Posted on 07/04/2002 10:27:33 AM PDT by dirtboy
Penn professor Stephen Gale has frightening scenarios of al-Qaeda bringing this nation to its knees. People listen, but he's not sure they're hearing.
In 1998, University of Pennsylvania political science professor Stephen Gale went to Washington with a warning.
He told Federal Aviation Administration security officials that terrorists might seize airplanes and fly them into some of the nation's most prized landmarks. Two he mentioned: the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
No one listened, he said. An FAA security official told him that scenario fell into the category of threats the government is powerless to stop - like meteorites.
Gale walked out furious.
Today, people are listening. The 59-year-old resident of 46th Street and Osage Avenue testified in April before the Senate Appropriations Committee about the nation's vulnerabilities. He is a frequent guest on radio and TV shows, and since Sept. 11 has been mentioned in scores of newspapers and magazines.
Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, writing in the Wall Street Journal, mentioned Gale's FAA warning as an example of someone "who was doing things right." (As for the FAA, a spokesman said yesterday that through its own intelligence service, it was aware of the threat before Gale's visit.)
Gale's message isn't a comforting one. He warns that the nation could be paralyzed by attacks on electrical power grids that are guarded by rent-a-cops. He describes Osama bin Laden's network as smart, resourceful and determined to cripple the economy in ways that could make Sept. 11 seem mild. He gives al-Qaeda a 50-50 chance of toppling the United States - reducing the nation to frightened, fragmented territories focused on their own survival.
Gale hasn't been impressed with the nation's response. He has likened Tom Ridge, the homeland security director, to a "wooden Indian," and has questioned whether the nation has produced political leaders capable of the hard choices necessary to defeat terrorism.
He is critical of Attorney General John Ashcroft - not for being too hard-right, as many of Ashcroft's detractors believe, but for treating alleged 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui as a routine criminal defendant entitled to his day in civilian court.
An iconoclast, Gale has been at odds with his own employer, too.
"There are a substantial number of people on this campus - students, as well as faculty and administrators - who believe that we deserved it on Sept. 11," he said.
A Penn official said she was "astounded" by that claim. "That is very odd," said Carol Scheman, vice president for government, community and public affairs. "Speaking personally, it's utterly antithetical to my experience with my colleagues."
Gale notes that he wasn't invited by Penn to speak at a symposium on terrorism two days after the attacks, even though he taught a course called "Topics in Terrorism" for years.
When U.S. Rep. Robert A. Brady (D., Phila.) approached Penn last fall with the prospect of $6 million in state funding for a new anti-terrorism center that Gale would run, the university balked, the congressman said, asking instead that the money go to veterinary programs.
Hearing that, Brady balked.
"I think it's a mistake," said Brady, who teaches a graduate course with Gale part-time. "Penn should use him and use his expertise and give him some funding."
Scheman said Penn turned down the overture because there was much more involved in setting up such an institute than raising money. "It's a misapprehension of the facts to think he [Gale] was stopped from doing something because of personality," she said.
Gale doesn't worry about whom he offends. "I'm the guy who believes that seminars are a blood sport," he said. At a recent luncheon for him, colleagues joked about his habit of "running into walls head-first" - an image he loved.
In a time of specialization, Gale refuses to specialize. He has made himself an expert on terrorism, but he has also written on the philosophy of science, population change, community development block grants, and linguistics.
Gale came to academia by an unconventional route. He grew up poor in New York City, and worked as a postman and a dairy farmer in central New York state before getting a degree. At one time, his plan was to own his own farm.
"I was there milking 80 cows a day," he said. "Very heavy work. There were five tons of manure you had to scoop each day into the spreader" to be troweled onto fields as fertilizer.
He got his undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan in the 1960s, specializing in regional science. He has taught at Penn since 1973.
He has run a graduate program called Organizational Dynamics (but is stepping down this week and returning to the political science department). Students have ranged from bank executives to clergymen.
Smoking a pipe, Gale provokes his classes with real-world examples such as the failings of Philadelphia public schools and the Wharton School's construction of the $120 million Huntsman Hall academic center. ("What's the goal here, guys?" Gale said in an interview. "Do you want to educate students or do you want to prepare an architectural statement for the city of Philadelphia?")
