CIA.

Prouty pled guilty to crimes relating to stealing classified information on behalf of relatives in Hezbollah. US official response has been appalling, practically ruling out the idea that she was a spy for the terrorist organization (or for its main state sponsor, Iran),

Are the CIA and FBI in denial AGAIN? Is anybody in the counterintelligence business any more? Does the US still cling to the Cold War idea of counterintelligence as working or defending against the intelligence services of foreign governments - thus not treating terrorist organizations with their own intelligence services as counterintelligence threats?

I don't know, but something tells me that the answer isn't a good one. Prouty was at the center of the United States' most sensitive counterterrorism investigations in the late 1990s, at home and abroad, when she was one of only 7 (that's right: seven) FBI agents who could speak Arabic. Her pre-911 influence within the US counterterrorism, counterintelligence and intelligence communities is likely to have been considerable.

A Google News search doesn't show it, so we'll break some news here: Prouty told her closest friends in the 1990s that she was of Druze background in Lebanon. By inference, she would not have been an Islamist; the Druze split with Islam centuries ago and many are allied with Lebanese Christians and even with Israel. However, many Druze also support Hezbollah.

Prouty was one of the FBI's hottest agents at the time: hard-charging, tall and in excellent physical condition, and known to carry her Bureau-issued weapon in the most casual of dress. Prior to 9/11, when presented with evidence of Islamist networks in the Washington, DC area, she dismissed the evidence as of little importance. Those close to the matter trusted her judgment at the time, though after 9/11 US authorities, under the direction not of the FBI but the Justice Department, raided the offices in those networks, made several arrests, and got several terrorist-related convictions.

Bottom line: As with the Ana Belen Montes case of Cuban penetration of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the FBI and CIA must do fundamental and sweeping damage assessments of how Prouty might have colored American perceptions of the terrorist threat in ways damaging to this country.

FBI agent: Saddam used WMD as deception against Iran

Did Saddam Hussein slam-dunk CIA Director George Tenet with a deception operation aimed at Iran? It looks that way.

Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program was a deception to deter Iran, an FBI agent who spent nearly a year with the dictator says in a new book.

If true, the deception was one of the costliest mistakes in human history.

Special Agent George Piro befriended Saddam in what is described as a successful interrogation that yielded confessions about mass murder and about the WMD program that the US used as a pretext to invade in 2003.

Prominent intelligence writer Ronald Kessler authored the book, The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack. Kessler interviewed Piro who provided the account for the story.

Piro's account calls for an immediate classified and public assessment of how the US intelligence community detects and neutralizes deception. I don't think the community has been very willing to confront the issue, or to fix its own bureaucratic cultural biases in order to defend against such ruses. Higher education does little to fix the problem either, with the exception of places like The Institute of World Politics, where our new Master's degree program in strategic intelligence prepares current and prospective intelligence officers like no other school.

Wahhabi propaganda? Not!

People who advocate waging semantic warfare to widen rifts among the radical Islamists and split them from their support bases are obviously doing the work of . . . the Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood. This blogger apparently is one of them.

That's untrue, of course, but it's the logic of a few otherwise well-informed critics out there. Meanwhile, one of the leading Americans who has promoted the concept of using Islamic terminology to split the bad guys is being accused - falsely - of taking money from the horrid Saudi Arabian regime. The rest of us, according to the false accusers, are dupes. In their view, it's much smarter for the US to unite our Islamist enemies against us - along with most of the Muslim world - than it is to split them apart from one another.

Here's the situation. Prof. Doug Streusand of the Marine Corps University, Col. Harry Tunnell of the National Defense University and I are allegedly doing the dirty work of the Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood. We are unwittingly helping them, according to one person, because we argue that the US should split the "jihadist" movement by taking the narrative away from al Qaeda, Palestinian extremists, and Ahmadinejad, and empowering disadvantaged Muslims who lack the inclination or will to make war on us.

We developed our ideas, according to a recent column by Walid Phares, by following the "concocted" words of a "lobbyist" whose paymaster Phares won't mention but whom the reader infers must be a really bad guy. Hugh Fitzgerald of JihadWatch.com, however, says it outright: the alleged Wahhabi paid propagandist is our colleague Jim Guirard.

Now, I like Walid Phares and respect his work, and the guys at JihadWatch.com are doing a tremendous service even though I don't always agree with them. Here's the problem: In this particular instance, they have their facts wrong.

First, we didn't develop these ideas on our own, but got them from Muslim scholars and Arabic linguists whom I cite in my writings. No Muslim should be expected to take a non-Muslim seriously on a theological question, which is why some of us urge merely that the US in its messaging amplify what the disadvantaged Muslims - who lack state backing from Riyadh or Tehran, or the networks of the Muslim Brotherhood - are saying.

