Replies

The True Origins of Terrorism: Interview with Dr. Joseph Douglass

By: Ryan Mauro

RM: What countries were the most involved in the creation of the current terrorist threat we face?

JD: The most important nation, the granddaddy of terrorism, is Russia. Russia adopted international terrorism as a strategic intelligence operation in 1955. It organized schools for terrorists, terrorist training camps, coordination conferences and much more.

Next to Russia is China. Although not so prominent, nevertheless China was one of the major actors on this stage. There is hardly a communist or former communist nation that was not involved. North Korea sponsored and was itself involved in terrorism. So were Cuba, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Poland and so forth.

The one that had the most important role in the Americas was Cuba. Cuba also hosted tri-continental terrorist coordination meetings and was a base for terrorist training camps. They have been a far more serious terrorist threat to the US than Iraq because of their terrorist expertise, large number of intelligence agents within the United States, and significant BW and CW expertise. They should be one of the prime suspects in the anthrax letters of October 2001.

RM: Why did the Soviets and their allies sponsor drug trafficking, organized crime and terrorism?

JD: The three operated cooperatively and in a complementary fashion. They were all strategic intelligence operations, conceived in 1955-56 as part of the effort to modernize the world revolutionary movement. Organized crime was run mainly by the KGB; terrorism and drug trafficking was mainly managed out of the GRU. These operations were all coordinated and worked together.

The function of terrorism is to destabilize the country and drive a wedge between the people and the government. The function of organized crime was to corrupt and compromise the leadership and pro vide an important source of intelligence and influence. The function of drug trafficking is to corrupt the youth, decrease their long-term leadership, and weaken the future leaders of the country.

A fourth factor, which you neglected to mention, but was part of the same set of strategic intelligence operations, was deception, the purpose of which was to mislead people about the instigators and organizers of these activities, and blame the activities on problems internal within the culture of the country. And especially, as Jan Sejna said, "to prevent the spotlight of publicity from falling on our friends, the banks."

RM: Did the Soviets and their allies do anything to create or promote radical Islam?

JD: A major dimension of Soviet strategy was to infiltrate, turn, and use all religions. One of the easiest to penetrate was Islam because this religion is so similar to communism and its world view Within a religion, the idea was to turn the religion to support the Soviet strategy. Because a major thrust of its terrorism was run out of the Middle East -- I am not aware of any Arab terrorist operation that the Soviets were not involved in, if not founder of -- support of such terrorist activities would have been in support of Soviet policy and, as such, strongly anti-American and designed to isolate America from the rest of the world, especially Europe.

A main Soviet tactic was to recruit non-communist agents and send these agents to religious schools (seminaries) so that they would learn the religion from the ground up and be accepted into the religion for the long term. These people were both witting and unwitting agents with ideologies designed to support Russian strategy rather than Arab interests; or to manipulate Arab interests so they supported Soviet interests. The idea was to build a batch of instructors or teachers who would then dominate the teaching centers and schools, which are one of the main sources of terrorist recruitment.

The bottom line is that the Russians have been intimately involved in the corruption of the Islamic teaching centers and schools, through them and recruited clerics, as well as the radicalization of Islam and its anti-American hatred.

Finally, the success of the suicide bombers is quite likely not just a question of training and psychological brainwashing but actual mind-control using psychoactive drugs, as was also done on the Kamikaze pilots, Viet Cong, and others. Parallel activities in turning religions to Soviet interest, although not in the terrorist sense, can be seen in other religions as well.

RM: Did the Soviets do it directly or through rogue states like Iran, Iraq and Libya?

JD: First, as I understand Islam, the term radical is misleading. What we see is more appropriately fundamental Islam. That is, nothing that we see is inconsistent with the Islamic scriptures. This comes as a surprise to many people, what with our President describing Islam as a peaceful religion, focused on love and compassion. This image is nowhere to be found in the Islamic scriptures. A good treatment of the subject can be found at prophetofdoom.net, or in the book "Prophet of Doom." The web site has a mass of quotes and references.

Note that misleading the American public about an ideology is not new. Communism was misrepresented, as was the disintegration of the Soviet Union. As indicated in “The Black Book of Communism”, there was nothing but silence from academics, politicians, and the media on the crimes of Communism for eighty years, and that is still continuing. Respecting the Soviet use of surrogates has been a common practice.

Certainly, the Russians do it directly when the opportunity is right, or when they are not worried about disclosure, or do not want to trust the surrogate. In general, however, they have found it easier and more effective to use a surrogate, such as the Czechs or Germans in running operations and indigenous people where they do not want to show their faces, as in drug trafficking.

The reason surrogates works for the Russians is that people do not trust the Russians, but they do trust the Czechs and Germans, who are seen as victims. Hence, the Czechs or Germans, etc. make the contacts and at the appropriate time turn their information over to the Russians. The Czechs were very active in this respect in Egypt and Syria, where they had good contacts, and the Germans were very active in Iraq and Iran. The key question in planning the operation is which surrogate is the best to use and, in some, countries there are many options.

