Countering Terrorism - How Not To Do It

"Letter to Editor"

06/18/2007

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: Countering Terrorism - How Not To Do It

On June 6, 2002, former FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and how the FBI could do a better job detecting and disrupting terrorism. Time magazine had acquired (not from Rowley) a long letter she wrote to FBI Director Mueller listing a string of lapses in the month before 9/11 that helped account for the failure to prevent the attacks. As painful and embarrassing as it was after such tragedy to unravel the mistakes, Rowley insisted that the unraveling was necessary in order to address effectively the threat of further terrorist attacks. Her VIPS colleagues asked Rowley to review what has happened in the five years since her testimony, and we have contributed to this memorandum. In what follows, Rowley outlines how the primacy given to PR and other political factors have encumbered still further the FBI's ability to deal in reasonable and effective ways with the challenge of terrorism.

The entire memo is here: http://voxverax.blogspot.com/2007/06/memo-from-vips-on-terrorism.html

Prepared by:


Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

- Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent
- Tom Maertens, former NSC Director for Nonproliferation; former Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Dept. of State
- Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst; former counterterrorism manager, Dept. of State
- Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst


Submited by: Leigh Pomeroy