In today’s Washington Post, an anonymous intelligence official talked about the intelligence community’s role in the attempted Christmas bombing:

Anyone who believes that a relatively small organization like NCTC [National Counterterrorism Center] is going to connect every electron in each of those 30 databases is either disingenuous or naive, and certainly knows very little about how intelligence analysis actually works.

Bingo! We as a public have to reorient our expectations about the intelligence community’s ability to ensure 100 percent security on a 24/7/365 basis. That’s not a knock on intelligence pros. As a former intel analyst, I’ve seen time and time again just how unrealistic the expectations are.

While individual quotes that dumb down the intelligence community’s capabilities are illustrative, they fail to drive home how difficult intel work really is. I think it’s more useful to examine what it’s actually like to “connect the dots” in the case of a potential terrorist operative. From my own experience, here’s how it works:

I’d receive a lead from the CIA Station in Rabat, Morocco, about a potential bad guy. For the purposes of this explanation, let’s say he’s a Moroccan named Abdul Aziz Mohammed Abu Sayaf, but I don’t know anything else about him, such as his date or place of birth. (I chose that name not because I want to stereotype all “terrorists” as Arab or because he’s an actual bad guy, but because – as I explain in detail below – it will help illustrate a point about transliteration’s role in analysis of suspected terrorists specifically from Muslim countries.)

My goal is to find out everything we know about this individual and determine whether he’s a legitimate threat. This is no small point — in order to raise the alarm, I need definitive intelligence corroboration that the individual in question has a reported history that solidifies him as a potential danger. In other words, we don’t just arrest people because of a single report from a source of unknown quality. For the record, 99 percent of the time, walk-in sources to U.S. Embassies are of poor-to-unknown quality. That includes friends and family members who walk into the embassy and claim their relatives are potential dangers. Why? Family relations are tangled webs, and who really knows if your uncle just might want you arrested in revenge for that unsettled family land dispute.

Therefore, I’ll take his name and plug it into NCTC’s terrorism search, a database that stores more information about terrorism suspects than you could ever imagine. Most of the information is contained in reports from the CIA, NSA, DoD, State Department, and foreign intelligence services that have shared with us. The reports range in length from just a paragraph or two about a specific individual, to tens upon tens of pages long of names, aliases, and birth dates of “suspected” individuals about whom these suspicions are undefined (thank the Italians for this).

“Abdul Aziz Mohammed Abu Sayaf” goes in the old database, and presto-changeo, 27 reports come back. I tear through them for information that matches what I know about my guy. Say I can throw out 22 of the reports because they’re all about an “Abul Aziz Mohammed Abu Sayaf” who lives in Indonesia and was arrested in 2004 and is now in jail.

That leaves five reports. Four are about an Egyptian. Out. And the last one is about some guy of the same name in an unknown country who doesn’t appear to have really done anything wrong. I’m interested in the last one, but need much information on him before taking action.

Here’s where it gets fun. Since there may be more information out there, I start looking for variations of Abul Aziz Mohammed Abu Sayaf’s name, as names like Aziz, Mohammed, and Sayaf can be spelled several different ways when transliterated into English from Arabic. But rather than guess at which combination of the spellings works in our guy’s case, I would enter into the database, “Abdul Aziz* M*h*m*d Abu Say*af*,” which accounts for the different vowels and multiple consonants that may be used in variant spellings.

The result? 2,453 new reports to comb through!

I would logically cut that number down by entering what little other information I know about this guy. Next search: “Abdul Aziz* M*h*m*d Abu Say*af* AND Morocco.” Down to 372. Next search: “Abdul Aziz* M*h*m*d Abu Say*af* AND Morocco adj! 20,” which means all of the above words must appear within 20 words of one another. Down to 87.

I diligently read or skim through all the 87 reports looking for any nugget of information that could corroborate the suspicions about our man. Perhaps I find an additional report or two about an individual who might be the person in question, but I can only say that with 50 percent confidence.

The end result is that I write another report saying only what I can definitively conclude:

Abdul Aziz Mohammed Abu Sayaf is suspected of wanting to enter the United States to conduct a terrorist attack. Sources of unknown quality indicate Abu Sayaf is interested in traveling this month, though it remains unknown whether Abdul Aziz Mohammed Abu Sayaf is a credible threat to the United States.

I file my report, and the receiving officer – given limited resources to follow leads – deems my report interesting, but not urgent.

Two days later, an individual named Abdull-Aziz Muhammad Abou Sayyaff buys a ticket on a flight to Newark and tries to detonate an explosive belt on board. With hindsight, it’s easy to point out the flaws in my analytic process: Should the name spelling be uniform? Why did you limit your search so much? This is national security – you mean to tell me you can’t be bothered to read 327 reports? Shouldn’t we chase down every lead?  And etc… sigh.

