The recent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi operation suggests the implementation of a new policy, reportedly under consideration last year at the Pentagon. The so-called “Salvador Option,” which consists of going after the senior leadership of terrorists worldwide with elite military special-forces units, is reminiscent of similar operations in Central America in the 1980s.
While it seems an effective policy, it could cause jurisdictional disputes between the DOD and “corporate” CIA, with DOD preferring clandestine special military operations and CIA favoring “covert actions”, which are more traditional intelligence activities.
The key difference between the two is that “covert actions” are done without the acknowledgement of U.S. participation, while clandestine military operations are generally acknowledged.
In fact, Congress defined “covert action” by Public Law in 1991 as intelligence activities undertaken by the U.S. in a foreign country without attribution, to influence military, political or economic conditions there.
But attribution itself has tremendous strategic significance in the war on terror, and a more basic question is whether traditional covert action is a good tool for the fight.
It probably isn?t.
Non-attributed action by the United States may send the opposite of the message we should be giving to the sponsors and supporters of terrorism. It may even serve as a moral equivalent crutch for terrorists, giving them a free pass for acts of terror as so-called “responses.”
In fact, we need a whole different policy focus on attribution: Rather than worry about the attribution of our counterterrorist activities, we should be attributing all aspects of terrorism to the known or most likely sponsors of it.
This is as precise as we need to be. We know enough about those who sponsor and support terrorism to hold certain bad actors responsible for it and take very focused military action against them. And, we would ? at the appropriate time ? routinely acknowledge such operations in accordance with guidelines approved by the president.
For example, a hypothetical U.S. response to acts of terror or threats from terrorism under this new policy could be the destruction or disappearance of a key support of terror ? a specific political, leadership, military or economic target somewhere in the world. And, unlike the theory behind traditional “covert” action, this action would be fully acknowledged at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner. The al-Zarqawi operation serves as a model for this policy.
The “corporate” CIA most likely would oppose such a general policy because traditional covert action is their primary responsibility under the current law and regulatory structure. However, these arguments would be grounded more in budgets and bureaucratic “turf” rather than in substance.
The president could simply overrule the CIA?s objections while taking this new policy direction. After all, it is the president who approves covert action in the first place (and notifies selected Members of Congress) under the 1991 law. And, ultimately, it is the president, as commander in chief, who evaluates, approves and directs all specific U.S. responses to terrorism, “covert” or not.
The bottom line is simple: While operational secrecy is a basic requirement for successful military operations, deniability or non-attribution isn?t, nor should it be.
Those who believe we should have more open debate about the use of force in fighting terrorism worldwide should support this policy approach. The War Powers Act, for example, with its requirements for generalized Congressional notification of the use of military force overseas, is a far more publicly accountable method of Congressional oversight than secret notifications to a few Congressional leaders, which are required for “covert actions” under the 1991 law.
In short, the al-Zarqawi operation demonstrates that to put real teeth in our strategic actions in the war of terrorism, we should probably take the “covert” part out.
Daniel Gallington is a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
