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Jewish World Review
June 9, 2005
/ 2 Sivan, 5765
Judge Richard Posner has the most intelligent things to say about intelligence in the age of terror
By
Bob Tyrrell
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Judge Richard A. Posner was in town for a public appearance the other night, and as he is a leading candidate for the title World's Foremost Authority, I thought I would stop by the famous old Willard Hotel to see what he had to say about the 9/11 Commission Report and
its legislative by-product, the Intelligence Report Act. Supposedly the
legislation improves the capacity of our intelligence community in this time
of terror attacks worldwide. Posner, a federal judge and lecturer at the
University of Chicago Law School, writes on a broad range of public matters.
He writes beautifully on issues that do not invite elegant prose and with a
powerful analytical mind. Often he comes to conclusions with which I do not
agree. For instance in his book on the impeachment of President Bill
Clinton, he reviewed the law and the transgressions of the culprit,
concluding that Clinton could be impeached but should not to be. Well, Judge, I was with you part of the way.
Now he was in Washington to discuss his most recent book,
"Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11,"
which is part of a promising series of brief books that the Hoover
Institution is publishing on pressing political, economic and social issues.
As usual Posner's approach reminds me of another brilliant, if
unconventional, policy scholar the late Edward Banfield. Banfield, a
Harvard government professor of two decades back, employed vast learning and
a skeptical intelligence to arrive at conclusions that ended up being
commonsensical, and thus, to his fellow scholars, deeply disturbing.
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On the 9/11 Commission's findings and the consequent
legislation, Posner's most optimistic judgment is that the legislation is
hazy. It leaves the president and intelligence reformers much room in which
to revise the commission's recommendations, and they had better use all the
room available because they will need it to improve intelligence. His
additional judgment is very much like one Banfield might render, to wit,
there is no "solution" to the intelligence problem. Surprise attacks are by
their nature surprising. While we attempt to thwart the next 9/11, the
terrorists are working on something new. Will the intelligence community
anticipate it and prevent it? That is hard to say, though we had better try.
"The commission's report," Posner writes, "mentions only in
passing the greater potential threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in
the hands of terrorists or enemy states. Deadly pathogens, lethal gases, and
even small atomic bombs can be fabricated almost anywhere in the world and,
because of their small size, delivered surreptitiously to the United States
and activated by a small number of terrorists or foreign agents." Posner
goes on: "An active program of foreign intelligence of unprecedented scope
and technological sophistication is needed and more: a program that can
anticipate technological surprises in the form of new, more lethal weapons
of mass destruction or means of delivering them."
As for the reforms in place, Posner is skeptical of their
usefulness. Yet there is one reform that he seems to favor, though it is not
now in place. The domestic intelligence function now in the hands of the FBI
should be "carved out" and placed in a different authority. That new
authority would operate as does the United Kingdom's Security Service (MI5).
Unlike the FBI today, MI5 is not a police force vested with pursuing
terrorists with the intent of prosecuting them. The prosecution of them is a
distraction best left to a police force, namely the FBI. Such a reform,
Posner agrees, creates civil liberties problems. Yet he believes the
problems can be overcome for the good of prosecuting criminals and of
gathering still more information on domestic terror plots. It has worked
well in the UK and might work well here.
Posner makes the interesting point that the 9/11 Commission did
not study intelligence gathering by other, possibly more seasoned,
intelligence agencies in countries such as the UK and Israel. Nor did the
9/11 Commission avail itself sufficiently to the expertise of Americans with
superior knowledge and experience in intelligence. He mentions the loss that
the commission suffered when Henry Kissinger was barred as chairman,
apparently for political reasons. His book is among the finest analyses of
intelligence gathering and of intelligence reform I know of. It rests on an
insight into intelligence that the historian Paul Johnson made years ago.
Johnson's insight is useful to those who underestimate the difficulty of the
topic.
Says Johnson: "Intelligence reports are like reading spy novels
with the last chapter missing, because you never know what actually has
happened in the end." To be sure, Posner is aware of the murkiness of
intelligence. Readers of this book will become aware of the huge job ahead
in the struggle against terrorists.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.
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