In past Security Weeklies we have often noted how analyzing terrorism is like assembling a puzzle. After an attack has transpired, it is easier to piece the disparate clues together because you have the luxury of knowing what the finished puzzle should look like. You know the target, the method of attack, the time, the place, etc. These factors frame your approach to the bits of evidence you gather and allow you to assemble them into a cohesive, logical framework. While there will certainly be missing pieces at times, having the reference point of the attack itself is helpful to investigators and analysts.

On the other hand, analyzing a potential threat before an attack takes place is far more difficult. It is like sifting through pieces of thousands of different puzzles, all jumbled together in one big pile, and attempting to create a complete picture without knowing what the end result — the attack — will look like. Sometimes pieces look like they could be related, but it is often difficult to determine if they really are without having the picture of the finished attack and the important framework for investigative reference: target, method of attack, time and place. It is often easy to look back after an attack and criticize authorities for not making a critical connection, but it is difficult to piece things together before the attack occurs without the assistance of hindsight.

Over the past few weeks we have been studying a number of interesting puzzle pieces pertaining to potential threats to U.S. interests by transnational jihadists. It is currently unclear if they all fit together to form a seamless narrative, but the implications of a potential convergence are too big to ignore. We feel compelled to write about this potential convergence in much the same way we did in September 2009, when we discussed the possibility of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) using innovative bomb designs to bring down passenger aircraft rather than to assassinate individuals. The earlier convergence came to fruition on Dec. 25, 2009, when AQAP attempted to destroy a Northwest/Delta flight from Amsterdam to Detroit using an improvised explosive device (IED) concealed in the suicide operative’s underwear. Time will tell if the current grouping of events is a true picture of what is about to happen or is simply a false positive.

The Pieces

The pieces of the current case began emerging a few weeks ago, before the May 2 anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death. Reports began to surface that AQAP’s lead bombmaker, Ibrahim Hassan Tali al-Asiri, had been seen again. American officials originally said al-Asiri was killed in the Sept. 30, 2011, airstrike that also resulted in the death of AQAP’s English-speaking ideologue, Anwar al-Awlaki. A few days after the strike, reports surfaced that al-Asiri had in fact survived the attack, but he has maintained a low profile since then.

While al-Asiri is certainly not AQAP’s only bombmaker, he is an innovative, out-of-the-box thinker. Not only was he behind the device that his brother, Abdullah al-Asiri, used in his suicide bombing attempt against Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef on Aug. 27, 2009, and the underwear bomb used in December 2009, he was also responsible for the attempted attack against two U.S. cargo aircraft in October 2010 using IEDs hidden in computer printer ink cartridges. Indeed, he is the technical author of every AQAP transnational attack attempted so far. Even though all of those attacks have failed, he is still considered a threat. This fact was highlighted by the May 7 reports of a thwarted bomb plot using an improved version of al-Asiri’s underwear device.

A second, AQAP-related piece of the puzzle surfaced on May 2, when the group published two editions of its English-language Inspire magazine, ending the publishing hiatus that began after the magazine’s editor, Samir Khan, died in the same Sept. 30, 2011, airstrike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki. AQAP watchers wondered why the group released two editions of the magazine so closely together, and the revelation of a plan for another transnational bomb plot directed against American aircraft appears to provide the answer to that question.

Last week, we wrote about the third piece of the puzzle: the proliferation of Libyan shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, also known as MANPADS, among jihadist militants in Africa and perhaps elsewhere. Many of these missiles are older SA-7s that have limited utility against modern military aircraft equipped with countermeasures, but they could be employed effectively against a commercial airliner during the vulnerable takeoff or landing phases of a flight. While this threat has existed for some time, we are hearing recent reports of missile dissemination and planning discussions.

Another important piece of the puzzle is the ongoing trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mohammed, better known by his initials KSM, is the captured al Qaeda operational planner who was named the principal architect of the 9/11 operation in the 9/11 Commission Report. He was also involved in a number of other plots prior to 9/11, including the 1994 Operation Bojinka plot in the Philippines, the 2001 shoe-bomb plot and the 2002 Library Tower plot.

KSM’s operational style had several distinctive hallmarks, including the frequent choice of aircraft as targets; the notion of multiple, simultaneous strikes; and the use of modular IEDs smuggled aboard the aircraft. Although KSM was arrested in March 2003, he continued to influence other jihadist planners. This influence was clearly seen in the August 2006 Heathrow liquid-bomb plot, which targeted nine American airliners. AQAP’s cargo bombing attempt, which targeted multiple aircraft, reflected KSM’s preference for multi-pronged plots, and the reports of the thwarted May 7 bombing attempt indicate that aircraft are still considered desirable targets for jihadist groups.

KSM’s trial began May 5, three days after the anniversary of bin Laden’s death. With the trial in the world’s media spotlight, it is quite possible that jihadists are planning an operation in homage to KSM and bin Laden, and that KSM’s operational hallmarks could be seen again.

Paradigm Shifts

Of course, this is nothing new. Commercial aviation has been threatened by terrorism for decades now, and as discussed above, airliners have been under constant threat from jihadist groups because they are highly visible targets that are readily associated with specific nations, and a successful attack generates a large number of casualties and a high level of press coverage.

