By: Keith Thomson
The Huffington Post 

“Al Qaeda becomes dangerous when they have a feeling of security,” former Homeland Security Advisor Kenneth Wainstein told me recently. “We’ve seen that movie before with Afghanistan, in the 1990s, when they built up the infrastructure they used for 9/11.”

So it was heartening when President Obama announced our goal: “To disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.”

The initiative includes the deployment of 17,000 additional troops to the area as well as a strong effort to bolster Afghanistan’s own security forces. And the United States is taking the fight to Al Qaeda in the shadows. “We are using various intelligence methods to penetrate their operations,” Wainstein said. “We are disrupting their recruiting and keeping them off-balance.” Meanwhile, flocks of satellites and drones are scouring Pakistan and Afghanistan for Al Qaeda camps.

Yet a spring remains in Al Qaeda’s step.

The reason, according to several intelligence community sources, is the terrorists’ delight with the new U.S. policy that essentially has opened our interrogation playbook to them. According to Fred Rustmann, who was a CIA operations officer for twenty-five years, Al Qaeda operatives have become emboldened: “They feel as if they’ve been given a Get Out Of Jail Free card.”

“Now, when an Al Qaeda recruit is going through his SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape] training, he is being told exactly what his interrogation will be like if he is captured,” Rustmann says. “He has no fear of it. He knows that he’ll come out okay. He knows that any threats to run him over to a country that will torture him are false. He knows he will not be killed or physically or mentally harmed. There will be no scars on his body or psyche when the interrogation is over. The most he’ll endure will be days or weeks of discomfort. He will be able to hold out. He will not break. There will be no incentive for him to betray Al Qaeda plans and intentions, or to give any information other than his name, rank and serial number.”

While careful to draw a line at cruelty, Rustmann adds, “There has to be incentive for the prisoner to answer the interrogator’s questions. If there is no incentive, the prisoner will simply stonewall the interrogator. And particularly when there is no time for lengthy rapport building and recruitment, fear is the best incentive for cooperation.”

Due to a perception that fear has been removed from the equation, intelligence community morale is the mirror opposite of Al Qaeda’s. “At its lowest point since the days of the Church Committee in the 70s,” is the consensus I gathered. Certainly, few counterterrorism operatives are among the 49 percent of Americans who oppose the use of torture no matter the circumstance, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll (48 percent believe the United States should consider it on a case basis).

“The hope is that our liaison counterparts will do the heavy-lifting,” Rustmann says.

The Pakistani ISI’s interrogation tactics reputedly make those employed at Guantanamo seem like spa treatments.

Rustmann notes: “People always think that the CIA will find a way to get things done despite the laws. That may have been the case in the old days, but not today. They won’t risk their careers and possible jail time.”

Of course fear is not the only way to gain our enemies’ cooperation. Some are swayed by ideology—the City Upon a Hill has a good track record. Some are motivated by ego, the chance to avenge a grudge against one’s superior, for instance. And then there is, historically, the CIA’s greatest sales tool: the Almighty Dollar.

With these aids, CIA officers will attempt to recruit Pakistani and Afghanistani locals—even locals who hate the West—in order to learn the whereabouts of Al Qaeda camps and destroy them.

“We have been successful recruiting from strength and not having to coerce people into cooperating,” Rustmann says. “You need to give them a way to rationalize their behavior. Give them an excuse—a better life for their families, for instance. They may still hate you. But they’ll work for you—there are a lot of workers in America who hate their bosses.”

But such penetrations are rare, and time-consuming (“a year or more,” Rustmann estimates). Also, as Rustmann puts it, “It’s the hardest sales pitch you’ll ever make in your life—inducing someone to willingly betray his country. And that’s a Russian or a Frenchman, not a religious fanatic like an Al Qaeda jihadist.”

Still, there is an excellent historic precedent for penetration on a fee basis: Afghanistan, of all places, in 2001.

“Along with Delta and the Special Forces, the CIA officers were the first into Afghanistan, handing out money,” Rustmann recalls. “That’s how we got the Northern Alliance on our side. It was like a rent-an-army, and not a lot of money: two dollars a day was a great wage for a soldier. And you can buy fanatics too.”

It’s unlikely that this knowledge will dampen Al Qaeda spirits. But that spring in their step may yet be the result of a rocket strike.