The program's aim is to help students learn to overcome hidebound boards of directors ("lazy slobs," Gale says), and "institutional rules" that lead them down "blind alleys," to realize whatever goal they have set.
Terrorism has been a specialty of Gale's for years, an outgrowth of his focus on regional interests that straddle national boundaries.
Diana Koros, whom Gale describes as his "significant other," said he always knew terrorism posed such a lethal threat, but couldn't get others to share his concern.
"Since I've known him he was always so sure this was coming," said Koros, who met Gale in 1987. "He couldn't tell you when, but he could tell you it was coming. No one else thought of these things' being conceivable."
Now that the threat is real, Gale said, the nation needs to take it seriously.
An attack on buildings where the nation's electrical grid is balanced, for example, would disrupt health care systems, shut down computer networks, and disable fuel pumps, all part of the "essence of modern life." It would create, he said, the "endgame" in which "we're done."
"There ain't no nation no more," he said. "We'll splinter into a whole bunch of regional segments that are just going to figure out how to survive. That's it.
"We have all sorts of efficiencies built into our system. And the flip side, the dark force of efficiency, is vulnerability."
Gale calls for stepping up security measures, pivoting from a police mind-set to a military footing. It must be made plain to people, he said, that the rules have changed. Airplanes need commandos, not sky marshals, he says. If four kids breach the perimeter fence at a building that houses the electrical grid, the security guards can't take the chance of asking questions.
"You have to kill them," he said. "It may not be what you want to do in the best of all possible worlds. This ain't the best of all possible worlds. You're going to lose an electrical grid that brings down the entire nation.... I can't afford to ask what you're doing there, because I might lose the whole nation as a result."
Critics see such views as extreme. Criminologist Lawrence Sherman, also at Penn, says that for police to shoot first and ask later could be disastrous. It's one thing for police to react to a gun-wielding suspect, and quite another to react to someone about to turn the power off.
"I don't think we want to be upping the ante for police to be shooting people all over the United States simply because we had so many people die on Sept. 11. Pretty soon we'll lose as many as we lost on 9/11."
Gale's tastes are eclectic. His crowded office in Penn's McNeil Building is filled with computer equipment that looks as if it could pilot the space shuttle. His books run from Shakespeare to business ethics, and he's especially fond of Tom Clancy novels. He's writing a short story of his own now. The title: "Survivor."
"It's about surviving," he said. "And if you don't focus on what it means to survive, you're going to lose. That's the priority. It's always the priority of any species."
For all the attention he's getting, Gale isn't persuaded that the response is much different from what he got four years ago at the FAA.
"There's certainly been a lot of interest in speaking to me," Gale said. "Do I believe people are listening?
"No."
I pray you are correct. But Al Queda generally takes a fair amount of time between attacks.
Using Barbara Hatch Rosenberg logic, we ought to arrest this guy on suspicion of masterminding the 9-11 attacks.
Mine work just fine, thank you. Instead of throwing an insult, perhaps you can refute my contention that there are very significant political fault lines in this country.
Those faculty and administrators, as well as staff are about to get a dose of "the great tax cut of 2002." The "deserved" blow to the economy on top of the recession will blow apart their revenue stream as students struggle with paying the tuition. Tax revenue declines because of the frozen economy and the inflated cost of their socialist product are ending their way of life as they've known it.
In less than 10 years corporate schools and at-home on-line courses will be the way we get our degress and the liberals at the universities will be much less influential in politics, sexual conquests of coeds, and war protests; keep on rocking in the free world.
I really hate to say it, but this country needs to be attacked again. Which, tragically, it will be.
A very well-thought-out idea, although I can think of other ways I would prefer leftists to be proven idiots - unfortunately, proof of such to leftists usually entails the application of a 2x4 to the side of their little pointy heads.
Ironic that those who would apologize are responsible for the decline in morals in this society; i.e., the left.
If bin Laden is alive I would not count him out just yet. As dirtboy says al Queda takes some time between attacks. It takes time to set up a coordinated attack like 911.
You also have to consider we complete destroyed the al Queda home base. It will take a considerable amount of time for Al Queda to reorganize and train a new batch of jehadist.
Al Queda can’t be considered out for the count yet. 911 gave them a lot of publicity in the fundamentalist Muslim world. I believe they will have eager young men and women with dreams of a glorious martyr's death flocking to bin Laden’s banner.