But as airline security measures have shifted in response to threats, so too have the modes of attack. When security measures were put in place to protect against Bojinka-style attacks in the 1990s – attacks that involved modular explosive devices smuggled onto planes and left on board — the jihadists adapted and conducted 9/11-style attacks. When security measures were put in place to counter 9/11-style attacks, jihadists quickly responded by shifting to onboard suicide attacks with concealed IEDs inside shoes. When that tactic was discovered and shoes began to be screened, they switched to camouflaging containers filled with liquid explosives. When security measures were adjusted to restrict the quantity of liquids that people could take aboard aircraft, jihadists altered the paradigm once more and attempted the underwear bombing using a device with no metal components. When security measures were taken to increase passenger screening in response to the underwear bombing, AQAP decided to attack cargo aircraft with IEDs hidden in printer cartridges.

It is notable that, after the failed underwear-bomb attack in December 2009, air security measures began to include additional pat downs and an increased use of body scanners that have the ability to identify items hidden under passengers’ clothing. As with the previous changes in security procedures, al-Asiri and AQAP’s operational planners likely accounted for these changes while planning the devices for the latest plot. They would need to use a device that would not be detected by a pat down or a body scanner. The reports indicate that they attempted to do this by creating a more form-fitting device hidden inside briefs.

Another way planners could evade detection is by using devices that are either implanted inside a suicide operative or hidden inside a body cavity. The advantage to using a body cavity to smuggle the device is that the device could then be removed from the body and detonated in close proximity to a critical component of the aircraft. Removing it from the body would also prevent the body from attenuating the force of the blast, which is what appeared to have happened in the Nayef attack. Creating security measures to search for devices hidden inside a potential bomber’s body would be difficult and more intrusive than current procedures.

The original underwear IED reportedly contained less than three ounces of pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a high explosive. One could fabricate five such devices with a single pound of PETN, and explosives have always been extremely easy to acquire in Yemen — even more so now that the country has been ravaged by civil war and AQAP and tribal elements have ransacked government arms depots. To date, al-Asiri’s imaginative bombs have been successfully deployed in the underwear-bomb, printer-bomb and Nayef plots, but they all failed to destroy their targets. If AQAP is able to address this quality-control issue, the only thing effectively limiting AQAP from launching multiple suicide IED attacks is the availability of operatives who are willing to conduct such attacks and able to travel abroad.

Since the suicide operative is a critical node in this type of operation, the United States and its allies have a place to focus their efforts. If they can find the suicide operatives before they depart Yemen, the threat can be minimized. It is worth noting that the suicide operative involved in the plot disclosed May 7 was reportedly a double agent. It is unclear if the purported bomber in the recent threat case was a plant sent in to penetrate AQAP, a loyal jihadist who was intercepted and turned, or an operative that simply got cold feet — something we have seen in the past. It is also not clear if the group hoped to deploy more than one of the devices in a KSM-style, multi-pronged attack, as it did in the printer-bomb plot. We have noted recent reports of European citizens arrested in Yemen for having ties to AQAP, but we have seen no indication that they are related to this threat.

An attack against multiple airliners would be the type of spectacular terrorist strike that would have international repercussions and would deeply affect international air transportation. If such an attack was coordinated with, or followed closely by, an attack against multiple airliners using MANPADS, it could have an even deeper impact. This would affect the American people — and, consequently, the American government — especially given that 2012 is a presidential election year in the United States, and President Barack Obama would almost certainly take measures to demonstrate that he was tough on terrorism. We stress the impact on the United States because, as the latest edition of AQAP’s Inspire magazine indicated, the United States remains the prime jihadist target and U.S. airliners will likely be targeted again in any plot.

Of course, it would not be easy for AQAP to recruit multiple suicide operatives and transport the operatives and their IEDs out of Yemen without detection. (Although it does appear the operative in the thwarted plot was able to successfully get the device out of Yemen.) It would also be quite difficult for different al Qaeda franchises to coordinate their attacks in either a multi-pronged or parallel attack scenario. We have not seen them take such an approach in the past, although we have in recent months seen increased indications of communication and coordination between AQIM, Boko Haram, al Shabaab and AQAP. This lends itself to the idea of a convergence, especially one related to the MANPADS threat, but it does not provide any direct evidence.

Still, with so many puzzle pieces suggesting some sort of merging of threats is taking place — even if it is only accidental — a possible convergence is worth discussing because of the significant consequences it could have.

I know first hand that getting warrants can be a pain in the ass, but too bad, its our job to defend and protect the constitution, not whine about how hard it is to do our jobs and still abide by the “current” law, or to look for shortcuts and ways to get around the only document that stands between freedom and totalitarianism.

But don’t worry, I’m clearly over reacting because if I wasn’t, those vigilant watchdogs of the Fourth Estate would surely mention the trampling of our fundamental freedoms in their newspapers, websites and TV news shows, wouldn’t they?

Here is the latest assault on our freedoms from the EFF

DOJ Official: Any Privacy Protection is Too Much Privacy Protection for Cell Phone Tracking

Jason Weinstein, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s criminal division, told a panel at the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee’s ”State of the Mobile Net” conference yesterday that requiring a search warrant to obtain location tracking information from cell phones  would “cripple” prosecutors and law enforcement officials. We couldn’t disagree more.

