The Evolution of the War on Terrorism

J. Cofer Black is a lot of things, depending on who’s doing the describing: a legendary CIA agent who helped bag notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal; an architect of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, in 2001, and the overthrow of the Taliban; a key player in the U.S. rendition and secret prison programs; an executive at an American security outfit accused of running roughshod in Iraq.

On Monday, Black was at the School of Law, talking to students at a luncheon hosted by the University’s National Security Law Society, a law student group.

In a packed room, he gave a rundown of his three-decade career with the CIA and the U.S. Department of State and talked about the evolution of the government’s attitude — legal and otherwise — toward terrorism since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Black, who has a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Southern California, joined the CIA in 1974. He is credited with collecting the intelligence that led to the 1994 capture of notorious Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal.

In 1993, Black was assigned as CIA station chief in Khartoum, Sudan, where relations with the United States were strained over the African country’s sponsorship of terrorism. At the time, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had found a safe harbor there and had even targeted Black for assassination because of his pursuit of information on terror cells.

After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military became focused on state sponsors of terrorism, such as Libya and Iran, and regarded the actions of loosely affiliated and nongovernment-backed groups a law enforcement issue. Al-Qaeda was not a top priority, Black said, as evidenced by the meager funding, resources, and personnel allotted to it.

In 1999, CIA Director George Tenet appointed Black director of the agency’s Counterterrorist Center. Black said the millennium plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999 marked a turning point in the official attitude toward terrorism. He and his team had warned that there was an 80 percent chance that the United States would be attacked, and to “its significant credit,” he said, the Clinton administration took action. A Canadian border stop of one of the plotters netted a trunkful of explosives. But then Clinton exited the political stage. “As they were walking out the door,” Black said, “they got it, big time. It took them eight years to get it.” The new Bush administration, while more focused on terrorism, was not fast enough, he said.

After the September 11, 2001, attacks, the military had no war plan for Afghanistan, where bin Laden had been living and operating terrorist training camps. But Black and his team had been gathering intelligence on al-Qaeda for years. “Into this vacuum, the role of the intelligence community was more useful,” he said. “We were able to project and facilitate the entry of military forces. It worked out well. The Taliban and al-Qaeda — at least during the first period, the first 10 weeks — had essentially been removed from all cities, and their formations destroyed.”

From 2002 to 2004, Black served as point man for the government’s international counterterrorism policy, with the rank of ambassador at large. After President George W. Bush was reelected in 2004, he resigned and took his intelligence experience to the private sector, joining the controversial private security firm Blackwater Worldwide as vice chairman. The North Carolina–based outfit provides personal security to U.S. state department employees in Iraq, including the ambassador. Last month, Iraq’s Interior Ministry rejected Blackwater’s application for an operating license, contending that its reckless history in Iraq, including the killing of 17 civilians in 2007, left it no choice. Five Blackwater guards have been charged in the United States with manslaughter in connection with that incident. After Monday’s talk, Black declined to comment on the license denial.

Black is also chairman of the intelligence-gathering company Total Intelligence Solutions, and in 2008 he served as Mitt Romney’s counterterrorism and national security advisor during Romney’s run for the Republican presidential nomination. Black said the struggle against terrorism will continue to be slow going, and much work remains.

“In my view, we have not emphasized enough our contacts and relationships with our friends, and to some extent our enemies, overseas,” Black said. “This has to be a cornerstone of how we do our business. We need to be perceived as the kind of people that we are, not as how we are presented in the media. I’ve been very pleased to see how our new administration has been received overseas. We’ll have to follow this up with constructive actions. We all support Obama, and there are challenges out there besides financial. There continue to be terrorists.”

After speaking, Black took questions from the audience. Michael Sloan (LAW’10) asked, “In your opinion, should CIA interrogations be limited to the methods within the Army Field Manual?”

Black responded by asking audience members how many waterboarding interrogations they believed the CIA had conducted: “300? 3,000? 30,000? And remember, the criteria is people who have killed Americans, who say they’re going to kill Americans, or have knowledge of plans to kill Americans.”

Black’s answer: “There were three.”

For security agencies, he said, “there should be some ambiguity. Ambiguity can be helpful,” to avoid giving terrorists an interrogation playbook. He pointed out that 61 of the released Guantanamo detainees have resurfaced as terrorists and have killed at least four U.S. soldiers. “I would really never want to be in the position to see these soldiers’ mothers,” he said.

“I do believe our counterterrorism techniques have become increasingly more effective,” Black said. “I think we’re in much better shape now than certainly we were during the 9/11 period. It’s taken a lot of time, a lot of people, the expensive creation of new agencies. But I think we’re on the right track.”

Black ended by urging students to start their careers in the field of service, to do “something that is primarily for somebody else and doesn’t involve how much money you can make. In the end, it’s not how much your car costs, but what you walk away with.”

The National Security Law Society at BU’s School of Law seeks to promote democracy and the rule of law, as well as nonpartisan discourse on U.S. national security policy and foreign affairs. Among the society’s areas of interest: the separation of constitutional powers between the president, Congress, and the courts in the national security field; international and domestic legal constraints on the use of force in international relations; legal issues raised by the global war on terror, including the use of civil litigation; and the promotion of democracy and the rule of law.

Caleb Daniloff can be reached at cdanilof@bu.edu.