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Military faulted on battling terrorism©Associated Press © St. Petersburg Times, published January 10, 2001 WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military must break out of a "purely defensive mode" and take more aggressive precautions against terrorists, says a special commission that reviewed the USS Cole bombing that killed 17 sailors. The commission did not assess the performance of the Cole's captain or crew or investigate why they failed to foresee the attack. Instead it sought to draw lessons from the incident for improving the protection of U.S. forces in transit around the world, particularly those -- like the Cole -- that make brief visits to remote ports and airfields. The Cole was refueling in Aden harbor in Yemen on Oct. 12 when a small boat sidled up to the 505-foot destroyer and detonated a load of explosives. The blast ripped a hole 40 feet high and 40 feet wide in the hull of the $1-billion warship. It was the first time terrorists had successfully attacked a U.S. Navy ship, and the Cole commission said the bombers had found a "seam in the fabric" of the Navy's system of self-protection. The way to strengthen that fabric lies in improved anti-terrorism training, better intelligence and a recognition that terrorism is a pervasive threat, the panel said. "We do believe that this threat is enduring, it's dangerous, people are dying from it, it is not a transitory threat, it's not going away," said retired Navy Adm. Harold Gehman, who co-chaired the commission with retired Army Gen. William Crouch. Gehman said the transition team of Defense Secretary-designate Donald Rumsfeld has asked for a briefing on the report, and Defense Secretary William Cohen, who appointed the Cole commission, said he has asked Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to review the findings and to recommend to Rumsfeld how to act upon them. Cohen also said he asked Shelton to review the report with an eye toward determining whether it raises questions about accountability. Among the panel's main findings was that while anti-terrorist protections at fixed, permanent installations used by U.S. forces abroad are adequate, insufficient attention has been paid to such protections for U.S. forces in transit abroad. The report said the military services do too little to detect and deter terrorist threats before they can be carried out. "We must get out of the purely defensive mode," the report said. Cohen conceded, however, that "even America's best efforts cannot remove every risk," and that U.S. troops will always be vulnerable to what the commission's report called "a very adaptive, persistent, patient and tenacious terrorist." Among the commission's recommendations on reducing the risk of terrorist attack on U.S. forces transiting abroad: The Pentagon and State Department should work together to improve the security capabilities of countries through which U.S. forces transit. Each of the military services should give regional commanders full-time specialists in "force protection," measures designed to guard against terrorist attack. Military commanders should identify ways to deter terrorists instead of being "entirely reactive." Military officers should be better trained in what kinds of intelligence to request when operating abroad. Intelligence agencies need to work harder at developing human sources of information, in addition to technical sources such as electronic intercepts.
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