What Do You Tell People?

By Jeffrey Kluger

Battling terrorism on the home front could forever be tangled up in politics, but what if it weren't? Suppose it were up to the antiterrorism pros alone to decide when to warn the public, what to say about the source of their intelligence and the actions the government is taking to neutralize the threat. Is there an obvious way to handle the sudden evidence that terrorists have plans to strike?

Probably not. Few people could disagree last week with the Bush Administration's decision to alert workers in New York City that their buildings had been cased. But there's less of a consensus, including in more terrorism-prone places like Israel and France, about whether U.S. officials should be forthcoming about how they came by that intelligence and what exactly they are doing about it. "To publish or not to publish--this is the dilemma of the intelligence officer every day, every minute," says Colonel Yossi Daskal, a retired head of the terrorism section of Israeli military intelligence.

Israeli security officials believe that in going public, the U.S. was relying on a strategy that agencies employ when they lose the intelligence contact, to use the term of art. That happens when sleuths collect enough leads to be pretty sure something's up but not enough to know precisely what's coming or when. Publicizing the information not only gives targeted populations warning but could also cause the attackers--who may think intelligence officials are closer than they really are--to abandon their plans.

The Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, doesn't generally publicize threats unless it has solid evidence of an impending strike. When the Palestinian uprising began in 2000, Shin Bet initially tried to keep information about imminent attacks secret. But whenever it put up new checkpoints to thwart the terrorists, radio stations would report the traffic snarls that ensued, and the government would be forced to acknowledge the terrorism threat. The Israelis noticed that this often prompted bombers to put off their journey or to make cell-phone calls to their handlers for traffic information, sometimes enabling Shin Bet to trace a bomber's location and capture him. Now, in a strategy code-named the Blade procedure, when Israelis have hard evidence that a bomber is on the way, they will often announce it. Officials say dozens of terrorist attacks have been prevented that way.

The French, who have had their share of terrorist battles with Algerian, Islamist and pro-Palestinian groups, are much more circumspect, telling the public to watch their backs when there's danger afoot but remaining studiously silent about what drove them to issue a warning. "Why do you want plotters aware you know even a portion of what you've discovered?" asks a French security official.

On the few occasions when information got out, says that official, the results were counterproductive. Earlier this year, for instance, an antiglobalization group calling itself AZF contacted the Interior Ministry, demanding ransom to remove bombs that AZF claimed to have planted under rail lines. Two bombs were found, one where the AZF said it would be. Security forces were hoping to smoke the group out of hiding, but not long after word of the threat leaked to the media, AZF vanished entirely, promising to be back. Even when a plot has been foiled and the planners have been captured, the French favor an official code of silence, reasoning that talking too much can give accomplices who may still be out there some scrap of information they need to continue eluding capture. In 2002, for example, officials withheld information discovered in a sweep of Chechen-trained jihadists planning to bomb the Russian embassy in Paris. Investigators used the undivulged leads to chase down additional members of the plot and uncover details of far greater planned violence.

The British also employ a tight-lipped approach, refusing last week even to confirm media reports, based mostly on U.S. and Pakistani sources' information, that suspected alQaeda leader Abu Eisa alHindi had been arrested in Britain. "That's the British style," says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at St. Andrews University in Scotland. "Don't talk about it, get on with the job quietly, and leave an aura of mystery." But that style drew criticism from Conservative Party leaders amid media reports that alHindi had been in the final stages of planning an attack on Heathrow Airport. "The British public appears to be always the last to know," complained David Davis, a Tory leader in Parliament. --By Jeffrey Kluger. Reported by Bruce Crumley/Paris and Matt Rees and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem

With reporting by Bruce Crumley/Paris and Matt Rees and Aharon Klein/Jerusalem