al Qaeda remains resilient

It seems to me that a bad combination of weak intelligence, a bungled occupation of Afghanistan (and, of course, Iraq), and politically-motivated but misguided claims of success have severely hampered our abilities to bring the terrorist network to heel. Or, at least, that's how I interpret this report in today's WSJ [sorry, subscription required].

The spate of arrests of terrorist suspects from Pakistan to Britain, while trumpeted as a sign of the progress in the war on terror, has set off a debate within the intelligence community about whether the al Qaeda command structure, thought to have been crippled, still is strong.

Despite three years of war, the extremist network created by Osama bin Laden is operating both within a traditional company, top-down command structure, as well as with free-lance franchisees, experts say, making it all the more difficult for the Bush administration to claim victory.

"Whatever hits al Qaeda has taken we can now see that the organization was conducting business as usual," says Bruce Hoffman, the acting director for Middle East policy at research organization Rand Corp. and an expert in terrorism and counterintelligence. "This points to a movement with much deeper benches than we imagined, that can build and replenish its leadership as it needs."

As recently as June, U.S. government officials were saying that because 70% of al Qaeda's top leadership had been killed or captured, those remaining on the run could do little more than encourage free-lancers or disembodied operatives in audio and video messages with target ideas. "What we see is that because of tremendous successes against the terrorist target, the command and control structure of al Qaeda has broken down," one senior intelligence official said at the time.

That view is being reassessed. The picture of al Qaeda emerging from the cache of information from computer files and documents seized in Pakistan last month and from interrogations is of an organization still on its feet. Although many of the groups' most experienced members have been caught or killed, the new operatives appear as committed to striking the U.S. but have fewer resources and are forced to operate much more furtively. Some have been in the organization for years; others have entered since 2001.

[...]

U.S. intelligence has maintained that al Qaeda, although wounded, still is dangerous, with plenty of trained cadres capable of carrying out terrorist attacks on the U.S. and determined to do so. Notwithstanding, the thinking about al Qaeda changed in the aftermath of the March bombings in Madrid, in which an Islamist group said to be "inspired" by al Qaeda, rather than a formal part of the organization, was responsible for the attack. This gave rise to new thinking among counterterrorism experts that al Qaeda franchises and wannabes had taken over as the main threat.

Dr. Hoffman of Rand Corp. says he understands why prominent analysts might have arrived at that conclusion, but he believes it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how al Qaeda operates. "There has never been an either/or with al Qaeda," he says. "It has always functioned from the top down and at the same time has encouraged free-lance activity and franchises to operate on their own. This is what makes them so flexible and resilient."

Part of the problem, according to terrorism experts, is that there is a tendency for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement to inflate the importance of the few breaks that they have made in recent months, skewing some of their analysis.

Another problem is increasing tension between the Bush administration, which appears eager to claim election-year success against al Qaeda, and its allies, such as Pakistan and Britain, who have complained that public disclosure of identities of suspected terrorists has alerted al Qaeda to what the U.S. was learning about its continuing operations [emphasis added]. Even some U.S. officials say they have noticed an unusual willingness by the normally tight-lipped Bush administration to reveal details about last month's arrests.

A senior White House official denied last week that the U.S. had been responsible for leaking names of those arrested, saying the information initially came from overseas. The official added that, "When somebody's taken into custody at a senior level, it has a limited shelf life."

There also are indications that the Central Intelligence Agency and other members of the intelligence community were less than enthusiastic about making the information public. A senior Homeland Security official said the quick turnaround two weeks ago in making top-secret intelligence public was helpful in allowing local law enforcement to increase security, but made the intelligence community extremely uncomfortable.

Unlike President George W. Bush, I don't feel safer.