-Caveat Lector-
LOYAL OPPOSITION: CIA Ignores Real Threat
David Corn, AlterNet
October 2, 2000
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9861
Allow me to begin with two seemingly unconnected events.
First, George W. Bush was speaking the other day at an elementary school,
and, via C-SPAN, I was hanging on every word. Literally. Listening to Bush
has become a recreational amusement. It's impossible to do so without waiting
for him to dyslexiate, strangle syntax, or create vocabulary -- like watching
a car race in anticipation of a fireball.
I must admit, though, this time he was negotiating English with impressive
ninth-grade skill. But he did get around to saying something foolish. A
question was tossed at him pertaining to national security. He seized the
moment to highlight his support for a national missile defense system. Since
I was flossing, I failed to transcribe his remarks. But here was the gist
(actually, Bush usually speaks in gist): if there's somebody out there
holding one of our friends "hostage" with a missile attack, like Israel, and
he tries something like that, we're going -- or was it "gonna"? -- to be able
to shoot that missile down, and he'll be "scared" of us doing that, and our
friend will be safe.
Well, sixth-graders, if Saddam Hussein is not going to be frightened by the
prospect of retaliation from Israel, which posseses several nuclear bombs,
and from the United States, which possesses many nuclear bombs, why would he
be scared of a high-tech gizmo that supposedly (but without a guarantee) can
intercept a nuclear missile he hurls toward Israel? Didn't Saddam launch
missiles against Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, despite the presence of the
Patriot antimissile system? And a bombed-out, radioactive Baghdad is not a
sufficiently horrifying disincentive? This idiotic formulation -- we can
frighten off a suicidal madman (for he would have to be suicidal and mad to
launch such an assault) with sci-fi weaponry -- is perhaps an appropriate
response to the hyped-up threat of the rogue-nation, single-missile attack, a
threat that is readily dismissed by most of our allies. Yet this is what
passes for a discussion of national security on the campaign hustings.
On to the second event. The day after this Bush chat, a twentysomething
Chilean television reporter came by to interview me about the CIA (about
which I wrote a book several years ago). The spy gang is much in the news in
Chile these days, for the CIA in mid-September released a remarkable document
summarizing the assorted clandestine ways it had undermined Chilean democracy
in the 1960s and 1970s. The report notes that the agency "actively supported
the military junta" that in 1973 overthrew the democratically-elected
Salvador Allende and that tortured and disappeared thousands. Even though the
military regime engaged in "systematic and widespread human rights," the CIA
waged propaganda operations using the news media to create "a postive image
for the military junta," the report says.
The most outrageous news in the document concerned Manuel Contreras, the
notorious chief of Chilean intelligence in the post-coup years. The CIA
revealed that it had maintained a relationship with this thug, who was one of
the prime human rights abusers in Chile and who had plotted the 1976 car-bomb
assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit,
his American assistant, in Washington, DC. That's right. The CIA had on its
payroll the guy responsible for the murder of an American.
Surely, this has caused a major controversy in America? the Chilean reporter
asked. No, I told her. She shook her head in disbelief. And what about the
CIA? she asked. Doesn't Congress and the American public demand it no longer
engage in improper activity abroad? Not really, I replied. The CIA does not
face much scrutiny -- on Capitol Hill or at large -- and it's hard to tell
where it is mucking about these days. She was astonished.
Bush's simplistic national security riff and the reporter's charming surprise
came to mind as I was perusing the most recent issue of the Environmental
Change & Security Project Report, an inch-thick policy-wonk journal published
by the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center and financed by the US Agency
for International Development and several foundations. (I do enjoy a lively
read.) The volume contains a national intelligence estimate produced a few
months ago by the National Intelligence Council, a committee of experts from
within the "intelligence community" that advises the CIA chief. The estimate
-- entitled "The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for
the United States" -- notes that "new and reemerging infectious diseases will
pose a rising global health threat and will complicate U.S. and global
secuity over the next twenty years."
Here was evidence that the CIA could do something useful and that there are
public servants at work on assessing and countering real -- not comic-book --
threats. The estimate is chilling. The up-and-coming infectious diseases, it
says, "will endanger U.S. citizens at home and abroad, threaten U.S. armed
forces deployed overseas, and exacerbate social and political instability in
key countries and regisions in which the United States has signficiant
interests."
It's no surprise infectious diseases -- such as TB, malaria, and cholera --
are on the rise. "The spread of infectious diseases," the estimate says,
"results as much from changes in human behavior -- including lifestyles and
land use patterns, increased trade and travel, and inappropriate use of
antibiotic drugs -- as from mutations in pathogens." It reports that the U.S.
Institute of Medicine believes that the major infectious disease threat to
the United States may come from a previously unrecognized killer virus, like
HIV. And the estimate says that "epidemiologists generally agree that it is
not a question of whether, but when, the next killer pandemic will occur."
By the way, the estimate cites the increase of US food imports as
contributing to the rising trend of foodborne illnesses: "The globalization
of the food supply means that non-hygenic food production, preparation, and
handling practices in originating countries can introduce pathogens
endangering foreign as well as local populations." In other words, thank you,
Nafta.
The estimate presents a dark picture. Twenty-nine previously unknown diseases
have appeared since 1973. (Think Ebola and HIV/AIDs.) Its drafters consider
it "plausible" that AIDS -- which is already devastating sub-Saharan Africa
-- will spread rapidly through India, China, the former Societ Union and
Latin America and that drug-resistant strains of TB, malaria and other
infectious diseases "appear at a faster pace than new drugs and vaccines,
wreaking havoc on workd health." Moreover, they maintain, "infectious
diseases are likely to slow socio-economic development in the hardest-hit
developing and former communist countries and regions. This will challenge
democratic development and transitions and possibly contribute to h
umanitarian emergencies and civil conflicts." The gross domestic product of
Kenya in 2005, according to one study cited, will be 14.5 percent smaller
than it otherwise would have been due to AIDS. Russia, too, is facing a
health crisis. Back in the days of communism, more than 95 percent of the
population of the Soviet Union had regular access to essential drugs; now
it's 50 to 70 percent. "In our view," the estimate asserts, "the infectious
disease burden will add to poliical instability and slow democratic
development in sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Asia, and the former Soviet
Union, while also increasing political tensions in and among some developed
countries."
The next ten years, the paper predicts, will not be happy ones regarding
infectious diseases. Drug-resistance bacteria is likely to have the edge over
humans. Moreover, it adds, "development of an effective global surveillance
and response system probably is at least a decade or more away." But the
estimate writers believe -- or is it more a hope? -- that the decade after
that will be a time of progress, for "the worsening infectious disease
threat...is likely to further energize the international community." Things
will get worse before they get better -- what an upbeat notion.
There are real security threats facing the United States. A plague is a more
likely danger to Americans than a lone North Korean nuclear ICBM. Yet
political discussions regarding national security rarely cover such
non-traditional threats as infectious diseases or move beyond cereal-box
positions. It's encouraging that there are some within the intelligence
community who have a broader view of national security than the old
commie-fixated covert plotters of the CIA and the Star Wars-obsessed governor
of Texas.
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