For years, we’ve been arguing that cell phone location data should only be accessible to law enforcement with a search warrant. After all, as web enabled smart phones become more prevalent, this location data reveals an incredibly revealing portrait of your every move. As we’ve waged this legal battle, the government has naturally disagreed with us, claiming that the Stored Communications Act authorizes the disclosure of cell phone location data with a lesser showing than the probable cause requirement demanded by a search warrant. 

Since the new year, a number of significant developments has led to increased awareness on this important topic. First, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in United States v. Jones which held that the warrantless attachment of a GPS device on a car violated the Fourth Amendment’s right to be free from unreasonable government searches. In concurring opinions, Justices Sotomayor and Alito both noted that technology had the power to shrink privacy, particularly with respect to locational privacy, as the information gleaned from web enabled smartphones supplanted the need for law enforcement to physically install GPS devices in order to track someone. Then in March, we filed an amicus brief along with a number of other civil liberties organizations, urging the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule that cell phone location data requires a search warrant. In April, the ACLU released the results of a coordinated FOIA request that found law enforcement officials throughout the country were routinely obtaining cell phone location tracking information with differing legal methods and standards, and were frequently getting this information without a search warrant.

Its this last point — the differing standards for disclosure and legislative attempts to make those standards uniform — that sets up Weinstein’s comments (you can hear the full audio here). Noting that Jones requires a warrant for GPS data, but that courts have reached conflicting opinions on whether a search warrant is necessary for cell phone location tracking records that are held by wireless company providers, he rightfully noted ”there really is no fairness and no justice when the law applies differently to different people depending on which courthouse you’re sitting in.” But unfortunately, the DOJ’s solution for this problem is for Congress to say that cell phone location tracking records held by third parties — typically the cell phone providers — are not subject to the search warrant’s probable cause requirement, as it would “cripple” law enforcement. To be clear, despite Weinstein’s comments that he’s only speaking for himself, DOJ’s explicit position is that no warrant is necessary, as that’s what they’ve consistently told courts, including the Fifth Circuit.

The problem with the DOJ’s position is that it fails to take into account privacy. The only way to ensure “fairness” and “justice,” is to demand that our Fourth Amendment rights not be violated by law enforcement working closely with cell phone providers to access your location information without your knowledge. We’ve already seen that despite the ruling in Jones, law enforcement and the wireless industry are finding ways to continue their pre-Jones practices of warrantless surveillance amid a stunning lack of transparency. We’re slowly seeing legislative action in the right direction on these important issues. On the federal level, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Or) has proposed the GPS Act, that would require law enforcement to obtain a search warrant to access location information. In California, we sponsored a bill with the ACLU of Northern California, to require law enforcement to get a search warrant anytime it wants location information about another person in California. And earlier this week, Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass) sent a request (PDF) to the biggest wireless carriers, demanding information about their relationship with law enforcement.

Requiring the police to obtain a search warrant — the traditional method for balancing law enforcement needs with individual privacy — and demanding the wireless industry be transparent about how they deal with law enforcement requests for location information are critical steps in the right direction, towards “fairness” and “justice,” location privacy and transparency.

By Scott Stewart

Institutional Revolutionary Party presidential candidate Enrique Pena Nieto, the front-runner in the lead-up to Mexico’s presidential election in July, told Reuters last week that if elected, he would seek to increase the size of the current Mexican federal police force. Pena Nieto also expressed a desire to create a new national gendarmerie, or paramilitary police force, to use in place of the Mexican army and Marine troops currently deployed to combat the heavily armed criminal cartels in Mexico’s most violent hot spots. According to Pena Nieto, the new gendarmerie force would comprise some 40,000 agents.

As Stratfor has previously noted, soldiers are not optimal for law enforcement functions. The use of the military in this manner has produced accusations of human rights abuses and has brought criticism and political pressure on the administration of President Felipe Calderon. However, while the Calderon administration greatly increased the use of the military in the drug war, it was not the first administration in Mexico to deploy the military in this manner. Even former President Vicente Fox, who declared war on the cartels in 2001, was not the first to use the military in this manner. For many decades now, the Mexican government has used the military in counternarcotics operations, and the Mexican military has been used periodically to combat criminals and bandits in Mexico’s wild and expansive north for well over a century.

In recent years, Mexico has had very little choice but to use the military against the cartels due to the violent nature of the cartels themselves and the rampant corruption in many municipal and state police forces. The creation of a new paramilitary police force would provide the Mexican government with a new option, allowing it to remove the military from law enforcement functions. But such a plan would be very expensive and would require the consent of both houses of the Mexican Congress, which could pose political obstacles. But perhaps the most difficult task will be creating a new police force not susceptible to the corruption that historically has plagued Mexican law enforcement agencies.

Paramilitary Police Forces

The concept of a paramilitary police force is not new. Such police forces have existed for years in Europe in the form of the Carabinieri in Italy, the Guardia Civil in Spain and Gendarmerie Nationale in France. As the name of the Italian paramilitary police agency implies, such police normally were deployed in remote areas and armed with carbines, heavier arms than those employed by most urban police officers. Indeed, even the British, whose police officers were traditionally unarmed, created well-armed paramilitary police agencies in their rugged and remote colonial holdings.

