Charters, David A.

English

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The Journal of Conflict Studies143Book ReviewsNaftali, Timothy. Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism.New York: Basic Books, 2005.The 11 September attacks have brought the subjects of terrorism and coun-tering terrorism back into “fashion.” They have also generated a flood of books,scholarly, journalistic, and otherwise, with more — it seems — being publisheddaily. Not surprisingly, the quality and value of these volumes vary considerably.Fortunately, Timothy Naftali’s is one of the best. Indeed, it is in a class by itself.That is a result of the book’s provenance. Naftali, a historian and AssociateProfessor at the University of Virginia, was contracted by the 9/11 Commissionto write an unclassified history of the early years of American counter-terrorism.Based on extensive archival research in declassified documents and interviewswith officials involved, the study amounted to a “quasi-official history.” Thecommission’s wisdom in allowing the author to publish it is to be commended.Naftali has written a book that will be of great value to scholars and others inter-ested in the subject.One of the book’s major contributions is to place the current “War onTerrorism” in historical context. Although its scale and scope is unique, this waris not sui generic. Rather, it represents the latest iteration of a “war” that has beenunderway for several decades. In fact, the story opens in the latter stages of theSecond World War when American counter-intelligence had to deal with allegedNazi plans to assassinate General Eisenhower and conduct a terrorist campaignagainst Allied occupation forces. Neither threat materialized, so terrorism wasnot a high priority immediately after the war. But in passages that eerily presagepost-11 September anxieties Naftali writes that after the Cuban Missile Crisis theCIA warned the Kennedy administration that it would be possible to smugglesmall nuclear or chemical weapons into the United States. However, only theSoviet Union had that capability and the US doubted that it was likely to takesuch action.The spate of airline hijackings in the late 1960s might have focussed USpolicy-makers on terrorism. But hijackings to Cuba were almost routine; pas-sengers usually were released unharmed after negotiations and minor conces-sions. So, there was little incentive or enthusiasm to take firm action until the fallof 1972. Then, the Munich massacre, a nearly disastrous domestic hijacking(which included a threat to crash the plane into a nuclear reactor), and the threatof a world-wide airline pilots’ strike, galvanized the Nixon administration intotaking the problem seriously. Full screening of passengers and hand luggagebegan in January 1973, and the number of hijackings dropped to almost nil. FromSummer 2006144that point on, terrorism was on the agenda of every president, although its impor-tance relative to other issues waxed and waned over time and between differentadministrations. Naftali’s account confirms Walter Laqueur’s assertion in 1987that the rhetoric about fighting terrorism was never matched by the allocation ofvital resources and attention to that fight. In more than one administration theissue fell through the cracks or got bogged down in inter-agency “turf wars.” Onthe eve of 11 September it was not a high priority for the Bush administration,which was focussed on ballistic missile defence. The idea of a major foreign ter-rorist attack on the US originating inside the country, Naftali concludes, was the“blind spot” in American national security policy.But that doesn’t mean terrorism always had been overlooked. In fact, attimes it became too all consuming.  Hezbollah’s kidnapping of Americans inLebanon in the 1980s caused a steady drumbeat of public pressure on the Reaganadministration by the hostages’ families to “do something” to secure theirrelease. The absence of viable alternatives led to the arms-for-hostages deal withIran, which mutated into the infamous Iran-Contra scandal that shook Reagan’spresidency. But Naftali shows that the US chalked up a series of counter-terrorism vic-tories as well. Through the 1970s the US government and Yasir Arafat commu-nicated secretly by means of a “back-channel” — Fatah terrorist Ali HassanSalameh — with two positive results; it helped to nudge the PLO toward the“two-state solution” and gave the West warnings that allowed them to thwartattacks by some rival Palestinian groups. In fact, dismantling the most dangerousof them — the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) — proved to be America’s great-est counter-terrorism success. Using intelligence from sources in Eastern Europe,where the ANO had arranged sanctuaries, the CIA penetrated the ANO’s finan-cial network. Later, the US persuaded the Syrians to expel Abu Nidal himself,and then, with help from the PLO, Jordan, and Israel, played upon Nidal’s para-noia to destroy the organization from within. What followed was a series ofdefections and internal reprisals that devastated the group. Working withPeruvian authorities the CIA also played a role in their capture of AbimaelGuzman, leader of the Shining Path group. The author presents all of this in well-documented and highly readableprose; indeed, at times it reads more like a thriller than what was once a govern-ment study. This makes it both valuable for scholars and accessible to the inter-ested public. Scholars will, of course, find points on which to criticize the book, and thisreviewer is no exception. I was struck that a few incidents I thought of as notablewere not mentioned: the Tupamaros’ kidnapping and murder of American policeofficial Dan Mitrione in Uruguay in 1970; the 1973 Palestinian firebombing of aPam Am airliner at Rome airport, which killed fourteen Americans; and the kid-napping of US General James Dozier by the Red Brigades in Italy in 1981 (andThe Journal of Conflict Studies145his subsequent rescue by the Italian anti-terrorist unit). Did these events have anyimpact on the development of US