Terrorism today reflects both change and continuity. New adversaries with new motivations and new rationales have appeared in recent years to challenge some of our most basic assumptions about terrorists and terrorism. Their emergence, however, has not produced the anticipated changes in either terrorist weaponry or tactics that were predicted to follow in the wake of the Aum Shinrikyo's 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Instead, as has been the case for more than a century, the gun and the bomb remain the terrorists' main weapons of choice. Thus, as fanatical or irrational as even this new breed of terrorists may seem, like their more traditional counterparts, they too have remained remarkably conservative operationally: adhering to the same familiar and narrow tactical repertoire that they both have mastered and equally importantly believe maximizes their likelihood of success. For this reason, future terrorist use of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapons may be far less certain than is now commonly assumed and therefore current efforts to address this threat may prove as ineffective as they are misplaced.

The New Terrorism and Its Putative Implications

      In the past, terrorism was practiced by a group of individuals belonging to an identifiable organization with a clear command and control apparatus who had a defined set of political, social or economic objectives. Radical leftist organizations such as the Japanese Red Army, Germany's Red Army Faction, Italy's Red Brigades as well as ethno-nationalist terrorist movements like the Abu Nidal Organization, the IRA, and the Basque separatist group, ETA, reflected this stereotype of the traditional terrorist group. They issued communiqués taking credit for—and explaining—their actions and however disagreeable or distasteful their aims and motivations were, their ideology and intentions were at least comprehensible.

      Most significantly, however, these familiar terrorist groups engaged in highly selective and mostly discriminate acts of violence. They bombed various “symbolic” targets representing the source of their animus (embassies, banks, national airline carriers, etc.) or kidnapped and assassinated specific persons whom they blamed for economic exploitation or political repression generally in order to attract attention to themselves and their causes.

      Finally, these groups were often numerically constrained. They mostly comprised relatively small numbers of persons. Neither the Japanese Red Army nor the Red Army Faction, for example, ever numbered more than 20 to 30 hard-core members. The Red Brigades were hardly larger, with a total of fewer than 50 to 75 dedicated terrorists. Even the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Basque separatist group ETA could only call on the violent services of perhaps some 200-400 activists while the feared Abu Nidal Organization was limited to in excess of some 500 men-at-arms at any given time.

      In contrast to the stereotypical terrorist group of the past, this new generation of terrorists evidence several important organizational changes which in turn have affected their operations, decision-making and targeting. Rather than the pyramidal, hierarchical organizational structures that were dominant among terrorist organizations during the 1970s and 1980s, terrorists are now increasingly part of far more amorphous, indistinct, and broader movements.¹ These movements also tend to operate on a linear rather than hierarchical basis. Hence, instead of the classic cellular structure that was common to previous generations of terrorist organizations, some contemporary groups are more loosely connected or indirectly linked through networks comprised of both professional— i.e., full-time—terrorists and amateurs—i.e., mostly, hangers-on, supporters, sympathizers and would-be terrorists who may lack the expertise or experience of their more established counterparts.

      The absence of any existing, publicly identified central command authority is significant in that it may remove previous inhibitions on the terrorists' desire to inflict widespread, indiscriminate casualties. In some instances, individual networks therefore may have greater freedom and independence in tactical decisions than traditional terrorist cells of the past given the absence of some central command structure or actual functioning headquarters. Accordingly, this particular trend in terrorism may represent a very different and potentially far more lethal one than that posed by more familiar, traditional, terrorist adversaries. Further, the anonymity intrinsic to this type of operation coupled with the lack of a discernible organizational structure with a distinguishable command chain behind the attackers is deliberately designed to prevent easy identification, facilitate the perpetrators' escape and evasion, and also hopefully avoid retaliation by the victim states' military forces.

      Finally, many terrorist movements today are also seen to have less easily defined aims or identified objectives. Some are motivated by unswerving hostility towards the West in general and the United States in particular or a desire for revenge and retaliation that is frequently fuelled by compelling religious imperatives and justifications rather than abstract political ideologies. Thus in contrast to the intelligible demands of past familiar, predominantly secular terrorist groups who mostly claimed credit for and explained their violent acts; the most heinous and lethal attacks perpetrated by terrorists over the past decade—mostly those directed against civilians²—have gone unclaimed. By maintaining their anonymity, terrorists may believe that are able to capitalize further on the fear and alarm intrinsically generated by their violence.

