Part 1
In the past,
politicians promised to create a better world.
They had different ways of achieving this.
But their power and authority
came from the optimistic visions
they offered to their people.
Those dreams failed.
And today,
people have lost faith in ideologies.
Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as
managers of public life.
But now,
they have discovered a new role
that restores their power and authority.
Instead of delivering dreams
politicians now promise to
protect us from nightmares.
They say that they will rescue
us from dreadful dangers
that we cannot see and do not understand.
And the greatest danger of
all is international terrorism.
A powerful and sinister network
with sleeper cells in
countries across the world.
A threat that needs to be
fought by a w*r on terror.
But much of this threat is a fantasy
which has been exaggerated
and distorted by politicians.
It's a dark illusion
that has spread unquestioned through
governments around the world
the security services,
and the international media.
This is a series of films
about how and why that
fantasy was created
and who it benefits.
At the heart of the story are two groups:
the American neoconservatives,
and the radical Islamists.
Both were idealists
who were born out of the
failure of the liberal dream
to build a better world.
And both had a very similar explanation
for what caused that failure.
These two groups have changed the world
but not in the way that either intended.
Together, they created today's
nightmare vision of a secret
organized evil that threatens the world.
A fantasy that politicians then
found restored their power
and authority in a disillusioned age.
And those with the darkest fears
became the most powerful.
The Power of Nightmares
The Rise os the Politics of Fear
Part Baby it's cold outside
The story begins in the summer of
when a middle-aged school
inspector from Egypt
arrived at the small town of Greeley,
in Colorado.
His name was Sayyed Qutb.
Qutb had been sent to the U.S.
to study its educational system
and he enrolled in the local state college.
His photographs appear
in the college yearbook.
But Qutb was destined
to become much more
than a school inspector.
Out of his experiences of
America that summer
Qutb was going to develop
a powerful set of ideas
that would directly inspire those
who flew the planes on the
attack of September the th.
As he had traveled across the country
Qutb had become increasingly
disenchanted with America.
The very things that,
on the surface
made the country look
prosperous and happy
Qutb saw as signs of an
inner corruption and decay.
This was Truman's America
and many Americans today regard it
as a golden age of their civilization.
But for Qutb,
he saw a sinister side in this.
All around him was crassness, corruption
vulgarity. Talk centered on movie
stars and automobile prices.
He was also very concerned
that the inhabitants of Greeley
spent a lot of time in lawn care.
Pruning their hedges,
cutting their lawns.
This, for Qutb,
was indicative of the selfish
and materialistic aspect of American life.
Americans lived these isolated
lives surrounded by their lawns.
They lusted after material goods.
And this,
says Qutb quite succinctly
is the taste of America.
What Qutb believed he was seeing
was a hidden and dangerous reality
underneath the surface
of ordinary American life.
One summer night,
he went to a dance at a local church hall.
He later wrote that what he saw that night
crystallized his vision.
He talks about how the pastor
played on the gramophone
one of the big-band hits of the day
"Baby, It's Cold Outside."
He dimmed the lights so as to
create a dreamy, romantic effect.
And then,
Qutb says that
"chests met chests,
arms circled waists
and the hall was full of lust and love."
To most people watching this dance
it would have been an innocent
picture of youthful happiness.
But Qutb saw something else:
The dancers in front of
him were tragic lost souls.
They believed that they were free.
But in reality
they were trapped by their
own selfish and greedy desires.
American society was not going forwards;
it was taking people backwards.
They were becoming isolated beings
driven by primitive animal forces.
Such creatures,
Qutb believed
could corrode the very bonds
that held society together.
And he became determined that night
to prevent this culture
of selfish individualism
taking over his own country.
But Qutb was not alone.
At the same time,
in Chicago
there was another man
who shared the same fears
about the destructive force
of individualism in America.
He was an obscure political philosopher
at the University of Chicago.
But his ideas would also have
far-reaching consequences
because they would
become the shaping force
behind the neoconservative movement
which now dominates the
American administration.
He was called Leo Strauss.
Strauss is a mysterious figure.
He refused to be filmed or interviewed.
He devoted his time to creating
a loyal band of students.
And what he taught them was
that the prosperous liberal
society they were living in
contained the seeds of its own destruction.