counter-terrorism policy? If so, it is not appar-ent in the book.With respect to policy itself, the book is perhaps a little too focussed andthis may reflect its origins. Naftali has put American counter-terrorism policyunder a microscope to good effect, but as a historian I was troubled by the lackof wider context. Laqueur’s astute comment about the dichotomy between rhet-oric and action on terrorism is germane here. It can be explained — at least inpart — by the policy priorities of different administrations. But those prioritiesare largely absent through much of the book. One is inclined to ask: what elsewas on the presidents’ desks and agendas when terrorism was being discussed?For example, how important was terrorism as a policy issue compared to US-Soviet arms control negotiations? Did the Reagan administration’s fixation onSoviet sponsorship of terrorism have any impact on that centerpiece of strategicpolicy? Likewise, America’s experience of terrorism in Lebanon was shaped toa considerable extent by the actions of its ally Israel, but the book doesn’t set thatexperience within the context of the wider US/Israeli strategic relationship thatwas developing during the 1980s. Did the Americans come to share Israeli per-ceptions of the problem, as some critics have suggested, and if so, did this influ-ence its approach to counter-terrorism, for better or worse? Finally, US policiesand actions generated criticism both domestically and among its allies; the inter-ception of the Achille Lauro hijackers and the air raid on Libya are cases in point.But there is scant mention of public or allied dissent and whether it subsequent-ly influenced decision-makers and their policies. Clearly, American policies werenot developed in a vacuum, but the reader could be forgiven for concluding thatthis was the case.Finally, scholars rarely pass up an opportunity to critique the use ofsources. Naftali has made excellent use of declassified primary sources in theofficial and private archives and presidential libraries. These give the work itsauthoritative stature and scholarly credentials. But he appears to have overlookeda number of worthwhile secondary sources, such as William Regis Farrell’s TheU.S. Government Response to Terrorism (Westview, 1982), which was the firstto explore the inter-agency battles over counter-terrorism jurisdiction, startingunder the Nixon administration. Mark Celmer, Terrorism, U.S. Strategy andReagan Policies (Greenwood, 1987) did the same for a later period. David C.Martin and John Walcott, Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America’s War onTerrorism (Harper and Row, 1988) is a solid journalistic history of US counter-terrorism in the Reagan era. Brent Wilson’s chapter on American efforts to count-er international terrorism in this reviewer’s edited volume, The Deadly Sin ofTerrorism (Greenwood 1994) provides a scholarly perspective that spans theperiod from the Nixon to the first Bush administration. This is not to suggest thatany of these studies comprised the last word on the subject, but rather that onewould expect to see them cited if only to demonstrate the author’s awareness ofSummer 2006146the full spectrum of extant writing on the subject — and to provide him with theopportunity to correct the earlier record. On the other hand, to help substantiatethe dismantling of the ANO, he does cite journalist Patrick Seale’s book AbuNidal: A Gun for Hire (Random House, 1992), which advances the bizarre the-sis that since Nidal’s operations were so damaging to the Palestinian cause hemust have been an Israeli agent. Naftali, of course, doesn’t buy that argument,but nor does he use his book to discredit that conspiracy theory.These limitations, however, are largely of interest only to the specialistscholar and do not detract from the overall value of the book. The 9/11Commission is to be commended for initiating this study and for choosing ascholar and writer of Timothy Naftali’s calibre to write it for a public whichdeserves such a balanced exploration of America’s counter-terrorism past. It islikely to be the definitive work on the subject for the foreseeable future.David A. Charters is a Professor of History at the University of NewBrunswick.Born, Hans, and Ian Leigh.  Making Intelligence Accountable: Legal Standardsand Best Practice for Oversight of Intelligence Agencies. Oslo: PublishingHouse of the Parliament of Norway, 2005. To say that the business of national security has become increasingly com-plex in the post-11 September world has become something of a cliché. Ofcourse, this does not make it untrue. Governments increasingly rely on securityand intelligence organizations, in turn elevating the risk of abuse of these servic-es. In Making Intelligence Accountable, Dr. Hans Born, senior fellow at theGeneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, and Ian Leigh, co-director of the Human Rights Centre and professor of law at Durham University,compile a catalogue of best practices in the oversight of intelligence agencies.They do so with an eye toward raising awareness of good governance in the fieldof intelligence and encouraging sound security policy to protect agencies and cit-izens against political abuse. By comparing and evaluating intelligence oversightlegislation from over 20 states, each with its own mix of organizational struc-tures, democratic maturity, and political culture, Born and Leigh have assembledperhaps the most comprehensive study of intelligence accountability methods todate. While Making Intelligence Accountable reads more like an instructionmanual for intelligence oversight reform than it does an argumentative piece ofscholarship, one can still discern at least three main contentions. The authors’first key claim is that the oversight of intelligence agencies is a responsibility

Naftali, Timothy. Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

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Naftali, Timothy. Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

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