| December 4, 2002 | Wednesday | Ramazan 28,1423 |
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Split verdict and after
Drawing the line
The Saudis: friends or foes?
Spying inside America
LONG ago, Karl Marx, famously borrowing from Hegel, said that “everything happens twice in history — the first time as tragedy, the second as farce”. The repetition of past mistakes qualifies as folly, when it is a perverse persistence in a policy that is demonstrably unworkable. Regrettably, this is what is happening in Pakistan today. After three years of army rule, pre-poll rigging and horse-trading, Pakistan has an elected a parliament and a prime minister once again.
AMERICANS used to take for granted that Saudi Arabia was one of their most faithful, obedient and useful allies. The 7,000 or so princes of the Saudi royal family who control 30 per cent of the world’s proven petroleum reserves could always be counted on to support American interests in the Mideast, buy lots of US arms, and sell their oil at low prices.
LET us, just for a moment, overlook the moral aspects of what was attempted and partly achieved in Mombasa last week. And let us also suppose that the terrorists had succeeded in their purpose of massacring scores of Israeli tourists in the lobby of the Paradise Hotel and a couple of hundred more on a chartered flight. In political terms, how could such a strategy conceivably have helped the Palestinian cause?
As a neo-fascist, highly militarized state, Israel thrives on insecurity. Every suicide bombing inside the country or in the occupied territories reinforces support for repressive policies and usually invites immediate retaliation against Palestinians. Of course, each bombing also underlines the stark truth that repression is not an effective prophylactic against attacks. Indiscriminate violence is a game that two can play indefinitely — or at least until they start running out of players. And in such games there can be no winners.
Now let’s envisage a somewhat different scenario. No more suicide attacks or ambushes. No more terror on the Palestinian side. That would deprive the Israeli state of its main excuse for systematic human rights abuses. Such abuses would not immediately stop, but popular support for state terror would begin to ebb away. It therefore seems that the would-be mass murderers of Mombasa were no friends of the Palestinians. Either that, or they were simply damn fools.
It is widely suspected that the three men who blew themselves up in the Paradise Hotel — killing a dozen Kenyans and three Israelis, including two children — and their accomplices who aimed a couple of missiles at a plane packed with Israeli tourists, were associated with Al Qaeda. The circumstantial evidence does indeed point towards that conclusion, suggesting that no part of the globe is out of the reach of Osama bin Laden and his amorphous band of distinctly unmerry men; having already exercised their malign influence in America, Europe and Asia, they have now done their bit in Africa, returning to their hunting ground of 1998.
It is worth recalling that even then, most of the victims in the attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salam were Kenyans and Tanzanians — collateral damage, so to speak, which was not followed by the slightest expression of remorse by the perpetrators or their allies. That’s precisely the sort of unrepentant arrogance one would expect from the US in comparable circumstances.
There was also a long-term aspect to the response, which appears to have bred considerable resentment in Kenya. As Fuad Nahdi, who grew up in Kenya and is now the publisher of the Muslim magazine Q-News, puts it: “People have been infuriated by the habit of CIA and FBI agents, accompanied by Kenyan intelligence officers, of barging into people’s homes and searching them.”
Adds Giles Foden, the author of a book on the 1998 bombings: “The trial of some of those responsible for the 1998 bombings concluding just as the September 11 attacks of 2001 shook America and all of us out of complacency. Defence submissions argued that the methods used by the US, in conjunction with local authorities, to gather information in Kenya and Tanzania violated human rights. The Muslim community in both countries was put under pressure and that may well turn out to be a factor behind [last week’s] attacks...”
None of the above can offer even meagre justification for what happened in Mombasa last week. But it does help explain the milieu in which resentment and despair make for a potent — and potentially explosive — mix.
“I grew up surrounded by mosques full of imams and scholars who oozed wisdom and dignity,” recalls Nahdi. “Their discourse was love-based and God-centred. Today, the sermons echo a message of anger, frustration and hate. As president of the Muslim Students Union at the University of Nairobi, I was obsessed with so many local concerns that Palestine never made it to the top five. Today, Israel and the plight of the Palestinian people is on the tongue of every Kenyan Muslim you speak to.”
