Life Inside the Bubble: Why a Top-Ranked Secret Service Agent Walked Away From It All
Page 18
If the politicization of the lives of our patriotic public servants and the intentionally misleading information disseminated by the administration are not enough to convince you that something suspicious is going on, ask yourself this: why were the survivors of the Benghazi attacks hidden?
No one disputes that there were several Americans serving in Benghazi on the night of the fateful attack, but as for their numbers or their location, details were intentionally hidden. Information leaks in Washington are so numerous that during my time with the Secret Service, they were typically factored into our plans. It was assumed that information would leak, and layered security plans designed to handle leaks were the rule, not the exception. Yet after the Benghazi attacks on both the diplomatic mission and the CIA annex, the survivors received medical attention in Benghazi, were moved to an airfield, transported first to Tripoli and then back to the United States, and treated at a facility at home, all the while hidden from the press and public.
That all of this action was taken without any information leaking to the media is an act of logistical secrecy I have never witnessed during all my time with the government. Given all of the people involved in all aspects of the incident, it is amazing that no information about the survivors was leaked. Keeping a secret in the federal government is exceedingly difficult, because trafficking in information, both classified and unclassified, is big business in Washington. During both my run for the US Senate and my tenure as an agent, I was appalled by the sheer number of individuals eager to scoop a story. Everyone wants to be in the “information in-crowd,” and the appetite for inside information from journalists, bloggers, and corrupt bureaucrats looking for some detail to use as political ransom is insatiable. The question is not if information is going to leak, but when.
Yet even in this environment, time passed and a thick blanket of secrecy remained over the location and condition of the Benghazi survivors. I was in awe of the intricate level of detail involved with keeping the Benghazi survivors’ location a secret and the preventative mechanisms put in place to silence anyone who had knowledge of the situation from speaking out. Even now, almost a year after the incident, CNN has reported on an unprecedented internal effort to ensure the silence of CIA personnel with knowledge of the Benghazi affair.**
In a March 1, 2013, letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Representatives Frank Wolf and Jim Gerlach cite a “reliable source” who indicated that there were as many as thirty survivors of the attack and that many of them were being treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. If this was this case, the effort to silence the survivors was even more unprecedented. Something has been exchanged for their cooperation, and it must be significant. It was only after relentless congressional, public, and media pressure that Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Tripoli, and Mark Thompson, deputy coordinator for operations for the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau, were located and authorized to testify before Congress about the numerous failures leading to the deaths of our personnel in Benghazi and the sad cover-up that followed.
But the political penalty to be paid by those working overtime to suppress the Benghazi survivors’ accounts of the incident is likely going to be severe. Every political consultant can attest to the fact that an issue becomes much more personal when you can put a human face on it. The Benghazi survivors eventually will recount, in tragic detail, the events of September 11, 2012; the fear, shock, and disappointment they felt at the utter lack of any significant US military or diplomatic response to an attack that lasted more than eight hours; and the anger at becoming pawns in the administration’s cover-up.
Tears tell a story words can never adequately replicate, and the officials involved in the deliberate suppression of information are well aware of this fact. A word of caution to the administration: as time passes, secrets become less secret, threats become less threatening, and promises become less rewarding. This information will leak out over time; indeed it has begun to come out already. Every detail of the survivors’ accounts of the attack will reopen a gaping wound and destroy any semblance of credibility this administration may have left. The bureaucracy is an imperfect shield, and it can save the administration and its surrogates only for a limited amount of time.
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BOSTON: TOO MANY AGENCIES, NOT ENOUGH COMMUNICATION
THE APRIL 15, 2013, terrorist attacks in Boston opened up a new chapter in our ongoing battle against terrorism. In a country where we attribute our success and prosperity to both economic and political liberty, which we extend to everyone within our borders, it is a tragedy that those who have enjoyed these freedoms still make America their target of choice. Terrorists who continue to target us subscribe to an ideology that is the very antithesis of freedom. Their ideology is one anchored in blame and pursues a goal of global hegemony and forced subservience. They use the tools of terror, death, and destruction to achieve these perverse goals. This is not about religion. There are three million Muslims currently living peacefully in the United States who would be revolting en masse if this were a religious issue. Rather, it is about a group of murderers attempting to hijack and hide behind religion in order to lend some air of legitimacy to their evil ambitions.
The Obama administration’s obvious discomfort with publicly acknowledging terrorism is a by-product of the president’s ideological belief system, which tends to the extreme left. The extreme left wing of the Democratic Party is led by politicians who believe that society can be perfected, that evil is simply a by-product of a societal breakdown, and that the historical mistakes of the United States are the cause of our current global challenges. It is this type of idiocy that is exposing the American people to unnecessary dangers as Washington avoids the warning signs of international and domestic terrorism in a misguided effort to not cast blame.