He didn't give interviews,
or write political essays
or appear on the radio
there wasn't TV yet-or things like that.
But he did want to get a school of students
to see what he had seen:
that Western liberalism led to nihilism
and had undergone a development
at the end of which it could
no longer define itself
or defend itself.
A development which took everything
praiseworthy and admirable
out of human beings
and made us into dwarf animals.
Made us into herd
animals-sick little dwarves
satisfied with a dangerous life
in which nothing is true
and everything is permitted.
Strauss believed that the liberal
idea of individual freedom
led people to question everything
all values,
all moral truths.
Instead, people were led by
their own selfish desires.
And this threatened to tear
apart the shared values
which held society together.
But there was a way to stop this,
Strauss believed.
It was for politicians to assert
powerful and inspiring myths
that everyone could believe in.
They might not be true,
but they were necessary illusions.
One of these was religion;
the other was the myth of the nation.
And in America,
that was the idea
that the country had a unique destiny
to battle the forces of
evil throughout the world.
This myth was epitomized,
Strauss told his students
in his favorite television
program: Gunsmoke.
Strauss was a great fan
of American television.
Gunsmoke was his great favorite
and he would hurry
home from the seminar
which would end at,
you know, : or so
and have a quick dinner
so he could be at his seat
before the television set
when Gunsmoke came on.
And he felt that this was good,
this show.
This had a salutary effect
on the American public
because it showed the conflict
between good and evil in a way
that would be immediately
intelligible to everyone.
Let's see what happens!
No!
The hero has a white hat;
he's faster on the draw than the bad man;
the good guy wins.
And it's not just that the good guy wins
but that values are clear.
That's America!
We're gonna triumph over the evils of
that are trying to destroy us
and the virtues of the Western frontier.
Good and evil.
Leo Strauss' other favorite
program was Perry Mason.
And this, he told his students,
epitomized the role that they
the elite,
had to play.
In public,
they should promote the myths
necessary to rescue America from decay.
But in private,
they didn't have to believe in them.
Perry Mason was different from Gunsmoke.
The extremely cunning man who,
as far as we can see
is very virtuous and uses
his great intelligence
and quickness of mind to
rescue his clients from dangers
but who could be fooling us
- because he's cleverer than we are.
Is he really telling the truth?
Maybe his client is guilty!
In , Sayyed Qutb traveled
back to Egypt from America.
He too was determined to
find some way of controlling
the forces of selfish individualism.
And as he traveled,
he began to envisage a new type of society.
It would have all the modern benefits
of Western science and technology
but a more political Islam would
have a central role to play
keeping individualism in check.
It would provide a moral framework
that would stop people's selfish
desires from overwhelming them.
But Qutb realized
that American culture was
already spreading to Egypt
trapping the masses
in its seductive dream.
What was needed,
he believed, was an elite
a vanguard who could see
through these illusions of freedom
just as he had in America
and who would then lead the
masses to realize the higher truth.
The masses need to be led.
And it is this vanguard group
that will be responsible
for the task of leading the
people out of the darkness
and into the light of Islam.
Because the masses had succumbed
to their own selfish desires
and he wanted the vanguard
to be different, to be pure
to be standing together outside
all of this corrupt situation
bringing people back to the truth.
On his return,
Qutb became politically active in Egypt.
He joined a group called
the Muslim Brotherhood
who wanted Islam to play a major role
in governing Egyptian society.
And in
the Brotherhood supported the
revolution led by General Nasser
that overthrew the last
remnants of British rule.
But Nasser very quickly made it clear
that the new Egypt was
going to be a secular society
that emulated Western morals.
He quickly forged an alliance with America.
And the CIA came to Egypt to
organize security agencies
for the new regime.
Faced with this
the Muslim Brotherhood began
to organize against Nasser
and in Qutb and other leading
members of the Brotherhood
were arrested by the security services.
What then happened to Qutb
was going to have
consequences for the whole world.
In the s,
this film was made
that showed what happened
in Nasser's main prison
in the ‘ s and ‘ s.
It was based on the testimony of survivors.
Torturers who had been trained by the CIA
unleashed an orgy of v*olence
against Muslim Brotherhood members
accused of plotting to overthrow Nasser.
At one point
Qutb was covered with animal fat
and locked in a cell with dogs
trained to attack humans.