Some of these organizations still exist, including the Pakistani Frontier Constabulary and the Indian Assam Rifles. In Latin America, the Chilean Carabineros have a long, and sometimes checkered, history. In 2006 the Colombian government established a modern paramilitary police force under the Directorate of Carabineros and Rural Security that was intended to help address the threats posed by the insurgent groups, former-paramilitary criminal bands (“bacrim”) and narcotics traffickers in Colombia’s hard-to-police rural regions.

Due to the Colombian government’s success in combating drug cartels and the country’s growing military proficiency, the Colombians increasingly have become involved in training personnel from other countries in a variety of skills, such as helicopter flying and long-range jungle patrolling. This Colombian training is very attractive to countries such as Mexico. For this reason, the Colombians have begun exerting a growing influence on Mexican counternarcotics thinking and strategy. In fact, the Mexican and Colombian attorneys general just signed an agreement April 17 to share information pertaining to narcotics smuggling. Because of this influence, it is likely that the Colombian Carabineros have played a big part in shaping the thinking of Pena Nieto’s advisers who suggested a similar paramilitary police force for Mexico.

Unlike military troops, paramilitary police are police officers and receive police training, which is quite different from military training. But paramilitary police officers are normally more heavily armed than regular police officers and receive supplementary military-type training, which involves things like fire and maneuver and patrolling. They also have law enforcement authority, which means they can conduct investigations and make arrests. Although paramilitary police have been accused of human rights abuses in some places, by and large they are better suited for dealing with civilians than are soldiers, and they tend to create less tension. Tensions arising from military actions can be significant: In 2011, the Mexican National Human Rights Commission received 2,200 complaints against the Mexican army and navy.

Pena Nieto also has called for the Federal Police to be expanded from 40,000 to 50,000 officers. Calderon submitted a police reform plan to the Mexican Congress in September 2008 that created the current federal police force. Calderon’s reform plan integrated the two existing federal law enforcement agencies, the Federal Preventive Police and the Federal Investigation Agency, into one organization called simply the Federal Police.

Other Recent Police Reforms

In addition to consolidating the federal police forces, Calderon’s 2008 police reform plan also called for existing agents and new recruits to undergo a much more thorough vetting process and to receive higher pay. The idea was to build up a more professional force less vulnerable to corruption and better able to fight the cartels. The 2008 reform plan also included consolidating municipal police departments — arguably the most corrupt institutions in Mexico — into unified state police commands under which officers could be subjected to better screening, oversight and accountability.

In an attempt to mitigate the problems created by the interaction of the population with the military, especially in urban areas, the Calderon administration also has used a combination of the Federal Police and the military. For example, in Coordinated Operation Chihuahua, Federal Police assumed all law enforcement roles from the military in the urban areas of northern Chihuahua, including police patrols, investigations, intelligence operations, surveillance, first-response and operation of the emergency 066 call center for Juarez (equivalent to a 911 center in the United States). The Federal Police also were tasked with operating mainly in designated high-risk urban areas to locate and dismantle existing cartel infrastructure using law enforcement methods rather than military methods.

The military then assumed a supporting role, patrolling and monitoring the vast desert expanses of the state’s rural areas and manning strategic perimeter checkpoints to help stem the flow of narcotics, weapons and gunmen. These roles and areas of operations were intended to better reflect the training and capabilities of each force. While the enhanced Federal Police are designed to operate in an urban environment and trained specifically to interact with the civilian population, the Mexican military is trained and equipped to engage in more kinetic operations in a rural environment. The new paramilitary police agency would assume this rural, kinetic role.

The Main Obstacle to Reform

The Calderon administration’s police reform process has faced several setbacks in weeding out corrupt elements. Perhaps one of the greatest obstacles was encountered right away in October 2008, when the drug czar-designate at the time, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, was found to have been receiving $450,000 a month from the Beltran Leyva Organization for providing information about the Mexican government’s counternarcotics operations. Since that time, there have been numerous instances in which these “new and improved” federal- and state-level police officers have been arrested for corruption. The military has not been immune to the problem of corruption either. Soldiers have been caught protecting loads of narcotics, and even a member of the military’s elite Estado Mayor Presidencial was arrested in December 2008 and charged with being on a cartel payroll.

If Pena Nieto were elected president, it would be difficult for his administration to create a new, incorruptible police agency. Certainly, the Mexican government has aggressively pursued police reform for many years now, with very little success. Indeed, the lack of trustworthy law enforcement was a major factor in the Mexican government’s decision to turn to the military to counter the power of the Mexican cartels. As noted above, this lack of reliable law enforcement has also led the Calderon administration to aggressively pursue police reform.

An examination of Mexico’s corruption reveals that the country’s ills go far deeper than just corrupt government institutions. The corruption seen in government institutions is really just a symptom of deeper, systemic and cultural problems. Quite simply, unless these deeper issues are addressed, reforming an institution or creating a new institution will not result in any meaningful change. In fact, the surrounding environment will ensure that the revamped institutions will soon be corrupted like the ones they replaced. This corruption of new institutions has happened repeatedly in Mexico and elsewhere.