      This array of changes has in turn raised serious concern about the continued relevance of much of the conventional wisdom on terrorism—particularly as it pertains to potential future terrorist use of CBRN weapons. In the past, most analyses of the possibility of mass indiscriminate killing involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear terrorism tended to discount it. Few terrorists, it was argued, know anything about the technical intricacies of either developing or then dispersing such weapons. Political, moral, and practical considerations were also perceived as important restraints on terrorist use of such weapons of mass destruction. Finally and most significantly, we assured ourselves that terrorists wanted more people watching than dead. Therefore we believed that terrorists arguably had little interest and still less to gain from killing wantonly and indiscriminately. While some of these arguments perhaps were still pertinent to most secular terrorists, incidents like the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway by an apocalyptic Japanese religious sect, the bombing of New York City's World Trade Center Islamic extremists two years before and the bombing of a government office building in Oklahoma City by an American Christian white supremacist just a month after the Tokyo incident—coupled with other attacks perpetrated by religious-inspired terrorists throughout the world during the 1990s³—appeared to have rendered these arguments dangerously anachronistic. Upon closer examination, however, this has not proven to be so—despite fears, arguments and spending to the contrary.

      First, this new era of terrorism—supposedly more lethal and bloody than before—that the new terrorists were thought surely to wreck has yet to materialize. Indeed, despite the overall rise in terrorism's lethality reported by such authoritative sources, as the U.S. State Department's annual Global Patterns of Terrorism publications,⁴ a total of 87 Americans were killed in 40 attacks perpetrated by terrorists overseas between 1990 and 1999. Terrorism, of course, remains a threat to Americans traveling or working abroad, and whatever the total number, it is incontestably tragic that any American should lose his or her life to violence or be wantonly harmed and injured simply because of the nationality of the passport they carry, the uniform they wear, or the job that they perform. Nonetheless, the fact remains that despite the so-called appearance of the “new face of terrorism” heralded by many, the streets of the world hardly run red with American blood. In fact, approximately six times as many Americans (571) were killed by terrorists in the 1980s as compared with the 1990s.

      Nor is the situation terribly different in the U.S. itself. Admittedly, a total of 176 persons were killed by terrorists in this country during the 1990s—more than twice the international figure. At the same time, however, this tragic death toll is the result of three out of a total of only 25 terrorist incidents reported to have occurred in the U.S. between 1990 and 1997 (the last year for which figures have been published) according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). And of the three incidents, it was one especially heinous act—the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal office building in Oklahoma City—that accounts for the overwhelming majority of fatalities (168 deaths).⁵ Again, there is no doubt that terrorism remains a threat to the lives and well-being of Americans in our own country, but the actual number of terrorist incidents (as opposed to the hundreds of CBRN hoaxes that the FBI and other law enforcement and public safety agencies now routinely respond to),⁶ remains remarkably few and those that cause fatalities still less.

      None of the above, it should be emphasized, is meant to suggest that the U.S. should become complacent about the threat of terrorism (domestic or international) or in any way relax our vigilance either at home or abroad. Terrorism poses—and will likely to continue to pose—a serious threat to Americans and American interests both in this country and overseas. Nonetheless, it is equally clear that there has been a tendency to exaggerate the dimensions of the threat and the strategic impact that terrorist violence has actually wrought. And by overreacting and falling prey to a sense of acute fear and intimidation, we also disproportionately inflate the terrorists' power in ways that are both counterproductive and often completely divorced from reality.

      America's current preoccupation with Osama bin Laden and attendant—however inadvertent—lionization of his stature and power is arguably such a case in point. Despite his vast wealth and alleged legions of minions, it is hardly likely that bin Laden could ever hope to vanquish the U.S. military, overthrow our government or achieve any fundamental political changes in American foreign or domestic policy. Yet, this single individual is held in fear and accorded a stature far in excess of his specific capabilities and unique accumulation of financial resources or even what one human being could conceivably wield over a long established nation-state, much less the globe's sole super power.

      Terrorism is fundamentally the use (or threatened use) of violence in order to achieve psychological effects in a particular target audience. The fomenting of widespread fear and intimidation is therefore ineluctably the terrorists' intent. Accordingly, by succumbing to terrorist threats and braggadocio and, failing to distinguish their inflated rhetoric from genuine intentions, much less actual capabilities, we risk making hard policy choices and budgetary allocations based mostly on misperception and misunderstanding rather than on hard analysis built on empirical evidence. Indeed, the incorrect lessons derived from the Aum experience in general and the 1995 nerve gas attack in particular illustrate the dangers of responding emotionally and viscerally rather than soberly and calmly to such terrorist threats.⁷

The Misunderstood Lessons of Aum

      Even if the motives of terrorists are changing in such a way that they are becoming more lethal and even if this in turn may cause them to contemplate ever more bloody and heinous acts that might lead to CBRN weapons use, these trends do not necessarily imply that terrorists currently possess (as it is frequently portrayed) either the requisite scientific knowledge or technical capabilities to implement their violent ambitions. In this respect, as easy as some argue that it may be for terrorists to culture anthrax spores or brew up a concoction of deadly nerve gas, the effective dissemination or dispersal of these viruses and poisons still presents serious technological hurdles that greatly inhibit their effective use. Indeed, the same Japanese religious sect that is most directly responsible for precipitating our current obsession with terrorism and CBRN weapons is precisely a case in point.