These are easy and obvious criticisms. And certainly, some improvements can and will continue to be made. However, given the vast amount of American and internationally derived information, the pressing need to run down several searches like this on any work day, and the permanent resource constraints, these are also criticisms by those who don’t understand the tremendous complexity of intelligence work and the diminishing marginal returns of hiring thousands more additional analysts.

In short, finding bad guys is often like looking for grains of sugar on a beach. Unfortunately, we have to accept that we might not find them all.

With the news that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was linked to, and possibly directed by, a group called Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), there’s much apprehension and confusion about this allegedly “new” offshoot of Osama Bin Laden’s group.

Though I’m usually not one to lead the charge against “the media”, I’ve been most disappointed by the lack of explanation about the differences in organization, targets, intentions, and capabilities between the group based in Yemen and the one along the Af-Pak border.

Let’s get the obvious but oft-unstated out of the way:  Though AQAP may trace some of its origins to the AQSL-directed 2000 bombing of the USS COLE, today AQAP is a distinct, separate entity from Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda (which is commonly referred to throughout the intelligence community as Al Qaeda Senior Leadership, or AQSL).  AQAP may share a general ideological affiliation with AQSL, but - most significantly - its specific targeting intentions and attack capabilites may vary significantly.  Furthermore, AQAP’s leadership is largely independent to do as it pleases, and though it may receive occasional communications and guidance from Osama Bin Laden’s cadre, AQAP is essentially free to follow or ignore it as it may seem fit.

The best move AQAP is adopting the “al Qaeda” brand.  Franchising AQ is a no-brainer:  the group in Yemen and Saudi can not only entice finances and recruits to its organization on the al Qaeda name, but it also strikes fear world-wide as pundits, hosts, and articles flippantly repeat the name as if the group were under direct orders and possessed similar strike capabilities as Al Qaeda’s Senior Leadership back in 2001.

So what are AQAP’s intents and capabilities?  The group certainly shares an obvious anti-American/anti-”Western” bent, along with its Af-Pak based bretherin.  Since 2003, AQAP has launched several attacks against employees of Western petroleum countries, tourists, and the American embassy and consulate.  But whereas AQSL is focused on large-scale attacks against US soil, the Arabian Peninsula group has a primary motivation of toppling the Saudi and Yemeni regimes, and likely views these American/Western targets as not quite as important.

“But what about the Christmas Day plot?” you ask, “that seems like a pretty serious attempt to kill Americans on American soil.”  True, it does.  However, note that the plot failed.  It’s an important point because since successful terrorism plots are the marriage of a group’s intention to hit a particular target plus its capability to do so, on that score, AQAP failed.  It is quite easy to have a lone operative like Abdulmutallab volunteer to conduct an attack, and the groups leadership provide him the basic training and materiel to execute it.  But the fact that the bomber and explosives were incompetent and/or faulty respectively speaks volumes about AQAP’s lack of capability to conduct anything close to a 9/11 style attack from a Yemeni safe-haven.  Of course, since the group has displayed its intention to target Americans in America, the group should merit close attention for improving operational capability.

Yet AQAP still succeeded in exploiting the media value of even a failed operation.  And that, in a word, is amazing.  If we continue to let partisan political bickering drive security policy, then fledgling groups like AQAP continue to win as they gain fame and notarity.  It’s even more incredible that Republicans have the audacity to politically exploit nearly uncloseable gaps in America’s defensive net as it was their president who constructed its architecture in the first place.

Crossposted at The Progressive Fix.

The Whos down in Whoville might almost be jealous of Portici - a town of some 60,000 residents near Naples, Italy - whose mayor, Vincenzo Cuomo declared that Christmas decorations would be banned in public this year.

And why would Whoville necessarily be jealous of this decidedly anti-festive decree?  Because at least the good mayor has a reason to justify his actions: In Whoville, the Grinch stole Christmas out of spite; in Portici, Mayor Cuomo’s policy is at least trying to break a mafia funding scheme.

The crackdown on tinsel, Mr. Cuomo says, is the latest front in his battle against the Camorra, the Naples-based mob known for its brutality and economic savvy.

When the Christmas season comes around — and holiday shopping picks up — the town sees a spike in payments of the pizzo, or protection money. The “pizzo di Natale,” as Christmas-time payments are called, is commonly carried out through the forced sale of overpriced decorations — from Advent calendars to poinsettias — by the Camorra to shopkeepers.

So far, so good, though the mafia aren’t usually ones for taking such aggressive attempts to curb their power lightly.  Two months ago, the mayor received a bullet from an AK-47 in the mail.  Bill O’Reilly:  Eat your heart out - this is a very different, yet very real War on Christmas whose consequences, even localized to a medium-sized town in southern Italy, are far more important that your invented culture war.