The Guatemalan Department of Anti-Narcotics Operations, known by its Spanish acronym DOAN, provides an excellent example of how deep-seated corruption in the environment can affect a totally new institution created to be impervious to corruption. Created in the mid-1990s in response to rampant corruption in the Guatemalan police, DOAN was meant to be immune from corruption via the use of hand-picked “clean” recruits, who would receive proper training and be paid wages sufficient to support their families. The Guatemalan government received significant assistance from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, which helped the Guatemalans select, train and equip the DOAN officers.

Unfortunately for the Guatemalan government and its U.S. benefactors, providing state-of-the-art training, modern equipment and a living wage still did not ensure integrity when DOAN officers were placed into the Central American country’s (still) corrupt environment. Within a few years, the highly trained and heavily vetted officers of the DOAN had begun to torture and kill narcotics smugglers, then steal and sell their shipments. The DOAN was disbanded in 2002 because it had essentially become a drug trafficking organization.

Mexico also has a long history of law enforcement agencies being disbanded and folded into new agencies due to corruption. For example, the Mexican Federal Investigation Agency (AFI) that Fox created in 2001 was a replacement for an agency, the Federal Judicial Police, which was disbanded due to rampant corruption. The AFI was patterned after the FBI and was structured to block corruption from other agencies. Despite those safeguards, by late 2005 the Mexican Attorney General’s Office reported that almost 1,500 of the AFI’s 7,000 agents were under investigation for suspected criminal activity and that 457 agents faced criminal charges. Because of this corruption, Calderon’s 2008 police reforms disbanded the AFI and assigned its mission to the Federal Police in early 2009.

The Mexican AFI and Guatemalan DOAN demonstrate that even a competent, well-paid and well-equipped police institution cannot stand alone in a culture unprepared to support it and help maintain its integrity. Over time an institution will take on the characteristics of the society surrounding it. This means that the creation of a new paramilitary police agency by the next Mexican administration would help solve some of the problems affecting Mexico as far as deploying the military to conduct law enforcement functions, but it is not the answer to Mexico’s deeper problems.

Solving these deeper problems in Mexico will require a holistic approach reaching far beyond police and military institutions to address the country’s profound economic, sociological and cultural issues. Such holistic change will not be easy to accomplish. It will require a great deal of time, money, effort and — critically — leadership. Mexico’s next president will have his hands full.

If you resist with a commitment to win you may well prevail, especially if you are armed and trained.  If you lose it is still better to die fighting in place than to be taken prisoner and have your head cut off with a dull knife while your screams gurgle through your own blood as we have witnessed on numerous videos from the Middle East, brought to us by the “Islamic practitioners of peace.”

By Scott Stewart

U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman announced April 3 that the U.S. government’s “Rewards for Justice” (RFJ) program was offering a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). In other Rewards for Justice cases involving Pakistan, suspects such as Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abdel Basit and Mir Amal Kansi have hidden in Pakistan and maintained relatively low profiles. In this case, Saeed is a very public figure in Pakistan. He even held a news conference April 4 in Rawalpindi announcing his location and taunting the United States by saying he was willing to share his schedule with U.S. officials.

While the Saeed case is clearly a political matter rather than a pure law enforcement or intelligence issue, the case has focused a great deal of attention on Rewards for Justice, and it seems an opportune time to examine the history and mechanics of the program.

Rewards for Justice

In the shadow of the 1983 and 1984 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon, the U.S. Congress established the Rewards for Justice program under the 1984 Act to Combat International Terrorism. The program is administered by the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, which was established by the Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act of 1986.

The program was intended not only to reward people who provide information that leads to the arrest or conviction of people who plan, commit or attempt terrorist attacks against U.S. targets but also to obtain information that prevents such attacks. U.S. government employees and the employees of other governments are not eligible for the program. The law also authorizes program participants to be entered into the U.S. Department of Justice witness protection program to ensure their safety after providing information. The statute covers arrests of and convictions for the subjects sought and contains a clause for “favorable resolution” of such cases that can be applied when a military strike results in the death of the suspect.

While the RFJ program currently offers large rewards — $25 million for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda, and $10 million for figures such as Saeed and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar — the rewards initially offered by the program were much smaller, up to $500,000. That amount was increased to $1 million in 1990, and then augmented to $2 million total through matching funds provided by the Air Transport Association and the Air Line Pilots Association. The program gained the ability to offer large payments for figures such as al-Zawahiri under the 2001 Patriot Act, which was passed after the 9/11 attacks.

The RFJ got off to a slow start and didn’t really begin to have much of an impact until the early 1990s. Its first significant success occurred during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when an informant in Bangkok tipped off American officials to a pending attack against U.S. interests there by agents of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. The informant received a significant reward and was relocated to a safe place along with his family. However, rewards paid for information leading to the prevention of attacks have proved to be the exception rather than the rule for the RFJ.