      The Aum Shinrikyo, it must be said, was by no means a typical terrorist group. Rather than the handful of men and women, with limited training, technical capabilities and resources that has dominated our conception of the archetypal terrorist organization, Aum was unique. It was a religious movement with upwards of fifty thousand members and offices in New York, Germany, Australia and Sri Lanka in addition to Japan and Russia. Aum had assets estimated to be in the neighborhood of $1 billion—and at least certainly in the hundred millions. It specifically recruited graduates with scientific and engineering degrees from Japan's leading universities and provided them with state of the art laboratories and lavish budgets with which to fund the group's variegated weapons R&D programs. Indeed, when police raided the sect's laboratories following the nerve gas attack, for example, they found enough Sarin to kill an estimated 4.2 million persons. In addition, Aum had either already produced or had plans to develop other powerful nerve agents such as VX, tabun and soman; chemical weapons such as mustard gas and sodium cyanide; and deadly biological warfare pathogens that included anthrax, the highly contagious disease known as Q-fever—and possibly the deadly Ebola virus as well. Aum's most ambitious project, however, was doubtless its efforts to develop a nuclear capability. To this end, the group had purchased a 500,000-acre sheep station in a remote part of Western Australia. There, they hoped to mine uranium that was to be shipped back to Aum's laboratories in Japan where scientists using laser enrichment technology would convert it into weapons-grade nuclear material.

      The group had also assembled an impressive panoply of conventional weaponry. Aum is believed to have purchased large quantities of small arms from Russian sources and to have been in the market for advanced weaponry such as tanks, jet fighters, surface-to-surface rocket launchers, and even a tactical nuclear weapon. What is known is that Aum succeeded in obtaining a surplus twin-turbine Mi-117 helicopter—complete with chemical spray dispersal devices. The group also planned——and had gone as far as to acquire sophisticated robotic manufacturing devices—to produce at least a 1,000 knock-off versions of Russia's world-famous AK-47 assault rifle along with one million bullets. Finally, the sect had determined how to the manufacture TNT and the central component of plastic explosives, RDX.

      As the above inventory of armaments and technological and engineering accomplishments suggests, Aum was no ordinary terrorist group. Rather than the handful of men and women, with limited training, technical capabilities and resources that has long colored our conception of the archetypal terrorist organization, Aum was—by any measure—unique. It was a religious movement with upwards of sixty thousand members and offices in New York, Germany, Australia, and Sri Lanka—in addition to Japan and Russia. Aum had assets estimated to be in the neighborhood of $1 billion—and at least certainly in the hundred millions. It specifically recruited graduates with scientific and engineering degrees from Japan's leading universities and provided them with state-of-the-art laboratories and lavish budgets with which to fund the group's variegated weapons R&D programs. Indeed, as many as 80 scientific personnel were specifically detailed to work on the group's chemical weapons programs, according to one estimate; it's biological weapons research, however, never employed more than perhaps 20 persons at most.

      However, despite Aum's considerable financial wealth, the technical expertise that it could call upon from its well-educated members and the vast resources and state-of-the-art equipment at their disposal; the group could not effect even a single truly successful chemical or biological attack. On at least nine occasions the group attempted to disseminate botulinum toxin (Clostridium botulinum) or anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) using aerosol means: each time they failed either because the botulinum agents they grew and enriched were not toxic or the mechanical sprayers used to disseminate the anthrax spores became clogged and hence inoperative. Even the more successful Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway would be laughable if not for the tragic deaths of 12 persons and the physical and psychological harm caused to many more victims. For all its sophisticated research and development, the best means the group could find to disseminate the nerve gas was in plastic trash bags that had to be poked open with sharpened umbrella tips in order to release the noxious mixture.

      Finally, the group's distinct lack of success in actually wrecking the mass destruction or mass casualties ascribed to these types of weapons, despite the considerable resources at its disposal, speaks volumes about the challenges facing any lesser-endowed terrorist organization. Indeed, neither was mass destruction achieved nor mass casualties even inflicted. New research has revealed that of the five thousand persons who received medical treatment in the aftermath of the subway attack, the vast majority (73.9 percent) were suffering from shock, emotional upset or evidenced some psychosomatic symptom.⁸ Accordingly, even the number of persons physically injured or affected by the attack is much lower than previously reported.

