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Saturday, October 19, 2002
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D.C. SNIPER TERROR
Ex-CIA operative: Shootings likely terrorism
Says Pentagon involvement, nature of killings support theory
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Posted: October 19, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Jon Dougherty
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© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
A former U.S. Army and CIA special operations veteran says the
nature of the Washington-area shootings make him "lean more
toward" believing they are terrorist acts.
Also, says Jamie Smith, head of Smith Consulting Group – a
security consulting agency – whoever is terrorizing the populace with
indiscriminate sniper attacks likely has "some level" of military or
paramilitary training.
The military has "three types of snipers," explained Smith, who holds
a doctorate in law and who recently returned from missions in
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"You have the highly trained sniper, the trained marksman and an
armed irregular. This shooter seems to have at least as much
training as a trained marksman," he said, judging by his ability to
squeeze off deadly shots and elude capture afterward.
The 14-year special-ops veteran and former director of the Navy's
Antiterrorism Warfare Development Program said other clues
lending weight to his theory include the fact that the shootings don't
fit any traditional killing-spree pattern: The shooter is "not taking
souvenirs, he's not disorganized and seems like he has a sound
plan" of operation, indicating forethought and preparation.
Also indicative of the terrorism angle, he says, is the fact that the
Department of Defense is now getting involved in the hunt for the
sniper.
"You've got to think that the powers that be consider this at least a
strong likelihood that a foreign influence is doing this, because
they've now turned national security assets over to it," he said.
Smith was referring to an announcement by Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld earlier this week that he was assigning U.S. Army
surveillance planes – with infrared equipment aboard that is used to
spot gunfire – to help look for the sniper.
"The FBI has a lot of investigative muscle," he added. "For them to
seek the assistance of the defense establishment tells me there is
something else going on."
Smith also said he believes, as do an increasing number of police
officers and terrorism experts, that there may be more than just one
killer involved – that whoever is doing the shooting is operating in a
two-man team.
"You can't squeeze a shot off, pack your weapon, crank up the
vehicle and then drive out" and avoid police dragnets and witnesses
without help, Smith said. "It makes sense there might be more than
one" individual involved, he added.
Smith said he'd seen al-Qaida training tapes, like the one first
disclosed by WorldNetDaily in September, while on duty in central
Asia.
"[Al-Qaida operatives] use a lot of vehicles and a kind of dual hit-
and-run where you have one driver and one shooter," he said.
In one particular scenario, "they use a motorcycle," he said. "As they
approach the target, the guy on back stands up on the rear
motorcycle pegs and actually shoots over the driver's head as they
pass the victim."
Al-Qaida operatives also have trained in home invasions and
abductions, as well as "assassinations at your door," he said.
Though the Bush administration has not identified the shootings as
terrorism-related, Smith pointed out an irony: The shootings began
"around the time of the first anniversary of the invasion of
Afghanistan," when U.S.-led forces attacked the Taliban-led
government harboring known al-Qaida operatives and terrorist
training camps.
That, "coupled with the fact that all efforts so far have been focused
around D.C.," lends itself well that it could be terrorist-related, he
said. And, al-Qaida has been blamed for several other terrorist-
related incidents worldwide, indicating an upswing in activity.
Smith added that if the shootings are the work of terrorist cells, they
could be operating without direct orders from a command structure.
"It's not beyond the realm of possibility," he said.
Terrorism is obviously on the minds of several top U.S. officials,
including the heads of both intelligence agencies, who predicted
new attacks against the U.S. – assaults that likely would not be
detected or thwarted beforehand.
"You must make the analytical judgment that the possibility exists
that people are planning to attack you inside the United States –
multiple simultaneous attacks," CIA Director George Tenet told a
joint House-Senate intelligence panel on Thursday. "We're the
enemy. We're the people they want to hurt inside this country."
Tenet also said the current situation is similar to the time just before
9-11.
Added FBI Director Robert Mueller: "I have a hard time telling the
country that you should be comfortable, that we've covered all the
bases, in the wake of what we saw they were able to accomplish on
Sept. 11."
Smith indicated such frank warnings were uncharacteristic of the
agency's top officials, but said they should be taken very seriously
by the American people.
"For the director to say something like that, in open forum, sitting by
the FBI director, is remarkable," he said. "They usually try to keep
that kind of information out of the public debate."
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During the blitz in 1940, George Orwell sat in his bomb shelter and
wrote an essay called "England Your England." It opened with this
sentence: "As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying
overhead, trying to kill me." What struck him at that moment of
danger was that it really does matter whether you are English or
German. The nation is a nursemaid that breeds certain values and a
certain ethos. Orwell went on to describe what it meant to be
English.
Now Americans are being killed simply because they are
Americans. Like Orwell, Americans are once again becoming
aware of themselves as a nationality, not just as members of some
ethnic community or globalized Internet chat group. Americans have
been reminded that, despite what the multiculturalists have been
preaching, not all cultures are wonderfully equal hues in the great
rainbow of humanity. Some national cultures, the ones that have
inherited certain ideas--about freedom and democracy, the limits of
the political claims of religion, the importance of tolerance and
dissent--are more humane than other civilizations, which reject
those ideas.
~~ David Brooks, "The Age of Conflict",
http://theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/4
24hwkwa.asp
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