The One Percent Doctrine
Encyclopedia
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
winning journalist Ron Suskind
Ron Suskind
Ron Suskind is a Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist and best-selling author. He was the senior national affairs writer for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000 and has published the books A Hope in the Unseen, The Price of Loyalty, The One Percent Doctrine, The Way of the World and...
about America's hunt for terrorists since September 11th
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...
.
On July 24th 2006, it reached number 3 on the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
Best Seller list.
It assesses the ways in which American counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...
agencies are working to combat terrorist groups. In the narrative, Suskind criticizes the Bush administration
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
for formulating its terrorism policies based on political goals rather than geopolitical realities.
The title comes from a story within the book in which Vice President Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....
describes the Bush administration's doctrine on dealing with terrorism:
Summary
The One Percent doctrine (also called the Cheney doctrine) was created in November 2001 (no exact date is given) during a briefing given by then-CIA Director George TenetGeorge Tenet
George John Tenet was the Director of Central Intelligence for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, and is Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University....
and an un-named briefer to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...
in response to worries that a Pakistani scientist was offering nuclear weapons expertise to Al Qaeda after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack. Responding to the thought that Al Qaeda might want to acquire a nuclear weapon, Cheney observed that the U.S. had to confront a new type of threat, a "low-probability, high-impact event" as he described it.
Suskind makes a distinction between two groups engaged in the fight against terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
: "the notables", those who talk to us about the threat of terrorism (Bush, Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, et al.), and "the invisibles", those who are fighting terrorists (the CIA analysts, the FBI agents and all the other foot soldiers).
The book advances the theory that Abu Zubaydah
Abu Zubaydah
Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian citizen, sentenced to death in Jordan and currently held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Not neutral: Arrested in Pakistan in March 2002, he has been in US custody for more than eight years, four-and-a-half of them spent incommunicado in solitary confinement...
, a "top operative plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States" as Bush described him, was an insignificant figure.
According to the book, Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
apparently wanted Bush reelected in 2004, and therefore issued a video message which, in the U.S. media, was described as “Osama’s endorsement of John Kerry.” Why he wanted Bush in office remains unknown. In the book, unnamed CIA analysts speculate that this can be attributed to the view that the controversial policies Bush advocated would help recruit mujahideen
Mujahideen
Mujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...
and would cause the image of the United States to decline globally due to aggressive foreign policy.
The book also mentions a plot to attack the 34th Street – Herald Square subway station in New York City in March 2003. But, 45 days before an al-Qaeda cell, who had monitored surveillance of the station, were to release deadly cyanide
Cyanide
A cyanide is a chemical compound that contains the cyano group, -C≡N, which consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Cyanides most commonly refer to salts of the anion CN−. Most cyanides are highly toxic....
gas into the tunnels, Ayman al-Zawahiri
Ayman al-Zawahiri
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri is an Egyptian physician, Islamic theologian and current leader of al-Qaeda. He was previously the second and last "emir" of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, having succeeded Abbud al-Zumar in the latter role when Egyptian authorities sentenced al-Zumar to life...
and other terrorist leaders scrapped the plan because it wasn't as deadly as 9-11 and therefore wasn't notable enough to compete with the impact of 9-11.
New York Subway Plot
Richard ClarkeRichard A. Clarke
Richard Alan Clarke was a U.S. government employee for 30 years, 1973–2003. He worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National...
told ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
he is wary of the report about the New York City subway plot. Clarke stated: "There's reason to be skeptical... Just because something is labeled in an intelligence report does not mean every word in it is true." He said the information describing the plot would have been just one of the hundreds of threats that would have been collected in 2003. According to Clarke, the specificity of the report also made it suspect, stating "Whenever you get reports that are this specific, they are usually made up." Clarke also called into question the notion that Ayman al-Zawahiri called off the attack, adding that he would be too isolated to have that kind of direct control over a plot inside the United States. He also believes the terrorists would have carried out the attack if the plot was as advanced as Suskind reported, stating "Frankly if there was a team in the United States that was ready to do this, they would have done it."