It seems almost elementary that the governments of Pakistan and the United States both have a vested interest in extending Islamabad’s authority over the whole of its country, a point David Ignatius makes today:

Here’s the cold, hard truth: U.S. success in Afghanistan depends on Pakistan gaining sovereignty over the tribal belt. If the insurgents can continue to maintain their havens in North Waziristan and other tribal areas, then President Obama’s surge of troops in Afghanistan will fail. It’s that simple.

It’s not that simple, but extending the Pakistani government’s writ is certainly a core element to any hope of securing Afghanistan.  A safe base of operation across the border in Pakistan would allow al Qaeda’s senior leadership room to incubate in hopes of re-spreading its wings in a larger Taliban-protected region.

But just a handful of pages away in your trusty Washington Post illuminates just how difficult that challenge will be:

Pakistan’s Supreme Court nullified on Wednesday a controversial deal that had given President Asif Ali Zardari and thousands of other government officials amnesty from prosecution on corruption charges, a decision likely to further weaken Zardari’s shaky hold on power.

The ruling could open the door to additional legal challenges against Zardari. Although he still has immunity from prosecution under the constitution, opponents plan to contest that by arguing that Zardari is technically ineligible for the presidency. …

But Zardari’s ability to make decisions about the level of Pakistani cooperation with the United States has been compromised by his struggle to simply hold on to his job — a task likely to be made more difficult by the court ruling.

There are essentially three legs of power in the Pakistani government — the military and intelligence services are the largest center of gravity, followed by the courts and then the civilian leadership.   Rivalries between all three are intense to say the least, a dissection of which could occupy an entire encyclopedic volume, never mind the rest of this short blog post.  And even though the military isn’t mentioned in the WaPo’s article, it almost goes without saying that the generals would be fine if Zardari fell from power.

The point is that as long as these communities’ main focus is a struggle for power, the White House will never get them to pay primary attention to internal security.  And even if you could, each power-base has reasons (some better than others) to turn a blind eye to the Taliban lodged in Pakistan’s hinterland.

The situation isn’t hopeless… yet.  Despite long-standing suspicions of civilian President Zardari’s corruption (hey, the guy wasn’t called “Mr. 10 Percent” for nothing), he is the legitimately elected leader and was allowed to return to Pakistan - with his late-wife Benazir Bhutto - in an amnesty deal reached with ex-President Pervez Musharraf.  Therefore, the US should stand by Pakistan’s nascent democracy and support Zaradari, without making him look like an American puppet.

Then the US government should work on aligning the military under Pakistan’s civilian leadership.  Congress tried this by conditioning aid on just such a goal in October.  Guess what?  It didn’t go over so well with Pakistan’s generals.  Back to the drawing board.

Crossposted at The Progressive Fix.

David Brooks, oh how you are a dying breed: The rational, thoughtful conservative who holds true to his core values while having the humility to actually grant the other guy a point.

He also may have a man-crush on the president.  That’s why it is perhaps not so surprising that Brooks’ most recent column follows up on a point I made a few days ago:  That Barack Obama’s foreign policy is grounded in thoroughly progressive values.  Here’s an excerpt:

In 2002, Obama spoke against the Iraq war, but from the vantage point of a cold war liberal. He said he was not against war per se, just this one, and he was booed by the crowd. In 2007, he spoke about the way Niebuhr formed his thinking: “I take away the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction.”

His speeches at West Point and Oslo this year are pitch-perfect explications of the liberal internationalist approach. Other Democrats talk tough in a secular way, but Obama’s speeches were thoroughly theological. He talked about the “core struggle of human nature” between love and evil.

More than usual, he talked about the high ideals of the human rights activists and America’s history as a vehicle for democracy, prosperity and human rights. He talked about America’s “strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct.” Most of all, he talked about the paradox at the core of cold war liberalism, of the need to balance “two seemingly irreconcilable truths” — that war is both folly and necessary.

Brooks used the term “liberal internationalism” to describe Obama’s approach.  Your friends here at the PPI have a different version of the phrase, preferring “progressive internationalism”.  Though some of this manifesto is dated to a time when Iraq was clearly beginning to unravel, here’s what the PPI said back in 2003 before I drew my paycheck from around these parts:

Progressive internationalism stresses the responsibilities that come with our enormous power: to use force with restraint but not to hesitate to use it when necessary, to show what the Declaration of Independence called “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind,” to exercise leadership primarily through persuasion rather than coercion, to reduce human suffering where we can, and to create alliances and international institutions committed to upholding a decent world order.