Wahhabis have been trying to lay a claim on jihad that American policymakers generally have endorsed. Interpretations by non-extreme Muslims generally have gone unheeded. Having been one of the first to write about the "Wahhabi lobby" in Washington, I never found a case of Wahhabi-backed groups in this country questioning the absolutist, Saudi-sponsored propaganda theme, with one sole exception that was in direct response to an inquiry about a definition, and was a thematical part of a message. (If our critics would like to provide documentation to the contrary, I would like to see it and will gladly post it.)

In 2001 and 2002 I researched the Saudi-funded Grover Norquist network for my friend Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy, where I am a vice president, and published copies of the very checks that Muslim Brotherhood operative and convicted terrorist conspirator Abdurahman Alamoudi wrote to fund Norquist's Islamic Institute. Having written exposes of Islamist agitprop in this country and given Senate testimony about terrorist recruitment in prisons, I take it seriously when a good man like Phares says what he says.

But in this instance his facts are wrong. Phares' most damning allegation is that Guirard is a lobbyist who, we are led to believe, created his semantic warfare concept for his shadowy client. Though he uses the term "lobby" three times to try to discredit Guirard, Phares never says for whom Guirard lobbied, or when. If he had checked, he would have found that Guirard hasn't lobbied for about seven years, and he never lobbied for any Middle East interests.

Phares apparently got the "lobbying" misinformation from Hugh FitzGerald of Jihad Watch but didn't bother to check the facts himself. On July 9, Fitzgerald flatly - and wrongly - said that Guirard is "closely connected to the Saudis," and that "some say the Saudi Embassy and the Saudi lobby, all-powerful as ever, channel their views right through him...." Fitzgerald didn't say who "some" was, but we take it as editorializing in lieu of using the first-person.

There's no truth to the story. Guirard has no connection at all to the Saudis. That leaves us to wonder, Are these allegations a deliberate smear of Guirard over a policy diffence, or are they just sloppy and irresponsible reporting? I hope it's only the latter. In which case the accusers should retract and apologize.

Now, to tip the hat to Robert Spencer, any believing Christian or Muslim knows that the mankind cannot coexist in perpetuity on earth without his respective religion being supreme. Both faiths actively seek converts and teach doctrines based on their belief in divine revelation that their own religion will dominate the world. It doesn't take a "hater" to understand this theological fact. Much interfaith dialogue has addressed the issue. The fact that Muslims are more aggressive in spreading and enforcing their faith than are Christians is reason to give any true Christian pause.

But for government policy purposes, we are not taking a supernatural view of the current war of ideas. We are looking at this war as a conflict of men. In our secular, post-Christian society that recoils in horror at the thought of our government waging ideological warfare against Islamism, we would rather pretend that the fight is all about politics and culture. Only the Islamists and their followers, and a smattering of Christians, believe that the issue is spiritual warfare. For the rest of the world, including the United States, it's all a question of superior firepower, politics and self-flagellation.

And that's too bad. The Spencers and Phareses of the world certainly do have a point: for the most part, the most militant believers in converting the world's faithful are Muslims. The other believers are patsies in comparison. Even so-called "good" jihad has world spiritual conquest as an ultimate if vague goal. So in this sense, Spencer and Phares are right. That's a long-term strategic issue, and a religious one. Speaking for myself, my policy recommendations - to break the Wahhabi/Muslim Brotherhood/al Qaeda narratives - are strictly tactical and temporal, as I spell out in Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War.

From a Christian standpoint, it's understandable why our critics like Spencer and Phares take the absolutist positions that they do. But let's win the current war first.

What is not understandable - or permissible - is that they or their sources use inaccurate and even phony "facts" as bludgeons against good people like Jim Guirard. 

Deception: Appeal for acceptance, discourse on doctrine, preface to planning

"Deception: Appeal for acceptance, discourse on doctrine, preface to planning," by Walter Jajko, Comparative Strategy, November-December 2003.

The United States has rarely resorted to strategic deception, even when appropriate opportunities for its use have occurred and even though its adversaries have used it. The U.S. tends to view deception as unacceptable; yet, used knowledgeably and artfully, it can be a powerful, economic, and sometimes decisive instrument. Deception is an exceptional instrument of national security policy and an essential element of military operations. Deception targets the adversarial decisionmaker; his mind is the decisive battlespace. The indispensable conditions for the sustained conduct of deception are an apparatus, policy, philosophy, practitioners, and practice. The process of creating and executing a deception requires six rigorous and meticulous steps. The U.S. ought to use deception systematically to attack its adversaries' long-range, high-payoff targets.

Deception 101 - Primer on deception

"Deception 101 - Primer on deception," Joseph W. Caddell, Strategic Studies Institute, 2004.

Abstract to follow.

Strategic deception in modern democracies: The ethical dimension

"Strategic deception in modern democracies: The ethical dimension," Paper by Elizabeth Kiss, Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University, October 31-November 1, 2003.

Abstract to follow