      In sum, upon further examination and analysis, Aum's experience suggests—however counter-intuitively or contrary to popular belief—the immense technological difficulties faced by any non-state entity in attempting to weaponize and effectively disseminate chemical and biological weapons. It also provides striking refutation of the argument voiced with increasing frequency in recent years of the ease with which such weapons can be fabricated and made operational. Public officials, journalists and analysts, for example, have repeatedly alleged that biological attacks in particular are relatively easy for terrorists to undertake. According to one state emergency management official, for example, biological weapons “are available—and easy to make . . . .One does not need a degree in microbiology to make this work, being able to read is enough . . .. It's not like enriching uranium.”⁹ Similarly, both the White House and senior FBI officials have argued that the information needed to develop chemical and biological weapons can be readily obtained from the Internet and other open sources. Such claims do not square with the facts, given Aum's experience and its concerted, years-long R&D activities or indeed of subsequent research that has examined this question of ease of alleged fabrication and dissemination. Indeed, in the words of the national intelligence officer responsible for non proliferation issues and thus the country's senior intelligence analyst on this issue: “while popular culture can explore the potential BW threat, actually developing and using an effective biological weapon poses certain technological challenges.”¹⁰

Policy Implications Regarding Future Possible CBRN Terrorism

      The above analysis is not to suggest, however, that there either is no threat of terrorist use of CBRN or that it is one that should be dismissed or discounted. Indeed, the difficulties now facing a terrorist, who may seek to use a CBRN weapon to achieve mass effects, could of course change dramatically, because of new discoveries, further advances in technology, or other material factors. What this speech has argued is that some public pronouncements and media depictions concerning the ease with which terrorists might wreak genuine mass destruction or inflict widespread casualties, do not always reflect the significant hurdles currently confronting any non-state entity seeking to employ such weapons. In this respect, it should be stressed that a limited terrorist attack involving not a WMD per se, but an unconventional chemical, biological, or radiological weapon on a deliberately small scale—either alone or as part of a series of smaller incidents occurring either simultaneously or sequentially in a given location—could have disproportionately enormous consequences, generating unprecedented fear and alarm, and thus serving the terrorists' purpose just as well as a larger weapon or more ambitious attack with massive casualties could have. Hence, the issue here may not be as much a ruthless terrorist's use of some WMD designed to achieve mass casualties, as the calculated terrorist's use of some unconventional weapon to achieve far-reaching psychological effects in a particular target audience. To focus on weapons of truly “mass destruction” may, therefore, be missing the point and sidestepping the potential, credible threats posed by terrorists in this regard. The most salient terrorist threat involving an unconventional weapon, accordingly, will likely not involve or even attempt the destruction of an entire city (as often proclaimed by fictional thriller writers and some government officials), but the far more deliberate and delicately planned use of a chemical, biological, or radiological agent for more discrete purposes.

      Yet despite the empirical evidence regarding terrorism trends and patterns of activity (both domestic and international) and the correct lessons that should be drawn from the case of Aum, the U.S. remains singularly preoccupied with the threat of mass casualty terrorism based on planning for worst-case scenarios. This is largely a result of a mindset that took root in the immediate aftermath of both the 1995 Tokyo nerve gas attack and the large number of casualties inflicted at Oklahoma City and which has fundamentally shaped our thinking and perceptions of the terrorist threat ever since.¹¹ Despite the evidence to the contrary that has emerged regarding Aum and its implications for subsequent terrorist CBRN ambitions and indeed the overall pattern of terrorist activity in the five years since the 1995 subway attack, no significant reassessment, reconsideration or revision of the CBRN terrorism threat profile established during the 1995-1996 time frame has yet to be undertaken. Thus, a critical first step in assessing the threat as it exists today and is likely to evolve in the future should be to perform a new overall, net assessment of the terrorist threat not only internationally but domestically as well. Based on that assessment—which will address conditions, circumstances and vulnerabilities of today and not from five years ago—a determination can be made whether the worst-case scenario threat assessment approach that has dominated current domestic planning and preparedness for potential acts of CBRN terrorism—is still appropriate, much less relevant.¹²

      The current narrow policy focus lower-probability/higher-consequence threats, which in turn posit virtually limitless vulnerabilities, does not reflect the realities of contemporary terrorist behavior and operations. “This kind of analysis,” Brian Jenkins recently warned in testimony before Congress, “can degenerate into a fact-free scaffold of anxieties and arguments—dramatic, emotionally powerful, but analytically feeble.”¹³ Similarly, at the same congressional hearing, another expert, John Parachini, counseled that the “apparent over reliance on worst-case scenarios shaped primarily by vulnerability assessment rather than an assessment that factors in the technical complexities, motivations of terrorists and their patterns of behavior seems to be precisely the sort of approach we should avoid.”¹⁴ The main weakness in such an approach is in the axiomatic assumption that any less serious incident can be addressed equally well by planning for the most catastrophic threat—ignoring the fact that the higher-probability/lower-consequence attacks¹⁵ might present unique challenges of their own.