Inside the cell,
he had a heart attack.
Sayyed Qutb thought of himself
as a superior sort of person.
He saw himself as an
important Islamist thinker
and a strong character.
And so on and so on.
But at the end of the day
when he was in the military prison
he gave us the exact details
about his secret group
and the orders he had given.
The most dangerous was the order
to flood the whole of the Nile delta
and drown this corrupt land of infidels.
Qutb survived,
but the t*rture
had a powerful radicalizing
effect on his ideas.
Up to this point
he had believed that the
Western secular ideas
simply created the
selfishness and the isolation
he had seen in the United States.
But the t*rture,
he believed
showed that this culture also unleashed
the most brutal and barbarous
aspects of human beings.
Qutb began to have an
apocalyptic vision of a disease
that was spreading from the
West throughout the world.
He called it jahilliyah
- a state of barbarous ignorance.
What made it so terrifying and insidious
was that people didn't
realize that they were infected.
They believed that they were free
and that their politicians
were taking them forward
to a new world.
But in fact,
they were regressing to a barbarous age.
The sense is that jahilliyah
is so dangerous now
because not only is it
advanced by Western powers
but Muslims
- this is like a charge of false consciousness -
Muslims have become
infected with this jahilliyah
so now the threat to
Islam is also from within.
It's from without,
and within.
It's a state of emergency
because jahilliyah is a condition
that pervades everything and everybody.
It's even infected our powers of imagination.
We don't even know that we're sick!
That we now worship materialism,
and the self
and individual truths over the real truths.
Um, so it's an incredible
sense of epic confrontation
where Islam is being insulted on all fronts.
From within,
from without
culturally, militarily, economically, politically.
And under those circumstances
any way of fighting it becomes
justified and legitimate
and in fact has a kind of existential weight
because somehow it's
doing God's will on earth.
To Qutb,
this force of jahilliyah
had now gone so deep
into the minds of Muslims
that a dramatic way had
to be found to free them.
In a series of books he
wrote secretly in prison
which were then smuggled out
Qutb called upon a revolutionary
vanguard to rise up
and overthrow the leaders
who had allowed jahilliyah
to infect their country.
The implication was
that these leaders
could justifiably be k*lled
because they had become so corrupted
they were no longer Muslims,
even though they said they were.
Faced with this,
Nasser decided to crush Qutb and his ideas
and in Qutb was
put on trial for treason.
This is the only known film of
Qutb as he awaits sentence.
The verdict was a foregone conclusion
and on August , ,
Qutb was ex*cuted.
But his ideas lived on.
The day after his execution
a young schoolboy set up a secret group.
He hoped that it would one
day become the vanguard
that Qutb had hoped for.
His name was Ayman Zawahiri
and Zawahiri was to become
the mentor to Osama Bin Laden.
But at the very moment
when Sayyed Qutb's ideas
seemed dead and buried
Leo Strauss' ideas about
how to transform America
were about to become
powerful and influential
because the liberal political order
that had dominated America
since the w*r started to collapse.
Law and order have broken
down in Detroit, Michigan.
Pillage, looting, m*rder.
Only a few years before.
President Johnson had promised policies
that would create a new
and a better world in America.
He had called it "the Great Society."
The Great Society is in place
where every child can find
knowledge to enrich his mind.
It is a place where the City of Man.
But now
in the wake of some of the
worst riots ever seen in America
that dream seemed to have
ended in v*olence and hatred.
One prominent liberal
journalist called Irving Kristol
began to question
whether it might actually
be the policies themselves
that were causing social breakdown.
If you had asked any liberal in
we are going to pass these laws,
these laws, these laws
and these laws,
mentioning all the laws
that in fact were passed
in the s and ‘ s
would you say crime will go up,
drug addiction will go up
illegitimacy will go up,
or will they get down?
Obviously, everyone would have said,
they will get down.
And everyone would have been wrong.
Now, that's not something
that the liberals have
been able to face up to.
They've had their reforms
and they have led to consequences
that they did not expect and
they don't know what to do about.
In the early ‘ s,
Irving Kristol became the focus
of a group of disaffected
intellectuals in Washington.
They were determined to understand
why the optimistic liberal policies had failed.
And they found the answer in
the theories of Leo Strauss.
