CIA Transnational Anti-terrorism Activities - Intelligence and Terrorism in The 1990s - 1999

1999

In 1999 DCI George Tenet launched a grand "Plan" to deal with al-Qaeda. In preparation, he selected new leadership for the Counterterrorist Center (CTC). He placed Cofer Black in charge of the CTC, and "Rich B" (a "top-flight executive" from Tenet's own leadership group) in charge of the CTC's Bin Laden unit. Tenet assigned the CTC to develop the Plan. The proposals, brought out in September, sought to penetrate Qaeda's "Afghan sanctuary" with US and Afghan agents, in order to obtain information on and mount operations against Bin Laden's network. In October, officers from the Bin Laden unit visited northern Afghanistan. Once the Plan was finalized, the Agency created a "Qaeda cell" (whose functions overlapped those of the CTC's Bin Laden unit) to give operational leadership to the effort. CIA intelligence chief Charles E. Allen to set up a "Qaeda cell" was put in charge of the tactical execution of the Plan. i

The CIA concentrated its inadequate financial resources on the Plan, so that at least some of its more modest aspirations were realized. Intelligence collection efforts on bin Laden and al-Qaeda increased significantly from 1999. "By 9/11", said Tenet, "a map would show that these collection programs and human networks were in place in such numbers as to nearly cover Afghanistan". (But this excluded Bin Laden's inner circle itself.)

Al Qaeda operated as an organization in more than sixty countries, the CIA's Counterterrorist Center calculated by late 1999 . Its formal, sworn, hard-core membership might number in the hundreds. Thousands more joined allied militias such as the Taliban or the Chechen rebel groups or Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines or the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan....

A heavily redacted CIA document, the 1999 Terrorism Review, reveals concern with Libyan support of terrorism, through its External Security Organization (ESO). The ESO is described as responsible for surveillance, assassination, and kidnapping of Libyan dissidents outside the country; examples were given from actions in the United Kingdom and Egypt. Libya was also described as attempting to build influence in sub-Saharan Africa, supporting a range of Palestinian rejectionist groups, and giving funds and equipment to the Moro Islamic Liberation Organization and Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines.

In addition, the World Anti-Imperialist Center (Mahatba) and the World Islamic Call Society (WICS) were described as part of terrorist infrastructure. This review does not mention any country, other than Libya, or non-national actor as a sponsor of terrorism, as opposed to an operational terrorist group.