Absolute bullshit. The first attack unified the nation as it hasn't been since Pearl Harbor. Any further attack will trigger a unified national retaliatory fury beside which the campaign in Afghanistan will look like a flea next to a whale.
Yeah, I remember reading how the America First movement, all during 1942, staged protests that it was all America's fault, that the Japanese had legitimate grievances. That columnists attacked Roosevelt for invading Guadacanal. That Wendell Wilkie questioned Roosevelt's handling of the war.
Yep, just like post Pearl Harbor all over again...
Indeed. As I've mentioned before, for any kind of attack, you will be able to find, in retrospect, somebody in the defense establishment who has studied that kind of attack (if DOD is doing its job). It doesn't mean that he went and did it.
We should be careful not to give defense workers too much grief for doing their jobs, or we'll be stuck with nobody willing to do it. (I'm not suggesting that anybody should let off the hook without an investigation if there's genuine suspicion, of course. Hatfill says that he wants this investigation, in order to clear his name, although he doesn't appreciate the publicity surrounding it.)
Stephen Gale is Director of the Organizational Dynamics Program and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania . His research and teaching are in technology transfer and business development, real estate analysis, security, and project evaluation. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan.
Contact Us
Address:
University of Pennsylvania 483 McNeil 3718 Locust Walk Philadelphia, PA 19104-6286
Telephone: 215-898-6967
Fax: 215-898-8934
E-mail: dynamics@center.grad.upenn.edu
Dear Dr. Gale,I'll let you know if I hear anything.
I have published (November 2001) the first in a five part series regarding how the horrific events of 9-11 could lead to a world war if we are not much more vigilant, and how we could do badly in such a world war if our enemies employ asymmetrical warfare against us generally.
The series is called "Dragon's Fury" and the first Volume is called "Breath of Fire".
I have a web site where there are excerpts, bio, and reviews at:
http://www.dragonsfury-breathoffire.com
The book is available and selling fairly well on Amazon as a trade paperback and Ebook.
I believe much of the story is in line with your own words, warnings and predictions, but mine are extrapolated out a few years to where aggressor nations take up the struggle against us.
Volume II is now complete and in edit prior to delivery for distribution.
I would be interested in sending you a copy of Volume I and then Volume II for review if you are so inclined.
Please let me know and if you would like one, please email me a mailing address and I will ship one to you 2nd day.
Either way, thank you and God bless you for your efforts in the face of the enemies of our nation.
Sincerely,
Jeff Head
Emmett, Idaho
Engineering Consultant and author
Dragon's Fury - Breath of Fire
http://www.dragonsfury-breathoffire.com
A Novel of the Coming Third World War
You obviously have a minor reading comprehension problem. Note that I said "..since Pearl Harbor..", not "..LIKE Pearl Harbor". OF COURSE, the same America-haters that sprouted like mushrooms on cowdung during the Vietnam War are beginning to make their normal pacifist/anti-America noises---but also note that they kept their damned mouths SHUT and their heads well down for a LONG TIME after 9/11 as a result of the massive shift in public opinion toward retaliation. Any further terrorist actions will result in their complete route from public life.
Perhaps into 50 sovereign states as the founders envisioned? What a novel idea ;-)
IMO, there is no comparison. As I said earlier, the center is holding. But the edges are far more frayed now than in 1941.
OF COURSE, the same America-haters that sprouted like mushrooms on cowdung during the Vietnam War are beginning to make their normal pacifist/anti-America noises---but also note that they kept their damned mouths SHUT and their heads well down for a LONG TIME after 9/11 as a result of the massive shift in public opinion toward retaliation.
Yeah, Michael Moore waited at least two days before telling the terrorists that they should have bombed Bush Country instead of Gore Country. And his subsequent book had so little appeal that it was on the NY Times Bestseller list.
Any further terrorist actions will result in their complete route from public life.
Amigo, I wish I could agree with you here. But considering their ability to continue to support Clintonism in light of the amazing stories of corruption about Bill and Hill, I can't.
The error here is the ommission of a variable termed "yankee ingenuity." We Americans have a historical tendency to invent creative solutions to any problem.
When government was not a ball-and-chain all-regulating obstruction ...
Dr Gale is insightful and imagine what would have heppened if there were more openminded folks at the helm that actually were LISTENING !
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