Millions of Muslims across the world consider fanaticism an abhorrent deviation from the spirit of their faith. It is extremely unfortunate, in the event, that voices of sanity have tended to be drowned out in the cacophonous cross-currents of slander, threats and abuse that have flowed between Muslim extremists and their ideological counterparts in the West. Fundamentalism of both the George W. Bush variety and the Osama bin Laden type has consequently been bolstered. The fact that such tendencies pose a bigger threat to nations with Muslim majorities than they do to the West was illustrated the week before the mayhem in Mombasa, in Nigeria.
It was a nightmare of several stages, most of them preventable. There are no short-term remedies to the simmering tensions between Nigerian Christians and Muslims, maintained and periodically exacerbated by divide-and-rule enthusiasts of both persuasions. But Lagos could easily have turned down the offer to host the finals of the Miss World competition. Given the opposition to it among some groups of Muslims, the potential for unrest over the provocation ought not to have been too hard to recognize.
Miss World is objectionable not only on confessional grounds. As the Nigerian musician Femi Kuti put it in an interview with the BBC, “Nigeria has bigger problems... We have no light, no water, millions of children walk around the streets homeless, their parents can’t feed them. What is the benefit to the people of Africa? I’m not surprised if the people revolt.”
Some Muslims object to the spectacle of young women parading about in skimpy swimsuits as a corrupting influence and an invitation to immorality. Ironically, this view in some ways echoes the feminist perspective, whereby such pageants are perceived as an attempt to perpetuate an impression of women as unintelligent sex objects, to be valued for the shape of their bodies rather than the content of their minds. There is an important difference, though: in a perverse sort of way, those who insist on women covering up from head to toe betray an obsession with the attributes of the flesh not entirely dissimilar to the fascination with sexual attraction displayed by the porn industry.
Beyond the offensive absurdity of picking a bimbo on whose (invariably) slender shoulders rests the burden of epitomizing global womanliness for a year (fortunately, not many people take the spectacle seriously, and Miss World is as good as forgotten soon after she is crowned), there are several other grounds on which the pageant is objectionable.
Yet the rioting in Kaduna — according to an estimate by the Nigerian Red Cross, 220 people were killed, more than 1,000 injured, 22 churches and eight mosques were razed and at least 8,000 people made homeless — was sparked by a newspaper article by a young and inexperienced journalist, Isioma Daniel, who conjectured that the Prophet Muhammad would probably have approved of the pageant and may even have married one of the contestants.
A stupid and wholly uncalled-for remark? Yes. Intended to ridicule Islam? Not necessarily. Worth killing and dying for? Certainly not. But then, reason and religion rarely, if ever, go hand in hand. Luckily, by the time the Islamist deputy governor of Zamfara state pronounced a fatwa against Daniel, comparing her with Salman Rushdie, she had already left the country. “It is binding on all Muslims, wherever they are, to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty,” Mamuda Aliyu Shinkafi declared last week. A group of ulema, Jama’atu Nasril Islam, had the good sense to rescind the fatwa.
The pageant has since been shifted to London, amid protests by British feminists as well as the mayor of London. The writer Muriel Gray noted: “It is completely despicable that we have agreed to host this travesty... These girls will be wearing swimwear dripping with blood.” Some countries had already boycotted the competition because of the indefensible death sentence in Nigeria against Amina Lawal, an unmarried mother. A few more dropped out after the Kaduna crisis. But most contestants have stayed the course.
“It defies belief that after Miss World has brought tragedy and strife to Africa, its organizers should think it appropriate to carry on with the razzmatazz as if nothing had happened,” noted Mayor Ken Livingstone. He’s right. Besides, virtually any excuse for shutting down Miss World, which is due to take place next Saturday, would be welcome. But the events in Kenya and Nigeria also underline, for the umpteenth time, the need for greater self-criticism among Muslims. It is ridiculous in the extreme to assume that a foolish remark by a juvenile Nigerian journalist could in any way damage anyone’s faith. Whether Al Qaeda had anything to do with the strife in Kaduna is unknown, but Giles Foden holds that “one of the ways [Osama] bin Laden inspires is to concentrate propaganda efforts in areas like East Africa, Nigeria or Indonesia, where there are already tensions between Christians and Muslims”.
