The War against the Terror Masters: Why it Happened, Where We are Now, How We'LL Win [Hardcover]

If you've read Steven Emerson's American Jihad, Ellen Harris' Guarding the Secrets, Robert Baer's See No Evil and keep current with the work of the Middle East Media Research Institute and Middle East Quarterly, Ledeen's book won't provide many revelations. You'll know that Sunni and Shi'ite Islamists work together in a worldwide terror network, Wahhabi Saudis finance radical Muslim groups worldwide, Iran's mullahs have long linked with Yassir Arafat, and terrorist Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other radical leaders operate openly in mosques and schools throughout the U.S. And that FBI doctrine called "criminal predicate" requires evidence of plans or criminal action before agents can aggressively pursue terrorists.

But Ledeen's new information is a bombshell: In 1996, the Clinton administration rejected not one, but three, Sudanese offers to watch bin Laden, provide his connections to Hizbollah and Hamas--or turn him over to U.S. authorities. In 1997, the U.S. again refused the Sudan's offer to nail bin Laden, even preventing transfer of crucial data to Britain. Only in the late 2001 did the U.S. get the information.

He ties together many crucial strands of evidence--including damning new ones--into a coherent piece. Ledeen shows that the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on America were the result of bureaucracy gone to seed. The Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations all lost the will to pursue basic security measures in the U.S. and internationally.

Many reasons dictated that the U.S. get serious about terrorism after the Ayatollah Khomeini's violent overthrow of Iran's Shah in 1979. But Ledeen notes that things got especially dicey under Clinton's watch. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed, a plot was uncovered to bomb the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, Oklahoma City was bombed, explosives were stopped en route to Los Angeles before the millennium, two embassies were bombed in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole was bombed in Aden.

Ledeen shows, however, that Clinton sat on his hands. Advice from Treasury Secretary Rubin, George Stephanopoulos, Madeline Albright and others scuttled several anti-terror measures--such as shutting bank accounts of terrorist front organizations, giving terrorist watch lists to airline security men, or linking visa expirations to the duration of drivers' licenses.

Rather, Clinton fell prey to the false notion that terrorism could be controlled via peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the Clinton administration "inverted the real problem," Ledeen rightly concludes. For the conflict has full support from "the terror masters in Syria, Iran, and Iraq" and is "generously funded by Saudi Arabia." The terrorist war against Israel, Ledeen shows, is a war against an American presence in the Middle East. "Peace could not be achieved without dealing with Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia," he notes.

Straining "to avoid conflict" with these terrorist states at all costs, Ledeen reports, Clinton inadvisably shuttered the 1995 investigation of Islamic terrorist charities, which would have exposed the full extent of Saudi complicity in global money laundering. In northern Virginia alone, the investigation had already "turned up more than $1 billion in Saudi contributions to four interlinked Islamic 'foundations, institutes, and charities'." Closing them then, former federal prosecutor John Loftus charges, would have prevented millions of dollars from funding hundreds of suicide terror attacks. In March 2002, George W. Bush shut down the same charities that were investigated in 1995.

The U.S. had tied itself in a tight knot, writes Ledeen. The FBI could not keep newspaper clippings or files on suspected and known terrorists. The CIA was prohibited by Executive Order #11905 from talking to them. After 1976, CIA agents were not allowed even to associate with assassins--which meant it could not recruit terrorists, whose primary business was, after all, assassination. William Casey's CIA successfully skirted that executive order, Ledeen reports, under the direction of Middle East case officer Duane Clarridge, whose men caused the implosion of Abu Nidal's terrorist ring. But Casey died and Clarridge was purged in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The CIA grew so bureaucratic, Ledeen reports, that the Tower Commission (headed by former Senators John Tower and Edmund Muskie and General Brent Scowcroft) reported the name of a valuable Iranian mole--who was predictably murdered shortly thereafter.

Worse, a closed 1979 Congressional hearing caused the CIA to dangerously downgrade the PLO from a "terrorist" to "moderate" organization. Nevermind, Ledeen notes, that Yassir Arafat's PLO worked "hand in glove with Islamic radicals like the Muslim Brotherhood" (of which he and his father were both members), radicals in Egypt and Syria, and terrorist groups like Germany's Baader-Meinhof and Italy's Red Brigades. It had secretly figured "in Ayatollah Khomeini's seizure of power in Iran." Arafat trained the hardcore Iranian Revolutionary Guards, created the Abu Nidal group, which carried out his terror instructions, and made global terrorism a force to reckon with. He was (and is) key to the formation and function of the international terror network.

Ledeen suggests that Soviet CIA and FBI moles Aldrich Ames, Harold Nicholson and Robert Hanssen successfully deflected implicating the Soviets in international terrorism. In 1985, he writes, the CIA turned down KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin's offered treasure trove of data. He had hand-copied thousands of KGB documents--including names of thousands of Soviet agents working as Western politicians, journalists, moviemakers, military officers and diplomats--and Soviet connections to global terrorist leaders. This gave Al Qaeda a gestation period free from scrutiny, Ledeen reports, and cost the CIA several opportunities to meet with Ahmad Shah Massoud in northern Afghanistan. In Iraq, Ledeen writes, "one could fill a small volume with accounts of failed [CIA] coup attempts."

