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Issue Number 33
The challenge that security forces and the military face across known space in countering terrorism is how to obtain information about an enemy who fights unconventionally and operates in an environment where they are indistinguishable from the civilian populace. The differences between police officers and soldiers in training and approach, coupled with the fact that most military forces are generally uncomfortable with, and inadequately prepared for, counter terrorist operations, strengthens this challenge. Military forces in such unfamiliar settings must learn to acquire intelligence by methods markedly different from those to which they are accustomed. The most useful and effective intelligence information here are not discerned from orders of battle, visual satellite transmissions of opposing force positions, or intercepted signals - but from human intelligence gathered from the indigenous population.
The police, specifically trained to interact with the public, typically have better access than the military to what are called human intelligence sources. Indeed, good police work depends upon informers, undercover agents, and the apprehension and interrogation of terrorists and suspected terrorists, who provide the additional information critical to destroying terrorist organizations. Many here on Regina argue that the government must not over react in their efforts to bring the terrorists to justice by any means necessary, including the use of planetary and Imperial military units. However they overlook the fact that historically "good" police work that was effective in bringing terrorists to justice has of necessity involved nasty and brutish means.
In the wake of the most severe bombing campaign that Regina has ever seen during peacetime, most citizens today would agreed with the sentiment "that the innocent deserve more protection than the guilty". But in order to protect the innocent we should be truthful, if not explicit, in what we are willing to condone from those authorities responsible for our protection. The truth is that only information and intelligence can effectively counter terrorism. Equally disturbing and instructive, however, are the lengths to which the military and security forces often need to resort to get that information. I learned this some years ago, on a research trip to Menorb.
The setting - a swank waterfront hotel in Anosarr, could not have been farther removed from the carnage and destruction that have afflicted that planet for the past eighteen years and have claimed the lives of more than 18,000 people. Arrayed against the planetary government and the private security forces of several mega-corporations that have mining operations on the planet, is perhaps the most ruthlessly efficient terrorist organization in recent history.
I sat in the swank hotel drinking tea with a battle-hardened intelligence officer, charged with fighting the terrorists and protecting the lives of Menorb’s citizens. I cannot use his real name, so I will call him Merton. However, I have been told before our meeting, by a mutual friend – a former Imperial intelligence officer who had also fought skirmishes against sector terrorists - that Merton had another name, one better known to his friends and enemies alike: the Black Death. My friend explained that Merton had acquired his nickname from the merciless way in which he discharged his duties as an intelligence officer.
This became clear to me during our conversation. "By going through the process of laws," Merton patiently explained, as a parent or a teacher might explain to a bright yet uncomprehending child, "you cannot fight terrorism". Terrorism, he believed, could only be fought by thoroughly terrorizing the terrorists. That is, inflicting the same pain that they inflict on the innocent. Merton had little confidence that I understood what he was saying. I was an academic, he said, with no actual experience of the life-and-death choices and the immense responsibility borne by those charged with protecting society from attack.
Accordingly, he would give me an example of the split-second decisions he was called on to make. At the time, Anosarr was on "code red" emergency status, because of intelligence that the terrorists were planning to embark on a campaign of bombing public gathering places and other mining interests. Merton’s unit had apprehended three terrorists who, it was suspected, had recently planted a bomb that was ticking away in a mining town, the minutes counting down toward catastrophe. The three men were brought before Merton. He asked them where the bomb was. The terrorists - highly dedicated and steeled to resist interrogation - remained silent. Merton asked the question again, advising them that if they did not tell him what he wanted to know, he would kill them. They were unmoved. Merton took his pistol out, pointed it at the forehead of one of them, and shot him dead. The other two, he said, talked immediately; the bomb had been placed in a crowded mining dormitory and set to explode during a shift change. It was found and defused, and countless lives were saved.
On other occasions, Merton said, similarly recalcitrant terrorists were brought before him. It was not surprising, he said, that they initially refused to talk; they were schooled to withstand harsh questioning and coercive pressure. No matter: a few drops of petroleum distillate flicked into a plastic bag that is then placed over a terrorist’s head and cinched tight around his neck with a web belt very quickly prompts a full explanation of the details of any planned attack. [I have also heard tell that it wasn’t the lack of oxygen, or even the vapors that made them wet themselves, it was the story of the one that was touched with the match…]
I was looking pale and feeling a bit shaken as waiters in starched white jackets smartly cleared the china teapot and cups from the table, and Merton rose to bid us goodbye and return to his work. He hadn’t exulted in his explanations or revealed any joy or even a hint of pleasure in what he had to do. He had spoken in a measured, somber, even reverential tone. He did not appear to be a sadist, or even manifestly homicidal. [And not a year has passed since our meeting when Merton has failed to send me an unusually kind Christmas card.] In his view, the innocent had more rights than the guilty. He believed too, that extraordinary circumstances required extraordinary measures. Merton thought that I could never understand.
I am not fighting on the front lines of this battle; I don’t have the responsibility for protecting society that he does. He was right, I couldn’t possibly understand. But as I read the Regina Times each morning, covering the recent attacks on the UpPort, I am constantly reminded of Merton - of the difficulties of fighting terrorism and of the challenges of protecting not only the innocent but an entire society and way of life. I am never bidden to condone, much less advocate, torture. But as I recall the ruthless enemies that stalk Regina, I wonder about the lengths to which we may have to go to vanquish them. The moral question of lengths and the broader issue of ends versus means are, of course, neither new nor unique to our time. They are arguably no different than the stark choices that eventually confront any society threatened by an enveloping violence unlike anything it has seen before.
Recently I spoke with a decorated member of the Regina police force regarding the methods he was willing to utilize should he run across a lead in the ongoing investigation: He said " Naturally one worries - after all, one is inflicting pain and discomfort and indignity on other human beings… [but] society has got to find some way of protecting itself… and it can only do so if it has good information. If you have a close knit gang, which doesn’t give information, then you’ve got to find some ways of getting it. Now the softies of some worlds complain - but there is a lot of double talk about it. If there is to be discomfort and horror inflicted on a few, is this not to be preferred to the danger and horror being inflicted on perhaps a million people?"
I have never quite shaken my disquiet over my encounter with Merton and over the issues he raised - issues that have now acquired an unsettling relevance. Merton had tried to lend some perspective from his planet’s long experience fighting terrorism. "There are not good people and bad people," he told me, "only good circumstances and bad circumstances. Sometimes in bad circumstances good people have to do bad things. I have done bad things, but these were in bad circumstances. I have no doubt that this was the right thing to do."
In the quest for timely intelligence, will Regina too have to do bad things - by resorting to measures that we would never have contemplated in a less exigent situation?