Much of Africa is afflicted with a host of problems, from droughts, famines and AIDS to grinding poverty and endemic corruption. The West has contributed in one way or another to most of these. Whether or not Islam can help solve any of them, it certainly ought not to complicate or compound the continent’s woes.
E-mail: mahirali@journalist.com
Not surprisingly, what has emerged is a distorted picture which does not quite reflect the ground reality and has aroused fears about the prospect of political stability ahead. The split verdict has created a hung parliament incapable of ending the political uncertainty. Consequently, there is no strong reason to be optimistic as Pakistan steps into a democratic future.
In the post-election scenario, the substance of power remains in the hands of the president who is also the Chief of Army Staff and chairman of the powerful National Security Council. Cohabitation — coexistence between the president and the prime minister and between conflicting ideological stripes — has not been a great success in France. How can it work in Pakistan? President Zia tried it towards the end of his long army rule but it did not work. He had to sack Mohammad Khan Junejo, his prime minister, and dissolve the National Assembly with disastrous consequences for the country. Why make the same mistake again?
Why not profit from past experience and let the prime minister govern the country without the president breathing down his neck? Why keep the presidential sword hanging over his head? The history of Pakistan might have been different if the governor-general, Ghulam Muhammad, and his successors had not intervened and derailed the political process.
“The commonest error in politics (Salisbury’s note to Lytton) is sticking to the carcasses of dead policies. When a mast falls overboard you do not try to save a rope here and a spar there in memory of their former utility. You cut away the hamper altogether. And it should be the same with a policy. But it is not so. We cling to the shred of an old policy after it has been torn to pieces; and to the shadow of the shred after the rag itself has been torn away”.
I was present at the swearing-in ceremony of Mr. Junejo at the State Guest House in Rawalpindi. He said all the right things in his speech and expressed the hope that he will have the blessing and support of the president in facing the arduous task that lay ahead of him. Not a bad beginning, we all thought and heaved a sigh of relief. But in his very first meeting with the president, without expressing a word of thanks, he asked abruptly: “Mr. President, when do you plan to lift Martial Law?” Zia kept his cool but realized that he had made a wrong choice. Relations between the two became frosty. They were soon on a collision course and a showdown ensued.
Junejo was a democrat and made no secret of his determination to get rid of martial law and missed no opportunity to assert his independence. Zia resented this. What upset him most was that power was fast slipping out of his hands and flowing in the direction of the prime minister and he could do nothing about it. When I called on him at the presidency in Rawalpindi a few days after Junejo was sworn in, deathly silence prevailed. There was not a scrap of paper on his table and he looked visibly under-employed and quite unhappy. Things had not worked out the way he had planned.
He wanted Junejo to seek his prior approval in all important matters. Junejo was in no mood to oblige and was not prepared to be a puppet prime minister. There can not be two suns in the sky. Junejo’s fate was sealed. His days were numbered. It was now only a question of time.
How will things pan out between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali? Will history repeat itself? Musharraf is not Zia and Jamali is not Junejo. Musharraf is impulsive and not as cool as Zia was. On the other hand, Jamali is more tactful and flexible than Junejo. Will it make cohabitation between the two easier or more difficult? We have to wait and see. Mir Jamali’s biggest problem in the days ahead will be the president, his benefactor, who got him elected as the prime minister of Pakistan. The notion that the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) elected Mir Jamali as prime minister reminds me of a rooster who took credit for the dawn.
