Toward the end of Paul Williams' most recent book, The Dunces of Doomsday, we read that Islamic terrorist networks are affiliated with criminal networks arising from "former" communist countries like Albania and Russia. These criminal networks are connected, in turn, to drug trafficking and communist revolutionary movements. With regard to Hezbollah, for example, Williams wrote: "After setting up shop in Latin America, Hezbollah wasted no time in establishing business relations with the drug cartels in Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay and with paramilitary groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Peru's [Sendero Luminosos]. The drug lords and the revolutionaries sought weapons that Hezbollah could provide, and Hezbollah sought cocaine that it could sell throughout the Middle East and Europe through its Sicilian connections."
The interplay between drugs, organized crime and communist movements was documented and analyzed long ago in Joseph D. Douglass, Jr.'s book, Red Cocaine: The drugging of America and the West. The rise of a new criminal nexus, linking anti-American politics to organized crime and terrorism is part of an overall strategic restructuring (i.e., perestroika). It came about through decades of planning and organization, as part of a strategic shift. Napoleon once explained that victory belonged to those who knew how to "change formation" in the middle of a battle. And perestroika was all about "changing formation." For many decades the KGB and GRU were the most effective intelligence services in the world, and they knew how to change formation. Throughout the last century the Russian special services scored one triumph after another. Instrumental in defeating Hitler during World War II, the Russian troops reached Berlin and captured the archives of Nazi intelligence. Nazi Germany's spy networks were suddenly in Moscow's hands, and these could be flipped - turned to good account by a new paymaster. From this powerful position they began the Cold War. Of course, the Russians have made plenty of mistakes (like anyone else), but their overall advantage was due to superior organization, discipline and strategic focus. They organized their work in a practical way, and made all the necessary sacrifices - placing heavy demands on intelligence officers, enforcing rules with the threat of imprisonment or death.
The Western security services never came up to Moscow's draconian standard. They failed to take the hard road, preferring more relaxed work conditions. The result was a series of penetrations throughout the Cold War. As Western society became even more relaxed, even more casual, the organization of effective intelligence work became even more difficult. The West could not compete on the level of clandestine struggle, or on the level of psychological warfare. Intelligence can always be gathered, of course, even by a lax security service. But secrets cannot be safeguarded, and the agencies involved are open to penetration, deception and strategic manipulation. The perceptions of a Western government are formed, in some part, by that government's intelligence service and intellectual milieu. If the service has been penetrated and fed false information, if the intellectual culture of the country has been poisoned, then the work of intelligence analysis will deviate from the path of truth. Such analysis cannot provide advanced warning of attack, being unable to anticipate the method of attack. Blinded by false assumptions, the analysts within the closed circle of this system cannot even recognize their country's enemy, especially if the enemy has supposedly changed to a friend.
Between 1986 and 2001 a shift occurred in the battle between America and the communist bloc. The communist leadership under Mikhail Gorbachev announced a massive restructuring or "perestroika." This entailed a policy of "openness" or "glasnost." By 1992 the communist bloc seemed to disappear, and by 2002 the U.S. was primarily concerned with the threat of Arab or Muslim terrorism. Much publicity has been given to the idea of a nuclear attack organized by Arab terrorists. The nuclear weapons will be of Russian origin, but the attackers will be Muslim extremists. It is assumed that the Russians will have nothing to do with the attack itself. Thus, a kind of plausible deniability has been instilled directly into the equation. An alternative enemy has been built up in the public's mind, even as the old communist propaganda about "American imperialism" reasserts itself on all sides (under various false flags).
The task of restructuring or perestroika has been accomplished. The old communist bloc has been replaced with a criminal/clandestine/terrorist bloc. The United States, with its superior military machine, has been outflanked because U.S. intelligence agencies are unable to cope with organized crime and drug trafficking networks. The present-day "coalition of the willing" has been unable to correctly identify the strategic center of the enemy camp, or penetrate the clandestine system that is preparing a major strike against the American homeland.
To understand what is happening today one needs to understand the relationship between strategy and organization; especially in terms of the restructuring of clandestine systems. The United States does not have effective clandestine structures of its own. It cannot effectively penetrate enemy structures. This has been true since the 1950s. It is due to the limitations of the American mind and American political culture. The world requires that every society adapt to changing circumstances. America is structured for economic adaptation, but it is helpless when it comes to the clandestine, criminal world. A liberal political system is a system that protects individual liberty and privacy. This, in turn, disallows the intrusions of effective counterintelligence. Therefore, the United States suffers from a built-in handicap. This handicap existed during the Cold War, and it exists today during the War on Terror. Just as Russia seems incapable of adopting a true market system, America is incapable of adopting a true counterintelligence system. And so the inherent benefits and deficits of each must accrue over time, tending to an opportunity for an attack by one system upon the other.
We ought to sit up and take notice when Russian intelligence defectors like Alexander Litvineko and Vladimir Rezun warn about false flag terrorist attacks, secretly and indirectly orchestrated from Moscow (with plausible deniability). As of this writing, the defector testimony has been set aside because self-deception rules the roost. This is true within the U.S. government, academia and American culture. American intellectuals are incapable of digesting an entire subsystem of interlocking evidence. Digestion, in fact, is inhibited by material comfort and the desire to feel good about the future. One may conclude from this general analysis, that the United States will be attacked with WMDs in the not-too-distant future, and that America as a country will be unable to identify the ultimate source of the attack.
This may appear to be an overly pessimistic assessment. But the assessment is based on many factors discussed in previous columns. The decline of education, the decline of logical thinking and general knowledge, is an undeniable part of the problem. It must be admitted, of course, that intelligent people remain in control of American society, at all levels; but intelligent people do not receive the full benefits of their natural gifts when predisposed to self deception.
