Assessing Obama’s Counter terrorism Record

By JO BECKER and SCOTT SHANE

May 29, 2012

Officials in Obama administration and others outside, interviewed in recent months about President Obama’s counterterrorism record, said real progress had been made against Al Qaeda but also acknowledged lingering concerns about a fight that has shaped the United States’ approach to much of the world for the last decade. Excerpted below are remarks from some of nearly 40 current and former officials who had direct knowledge about the United States’ classified counter terrorism efforts. 

Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia and the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, gives the president high marks despite what he sees as a failure to capture and interrogate more terrorist suspects:

“We’ve crippled Al Qaeda. The foundation may have been laid in the Bush administration, but you have to recognize that this administration has been very committed to carrying the fight to the enemy.” 

William M. Daley, President Obama’s chief of staff in 2011, said the president has frequently remarked that “nothing comes to me that’s easy to decide,” and has been frustrated by an inability sometimes to get real-time information when strikes appeared to have gone awry:

“He would keep asking, and it was my job to push [National Security Advisor] Tom Donilon to keep asking, when are we going to get the answer to this — the real answer? Was it a screw-up, was it something gone wrong, was it bad intelligence — get me the answer. Generally these things, in spite of what we all want — answers immediately, they take a lot longer.” 

William K. Lietzau, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy, responding to internal administration concerns that its embrace of drone strikes suggests that it has adopted a take-no-prisoners policy:

“I don’t think there are clearer rules for lethal action than for detention, but you do have a clearer picture of the long term consequences... With lethal action, you are going to bury them. Figuring out what is going to happen long term with someone you detain is more difficult.” 

General James. L. Jones, the national security adviser from January 2009-November 2010, on how over time President Obama grew more comfortable with the drone program:

“At first when [then-C.I.A. director Leon] Panetta came to him with certain missions there was rigorous questioning and analysis about the unintended consequences of a mission if he approved it. He certainly adopted a principle of leadership that I absolutely agree with — that if you’re going to be blamed for something if it goes wrong, you want to understand what it is you’re agreeing to when you say yes. And as your comfort zone grows and your confidence grows in the people who are giving you advice, then you can relax a little bit.” 

Dennis C. Blair, former director of national intelligence, on what remains to be done:

“The strategic question not addressed is whether the current program has reached a point of diminishing returns. We might be just as safe relying on other measures to stop attacks on the U.S. — good intelligence sharing with other countries, strong border controls and vigilance within the country.

I’m all for drone strikes if there’s no downside. But in this case there’s a huge downside — we are making it more difficult for governments and Muslims that can cooperate with us against Al Qaeda to do so, and this cooperation is the key to long-term victory over Al Qaeda...

There is also another, long-term question that needs to be asked: Is killing leaders and followers of a hostile organization in large numbers outside a combat zone because we have the technical capacity to do so something we should be showing the world how to do? Are we creating some kind of a monster that could turn against us when the technology is available widely, as all technologies are.” 

Antony J. Blinken, national security adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., on participating in discussions about lethal action against suspected terrorists and the toll of overseeing such programs:

“The president is making, and you are contributing to, life and death decisions. Life and death decisions, first and foremost both for Americans citizens who may be at risk and those carrying out missions whose lives may be at risk, but also the people who are targets of your operations and the people around them, who may have nothing to do with it. And what people need to understand is how seriously and how powerfully the weight of those decisions bears on those who help shape them and ultimately, the president who makes them.”