Special Report: Aftermath Of Terror

CIA COMMITS FRESH MONEY TO ANTITERROR INTELLIGENCE WORK

WASHINGTON -- Stung by its past failures and the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency is committing hundreds of millions
of dollars to a broad set of covert operations against Osama bin Laden and
his world-wide terrorist network.

Between $700 million and $800 million has been allocated to the
intelligence community to support efforts authorized by President Bush in a
secret notice to Congress last month. Budget numbers alone can give only a
sense of the planning under way. But the investment is exceptionally large,
and shows how much of President Bush's war against terrorism will be
conducted out of sight. A CIA spokesman declined to comment, but one
official described the agency as effectively on a "war" footing. "It's not
a doubling of effort. It is much, much greater," he said.

Much of that war is focused on Afghanistan. The expenditures will go for
purposes ranging from the purchase of sophisticated reconnaissance
equipment to a rich set of rewards that will be offered for information
about the whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden and his associates. Resistance
groups and tribal leaders within Afghanistan, as well as factions in the
Taliban leadership, are all targets for recruitment and could receive CIA
support.

The additional funds also will help pay to build ties with more financially
strapped foreign-intelligence services in the Middle East and Central Asia,
in what one official described as a "multinational" effort. U.S. policy
toward anti-Taliban resistance groups in Afghanistan's north and south
still appears to be evolving.

Reports from Pakistan indicate that CIA and Pakistani military-intelligence
officials have participated in talks on putting together a new coalition
government in Afghanistan. But U.S. officials familiar with the CIA's
efforts insist the agency's chief priority is destroying the bin Laden
terrorism network, not dictating a new government in Kabul to replace the
ruling Taliban regime. The intelligence operations also will gather
information that would be useful to U.S. military forces being positioned
in the region. But there is a separate chain of command for military and
intelligence operations.

Inside the government, those who champion the covert-operations approach
would prefer that the administration delay any overt assault on the
Taliban, because they want the CIA to be given more time to target Mr. bin
Laden secretly. With Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld now on a trip to the
Mideast and Central Asia to brief allies and work out details of military
cooperation, the debate over when a U.S. strike should come is growing more
pointed.

For the CIA itself, there is the residual worry that any American military
action will be complicated by the fact that sophisticated ground-to-air
Stinger missiles, which the U.S. intelligence offices provided to Afghan
fighters battling the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, will be in the hands
of Taliban fighters. The agency tried to buy them back at inflated prices,
but between 200 and 500 are unaccounted for, officials say.

A Bubbling Cauldron Though the U.S. isn't specifically aiming to overthrow
Afghanistan's Taliban regime, numerous Afghan groups oppose the Taliban and
would like to see it replaced. The key opposition players:

Afghanistan's exiled king Mohammad Zahir Shah, deposed as king 28 years
ago, now lives in Rome.

Afghanistan's recognized ruler Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the United
National Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, is recognized by
the United Nations as the country's rightful ruler.

Afghan opposition parties

a.. Islamic Movement of Afghanistan

a.. Islamic Party

a.. Islamic Unity Party

a.. Islamic Afghan Society

a.. National Front

a.. National Islamic Front

The Stinger history also is a reminder of how the CIA is often buffeted by
its past. The agency is plunging back now into the business of aggressively
recruiting foreign assets not only to gather intelligence but also to carry
out missions against the bin Laden network. In doing so, it must walk a
line between maintaining tight control over those it works with while also
responding to pressure to take more risks in fighting the terrorist threat.

"We are now risk-averse," complains Rep. Doug Bereuter, a Nebraska
Republican and senior member of the House Intelligence Committee. Within
days of last month's attacks, Senate conservatives began demanding that the
CIA rewrite so-called dirty-assets rules, which require an agency
headquarters review of any intelligence source who is guilty of involvement
in, for example, human-rights abuses or drug trafficking. Mr. Bereuter has
attached a similar amendment to do that to this year's intelligence
authorization bill.

The agency has recently made changes to speed up such reviews, but claims
the procedures have never been used to turn down a potential source to
fight terrorism. However, the current mood that there has been too much
caution is well-captured by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter
Goss, a Florida Republican and former CIA agent himself: "This is a
low-profile moment for lawyers."

Caught in the middle is CIA director George Tenet, a native New Yorker who
was hit hard by the attack on the World Trade Center and lost a family
friend in the crash of American Airlines flight into the Pentagon. Mr.
Tenet is a Democratic holdover from the Clinton administration, and Senate
Republicans have begun circulating a letter asking Senate Intelligence
Committee Chairman Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, to begin an inquiry into
the failures of intelligence prior to last month's attacks. Given the
pressure of the current crisis, Mr. Graham is resisting any immediate inquiry.

In the interim, Mr. Tenet and the CIA are enduring a series of leaks,
apparently from former Clinton administration officials, about past,
unsuccessful efforts to target bin Laden. Mr. Tenet's survival as director
could well rest on the success of the aggressive plan he helped develop as
part of the U.S. response now.