The program also figured prominently in the February 1995 capture of Abdel Basit in Pakistan. Basit, widely known as Ramzi Yousef (the name on one of his fraudulent passports), is a Pakistani citizen born in Kuwait. He was the principal operational leader and bombmaker in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. After fleeing the United States he also planned a number of other failed or thwarted attacks in Manila, Bangkok and Pakistan. Basit is also the nephew of alleged 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with whom he conspired. The widespread use of the Ramzi Yousef name and Iraqi passport provided a great deal of confusion regarding his true identity, but it also allowed the government of Pakistan to extradite the Pakistani citizen to the United States with very little public backlash.

The RFJ was also used by the CIA to entice Pakistani tribesmen in June 1997 to hand over Mir Amal Kansi, who was convicted and executed in Virginia, for a January 1993 shooting outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Kansi, a Pakistani citizen, was rendered from Pakistan instead of extradited, which generated a great deal of controversy inside Pakistan.

While the RFJ advertises that it has paid out more than $100 million in rewards, it must be pointed out that a great deal of that money has been paid in Iraq, where the reward paid for the deaths of Udai and Qusay Hussein alone was $30 million. More than $11 million has been paid out in recent years for leaders of the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines. Although $25 million rewards were offered each for Saddam Hussein and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, rewards were not authorized in their cases.

In order for a high-profile reward such as that offered for Saeed to be established, a case has to be made before an interagency rewards program committee, which is chaired by the director of the Diplomatic Security Service. In addition to State Department personnel, the committee includes representatives from the Department of Justice, the FBI, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Treasury and the Department of Homeland Security. This interagency RFJ committee also authorizes the payment of rewards once cases are resolved and an informant is nominated to receive a reward. The secretary of state must personally authorize any reward offer exceeding $5 million, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved the reward for Saeed after receiving the committee’s recommendation.

Intelligence can come into the program via the Internet, telephone or mail. After a reward is issued and publicized, the RFJ staff is typically deluged with potential leads — many of which come from scammers and mentally disturbed individuals. However, most of the good sources the program has developed have contacted U.S. embassies or intelligence officers in person. While the program was once envisioned as an operational entity that would recruit and run informants, it has for the most part become an administrative program that provides rewards to informants run by other agencies.

The CIA also has specially designated operational funds that can be used as payments for intelligence pertaining to terrorism, albeit in a much more low-key fashion. Such payments do not have to undergo the type of public and interagency scrutiny and limitations that RFJ rewards must endure.

Limitations

The RFJ does have its limitations. Despite the huge rewards offered, the program has had very little luck in recent years capturing high-profile figures in Pakistan such as al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, Hakeemullah Mehsud or Sirajuddin Haqqani.

Additionally, although the program was instituted in large part as a response to the attacks conducted by Hezbollah against U.S. interests, the program has not had success in capturing figures such as Hasan Izz-al Din, Ali Atwa and Mohamed al-Hamadei, who are accused of hijacking TWA Flight 847 in 1985, despite the $5 million rewards offered for each of them.

One of the big assumptions behind the initiation of the program, and the subsequent increases in the amount of the rewards offered, is that everybody is for sale. If enough money is offered all the suspects will be turned in. Yet despite the very high rewards offered for many suspects, people have not come forward to offer information regarding their locations. This is likely due to two factors. First, it is clear that not everyone is for sale. Most of the people who are close enough to the target to provide actionable intelligence are in fact true believers and can’t be bought.

Second, there is a general distrust of the U.S. government in the parts of the world where most of the critical suspects are hiding — places like Lebanon and Pakistan. Individuals who might otherwise be induced by the cash rewards do not trust the U.S. intention or capability to protect them or their extended families. This protection would be required against reprisal not only from the terrorist group but also from the government itself. A current case in point is the medical doctor who helped locate Osama bin Laden and who is now in prison in Pakistan facing possible high treason charges.

As illustrated by the amounts of the rewards listed above, the program has proved more successful in a place like Iraq, where the U.S. military had a significant presence and control, or a location like the Philippines or Thailand, where the U.S. government is viewed in a somewhat better light.

It is also very difficult to get suspects out of hostile areas controlled by powerful tribes like the Pashtun along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border or powerful groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon, or to nab suspects who are protected by the government in a country like Iran or Pakistan.

In the Saeed case, the RFJ program is clearly being used for political purposes. This is firmly underscored by the fact that the announcement of the reward was made in India, the site of the 2008 Mumbai attacks and Pakistan’s longtime regional rival. Certainly, due to sentiment on the Pakistani street and the Pakistani government’s need to maintain the use of militant proxies in pursuing its interests in the region, the U.S. government does not expect the government of Pakistan to hand Saeed over. This case simply cannot be divorced from the larger dynamic of U.S.-Pakistani relations in the context of the pending U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Saeed’s choice of Rawalpindi, the heart of the Pakistani military establishment, as the location for his news conference clearly indicates that he feels secure that the Pakistani government will continue to protect him. The U.S. government certainly knows this. Therefore, the intent of the U.S. government in this case is not so much to facilitate the capture of Saeed but to use the reward as a mechanism to pressure the government of Pakistan to keep under control the militant networks that have evolved out of the LeT.

By Scott Stewart

Mohammed Merah, the suspect in a string of violent attacks culminating with the March 19 shooting deaths of three children and a rabbi at the Ozar Hatorah School in Toulouse, France, committed suicide by cop March 22 after a prolonged standoff at his Toulouse apartment. Authorities believed Merah also to have shot and killed a paratrooper March 11 in Toulouse and two other paratroopers March 15 in Montauban.

