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The Missing Men on the Street
The first line of defense against terrorism is
information. And the best source of information is found in the places the
terrorists come from. America has been losing the capability to go to those
places over the last three decades. A combination of two developments brought
this on. First, there was the growing capabilities of space satellites. These
high flying birds could take pictures, use radar and scoop up electronic
transmissions. All this seemed pretty neat. But not neat enough when you wanted
hear what people were saying on the street you had overhead pictures of. Second,
sending your people into enemy streets could get messy. Agents get caught, and
often killed in unpleasant ways. Over the last two decades, we have increasingly
seen the errors of our ways. But the forces of agents we had in the 1970s has
faded away and will take time to rebuild. You can't fight a war on terrorism
unless you have agents who can talk the talk, and walk the walk, of the foe they
are seeking. And yes, Americans do walk differently, as do people from every
culture. If you want to really know what is going on in, say, Egypt, you need
people there who can talk and walk like an Egyptian. On September 17th,
the director of the FBI put the word out in Arab-American community that the FBI
needed several hundred bilingual (Arabic-English) translators and linguists. The
response was overwhelming (see www.fbijobs.com for current needs). A few days
later, a similar call was put out for people who could handle Pushto (what 40
percent of Afghans speak) and Farsi (the language of Iran and western
Afghanistan.) Again, the response was far more than the FBI could handle. This
points out two things. As always, immigrant Americans tend to be more patriotic
than those whose families have been here for generations. And, as always,
immigrant Americans are suspected of still harboring some (or a lot of) loyalty
to their former country. While that is sometimes the case, it is also true that
most American traitors in the last few decades have come from old families. Yes,
there are often divided loyalties in migrant communities, but the majority of
migrants are very loyal. The Bin Laden organization learned this the hard way
during the 1990s and now recommends that it's people in America stay away from
Arab-American communities. Another Arab is more likely to pick up what the Bin
Laden people are really up to, and turn them in. Or at least pass their
suspicions on to the police. While having someone on the street can be
dangerous for the agents, it can be embarrassing for the government that sent
him. The American media, in particular, has a hard time dealing with all the
twists and turns of foreign cultures. The view of these foreigners that gets
presented to the American people (and political leaders) is usually a
combination of what is true, and what we wish were true. As long as you are just
depending on space satellites, news reporters and a few diplomats who like to
take long walks in the countryside to meet people, you can think pretty much
think what you like. But having a lot of agents on the street, and you suddenly
start getting contrary reports. The affairs of foreign nations are rarely as
simple as we would like them to be. Many senior officials accuse the agents of
having their own agenda (which is sometimes true) and are not happy about having
to shift their thinking just because those damn foreigners have shifted theirs.
There has long been a distaste for some of the people our foreign agents have to
deal with. If we are trying to shut down drug gangs, we have to deal with people
in the drugs business. Same with terrorism or government corruption. When the
media gets wind of the unsavory people "on the US payroll," politicians back
home get upset, as America is not supposed to be in cahoots with that sort. Laws
were passed in the 1990s, forbidding US intelligence agents from working with
people "with blood on their hands." If that sort of rule were imposed inside the
United States, many criminals would never be convicted. Police know that the
closer you get the crooks, the more criminals you have to deal with (informants,
witnesses and the like.) Overseas it gets even more murky as what might be
considered criminal here is not over there. Getting agents into action
takes years. The CIA, DEA and FBI (which now has over 40 foreign offices) know
it. The people with an aptitude for this work have to be found, trained and then
serve an apprenticeship with a more experienced hand in the field before being
turned lose. The thousands of agents needed to support a "War on Terrorism" and
it will take at least five years to develop that many useful agents. In the
meantime, some of these new recruits may be thrown into action prematurely and
lost. That will be the temptation. There will be a tremendous demand for
"action" in the war on terrorism and this will be dependent on getting
information at the street level in a lot of foreign countries. Although the
1990s "don't work with dirty people" laws are being repealed, so is the
realization that you can't fix the missing Man in the Street problem in only a
few years. This is going to get ugly, and stay ugly for a long time.
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