An intelligence official who was briefed at the time that the authorities learned of the threat, and who wished to remain anonymous, told The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
that some in the intelligence community had been skeptical of the supposed plot, particularly of the idea that the plot had been called off by Mr. al-Zawahiri. The plot was said to involve the use of a relatively crude device for releasing the chemical gases. "This is a simple cyanide thing, two chemicals mixed together, and it releases cyanide gas..They'd be lucky if they killed everybody on one car — you can do that with a 9-millimeter pistol...None of it has been confirmed in three years, who these guys were, whether they in fact had a weapon, or whether they were able to put together a weapon, whether that weapon has been defined and what it would cause or whether they were even in New York", he told the Times.
One former official told CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
that he agreed al-Zawahiri called off the attack but disagreed with Suskind that the terrorists were thwarted within 45 days of carrying it out. Two former officials told CNN the United States was familiar with the design of the gas-dispersal device and had passed the information to state and local officials, but added that the proposed timing of the attack was not as precise as Suskind wrote.
A former CIA official told the New York Daily News
New York Daily News
The Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
that few top U.S. counterterrorism officials knew about the plot and many deny Suskind's claim that a panicky Bush White House sent "alerts through the government." One reason for the lack of alarm, according to the former official, was that soon after discovering Al Qaeda blueprints for a homemade cyanide sprayer, the feds learned Zawahiri had nixed the plot because "it wasn't big enough." The device was also an unreliable weapon of mass destruction. "Cyanide
Cyanide
A cyanide is a chemical compound that contains the cyano group, -C≡N, which consists of a carbon atom triple-bonded to a nitrogen atom. Cyanides most commonly refer to salts of the anion CN−. Most cyanides are highly toxic....
is sexy, but difficult to weaponize...They have fantasies of poisoning a water supply. You can't imagine how difficult that would be. Did they fantasize about a cyanide attack? Most likely", a senior counterterrorism official told the Daily News.
New York Senator Charles Schumer
Charles Schumer
Charles Ellis "Chuck" Schumer is the senior United States Senator from New York and a member of the Democratic Party. First elected in 1998, he defeated three-term Republican incumbent Al D'Amato by a margin of 55%–44%. He was easily re-elected in 2004 by a margin of 71%–24% and in 2010 by a...
told the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
that while the threat was "serious enough to be taken seriously", the alleged plot was "never corroborated."
Suskind also claims in the book that the al Qaeda's cell that would have carried out the attack is still in the United States. Intelligence sources, however, told CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
that, as far as they know, there are no terrorist cells operating in the U.S. under the command of Zawahri or bin Laden.
Abu Zubaydah
A counter-terrorism official who asked not to be named told the Washington Times, "A lot of information [in Suskind's book] is simply wrong." One inaccuracy, this official said, is the book's assertion that Abu Zubaydah, whom the CIA captured in Pakistan in 2002, was not a key al Qaeda figure, and was insane. The counter-terrorism official said Zubaydah is "crazy like a fox" and was a senior planner inside al Qaeda who has provided critical information on how Osama bin Laden's group works.John McLaughlin
John E. McLaughlin
John Edward McLaughlin is the former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence and former Acting Director of Central Intelligence. McLaughlin is an accomplished magician and lectured on magic at the 2006 International Brotherhood of Magicians Annual Convention in Miami, Florida...
, former acting CIA director, has also stated, "I totally disagree with the view that the capture of Abu Zubaydah was unimportant. Abu Zubaydah was woven through all of the intelligence prior to 9/11 that signaled a major attack was coming, and his capture yielded a great deal of important information."
Sources with direct knowledge of Zubaydah's interrogation told the New York Daily News that while they concede Zubaydah knew about ideas but not operations and fed the CIA disinformation, he was lucid and difficult to crack. "He was tough and smart", said an agency veteran.
See also
- Al Qaeda
- Bush DoctrineBush DoctrineThe Bush Doctrine is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of former United States president George W. Bush. The phrase was first used by Charles Krauthammer in June 2001 to describe the Bush Administration's unilateral withdrawals from the ABM treaty and the Kyoto...
- War on TerrorismWar on TerrorismThe War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
- Weapons of mass destructionWeapons of mass destructionA weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...
- MubtakkarMubtakkarMubtakkar is a word that appears in both Arabic and Persian with related meanings that translate into English as "invention", "initiative", or "inventive". The word was reportedly used by Al-Qaeda to describe a poison gas weapon developed and intended for use in an attack in the New York subway...
External links
- Official site
- Excerpt published in Time
- Review by St. Louis Post-Dispatch By Harry Levins, July 2, 2006