While Merah’s death ended his attacks, it also began the inevitable inquiry process as French officials consider how the attacks could have been prevented. The commissions or committees appointed to investigate such attacks normally take months to complete their inquiries, so the findings of the panel looking into the Merah case will not be released in time to have any impact on the French presidential election set to begin April 22. However, such findings are routinely used for political purposes and as ammunition for bureaucratic infighting.

Like the suspects in many recent terrorist attacks in other countries, Merah had previously come to the attention of French authorities. He reportedly traveled at least twice to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region and was interviewed by authorities upon his return to France in November 2011. Some media reports have even suggested that Merah had worked as an informant for French authorities. Merah’s older brother, Abdulkader Merah, also reportedly was investigated in 2007 for helping French Muslim men travel to Iraq to fight. These facets of the case will certainly be examined in detail.

While it will be many months before the official reports are published, already we can draw several conclusions from this case. This is because the same essential problems occur whenever a Western government attempts to pre-empt vague, potential threats posed by an amorphous enemy. Indeed, these issues surfaced several times following attacks by Islamist militants in the United States, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. They also were seen in the July 2011 attacks in Norway.

In short, government bureaucracies do not deal well with ambiguity — and terrorist actors, particularly at the grassroots and lone-wolf levels, are nothing if not ambiguous. They tend to be insular and dedicated, and they might not be meaningfully connected to the command, control and communication mechanism of any known militant group or actor. This makes them exceedingly hard to identify, let alone pre-empt, before an attack is carried out.

As the political debates in London following the 2005 attacks (and in Washington following 9/11) have shown, that governments somehow are expected to prevent all terrorist attacks. When one occurs, political investigations into the cause of intelligence failures ensue and, on occasion, considerable finger-pointing and agency reorganizing. The public, after all, needs to feel secure.

But the uncomfortable truth is that there is no such thing as complete security. Given the nature of the terrorist threat and terrorist actors, no intelligence or security service in the world could identify every aspiring militant who lives in or enters a country or could pre-empt their potential acts of violence. This is impossible even in states that employ draconian security measures, and the challenge is obviously amplified in societies that value civil liberties and due process. The challenge is especially pronounced in cases where the subject is a citizen who has not yet broken any laws, or there is not sufficient evidence to support prosecution for any violations. A distinct tension exists between security and individual liberties.

Within that context, then, the tactical challenges and expectations faced by counterterrorism agencies are useful to consider.

Puzzles

Certainly, when the Merah case is reviewed in hindsight and in isolation it will become obvious that there were clues — pieces of a puzzle — that could have been fitted together to indicate Merah posed a threat and warranted focused intelligence and investigative efforts. As noted above, a few of those clues already have appeared in the press, and there are sure to be other clues revealed as the investigation progresses.

Anyone can be a brilliant investigator after the fact, but solving a puzzle in real time is very difficult — especially considering that Merah did not exist in isolation but was one of myriad potential threats French authorities faced. France is not North Korea, a homogeneous society where the few resident foreigners easily can be monitored. France is a huge, multicultural country that is home to many religious and political dissidents and refugees. Moreover, France’s Muslim population may number as many as 5 or 6 million, which equates to somewhere between 8 and 10 percent of the total population. Thus, even if one were to use profiling techniques, which can be problematic in their own right, identifying radical Islamists — who make up only a small percentage of France’s Muslim population — would be a tremendous undertaking.

Even if one were able to positively identify all the radical Islamists in France, there would be a further challenge of differentiating between what could be called “jihadist cheerleaders” — radicals who voice political or ideological support for the jihadist cause but are not actually violent — from those militant jihadists willing to commit attacks. The most vociferous are not always the most likely to conduct an attack, but their heated rhetoric usually draws a lot of scarce government resources. Even among those willing to wage physical jihad, there is an additional difference between those who believe they can fight only in Muslim lands and those who believe they can conduct attacks in the West.

Sorting through the galaxy of potential suspects is a daunting task for the French government. Obviously, if there is intelligence that a suspect is directly linked to al Qaeda or another known terrorist group, it is easy to classify that individual as a high-priority intelligence target. Such a suspect would then merit 24/7 physical and electronic surveillance, an endeavor that could tie up as many as 100 people, including surveillance operatives, supervisors, technicians, photographers, forensics experts, analysts and interpreters — and this would be to monitor only one suspect.

But in the real world, intelligence is seldom, if ever, so black-and-white. And quite often, investigators and analysts are left to work with bits of partial information. This problem is compounded by the very structure of the jihadist movement, which consists of al Qaeda, its franchises, grassroots sympathizers and lone wolves. The jihadist landscape has been described as a “network of networks” or a “network of relationships,” a characterization that has become even more apt as the capabilities of the central al Qaeda group have been degraded. In application, this means that when considering any particular plot, there may not be any clear-cut chain of command or communications networks on which to focus intelligence resources. The network within which jihadists operate is difficult to delineate, as are the targets they choose to attack. This same ambiguity also exists in the non-jihadist realm as seen in attackers such as Anders Breivik, Timothy McVeigh, Theodore Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph.

