[Mb-civic] Ex-Counterterrorism Chief Cites Rise in Attacks - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Ex-Counterterrorism Chief Cites Rise in Attacks

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 31, 2005; Page A19

Richard A. Clarke, the former head of counterterrorism in the White 
House under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said yesterday 
that there were twice as many attacks outside Iraq in the three years 
after the 2001 attacks as in the three preceding years.

Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda group "are no longer the traditional 
leaders as they were in the 1990s," Clarke said, adding that the 
terrorist leader had been building ideological groups from Afghanistan 
before Sept. 11, 2001, and that they had grown in the past few years 
into 14 to 16 separate networks.

Clarke said that bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, exercise 
"symbolic control and provide broad-brush themes" and that most of the 
networks operate independently, but "there are some signs of cooperation 
among some."

Clarke, now a corporate security and counterterrorism consultant, 
delivered his assessment of al Qaeda and the jihadist threat at a news 
conference at the New America Foundation designed to focus attention on 
a bipartisan, two-day policy forum set for next week in Washington, 
titled "Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose."

Clarke left the Bush administration in 2003 and has since alleged the 
Bush White House reacted slowly to warnings of terrorist attacks in 
early 2001.

Yesterday, Clarke said that Iraq is drawing a relatively small number of 
foreign fighters who train there and return home, but "it is unclear to 
what extent they are drawn by the U.S. presence or how much the U.S. is 
a magnet." Overall, he said that "there are more people participating 
[in jihadist networks] outside Iraq because of the U.S. presence" in 
that country.

"Al Qaeda has morphed from a hierarchical structure to a [worldwide] 
movement," he said. The goal of some is to create regional theocracies, 
he said, while others just want to overthrow their own governments. 
"They share the view that the U.S. is the great Satan and propping up 
governments that suppress Muslims," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/30/AR2005083001669.html?nav=hcmodule
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