The Hill – February 26, 2003
‘Forewarned’: Predicting attacks, terror alerts
Security firm executive reflects on aftermath of Sept. 11.
By Andrew Glass
Nonfiction books written in great haste – in this case, in just three months’ time – often fall victim to slapdash editing and poorly reasoned arguments. Be forewarned this is not such a book. It is, instead, cogent in its arguments, current in its material, compelling in its analysis and chilling in its conclusions.
Michael Cherkasky wastes no time in stating his major thesis: On Sept. 11, 2001, he charges, the government failed to protect us from a devastating terrorist attack. Were another such strike to occur today, he predicts, “we would almost certainly fail again, as our system of security does not work…”
Cherkasky approaches the hot-button issue of homeland security – he would prefer the term “national security” because the threat in his mind stretches well beyond our domestic shores – with good credentials. (The prose has no doubt been improved by the collaboration of Alex Prud’homme, a journalist who has written on crime, politics and business for top-flight national newspapers and magazines.)
Cherkasky supervised the New York prosecutors assigned to the Joint Terrorist Task Force after the World Trade Center (WTC) truck bombing in 1993. (While some experts warned the terrorists would return to try to finish the job, those warnings were widely ignored.)
He went on to become president and chief executive of Kroll, Inc., a leading security firm. (Kroll was the security advisor to the New York Port Authority, which ran the WTC complex at the time of the attacks. Cherkasky notes ruefully that it too was unable to foresee them.)
In their aftermath, we have been subjected to a color-coded series of threat levels publicized around the clock by cable news outlets. The problem, of course, is that even well-briefed people on Capitol Hill, let alone average citizens, don’t have a clue as to how to respond to, say, Code Orange.
Homeland security bureaucrats modeled their system on the Defense Department’s alert system, known as DefCon. But, unlike Tom Ridge’s minions at the newly minted Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon tags each of its stages with a number of specific and concrete actions.
“Our national leaders maintain that they understand the nature of this new threat,” Cherkasky writes. “Unfortunately, their understanding is superficial at best.”
Unsurprisingly, Kroll advises its Fortune 500 clients that they will likely be targets of terrorist attacks, both at home and abroad, for the foreseeable future. A major portion of Cherkasky’s book is devoted to a painstaking account of how the United States has been the target of militant Islamic terrorists for least 10 years, with without realizing it.
His single strongest recommendation: Shift the war on terrorism from the “rigid and hierarchical” FBI to a new Domestic Intelligence Bureau, modeled on Britain’s MI-5, with expanded powers.
Still, Cherkasky is careful to put the heightened risk into perspective. While he points out that on Sept. 11, the United States sustained more casualties than the country had suffered in all its foreign military operations combined for the last 30 years, the 3,000 who fell victim to the terrorist onslaught still represent less than 10 percent of the fatalities we suffer each year from car crashes.
For a chief executive who earns his living assessing terrorist threats for deep-pocket clients, Cherkasky is remarkably at pains to warn against over-reaction. He emphasizes the reciprocal threat posed to civil liberties by post-Sept. 11 actions by the Bush administration and even more draconian measures being advocated by the Congress. “The ad hoc measures we are taking threaten our liberty,” Cherkasky writes bluntly.
Cherkasky also believes that while another major attack by the Islamists is inevitable, the risks are heightened by U.S. policies in the Middle East generally and, specifically, by the rising prospect of an American-led war against Iraq.
Along with the president and his top advisers, Cherkasky believes that “the world would be a safer place without an Iraq dominated by Saddam Hussein.”
Nevertheless, he asks, whether it’s worth going to war to get rid of him. And on that score, he firmly breaks with the Bush line.
As he puts it: “If we attack Iraq without substantial Arab support, we will likely convert the majority of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims into our enemies. We cannot afford to do that for such a meager gain.”