RM: Is there any evidence then that Russia is still using rogue states to do such dirty work?

JD: Is there any evidence they are not? It is inconceivable that they’re not still involved. One public indicator has been the presence of top-ranking Soviet advisors prior to, and during the First Gulf War, and up to, and during part of the most recent attack on Iraq. The continued Russian presence can also be seen in books such as "Bin Laden." What has been happening over the past decade is less obvious than before for two reasons.

First, the intelligence collection directed toward Russia, Eastern Europe, etc. was turned off in 1990-1992, because our attention has been focused elsewhere, and the Russians have increased their security to hide such activities. However, we also know that their foreign intelligence activities have increased and, that they’re not about to have just "walked away" from the activities of interest, which were, and remain, very valuable.

RM: How come there isn't evidence emerging that Russia is directly sponsoring terrorism itself or via rogue allies?

JD: How do you know there isn't? If there were, would you know it or would it be suppressed? There was, and still is, a major effort to suppress such intelligence, i.e., it is still politically incorrect to focus attention on the crimes of communism. There is also less information available for the reasons stated above.

RM: What do you make of the US "alliance" with the former East Bloc in the War on Terror?

JD: Total nonsense. The problem is that no information has been released that indicates what constitutes this "alliance" and what has been provided in cooperation of real significance. There was also a joint US-Russian team formed to find any information on missing American POWs in Russia. This was formed in 1992. The specific reason was the desire of our government to show it as an example of Russian cooperation.

The person who headed the Russian side, Volkogonov, was propagandized here as a “historian” and “good guy”. In reality, he was Yepishev's deputy for propaganda and disinformation for twenty years. Yepishev was one of the more sinister Soviet generals who headed the Main Political Administration. Volkogonov knew about the use of American POWs, as he told a consultant to the Foreign Relations Committee before the task force was formed but that he would be killed if he talked about it.

He headed the Soviet side, not in a spirit of cooperation, but to make certain we did not find anything. This is more likely than not, an indication of how cooperation in combating terrorism has also gone, but the US would not admit this because it would show how much a farce our pro-Russian policies are.

RM: Does the Soviet sponsorship of drug trafficking, organized crime and terrorism hold any significance today and why?

JD: Tremendous significance. Organized crime and drug trafficking are regarded by professionals as even more important that terrorism, and a massive threat. When you recognize the size (revenues of over $3 trillion and capital assets in the $30 to $50 trillion range), it does not take much imagination to recognize this means the total corruption of financial, business, trade, politicians, law enforcement, justice, law, and intelligence. This was even laid out in a US interagency study published in unclassified form on the Internet in December 2000. Its title was International Crime Threat Assessment.

RM: Russia is a victim of terrorism, especially from Chechnya. How do you respond to those that say this makes them a perfect ally?

JD: Chechnya is also reported to be a region where terrorists continue to be trained. The Russians would not hesitate to kill or allow to-be killed hundreds of thousands of people to cover their own operations. The fact that they are a "victim" means absolutely nothing.

It is too good an "example" for precisely the reason you put forth. It is similar to the sudden drug problem Russia started talking about in 1988 when their role in drug trafficking started to surface. Most of the data in this sudden surge of publicity was shown not to have come from the mid-1980s but from the 1950s. The whole thing was contrived to create the impression that Russia was suffering just as the West was under attack and, thus, gain the sympathy of the West and pave the way for joint anti-drug trafficking efforts.

RM: Why is Russia still anti-American and trying to make an alliance to counter American power?

JD: As Gorbachev explained in his book, Peristroika, “We will never forsake our goals set by Lenin (i.e., global conquest)”. What we see being launched in 1989 is a new strategy to accomplish this same goal. Arbatov foretold the new strategy -- he explained it as follows: "We are going to do a terrible thing to you. We are going to take away your threat." My belief is that Russia will be anti-American until America has been undermined to the extent where, as Rowan Gaither explained in 1953, a comfortable Russia-US merger were possible.

______________________________________________________

Joseph Douglass Jr., PhD (Cornell University, 1962), has 35 years experience in national security matters as a researcher, author, and frequent speaker. He is a recognized authority on U.S. and Soviet nuclear strategy, chemical and biological warfare, Communist decision-making, and Soviet strategic intelligence operations.

Over the past twenty years his work has focused on the international narcotics trafficking and the war on drugs, the leading role of Russian intelligence in international terrorism and organized crime, chemical and biological warfare agents for use in political and intelligence operations, US defense policy, and on the fate of missing American POWs, which is the subject of his most recent book Betrayed.

Dr. Douglass has worked in the AEC’s Sandia Laboratory, the Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Department of Defense and several national defense corporations. He has taught at Cornell University, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is a frequent speaker and author of over a hundred scholarly articles, op ed pieces and a dozen books, including Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America and, most recently, Betrayed: Missing American POWs. He is also the co-author of America The Vulnerable: The Threat of Chemical/Biological Warfare, Why the Soviet Union Violates Arms Control Treaties, CBW: The Poor Man's Atomic Bomb, and Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War.