Mr. Jamali has inherited a dysfunctional political system that most Pakistanis describe as democracy with a dictator sitting on top. He faces a daunting task. Pakistan is at the crossroads today. In the virtual absence of the Constitution, the country is, to borrow George Washington’s words, united only by a “rope of sand”. A plethora of amendments has defaced, disfigured and mutilated the 1973 constitution and changed it beyond recognition. General Musharraf has literally reappointed himself president on the basis of a dubious referendum. “No man ever willingly gives up pubic life”, President Roosevelt once said, “no man who has ever tasted it”.
The people of Pakistan have been denied the right to elect their president in accordance with the Constitution. President Musharraf’s Legal Framework Order, the bedrock of the new political dispensation, is under attack and its legality in dispute. Major political parties refuse to take oath under the Legal Framework Order which they reject and do not accept as a part of the Constitution. Devolution, the brainchild of General Naqvi, trumpeted as a revolutionary concept, is in a mess, its future uncertain. The system of district administration, which had stood the test of time for centuries, has been demolished with nothing but chaos to replace it. No one knows who is in command at the grassroots level.
From the time of Herodotus democracy has meant, first and foremost, the rule of the people. Every country gets the kind of democracy it deserves. Pakistan is no exception. How meaningful is our new democratic order replete as it is with parliaments, cabinets and political parties when crucial decisions are made elsewhere. How can authentic democracy flourish in the country when people are not prepared to defend the core values of the nation — sovereignty of the people, inviolability of the Constitution, supremacy of civilian rule, an independent, incorruptible judiciary, rule of law, an impartial, independent and incorruptible Election Commission, a neutral, non-politicized and honest civil service, social justice, egalitarianism and unsparing and transparent accountability of rulers?
How can authentic democracy take root if people have no faith in their democratic institutions; if they do not value representative governments; if they are not prepared to make any sacrifice for its sake; if they are unwilling to defend it and if they are unable to do what it needs? How can you have authentic democracy in a country where sovereignty does not reside in the parliament, nor full power in the executive? Power resides where coercive authority resides. It is the ‘puvois occult’ which decides when to abrogate the Constitution, when to dismiss an elected government, and when to restore democracy and to what extent.
All our civilian prime ministers — Z. A Bhutto, Junejo, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir — made a fatal mistake when they lost sight of this reality. ZAB paid the ultimate price. He went to the gallows. Benazir is a fugitive from justice, living the life of an exile in London and Dubai. Nawaz Sharif faces an uncertain future in the holy land of Saudi Arabia. Junejo died a frustrated and unhappy man.
Mir Jamali will have to proceed warily if he is not to meet the same fate. It is difficult to predict how long he will last, but a Pakistani ruler, history shows, has only the briefest time to make his mark before the power slips away. Power is evanescent. It can come in a rush, but it also tends to evaporate quickly. Mir Jamali must therefore hurry up and draw upon it quickly, putting it to good use in public interest, or he will never achieve any result. I was born in slavery. On August 14, 1947, I was a free man, a proud citizen of an independent, sovereign, democratic country I could call my own, a country I could live for and die for. For me, and for all those who belonged to my generation, Pakistan symbolized all our dreams, our hopes, our aspirations. Today it is an abode of despair and despondency. The rich are getting richer, while the poor are sinking deeper and deeper into a blackhole of poverty. The country appears to be adrift, lacking confidence about its future. Disaster and frustration roam the political landscape. Look into the eyes of a Pakistani today and you will see a smouldering rage. Our entire political system has been robbed of its vitality by periodic army intervention and prolonged army rule. People wonder if Pakistan will ever take the high road of uninterrupted evolution and strength.
President Musharraf started with a blank cheque of goodwill and popular enthusiasm given to him by the people of Pakistan. But after three years of absolute rule, he has ended with a bankruptcy of moral and political support, leaving the country in worse condition than he found it in. A perfectly good country has become a laughing stock of the world once again. The country is in the grip of a grave political crisis but President Musharraf does not seem to comprehend the gravity of the situation and somehow persuades himself to believe that all is well and things are working out according to plan. This is delusion pure and simple.
