Report: Al Qaeda a tougher target for spies than the Kremlin Nick Juliano

Published: Thursday March 20, 2008



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Print This Email This Efforts to penetrate al Qaeda with undercover spies or convince the terror group's members to turn on their organization has confounded intelligence agencies in the US and its allies, even 10 years after the group founded by Osama bin Laden declared war on America, the Washington Post reports Thursday. Based on conversations with current and former intelligence officials from the US and Europe, the paper's Craig Whitlock reports that clandestine efforts against al Qaeda have been largely ineffective and the group is proving "tougher to penetrate than the Kremlin during the Cold War." Alain Chouet, a former French spy, tells Whitlock that al Qaeda penetration takes years, and that its Western foes may have missed their chance to insert agents into the group's upper reaches. "I think you cannot penetrate such a movement now," he said. Ten years ago, on Feb. 23, 1998, Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring it "the individual duty of every Muslim" to kill Americans and their allies around the world. Looking back, some U.S. and European intelligence officials said their governments had underestimated the enemy and thought they could rely on old methods to destabilize al-Qaeda.



During the Cold War, for example, the CIA had enjoyed some success in recruiting KGB moles and persuading Soviet officials to defect. The agency was also able to buy off Afghan warlords with suitcases of cash, persuading them to fight Soviet forces in the 1980s and to turn on the Taliban in 2001. A similar approach has worked, to a limited extent, against insurgents in Iraq: An informant's tip led directly to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, in 2006.



But al-Qaeda's core organization in Pakistan and Afghanistan has so far proved impervious to damaging leaks.



Part of the problem is that the CIA and FBI had very few Arabic-speaking officers who could handle or recruit informants. Instead of making it a priority to develop human sources, the agencies assumed they could rely on spy satellites and other high-tech tools. Where the Cold War saw US spies largely working out of embassies abroad, mingling with local officials at cocktail parties and convincing them to hand over intelligence about the Soviet Union, the fight against al Qaeda does not conform to traditional international borders. The nature of new al Qaeda recruits also creates a difficult environment in which to insert undercover agents -- rookie terrorists are commonly tapped to carry out suicide-bombing missions or kill someone. "You can't let them do" that, a former British official tells Whitlock. "You have an obligation to prevent it from happening." If an undercover agent tried to squirm out of such a mission, though, it would tip off higher-ups in a terror cell. Furthermore, prior to 9/11, the CIA was limited in its ability to recruit potential operatives or informants abroad because of 1995 guidelines that limited its ability to recruiting anyone suspected of human rights violations (i.e. just about anyone who would be able to hand over useful information from inside a terrorist group). Those guidelines, oft-derided within the CIA, were repealed in 2002 a year after Congress passed a law to push the CIA to do so. The fluid nature of terrorist groups, and their constant need for new recruits, does give intelligence officials hope of one day infiltrating al Qaeda, Whitlock reports. A Moroccan-born informant who infiltrated al Qaeda training camps while working with French intelligence, tells Whitlock that infiltration of a paid operative is difficult, but not impossible. "Every moment of my existence was a test, every little answer, every little movement," the informant, who wrote of his experience under the pseudonym Omar Nasiri, told Whitlock of his time in the camps. "You had to show complete devotion to the cause. If someone does all this to blend in, even if it is deception, the risk is that sooner or later he will believe it."