The Obama administration has taken a lot of heat for supposedly being “too realist” in its approach to foreign policy.  Certainly there’s evidence to support that claim:  Brooks says the White House “misjudged the emotional moment when Iranians were marching in Tehran” or there was the uncomfortable incident when Hillary Clinton side-stepped the issue of human rights in China because they “couldn’t interfere with the global economic crisis” (which she recently tried to rectify in a speech at Georgetown). True enough, at least for now.

However, when books are written on the Obama administration’s foreign policy, I’d bet the driving mind-set will be one that identifies and resolves discrete national security interests, underpinned by keen attention to America’s values.  Closing Guantanamo is perhaps the best example thus far.

A cleaned-up version of this post is over at the ProgressiveFix.com

Three cheers for Dick Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois.

Rather than offering shrill, partisan talking points at the prospect of closing the Guantanamo prison - equal parts Islamic extremist recruiting tool as well as human rights stain on our national psyche - Senator Durbin has consistently offered pragmatic progressive voice that is steadfast in his resolve to close Gitmo and ensure the security of the country.  The result is today’s announcement that the administration will likely open the detention facility in Thompson, Illinois as the destination for many of Guantanamo’s detainees.

When conservatives were doing their best Chicken Little impersonation about the alleged perils of bringing hardened terrorists to American soil, Durbin rebuffed Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, calmly telling NBC’s David Gregory on Meet the Press that:

Continuing Guantanamo, unfortunately, makes our troops less safe.  The bottom line as I see it is Guantanamo should close in an orderly way. … The fact is that closing Guantanamo, that announcement by the president, as well as abandoning torture techniques and so-called enhanced interrogation, finally said to the rest of the world that it’s a new day.  Join us in a new approach to keeping this world and America safe.  I think it was a break from the past we desperately needed.

[W]hen we checked with the director of FBI, Mr. Mueller, he said there’s no question that supermax facilities, not a single escape, we limit the communication of these detainees and prisoners, and we can continue to do that. …

I’d be OK with them in a supermax facility, because we’ve never had an escape from one.  And as I said, we have over 340 convicted terrorists now being held safely in our prisons.  I just don’t hear anyone suggesting releasing them or sending them to another country.  That isn’t part of the prospect that we have before us. …

With this stance, Durbin shows how rational solutions can stand with both American values and security: closing Guantanamo is a moral and security imperative, and the idea that America’s safety is threatened when terrorists are in supermax facilities is nothing more than political scare tactics.

And as a result, it looks like job-starved Illinois will be rewarded in the process.  The state will retro-fit the empty Thompson prison to meet the new security standards, and then have to staff the facility full time once open.  Thompson sits in Carroll County, IL, where unemployment rests at 11.1 percent; a refurbished facility could bring as many as 3,000 jobs.

And though this is anecdotal evidence, I asked Mike Satlak - my college buddy, Oswego, IL resident (120 miles from Thompson), and in the interest of full disclosure, Dick Durbin fan - about the prospect of moving prisoners to rural Illinois.  “I’m not scared at all of any security threat, and Thompson could really use the jobs.”

Word hit the street over the weekend that senior CIA officials have been pushing the Obama administration to expand unmanned aerial drone attacks against targets in Pakistan.  In the spies’ cross hairs are top Taliban commanders based in Quetta, a large regional city.

If counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations aren’t your cup of tea, you may have missed the ever-expanding role that unmanned drones have played in Pakistan.  While it’s true that President Obama has signed off on the program’s expanded use to now include more of Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, the issue of targeting Quetta - a major population center - seems to have given the White House some pause.

A former senior CIA official said he and others were repeatedly rebuffed when proposing operations in Baluchistan or pushing Pakistan to target the Taliban in Quetta. “It wasn’t easy to talk about,” the official said. “The conversations didn’t last a long time.”

That sounds about right - attacking Quetta is a bridge too far in the drone war.  Here’s why:

Many question whether we should have an unmanned drone program in the first place.  There are strong and reasoned arguments from intelligent analysts who believe the costs of a drone program outweigh its benefits.  The strongest argument offered against the program is that by unintentionally causing civilian casualties with off-target or ill-timed strikes, the program agitates and alienates the population that the counter-insurgents are supposed to be protecting.

After this story first broke, I agree with that basic premise, but said that drone attacks should be “extraordinarily limited, not stopped” because they were a “valuable tool in certain rare circumstances.”  Further, I developed a five-part criteria as a guideline to determine when those might be.  My forth criterion says that it’s “unrealistic to say that drone won’t fire on population centers because then the targets would just hide in plain sight.  However, the US must carefully weigh the chance of civilian casualties and seek to avoid them - by using smaller missiles, modifying times of the strikes, etc. - at all costs.”

However, Quetta is a city of 850,000 people, and it is difficult to imagine that innocent civilians could be reasonably avoided in any single strike - no matter how good the intelligence is.  Therefore, the administration is right to endorse the general practice, but to oppose its application in this specific instance.