      Finally, this approach may be the least efficacious means of setting budgetary priorities and allocating resources and indeed assuring the security of our country. This was precisely the point made by Henry L. Hinton, Jr., the Assistant Comptroller General, National Security and International Affairs Division, U.S. General Accounting Office, when he testified before Congress in March 1999. “The [most] daunting task before the nation,” he argued,

"is to assess—to the best of its ability—the emerging threat with the best available knowledge and expertise across the many disciplines involved. The United States cannot fund all the possibilities that have dire consequences. By focusing investments on worst-case possibilities, the government may be missing the more likely threats the country will face. With the right threat and risk assessment process, participants, inputs, and methodology, the nation can have greater confidence that it is investing in the right items in the right amounts. Even within the lower end of the threat spectrum—where the biological and chemical terrorist threat currently lies—the threats can still be ranked and prioritized in terms of their likelihood and severity of consequences. A sound threat and risk assessment could provide a cohesive roadmap to justify and target spending. . . ."¹⁶

      Moreover, at a time when the U.S. is especially preoccupied with these “high-end” terrorist threats involving mass destruction CBRN weapons, the series of apartment building bombings that occurred in Russia and Dagestan during August and September 1999 is a salutary reminder of how terrorists can still achieve their dual aim of fear and intimidation through entirely conventional means and traditional methods: using bombs to blow things up. This fact has important implications for America's—and indeed also other countries'—counter-terrorism preparedness. Given the limited resources and constrained capabilities typical of most terrorists, they perhaps reflexively shun weapons and tactics that either cannot be relied upon completely or that pose such enormous complexities in terms of their employment (e.g., achieving effective dispersal or dissemination) as to border on the unappealing, if not useless. For this reason, it can be said that terrorists remain essentially content with the limited killing potential of their handguns and machine-guns and the slightly higher rates that their bombs can achieve. In other words, they seem to prefer the assurance of the modest success provided by their more conventional weapons and traditional tactics to the risk of failure inherent in more complex and complicated operations involving CBRN weapons. Indeed, of the more than 9,000 incidents recorded in The RAND Chronology of International Terrorism since 1968, fewer than 100 evidence any indication of terrorists plotting to attempting to use chemical, biological or radiological weapons or to steal, or otherwise fabricate on their own, nuclear devices—much less actually to carry out such attacks. As one critic has observed in connection with the current concern over terrorist use of biological agents: “Nasty people and the ingredients for bioterrorism were all in place over a decade ago. Why now the drumbeating?”¹⁷ Indeed, since the beginning of the century little more than a dozen terrorist incidents in fact have occurred that resulted in the deaths of more than a 100 persons at one time: an arguably infinitesimal number given the total volume of terrorism that has occurred worldwide within past quarter century, much less one hundred years.

      There is another relevant paradox affecting terrorist behavior. Terrorists have long been seen as far more imitative than they are innovative. However, to date, no similar or copycat act of terrorism, which at the time was thought might likely follow in the wake of the 1995 Sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway, has materialized. In this respect, the Tokyo incident has been the exception rather than the rule in terms of terrorist behavior. “This fact gains significance,” Brian Jenkins recently observed, “when we note that past terrorist and criminal innovations—airline hijackings, political kidnappings, malicious product tampering—were promptly imitated. And terrorist attacks involving chemical and biological agents, if they do occur, are likely to remain rare events—they will not become the truck bomb of the next decade.”¹⁸

      Hence, the real issue and the most likely threat may not be the ruthless terrorist use of some weapon of mass destruction as proclaimed by many, but calculated terrorist use of some CBRN weapon to achieve far-reaching psychological effects. We may therefore be missing the point and sidestepping the real threat posed by terrorists in this regard. When and if a CBRN terrorist attack does occur in the U.S., it will not be the destruction of an entire city depicted by fictional thriller-writers and government officials alike: but the far more deliberate and delicately planned use of a chemical, biological or radiological agent for more discreet purposes. In this respect, even a limited terrorist attack involving not a chemical, biological or radiological weapon on a deliberately small scale could have disproportionately enormous consequences, generating unprecedented fear and alarm and thus serving the terrorists' purpose just as well as a larger weapon or more ambitious attack with massive casualties could.