Strauss explained that it was the
very basis of the liberal idea
"the belief in individual freedom"
that was causing the chaos
because it undermined the
shared moral framework
that held society together.
Individuals pursued their
own selfish interests
and this inevitably led to conflict.
As the movement grew
many young students who
had studied Strauss' ideas
came to Washington to join this group.
Some, like Paul Wolfowitz
had been taught Strauss' ideas
at the University of Chicago
as had Francis Fukuyama.
And others,
like Irving Kristol's son William
had studied Strauss' theories at Harvard.
This group became known
as the neoconservatives.
Well, many of them couldn't
get academic jobs
and the political science
and philosophy faclities
were not terribly friendly to those
of a conservative or moderately
conservative disposition.
And the truth is that a lot of people
who ended up in Washington
started out as academics.
I did; Paul Wolfowitz did;
and decided
they probably didn't have very
good prospects in the academy.
What we all had in common,
I think
was a certain doubt about
what once seemed a
kind of great certainty
and confidence in liberal progress.
The philosophic grounds for liberal
democracy had been weakened.
So I think Straussians who
came to Washington
they didn't think of themselves
as Churchill or Lincoln
let me assure you,
but they did that, you know
there's something noble about public life,
and about politics
and they tried to make a
contribution in many different areas.
The neoconservatives were idealists.
Their aim was to try and stop
the social disintegration
they believed liberal
freedoms had unleashed.
They wanted to find a way
of uniting the people
by giving them a shared purpose.
One of their great influences in doing this
would be the theories of Leo Strauss.
They would set out to recreate
the myth of America
as a unique nation
whose destiny was to battle
against evil in the world.
And in this project
the source of evil would be
America's Cold w*r enemy:
the Soviet Union.
And by doing this,
they believed
that they would not
only give new meaning
and purpose to people's lives
but they would spread the good
of democracy around the world.
The United States would not only
according to these
- the Straussians
be able to bring good to the world
but would be able to overcome
the fundamental weaknesses
of American society
a society that has been suffering,
almost rotting
in their language,
from relativism, liberalism
lack of self-confidence,
lack of belief in itself.
And one of the main political
projects of the Straussians
during the Cold w*r
was to reinforce the
self-confidence of Americans
and the belief that America
was fundamentally the only
force for good in the world
that had to be supported,
otherwise evil would prevail.
But to do this,
the neoconservatives were going to have
to defeat one of the most
powerful men in the world.
Henry Kissinger was the Secretary
of State under President Nixon
and he didn't believe in
a world of good and evil.
What drove Kissinger was a ruthless
pragmatic vision of power in the world.
With America's growing
political and social chaos
Kissinger wanted the country to
give up its ideological battles.
Instead, it should come
to terms with countries
like the Soviet Union
to create a new kind of
global interdependence.
A world in which America would be safe.
I believe that with all the dislocations we know
- now experience
there also exists an
extraordinary opportunity to form
for the first time in history,
a truly global society
carried by the principle of interdependence.
And if we act wisely and with vision
I think we can look back to all this turmoil
as the birth pangs of a more
creative and better system.
Kissinger had begun this process in
when he persuaded the Soviet Union
to sign a treaty with
America limiting nuclear arms.
It was the start of what was called "detente."
And President Nixon
returned to Washington
to announce triumphantly
that the age of fear was over.
Last Friday,
in Moscow
we witnessed the beginning
of the end of that era
which began in .
With this step, we have enhanced
the security of both nations.
We have begun to reduce the level of fear
by reducing the causes of fear
- for our two peoples
and for all peoples in the world.
But a world without fear was not
what the neoconservatives
needed to pursue their project.
They now set out to destroy
Henry Kissinger's vision.
What gave them their opportunity
was the growing collapse
of American political power
both abroad and at home.
The defeat in Vietnam
and the resignation of
President Nixon over Watergate
led to a crisis of confidence
in America's political class.
And the neoconservatives
seized their moment.
They allied themselves
with two right-wingers
in the new administration of Gerald Ford.
One was Donald Rumsfeld,
the new Secretary of Defense.
The other was d*ck Cheney,
the President's Chief of Staff.
Rumsfeld began to make speeches
alleging that the Soviets
were ignoring Kissinger's treaties
and secretly building up their weapons
with the intention of attacking America.
The Soviet Union has been busy.