Having spent many years behind the curtain as a federal agent, I can attest to the damage a dangerously ignorant world outlook can have on the rank-and-file federal investigators working day and night to prevent terrorist attacks. Agents with the best of intentions can be thwarted from advancing an investigation because of pressure to show that their motives are purely law-enforcement related and no judgment has been based on the subject’s religion or appearance. This is specific to investigations into terror cases with a connection to radical Islam and creates an unnecessary layer of scrutiny based on the assumption that the good men and women investigating these types of cases would initiate a case based on a personal prejudice. It is this unnecessary, top-down politicization of an already heavily scrutinized federal investigative process that has real-world consequences. Often, those staffers who work in the insulated, crystal kingdom of Washington, DC, consistently fail to recognize the challenges of the agents doing the day-to-day work. This is one more instance of the dangerous effects that proliferating bureaucracy has on individuals within the government who are simply trying to do their jobs.
The Boston Marathon bombing was unprecedented in a number of unfortunate ways that I believe will permanently alter the domestic security landscape and hopefully change the dangerous path we are currently walking.
Terror attacks initiated by individuals of Chechen origin are an anomaly in the West. The Chechen separatist movement, seeking autonomy for Chechnya from the Russian federation, has avoided targeting the West, and specifically the United States, for strategic reasons. The Chechens have historically viewed us as geopolitical foes of the Russians and have not conducted attacks against us to avoid drawing us into their regional fight on the side of the Russians. Giving the US a reason to align with the Russians and rally behind a shared cause would be a tactical disaster for the separatist movement. The old saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” applies to the Chechen view of the United States.
However, this terrorist attack was not carried out by Chechen separatists, known for their ferocity in their attacks against the Russians. It was planned and executed by two brothers of Chechen descent who fled the
ir homeland and integrated into the community in Boston, attending local schools, participating in social and athletic events, and, in the case of the older brother, even marrying an American woman.
The Tsarnaev brothers used the compassionate clause in American immigration law for political refugees seeking asylum and the generosity of the American social safety net to finance an attack against the country that gave them a chance at a better life. Photos of older brother Tamerlan in his flashy clothes and stories of him driving around his neighborhood in expensive cars are striking in their ideological hypocrisy. This ideological disconnect has real consequences for intelligence gathering as well because, in a prosperous country such as ours, young adults with flashy clothes and expensive cars are the exception and not the rule. These two brothers were living a middle-class existence in an average middle-class American neighborhood. Had they suddenly abandoned all of their material luxuries to pursue a perverse ideological war against our political and economic freedoms, then they would have likely elicited a greater degree of public suspicion. But the Tsarnaev brothers maintained a “normal” appearance to their neighbors and friends. They are not what we consider the traditional face of terror, and this made the case even more shocking.
Although major sporting events within the United States have long been coveted targets for international terrorist groups, no international group or individual has been successful at executing a terrorist plot at one. The 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta that killed one and injured over a hundred was actually carried out by a United States citizen, Eric Rudolph. And, most damaging, with nothing more than small arms, smokeless powder, homemade shrapnel, and two pressure cookers, a teen and a twentysomething managed to effectively shut down a major United States city for nearly an entire business week and terrorize its entire population.
The Boston Marathon bombing was the first successful attack on American soil where surveillance camera technology and the controversial growth in its deployment directly contributed to the apprehension of the attackers before they were able to engage in additional destruction. This will inevitably advance the continuing national debate about the trade-offs between liberty and security as a growing number of Americans become uncomfortable with the new “surveillance society.”
If there was a “new normal” in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, then I believe we are in a “new new normal” after the April 15, 2013, Boston attack. It is clear now that, despite political statements to the contrary, global terrorist organizations are not “on the run” and are simply developing new operational models to deliver their product: terror.
Although the casualties and property damage resulting from the Boston attack were far less than those of 9/11, the long-term consequences are potentially more severe. The September 11 attacks utilized a “franchise” model of terrorism where cells of individuals, similar to franchisees in the business world, received training and guidance from an umbrella organization but implemented the destructive plan themselves. This contrasts with the Boston attack, in which the Tsarnaev brothers seemed to have been untrained and without support after the bombing. It is clear that someone taught them how to make the bombs, but the fact that they did not try to escape after the attack and carried it out without trying to disguise themselves shows a lack of sponsorship from a larger terrorist organization.
The tragic tactical success of the Boston attack has demonstrated to the world the potential for a new, more dangerous model of terrorism. I call it “sole proprietorship” terrorism.
Leveraging the explosive growth in online video sharing and social media, terrorist umbrella organizations can initiate the “self-radicalization” process through online jihadist propaganda and provide guidance and training through instructional content without ever having to get their hands dirty. Then, after a successful attack, the umbrella organization can use the event as marketing for new recruits.