To no country has fate been more malignant than to Pakistan. We thought the past was dead and gone on October 12. It is not even past. Will Pakistan ever recover its elan vital and regain its lost dignity, its past glory? Will Pakistan ever convert itself into a more proud country, a more self-respecting and just country, a country that is truly sovereign, fiercely independent and genuinely democratic? Will consensus on the nation’s core values ever emerge in this country and will the people ever protect and defend those values? Today, Pakistan has trouble agreeing on whether the sun will rise tomorrow morning.
BROWSING through ten-year old London newspapers in the British Council some time ago, I came across in The Sunday Telegraph an interview with Mrs Margaret Thatcher who was the Prime Minister. The interview was in connection with the contest for leadership of the Conservative Party. Two points in it struck me as most unusual from the Pakistani way of looking at political government, and I thought, rather optimistically, that they might teach something to the set-up that Mir Zafarullah Jamali is now presiding over.
One was that when The Sunday Telegraph man reached 10 Downing Street, he was a little surprised to find that he was not received and conducted to Mrs Thatcher’s office by her official press secretary but by a press officer of the party. When he asked the latter about this, he was told that since the interview was not with the prime minister but with a candidate for the leadership of the Tories, the official press secretary could not even be present.
The second point came during the interview. The correspondent asked Mrs Thatcher what she thought about the suitability of Mr Heseltine, her rival, to lead the party in parliament. Mrs Thatcher replied that while she could talk about her differences with Mr Heseltine in the cabinet, she made it a point never to criticize a political opponent.
I was so struck by these two aspects of the interview that I laid aside the newspaper and began to ruminate on them. I could not help comparing them with what goes on in our country’s government politics and wondered whether such principles could ever form part of the life of a prime minister of Pakistan. (Hence my reference to Mr Jamali in the opening paragraph). Accustomed to our ways where an elected chief executive, be it at the centre or in the provinces, does not even dream of making a distinction between his official status and his party office, the two aspects came as a surprise, to say the least.
To quote just one example, we have watched thrice after 1990 a prime minister and chief ministers of the provinces, ostensibly caretakers, running the election campaigns with help from the paraphernalia available to them in their official capacity. We have seen party press releases issued through the government’s information departments. We have seen government transport used for electioneering without a moment’s thought to propriety or legality.
Maybe the reason for all this is that ever since the very inception of Pakistan, presidents, prime ministers and chief ministers have been tempted to retain party offices, because otherwise the party boss could dictate to the chief executive on policy issues or even ask him to explain acts of omission and commission. This could certainly not be tolerated by the power-hungry.
Since the very thought of this perfectly democratic interference was anathema to the prime minister and the chief ministers, the only way out for them has been to be chief of the party also, whether the party was the Muslim League or the Republican Party or the People’s Party. But despite the undesirable practice of the two offices being held by the same person, things were not too bad as we have seen during recent elected political regimes, that is after 1988.
For one thing, bureaucrats playing politics at all levels and or overlapping of government and party responsibilities was never so blatant in the early days. If it was done it was done with a feeling of wrongdoing, a tacit admission that this was not proper. Let me tell you a story in which I was personally involved.
The scene is 1952 in Lyallpur (as it was then called), where a three-day session of the Muslim League Council was being held, with Prime Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin directing the proceedings all through — as president of the ruling party. Naturally the Punjab president of the party, Chief Minister Mumtaz Daultana, was also there. The information department was present in full force because the PM and CM had to be covered. I was a junior information officer in Punjab at that time.
On the first day of the session I circulated a notice in the press gallery that reporters could avail themselves of the services of our transport to send their despatches to Lahore all the three evenings when a van would be going to the capital in any case. A harmless bit of PR activity to help journalists. Or so I thought.
Imagine my consternation when, in the Punjab Assembly session after a fortnight, a question was tabled by an opposition member asking why Hafizur Rahman had offered government transport to facilitate the reporting of a political party conference, on whose order and on what authority he had done so, and what disciplinary action was being taken against him for this misdemeanour. The fact had earlier been taken notice of editorially by the daily Nawa-i-Waqt.