The U.S. can defeat Islamist terrorists, Ledeen concludes in part by targeting Syria, implicated in both the 1983 Hizbollah bombing of the Beirut embassy and recent support of Al Qaeda. And it should reassess the relationship with the Saudi royal family, who are "underwriting the terror masters" everywhere.

The implications are huge.

---Alyssa A. Lappen

The terror masters despise our economic system and culture, but freely use our cell phones, computers, and modern weaponry in their relentless efforts to destroy us. Michael Ledeen also notes that these thugs form alliances with their ideological opposites that are peculiar to say the least. Logical consistency is apparently not a highly held value. The Ayatollah Khomeini was a radical Islamic cleric who didn't hesitate to ally "himself with anyone who could advance his cause: from Sunni terrorists like Arafat to Marxists unbelievers like the the leaders of the PFLP, and even deviants from the Islamic tradition like Hafez al-Assad." The author contends that it is foolhardy to suggest "that members of different sects and or traditions cannot work together in a common enterprise." On the contrary, terrorist leaders readily embrace the concept that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This is especially true when their common foe is the United States and the other centers of Western Civilization. Tomorrow they probably will return to killing each other, but today there are infidels to be murdered. "If it were simply a matter of our actions," adds Ledeen, "the leaders of the Muslim world would hail America as one of the greatest allies they've ever had." Didn't we, after all, save Muslims in Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Bosnia? Sadly, our efforts motivated by moral considerations are deemed irrelevant and unworthy of gratitude. We should also not be deluded in believing that this hatred is directly connected to Israel's tense predicament with the Palestinians. The rage of the Islamic fascists transcends this seemingly intractable problem. The ultimate goal of these monsters is to eradicate our very presence anywhere on this planet.

The United States is paying a severe price for long viewing the Middle East "in the context of the anti-Communist struggle, not as a problem unto itself." Ledeen is particularly frank concerning the incompetence and naiveté of our recent Presidents. Both the Republican administration of George Bush 41 and Democrat Bill Clinton underestimated the threats emanating from the Islamic lands. The latter is especially criticized for leaving our nation vulnerable. Clinton virtually gutted the CIA and the FBI rendering these agencies incapable of performing even minimal intelligence duties. The author employs the insights of Machiavelli to conclude that men like former President Clinton are "indolent princes" who "prefer to play it safe, and either take half measures or simply pretend to act." George Bush 43 hesitates in admitting that some aspects of the Muslim faith do not encourage peace and brotherhood, but overall he is currently leading our nation in the right direction.

Should we be pessimistic? Are we doomed? Not at all, asserts Ledeen. The author devotes an entire chapter regarding "How to Win the War." "Don't forget how quickly the Soviet Empire imploded," he points out , "to the astonishment of most of the world." The United States must secure its homeland, "kill or incarcerate the terrorists," and destroy their infrastructure. You will find the author's development of these three central themes to be both fascinating and invaluable. "The War Against The Terror Masters" should be on the top of your list. I strongly recommend it.

Ledeen's book, written nearly two years before the 9/11 Commission report would have been a much cheaper and faster way for Congress to get to the same result; that the CIA has so lost its way that it will take a Herculean effort to make it effective in fighting Islamofascism. Ledeen points to the willingness of the Clinton administration to turn its head after the first attack on American soil in 1993 for the sake of political expediency. He also goes back into previous administrations, Republican and Democrat alike to see how the CIA has become "a cross between the Post Office and the Agriculture" department in efficiency and intensity in protecting the West from the onslaught of international terrorism. The parts of the book that are most telling is what the 9/11 Commission chose to ignore, the micromanaging of the CIA by Congress which slowly but surely turned it into a eunuch in the Middle East. Former Senator Torricelli's demands for an investigation are particularly amusing given his amendment which effectively prevented the CIA from employing the kind of agents we will need to infiltrate the terrorist cells active all over the world today, including in the US.
Ledeen writes frequently in his columns, and this book should have a three ring binder to attach more up to date information, but this book is still worth reading, if for no other reason to read the "politically incorrect" version of what the commission should have found.
I must admit that I am not as much an optimist as he is when it comes to the stomach of those in the West to do what is needed to win the fight. Americans are not much better than Europeans in understanding that this is a war which has been going on since 1979, and we have only just begun to fight it. Kerry's run for election and the Democrats current posturing will prove bin Laden right, that we do not have a sense of history, and the future looks to see millions in NYC or DC get vaporized by an Iranian or North Korean nuke before we wake up to the challenge. Of course the loss of so many Democrats will change the political landscape for generations, but what the hey, anybody but Bush.