Michael Scheuer
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Michael Scheuer is a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who headed the Osama bin Laden "virtual station", between 1996 and 1999, who resigned in 2004. He has been critical of several U.S. administrations in not being aggressive enough against bin Laden and al-Qaeda, but has also written insightfully of what he considers the enemy's motivation. Scheuer is currently an Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, as well as consulting for organizations including CBS News. He calls himself an unreconstructed Ronald Reagan|Reaganite, and argues for a US-first policy. Scheuer has described al-Qaeda's motivation viewpoint as Islamic, but more focused on a sense of Muslim unity than on classic Salafism.[1] While he considers Osama bin Laden an enemy, he considers him a competent one to be respected, and believes that the United States Government has long misunderstood his appeal, either minimizing him or trying to force him into a Cold War model. He points out that while 9/11 may have been a surprise to the US, it was not to al-Qaeda, and they moved assets out of Afghanistan before an expected counterattack; controlling even the failed state of Afghanistan is not equivalent to defeating the enemy. [2] He has repeatedly pointed out that bin Laden is quite explicit in the reasons for its anger at the US:[3]:
Bin Laden learned from the Iranian revolution under Ayatollah Khomeini — few Muslims were willing to die in a durable jihad based merely on the "decadence and debauchery of US civilization". Scheuer observes that the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings were as much nationalist as religious. Cold War thinkingHe considers the Cold War ahistorical:
There were also luxuries such as surprise attack being unlikely, and an acceptance of Mutual Assured Destruction. Current leaders have, however, not let go of a number of Cold War-appropriate assumptions:[5]
Direct action recommendations while in governmentIn 1998, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said that he supported Scheuer's proposal for a covert operation to capture bin Laden, but finally decided against authorizing it due to the opposition of operations officers in the chain of command between Tenet and Scheuer, [6] presumably Jim Pavitt. Scheuer was also critical of the advice given by National Security Council staffer. Richard Clarke. He responded to Clarke's accusation that Scheuer was an ill-informed middle manager with the comment that Clarke "had a tendency to interfere too much with the activities of the CIA, and our leadership at the senior level let him interfere too much...So criticism from him I kind of wear as a badge of honor." [7] Criticism before leavingHe went quasi-public in 2004 as "anonymous" with the book Imperial Hubris, criticizing U.S. counterterrorism policy while still a serving CIA officer. [8] After resigning, he acknowledged the book. Questions have been raised, however, about why he was retained in the CIA after going public. The timing of its publication, shortly after the 9-11 Commission Report, suggested to some that it was a defense against criticism of CIA al-Qaeda intelligence. [9] Current recommendationsHis three most urgent recommendations are for the US to start a massive energy program to make it independent of Middle East oil, accelerate the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program to secure the nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Union and to increase border security. [10] He sees, as a longer-term effort, disengaging with Muslim states with authoritarian governments and eliminating unconditional support of Israel. If, however, it is necessary to use military force, it may need to be far more intense than has ever been seen. Discrimination is possible only with much better intelligence. [11] WMD ThreatScheuer has been particularly dramatic about the threat here. Not all arms control specialists regard it as quite as severe. In November 2004, he said, in response to an interviewer on CBS 60 Minutes, "You've written no one should be surprised when Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States," to which he responded,On Glen Beck's Fox News show, he said
It has been confirmed that Bin Laden sought and obtained a fatwa approving the use of nuclear weapons against the West. [14] A 2007 report from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University and the Nuclear Threat Initiative said that the Bush Administration had cut proposed fiscal year (FY) 2008 budget for cooperative threat reduction. It expressed concern that both funding and leadership were needed to "carry out the 'maximum effort' to keep nuclear weapons and materials to make them out of terrorist hands that the 9/11 attack Commission recommended." [15] In 2002, the Arms Control Association cited a 2002 National Intelligence Council report that expressed mixed views on the security of Russian nuclear materials and weapons: Russia maintains “adequate security and control of its nuclear weapons, but a decline in military funding has stressed the nuclear security system,” Unauthorized use is s “highly unlikely,” given “current technical and procedural safeguards.” It does say “The security system was designed in the Soviet era to protect weapons primarily against a threat outside the country and may not be sufficient to meet today’s challenge of a knowledgeable insider collaborating with a criminal or terrorist group.” Further, it warns Russian security varies widely, “Facilities housing weapons-usable nuclear material…typically receive low funding, lack trained security personnel, and do not have sufficient equipment for securely storing such material,” and that “weapons-grade and weapons-usable nuclear materials have been stolen from some Russian institutes.” The greatest concern was an unconfirmed allegation by Viktor Yerastov, head of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy’s Nuclear Materials Accounting and Control Department, that an amount of fissile material “quite sufficient to produce an atomic bomb” was stolen from an unidentified site at the Chelyabinsk nuclear complex in 1998. “Even with increased security…Russian nuclear power plants almost certainly will remain vulnerable to a well-planned and executed terrorist attack.”[16] US state-level initiativesHe sees the border security aspect as most plausibly driven by state governors rather than the Federal government; he also sees a need for the governors to refuse the use of National Guard forces in undeclared wars. Energy policyHe does not have specific recommendations on energy policy. US-Israel policySome of the strongest criticism of Scheuer appears to relate to his lack of support for Israel. He argues "Clearly, no nation has a right to exist."[17] He is critical of the Obama administration's approach, centering on Israel policy:In a Wall Street Journal opinion article, Ira Stoll, speaking of antisemitism in the US, wrote
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