This means that, without hard intelligence indicating a link between a particular suspect and a known militant group or network, government agencies often place suspected operatives into lower priority categories, which means they receive less investigation and intelligence monitoring. Indeed, it is often nearly impossible to gather hard intelligence about a person’s thoughts and intentions, and this is the crux of the dilemma facing the French and other governments as they attempt to assess the threat posed by individuals and small, insular groups.

Not all puzzles are equal. Investigating an attack after the fact is a matter of identifying the puzzle pieces and placing them together to form a complete picture of what happened. But identifying plotters and their plans before an attack occurs is far more difficult. It is more like sifting through the pieces of thousands of different puzzles, all jumbled together in one big pile, and then attempting to create a complete picture, without knowing what the end result — the attack — will look like.

Tools and Limitations

Several tools can be used to identify and pre-empt terrorist attacks. These are human-intelligence sources, signals intelligence, investigation and analysis. All of these tools are useful, but none are perfect.

Recruiting human sources from the communities in which militants are likely to live and move is invaluable, but any source can see only what is within his or her field of vision, and many sources exhibit biases that can cloud their collection. Militant cells are built on relationships and trust — often based on familial or tribal connections — which are difficult to establish quickly. And when the concern is about militants at the grassroots or lone-wolf level, the universe of people with whom human sources would need to establish close relationships becomes very large indeed. Moreover, even if a source is well-placed, it can be difficult to judge a suspect’s motivations and intentions unless one knows him or her intimately. In the Merah case, even some who claimed to have known the suspect well were surprised to learn of his alleged involvement in the attacks.

The utility of signals intelligence can also be limited, especially in light of past successes. Signals intelligence does not work well when suspects practice careful operational security (such as foregoing the use of satellite telephones, email or cell phones). Even a fairly moderate and intuitive amount of operational security can increase the difficulty of detection by orders of magnitude. In the case of grassroots operatives, escaping scrutiny simply means not committing acts that would bring someone to the attention of authorities, such as communicating with known members of terrorist groups or visiting radical Internet sites.

A potential suspect can be investigated, as was apparently the case with Merah, as well as suspects in past attacks such as London bomber Mohamed Siddique Khan, Norwegian bomber and shooter Anders Breivik and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan. However, due to the large numbers of potential suspects it is very unlikely investigators will conduct a full probe unless they note obvious signs of criminal intent or activity during their preliminary inquiry. Certainly, attackers are bound to the terrorist attack cycle, but unless they exhibit such behavior while being investigated, chances are the authorities are going to miss it even if the attackers are practicing sloppy tradecraft.

In any setting, intelligence is little more than raw data until analysis is applied — but drawing the correct conclusions is difficult if one has incomplete data, is given the wrong kinds of material to analyze or lacks the proper mindset and training to make useful inferences. Bias, assumptions and preconceptions also pose significant problems. In the Breivik case, authorities noted his acquisition of large quantities of fertilizer but discounted him as a threat after interviewing him. It appears that as a white Norwegian, he did not fit the investigators’ preconception of a potential threat. In other words, they were envisioning the wrong finished picture for that particular puzzle.

The fact is the resources available for investigations; physical and electronic surveillance; recruiting and handling human sources; and completing analyses from the field are finite for any government. In the French case particularly, one problem was that authorities had to devote significant resources to monitoring the “jihadist cheerleaders” (although some of those individuals are now being rounded up; the French government announced April 2 that it was deporting five radical Islamic preachers).

Monitoring and deporting cheerleaders does not fully address the problem of distinguishing those intending to conduct an attack from a host of potential attackers when the government has not been able to collect hard intelligence pertaining to that intent and activity. It is from this constellation of individuals that Merah and several other successful attackers have arisen in recent years. For the authorities, it is a question of justifying the expenditure of limited resources to monitor an individual or group whose connections to terrorism are questionable while staying fully engaged in monitoring others with solid connections to terrorism. This is how grassroots jihadists and lone wolves can, and will, slip through the net, sometimes with deadly effect.

At this time, it is impossible to tell how many individuals or small cells are or might be planning attacks in France, Britain or the United States. There are many variables involved, and no government agency should be expected to provide complete security against potential — but unknown — threats. Moreover, with each arrest, each intelligence find, each videotaped speech or warning, the game changes: Each side shifts, adjusts and adapts to the moves being made by the other side in order to attain or maintain an advantage. This type of shift was clearly illustrated by the calls by jihadist leaders in recent years for sympathizers to conduct simple attacks close to home with readily available weapons.

None of this is intended to argue that the missions of intelligence and security agencies are futile, that funding should be cut or efforts abandoned. In a world where complete safety is not possible, the question becomes one of aligning resources to prevent the most serious threats to a society and mitigating the effects of attacks that cannot be prevented. Such an approach stands in stark contrast to that of attempting to guard every potential target against every conceivable threat.

Indeed, acknowledging that it is impossible to prevent all acts of violence could provide a starting point for a more meaningful discussion of effective counterterrorism tactics. Knowing there is a limit to what governments can do can lead to smarter ways of doing things — focusing efforts and resources, collecting information and turning that information into actionable intelligence while safeguarding individual liberties.