Fortunately for me, the MLA who had tabled the question, Sheikh Mahboob Ilahi of Lyallpur (father of Sheikh Manzur Ilahi, a senior ex-CSP officer and caretaker Punjab CM in 1993) was an old friend of my father’s.
When he came to know that I was the culprit, and that I was on the verge of a nervous collapse because of his question, he graciously withdrew it.
Such was the fear of an assembly question in those days, and such was the line drawn between the official position and the party side of an elected leader. And this though was always present in the minds of all government functionaries, both high and low. So much so (and you’ll certainly be amazed to hear this) that if the prime minister or the chief minister was presiding over a party gathering or addressing a public meeting organised by the party, the commissioner and the DC, or the DIG and the SP, as also other officers, scrupulously kept themselves away. They would be at hand, but were never visible to the crowd and the participants. Nowadays of course they are found sitting on the dais with characteristic bureaucratic aplomb and self-assurance.
We have been under military rule of three years. Some people think that with the return of democracy the new politician rulers will display a better sense of right and wrong and a keener perception of the proprieties in regard to the subject of this piece. I am not so sure. For one, who is going to teach them anything about proprieties? Who is going to make them read this little bit about Mrs Thatcher’s interview? Even if they do peruse it, I am sure their comment will be: “Bhai, we can’t have everything as they have it in Inglistan.”
That was until the attacks of September 11, 2001, when 15 of the 19 aircraft hijackers turned out to be Saudi citizens. Angry Americans accused Saudi Arabia of being a hotbed of Islamic fanaticism and main paymaster of militant anti-American groups. Conservatives and Israel’s partisans unleashed a stinging campaign in the media and Congress against the Saudi royal family, calling for ‘regime change’ in Arabia as well as Iraq. Arabia’s oil, warned Washington’s oil imperialists, was too precious to be left to the Saudis — or to any Arabs, for that matter.
Then came week’s huge embarrassment. Princess Haifa, the wife of Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s high-profile ambassador to Washington, was alleged to have given thousands of dollars of private charitable donations for medical care to individuals she did not know that may have ended up in the hands of two of the US-based 9/11 hijackers.
Prince Bandar and his wife insist they had no knowledge their largesse would go to the hijackers, which sounds credible. They appear to be victims of exceptionally bad luck — if the story is true. True or not, the allegations further inflame anti-Arab feeling in the US and are giving Israel’s partisans in the media and Congress more ammunition to shoot at the Saudis. The White House is using the nasty episode to increase pressure on Riyadh to reverse its refusal to allow US forces to use Saudi bases to attack Iraq.
So, are the Saudis in fact responsible for financing what Americans call terrorism? It depends what one calls terrorism. The Saudis were the main financiers of the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, in a secret alliance with the United States. During the same era, the Saudis covertly joined the US in financing Saddam Hussein’s war against Iran. Saudi money went to the US-backed Nicaraguan Contras, and to the UNITA forces of Jonas Savimbi in Angola — all ‘freedom fighters’.
The Saudis also bankrolled small, militant Islamic groups - often with full US backing — provided they stayed far away from Arabia. In Afghanistan, Saudi money financed the Taliban, who warred against Afghanistan’s communist Northern Alliance, Wahabi fighters battling pro-Iranian Shia groups, and militant Wahabi missionaries.
Individual Saudis, a few of them princes, and some Saudi religious charities, gave millions of dollars to groups they held to be freedom fighters: notably Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine (branded ‘terrorists’ by the US and Israel). Financial aid to the needy and oppressed is a basic tenet of Islam.
Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, has long received funds from a small number of wealthy Saudis who see him as the Che Guevara of the Arab world battling US domination. However, the Saudi regime had nothing to do with these contributions. At the time they were made, the Saudi government was trying to assassinate Osama bin Laden. Most of the funds came from foreign bank accounts over which the Saudi government had no control.
The Saudi royals are now in a dangerous predicament. They depend on American military power for protection against Iraq and Iran — and their own people. The 5,000 US troops based in Saudi Arabia and 40,000 American civilians there are regarded by many Saudis as an army of occupation. Most Saudis idolize America, but are furious at Washington for its unquestioned support of Israel and impending war against Iraq, which they view as naked aggression.