This model is a greater danger because the self-radicalized members (or small groups in the case of the Tsarnaevs) have limited incriminating links and will leave fewer investigative and intelligence clues about the planning and operational stages of their attacks, making them harder to detect and prevent. Adding to the difficulty is the trend toward the expansion of the already segmented federal law-enforcement bureaucracy. Sole-proprietorship terrorism by nature does not involve the networks of individuals the franchise model relies on, and it will reduce the potential that these terrorists will somehow be flagged.
One example of the fragmentation among federal agencies comes from my experience in the Melville field office in conjunction with a bank fraud investigation. Although the investigation was initially referred to the Secret Service as a bank fraud case, as it unfolded and my target’s network of contacts materialized, it became clear that members of his network were targets of other agencies’ investigative antiterrorism efforts. This connection was uncovered by coincidence and not due to interagency operability.
The situation demanded that I contact the respective agencies and we work together to advance the investigation and apprehend the individuals. The cooperation was unnecessarily difficult at times because of the clashing of the bureaucracies involved, but eventually we accomplished our mission. When there is no network or cell, or the group is small and localized and its connection to the larger network is through cyberspace, the trail of investigative warning signs dries up. As leads become harder to follow and the interagency communication and information trading becomes more challenging and stressful, the fragmented nature of the investigative bodies can result in a sole-proprietor terrorist never being detected at all, as we saw in Boston.
A sole proprietor may make only a limited number of contacts that would be of investigative interest compared to the larger franchise cells that generate much more chatter. If any of these limited opportunities are missed, the chances of stopping an attack may be lost. Of course, information trading among agencies would be unnecessary if there were not so many different federal law-enforcement agencies acting as their own independent enterprises and contributing to the growing bureaucratic fog. The explosive growth of interagency segmentation and bureaucratic layering within agencies, in conjunction with the growing potential for sole-proprietor terrorism and limited investigative bread crumbs left on the trail, are significant factors working against government initiatives to combat terrorism.
We witnessed this exact phenomenon play out in the aftermath of the Boston attack, as details emerged about investigative clues about the attackers that were missed. Again, these missed clues were not due to any lack of dedication and mission focus by the individual federal agents who were involved, but by a broken and overly bureaucratic, multilayered federal law-enforcement structure.
The way the system works now, each agency exists primarily to protect its own turf, and the many layers within the agencies exist to protect the layer above, diffusing responsibility so no one is really responsible for the outcome of the game. The Boston Marathon case reminds me of the fraud investigation I conducted during my short tenure in the Baltimore field office. We found a number of co-conspirators in the target’s network that I would uncover as the investigation progressed. Each time I entered a subject into the Secret Service’s antiquated database and another Secret Service agent was interested in that subject, a message would appear with the agent’s phone number and his case number. As a matter of standard investigative practice, I looked into the investigating agent’s case for background information using the same system and would follow up with a detailed phone call to make the connections and put together the pieces of the investigative puzzle.
If this data-sharing process I described sounds simple, that’s because it was. Even with an antiquated system like the one the Secret Service had at the time, agents were still able to find the information they needed and the contacts necessary to move the investigation forward. Compare this old, poorly funded system to the multibillion-dollar investigation into th
e radicalization of Tamerlan Tsarnaev by current federal law enforcement. His name was entered into numerous databases, including the FBI’s Guardian Database, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDES), the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), and the Treasury Enforcement Communication System (TECS), which is managed by US Customs and Border Protection. Even with a search through all these sophisticated data platforms, federal law enforcement failed to produce any interagency investigative communication of value, and innocent American lives were lost as a result.
After the Boston Marathon attack, we learned that the Russian FSB (the former KGB) had already notified the FBI of Tamerlan’s suspected radicalization in March of 2011. The FBI conducted a preliminary investigation that didn’t produce anything of significance and concluded in June of 2011. The Russian FSB then notified the CIA of Tamerlan’s suspected radical ties in September of 2011. Tamerlan traveled to Russia in January of 2012, causing an alert to initiate within the TECS database, and he returned to Boston from Russia in July 2012, initiating another TECS alert.
Why were the alerts not followed up on? The answer to this question is simple: too many agencies, too many databases, and too many competing agendas. The expansion in bureaucracy at the expense of agents in the field who are laser-focused on counterterrorism only serves to diffuse responsibility among the bureaucratic layers, none of which are incentivized to actually produce an answer and be accountable for the American lives lost and traumatized by a terror attack.
The American public must demand a real set of solutions to this problem. Having worked inside this bureaucratic fog, I am consistently confused as to why no one is seriously proposing an obvious solution that would fix these issues: a streamlined, decompartmentalized federal law-enforcement organization, under one umbrella, with one person at the top responsible for its mission.