Conclusion: The Policy Questions On Counterterrorism We Should Be Asking

      Given this mixed picture of terrorist patterns and trends and the inherent uncertainty in attempting to predict future terrorist behavior, what should we do or, perhaps more apposite, what can we do to counter effectively the terrorist threat today and in the future? Hard issues require hard questions. It may therefore appropriate now to pause, to take stock of the situation and to assess where terrorism is going, where precisely our countermeasures are in response to that trajectory and thereby reexamine some of the fundamental conclusions about terrorism reached five years ago—in the wake of the Tokyo and Oklahoma incidents—to determine their relevance to both contemporary and likely future trends and developments in this area.

      We need to begin this reexamination by focusing on the entire CBRN terrorism issue. In this respect, even if one concedes the cogency of these perceived threats today, two critical questions need to be asked. One is whether we are drawing the correct lessons from the defining terrorist events of the past decade and the other is “how much is enough” to prepare the U.S. to adequately respond to this challenge and, equally important, upon what basis will the success or effectiveness of these measures be made?

      The second question we need to ask is how do we effectively counter the threat posed by transnational, stateless terrorist groups? In the past, we have relied on the use of military force and economic sanctions, but these options were directed almost exclusively against state-sponsors of terrorism. The issue that thus arises is whether these measures are still relevant and useful to the challenges posed by transnational terrorist movements such as the one associated with bin Laden. Hand-in-glove with this reexamination should be increased attention paid to the role of psychological operations directed against both terrorist organizations and generally towards shaping public opinion against terrorism in countries or regions of the world susceptible to terrorist manipulation.

      Third, we need to ask whether key U.S. government policies to combat terrorism are working and being enforced. Included among these is the very positive development three years ago when the State Department established a list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations that are proscribed by the Secretary of State from engaging in fundraising and other support activities in the U.S. But we need to be confident that this important measure is both adequate to counter the financing of terrorism and also that it is in fact being rigorously enforced against the nearly 30 designated groups who have operated in this country in the past and may still be doing so.

      Fourth, are death penalty statutes as applied to terrorists genuinely useful in deterring or preventing future acts of terrorism? This is not meant to kindle a broader debate over capital punishment in this country, but to ask whether there is a demonstrable, empirical value to putting convicted terrorists to death or might not such a policy in fact prove counterproductive: inspiring new acts of revenge and retaliation against the U.S., creating martyrs and political heroes out of murderers and thugs and also, not incidentally, possibly reducing international cooperation over the extradition of terrorists to the U.S. because of foreign opposition to our death penalty statutes?

      Fifth, is the American intelligence community correctly configured to counter the terrorist threats of today and tomorrow? The U.S. intelligence community is essentially a cold war-era artifice, created more than half a century ago to counter a specific threat from a specific country and a specific ideology. Is that architecture, which has largely remained unchanged since the immediate post-World War II period, still relevant to today's challenges? An estimated 60% of the community's focus, for example, remains on military intelligence pertaining to the standing armed forces of established nation-states. Given the emergence of transnational, non-state adversaries, however, is this balance still the appropriate one? There are no easy answers to the intelligence and terrorism issue, but without debate and discussion, there can be no assurances that we are in fact on the right track.¹⁹

      Sixth, should there be a domestic terrorism net assessment as there is a foreign terrorist net assessment? If so, how should it be done and who should conduct it? Also, as previously noted, should there not now also be a new foreign terrorist net assessment that takes into account the overall pattern of terrorist activity and trends since 1995 and does not remain fixated solely on the signal events of that specific time period?

      Seventh, are our efforts directed against terrorism in this country oriented too much towards response and recovery rather than on preemption and prevention? In recent years, crisis management and emergency response have dominated our thinking in the U.S. about terrorism countermeasures. Is this approach the correct one and has the right balance been struck between these equally critical sides of the scale?

      Eighth, as our concern with terrorism and terrorism threats grow alongside the array of countermeasures brought to bear against this threat, what are the implications for the continued protection of our fundamental constitutional rights and civil liberties? Here, any new measures strengthening preemption and prevention of terrorism need to be balanced with appropriate and effective oversight. Previous instances of abuse and transgression must serve as critical signposts to ward off the repetition of past mistakes if we are to ensure both the confidence of the public and these measures' long-term effectiveness.