So the royal family must play a risky game, balancing their people’s growing anti-Americanism, which is mirrored across the Muslim world, with their military and political dependence on the US, and need to stay in Washington’s good books.
But the US also needs the Saudis. First and foremost, they supply oil to the US, Europe and Japan in great quantity, at very low price. Today, oil sells for $25 a barrel. Osama bin Laden asserts the West is robbing Arabia’s resources: oil, he insists, should cost $300 a barrel.
The Saudis buy huge quantities of advanced US arms they cannot use and mostly keep in storage: $40 billion from 1993-2000. These purchases keep US military production lines open, reduce costs of US weapons, and employ large numbers of highly paid defence workers in key electoral states. The Saudis keep at least $100 billion in the US financial system, with big chunks in government debt.
No matte how dismayed Americans are with the Saudis and vice versa, they need each other. Sweep away the royal family and a Col. Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein would likely seize power; they will not so readily be at Washington’s beck and call. Or, if true democratic elections are ever held, Islamists might win. They hold the subversive idea that Arabia’s vast oil wealth must serve all the Muslim world and not just 7,000 Saudi princes.—Copyright Eric S. Margolis, 2002
Civil liberties groups and Attorney General John D. Ashcroft don’t often agree. Yet both quickly sounded the alarm at the news that the Bush administration has begun considering the creation of a domestic intelligence agency.
Civil libertarians warn that any such agency could be beyond control; Mr. Ashcroft denounced the idea as antithetical to his own efforts to make law enforcement and intelligence work closely together.
“The establishment of a separate, distinct agency would be to move in the other direction,” he said recently. “Instead of to integrate and cooperate and communicate, it would be to segregate.” His objections, and the civil libertarians’, are substantive. But the idea should not be so quickly dismissed. While FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III is trying to remake the FBI into an effective counterterrorism force, he may not succeed. Alternatives should be explored.
Two issues need to be separated: the rules governing domestic spying and the agency charged with doing the job. No agency should collect domestic intelligence — that is, spy — on Americans who are not working on behalf of a foreign power. If such people are committing crimes, that is the business of law enforcement. If not, government has no business in their business. That principle should be the same for the FBI as for some hypothetical agency. The key questions are whether a new agency would likely be more effective than the bureau and whether it would be more or less prone to abuse.
The bureau is no stranger to domestic intelligence operations — catching spies and watching potential terrorists. The notion that there is something radically new about an agency collecting foreign intelligence domestically is wrong. But the FBI does have a history of abusing its powers while collecting intelligence; and foreign intelligence, while part of its mission, is not its soul. Agents join the bureau to catch crooks, which is the guts of their training. Crime-fighting also offers the best means of professional advancement. Intelligence analysis is not the FBI’s strong suit. Neither is dissemination of intelligence that the bureau obtains.
True, there have been significant counterterrorism successes despite these impediments. But the FBI’s institutional culture clearly led to missed opportunities in the months and years before Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Ashcroft may be right that a devoted intelligence agency could never bridge intelligence and law enforcement as well as the FBI. But we think it is reasonable to ask whether an organization dedicated to collecting and analyzing foreign intelligence in order to protect domestic security might have more success.
Would such an agency be more likely to infringe on civil liberties? It might be argued that the relationship between the FBI and the Justice Department engenders a degree of discipline about the rule of law — an awareness on the part of FBI agents that the information they collect and the means they use to collect it must ultimately pass muster in court. An organization steeped in the secrecy of the intelligence world might balk at respecting such constraints.
On the other hand, an agency focused narrowly on intelligence and counterterrorism might not be likely to cut as wide a swath through the population as the currently configured FBI. At any rate, entrenched turf concerns should not stand in the way of a sober investigation of the potential costs and benefits of creating a new agency. Clearly, the current system has not performed so well as to pre-empt further discussion.—The Washington Post