Wanted: Skilled terrorist trackers

The News Virginian
Published: May 24, 2008

His legacy nibbled to bits by the perpetual occupation of Iraq, President Bush advances toward the respite of political oblivion with the ghosts of obscure but fateful failures on his trail. Principal among them are tears in the frail security net established in the rubble of 9/11.
Veiled by the absence of a terrorist attack on American soil since the collapse of the Twin Towers, the fraying of counterterrorism programs is on full display in a recent Washington Times report. The story is that one of every three positions is vacant in the FBI division tasked with tracking al-Qaida. The bureau, according to the report, is seeking volunteers to fill openings. Volunteerism works for terrorists, not so much for those who combat them.
John Miller, the FBI’s assistant director, carefully disputed the story, spilling vintage government doublespeak while declining to address specifics. The agency has “made great strides to build a domestically focused national terrorism organization.” Including, presumably, luring the little old lady from Pasadena to monitor Osama’s movements in between scrapbook classes.
The chief of the communications analysis unit of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, Bassem Youssef, is considerably more to the point. He told the Times that the bureau’s International Terrorism Operations Sections (ITOS) are “inexcusably understaffed,” a description he backed with a written statement to Congress claiming that just 62 percent of critical ITOS supervisory positions are filled.
If Youssef is to be believed, the suits as well as the jobs might be empty. He charges that FBI policy states that agents, ITOS supervisors and counterterrorism managers do not need “subject matter expertise” in Middle Eastern terrorism.
Well, naturally. What they might need is a good Rolodex.
Before elaborating, it should be noted that Youssef has an ax to grind. He has accused the FBI of improperly denying him promotions. It should also be noted that the Justice Department of Professional Responsibility has determined that the bureau retaliated against Youssef over his disclosures about the agency’s director and a congressional member.
Whether cronyism applied in Youssef’s case, it has decidedly been a factor in acquiring key positions in terrorism agencies created under Bush. Highly paid federal security directors charged with keeping terrorists off airplanes include or have included a onetime Beach Boys front man and senator’s son, sundry former Transportation Security Administration flacks and well-connected former political aides and managers from within the federal bureaucracy, all with little or no security background.
The situation is similar at the Department of Homeland Security, with Julie Myers among the most striking examples. She was tabbed three years to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the frontline operator in the domestic war on terror, with a $5-billion annual budget and 15,000 employees at its disposal. She was 36 at the time of her appointment and sharply questioned by the Senate over her qualifications, chief of which appears to have been her uncle, former Joint Chief of Staffs Chairman Richard Myers, and husband, John Wood, former chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
None of this has produced what all of us fear most, but this is likely more circumstantial than the result of an efficient domestic security system. Recall that eight years lapsed between an initial attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the one that felled the towers in 2001. Further, al-Qaida resources are heavily invested in the insurgency in Iraq.
On the eve the annual American rite of honoring those who have sacrificed life and limb for their country, the U.S. remains vulnerable, no longer because of the cunning of our terrorist enemies but because of an adherence to the politics of personal ambition with roots extending to the pinnacle of power. We can only hope never to see the fruit of this legacy.