      Finally, one of the most striking aspects of the current debate over the terrorism and counterterrorist policy is how wide the intellectual chasm separating the academic and policymaking communities over this issue has grown. The position of most academic terrorism analysts has been far more restrained and skeptical concerning the CBRN terrorist threat, for example, than many of their counterparts in government, the military, and law enforcement. Yet, their cautionary appraisals are either dismissed or have long ago been superseded by a policy process that is already plowing full-steam ahead. Further thought might therefore profitably be devoted to understanding why this bifurcation of views has emerged and indeed how these differences of opinion might be bridged and effectively harnessed to enhance future policy formulation on this issue.

      In conclusion, it should be noted as serious and potentially catastrophic as a terrorist CBRN attack might prove, it is highly unlikely that it could ever completely undermine the national security, much less threaten the survival of a nation like the U.S. or indeed most other Western countries. This point should be self-evident, but given the rhetoric and hyperbole with which the threat of CBRN terrorism is frequently couched, it requires reiteration. Even Israel, a comparatively small country in terms of population and landmass, who throughout its existence has often been isolated and surrounded by enemy states, and subjected to unrelenting terrorist attack and provocation, as the renowned French scholar Gérard Chaliand cogently points out, has never regarded terrorism as a paramount threat to its national security and longevity, worthy of profligate budgets or the diversion of disproportionate resources and attention. In addition it should be noted that even in the wake of the intense and fear concern that followed the 1995 Tokyo nerve gas attack, the Japanese government did not fall, widespread disorder did not ensue throughout the country nor did society collapse. There is no reason to assume that the outcome would be any different in the U.S. or in any other Western democratic state in the event of a similar terrorist attack involving a chemical or biological weapon. To take any other position risks surrendering to the fear and intimidation that is precisely the terrorists' timeless stock and trade. There is a thin line between prudence and panic. The challenge, therefore, in responding to the threat of terrorists' is to craft a defense that is not only both cost effective and appropriate, but that is also sober and practical.

_________________________________

·After dinner address delivered at the "Terrorism and Beyond: The 21st Century” Conference, co-sponsored by the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism and The RAND Corporation, 17 April 2000.

[1] Whether even this development is in fact "new” is also debatable. Over a hundred years ago the so-called "Anarchist International” (also known as the "Black International”) championed a similar strategy of violence perpetrated by loosely aligned, largely unconnected cells of like-minded radicals. See Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (NY: Columbia Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 19-20.

[2] These include, among other incidents, the 13 near-simultaneous car and truck bombings that shook Bombay, India in February 1993, killing 400 persons and injuring more than 1,000 others; the huge truck bomb that destroyed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 96; the 1995 bomb that demolished the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, leaving 168 dead; the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and, the series of bombings of apartment buildings in Dagestan and Moscow last August and September. Indeed, the 1988 in-flight bombing of Pan Am 103 is an especially notorious example. Although we know—as a result of what has been described as the "most extensive criminal investigation in history"—that the two Libyan government airline employees, who are currently being tried in The Hague, were identified and accused of placing the suitcase containing the bomb that eventually found its way onto the flight, no believable claim of responsibility has ever been issued. Hence, we still don't know why the aircraft was targeted or who ordered or commissioned the attack. For a more detailed study of this issue see, Bruce Hoffman, "Why Terrorists Don't Claim Credit," Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 9, no. 1 (Spring 1997), pp. 1-6.

[3] These include: the aforementioned 1993 bombings in Bombay which are believed to have been undertaken in reprisal for the destruction by rioters of an Islamic shrine in that India; the December 1994 hijacking of an Air France passenger jet by Islamic terrorists belonging to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the attendant foiled plot to blow up themselves, the aircraft and the 283 passengers on board precisely when the plane was over Paris, thus causing the flaming wreckage to plunge into the crowded city below; the wave of bombings unleashed in France by the Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA) between July and October 1995, of metro trains, outdoor markets, cafes, schools and popular tourist spots, that killed eight persons and wounded more than 180 others; the assassination in November 1995 of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a religious Jewish extremist and its attendant significance as the purported first step in a campaign of mass murder designed to disrupt the peace process; the Hamas suicide bombers who turned the tide of Israel's national elections with a string of bloody attacks that killed 60 persons between February and March 1996; the Egyptian Islamic militants who carried out a brutal machine-gun and hand grenade attack on a group of Western tourists outside their Cairo hotel in April 1996 that killed 18; the June 1996 truck bombing of a U.S. Air Force barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where 19 persons perished, by religious militants opposed to the reigning al-Saud regime; and, the massacre in November 1997 of 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians by terrorists belonging to the Gamat al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) at the Temple of Queen Hatsheput in Luxor, Egypt and, the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 that killed 257 and injured some 5,000 others.

[4] Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Patterns of Global Terrorism 1999. Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of State Publication 10687, April 2000, p. 1.

[5] Counterterrorism Threat Assessment and Warning Unit, National Security Division, Terrorism in the United States 1997 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1998), pp. 22-23.

[6] See Statement for the record before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 28 January 1998, http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress98/threats.htm; of FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, p. 6; Statement of Robert J. Burnham, Chief, Domestic Terrorism Section before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, 19 May 1999, p.1 at http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress99/bioleg3.htm; and, Statement for the Record of Mrs. Barbara J. Martinez, Deputy Director, National Domestic Preparedness Office before the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Emergency Management, 9 June 1999, p.1 at http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress99/comterr.htm.

[7] Among the first and most important works to incisively analyze the true implications of Aum and the 1995 nerve gas attack are: David Rapoport, "Terrorism and Weapons of the Apocalypse,” Georgetown National Security Studies Quarterly (Summer 1999), pp. 49-67; Ehud Sprinzak, "The Great Superterrorism Scare," Foreign Policy, no. 112 (Fall 1998), pp. 110-125; and, Milton Leitenberg, "Aum Shinrikyo's Efforts to Produce Biological Weapons: A Case Study in the Serial Propagation of Misinformation,” Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 11, no. 4 (Winter 1999), forthcoming.

[8] Anthony G, Macintyre, M.D., et al., "Weapons of Mass Destruction: Events with Contaminated Casualties—Planning For Health Care Facilities, JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), no. 263 (January 2000), pp. 242-249.

[9] Quoted in Grant Sasek, "Officials in State Warn of Biological Terrorism,” Helena Independent Record (http://billingsgazette.com/region/990125_reg009.html).

[10] U.S. Congress, "Statement by Special Assistant to the DCI for Nonproliferation John A. Lauder on the Worldwide Biological Warfare Threat,” House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 3 March 1999,
https://www.odci.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/1999/lauder_speech_030399.html

[11] This point is made by John Parachini in "Combating Terrorism: Assessing the Threat” Testimony Before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations, Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives, 20 October 1999.

[12] This same argument has been made repeatedly by Henry L. Hinton, Jr., Assistant Comptroller General, National Security and International Affairs Division, U.S. General Accounting Office, Before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations, Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives in (1) "Combating Terrorism: Observation on Federal Spending to Combat Terrorism,” 11 March 1999; and (2) "Combating Terrorism: Observation on the Threat of Chemical and Biological Terrorism,” 20 October 1999; as well as by John Parachini in "Combating Terrorism: Assessing the Threat” and Brian Michael Jenkins in their respective testimony before the same House subcommittee on 20 October 1999.; and the Hinton testimony "Combating Terrorism: Observation on Biological Terrorism and Public Health Initiatives,” before the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs and Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, Senate Committee on Appropriations, GAO/T-NSIAD-99-12, General Accounting Office Washington, D.C., 16 March 1999.

[13] Jenkins, "Testimony,” 20 October 1999, p. 4.

[14] Parachini, "Combating Terrorism: Assessing the Threat,” 20 October 1999, p. 17.

[15] A higher probability/lower consequence event is considered to involve the discreet, rather than massive, use of a chemical, biological, radiological or conventional weapon; whose effects would be geographically limited in both scope and actual physical destructiveness and that would most likely be aimed at inflicting fatalities numbering in the tens or twenties rather than the thousands (even though the number of injured requiring medical treatment could number in the thousands). The use of this term is meant to differentiate from lower probability/higher consequence events whereby a larger chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon would be used with intent of causing massive damage, extending over and affecting a widespread geographical area and resulting in perhaps thousands of fatalities and tens of thousands in injuries. As the former attack is regarded as relatively easier perhaps to execute in terms of the technological knowledge and sophistication, logistical support, and organizational assets required, based on patterns of terrorist activity and behavior, this is regarded to be the more likely type of threat. This assumption, however, is not meant to exclude the possibility of lower probability/higher consequence incidents occurring nor to ignore the need for appropriate preparedness and emergency response measures to counter the range of potential terrorist threats across a broad spectrum of assumed severity.

[16] Henry L. Hinton, Jr., Assistant Comptroller General, National Security and International Affairs Division, U.S. General Accounting Office, Before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations, Committee on Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives in "Combating Terrorism: Observations on Biological Terrorism and Public Health Initiatives,” GAO/T-NSIAD-99-112, 16 March 1999, pp. 4–5.

[17] Daniel S. Greenberg. "The Bioterrorism Panic,” Washington Post, 16 March 1999.

[18] Jenkins, "Testimony,” 20 October 1999, pp. 2-3.

[19] It should be noted, though, that the success of the Counterterrorism Center (CTC) established at the Central Intelligence Agency provides compelling evidence that we are indeed on the right track in the struggle against international terrorism.