They've been busy in terms
of their level of effort;
they've been busy in terms
of the actual weapons
they've been producing;
they've been busy in terms
of expanding production rates;
they've been busy in terms of expanding
their institutional capability
to produce additional
weapons at additional rates;
they've been busy in terms
of expanding their capability
to increasingly improve the
sophistication of those weapons.
Year after year after year,
they've been demonstrating
that they have steadiness of purpose.
They're purposeful about what they're doing.
Now, your question is
what ought one to be doing about that?
The CIA,
and other agencies
who watched the Soviet
Union continuously
for any sign of threat
said that this was a complete fiction.
There was no truth to Rumsfeld's allegations.
But Rumsfeld used his position
to persuade President Ford to
set up an independent inquiry.
He said it would prove
that there was a hidden threat to America.
And the inquiry would be run
by a group of neoconservatives
one of whom was Paul Wolfowitz.
The aim was to change the way
America saw the Soviet Union.
And Rumsfeld won that very intense
intense political battle
that was waged in
Washington in and .
Now, as part of that battle,
Rumsfeld and others
people such as Paul Wolfowitz,
wanted to get into the CIA.
And their mission was to create
a much more severe view of the
Soviet Union, Soviet intentions
Soviet views about fighting
and winning a nuclear w*r.
The neoconservatives chose,
as the inquiry chairman
a well-known critic and historian
of the Soviet Union called Richard Pipes.
Pipes was convinced that whatever
the Soviets said publicly
secretly they still intended to
attack and conquer America.
This was their hidden mindset.
The inquiry was called Team B
and the other leading
member was Paul Wolfowitz.
And the idea was then
to appoint a group of outside experts
who have access to the
same evidence as the CIA
used to arrive at these conclusions
and to see if they could come
up with different conclusions.
And I was asked to chair it
because I was not an
expert on nuclear weapons.
I was, if anything,
an expert on the Soviet mindset
but not on the weapons.
But that was the real key
was the question of the Soviet mindset
because the CIA looked only at -
they were known as "bean counters,"
always looking at weapons.
But weapons can be used in various ways.
They can be used for defensive purposes
or offensive purposes.
Well, all right,
I collected this group of experts
and we began to sift through the evidence.
Team B began examining all the
CIA data on the Soviet Union.
But however closely they looked
there was little evidence
of the dangerous weapons
or defense systems they claimed
the Soviets were developing.
Rather than accept that this meant
that the systems didn't exist
Team B made an assumption
that the Soviets had developed systems
that were so sophisticated,
they were undetectible.
For example,
they could find no evidence
that the Soviet submarine fleet
had an acoustic defense system.
What this meant,
Team B said
was that the Soviets
had actually invented a
new non-acoustic system
which was impossible to detect.
And this meant that the whole of
the American submarine fleet
was at risk from an invisible
threat that was there
even though there was no evidence for it.
They couldn't say that the Soviets
had acoustic means of picking
up American submarines
because they couldn't find it.
So they said
well maybe they have
a non-acoustic means
of making our submarine fleet vulnerable.
But there was no evidence that
they had a non-acoustic system.
They're saying,
"We can't find evidence
that they're doing it the way
that everyone thinks they're doing it
so they must be doing it a different way.
We don't know what that different way is
but they must be doing it."
Even though there was no evidence?
Even though there was no evidence.
So they're saying there
that the fact that the
w*apon doesn't exist
Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
It just means that we haven't found it.
Now, that's important, yes.
If something is not there,
that's significant.
By its absence.
By its absence.
If you believe
that they share your view
of strategic weapons
and they don't talk about it,
then there's something missing.
Something is wrong.
And the CIA wasn't aware of that.
What Team B accused the CIA of missing
was a hidden and sinister
reality in the Soviet Union.
Not only were there many secret
weapons the CIA hadn't found
but they were wrong about many
of those they could observe
such as the Soviet air defenses.
The CIA were convinced that
these were in a state of collapse
reflecting the growing economic
chaos in the Soviet Union.
Team B said that this was actually
a cunning deception by the Soviet regime.
The air-defense system worked perfectly.
But the only evidence they
produced to prove this
was the official Soviet training manual
which proudly asserted that
their air-defense system
was fully integrated
and functioned flawlessly.
The CIA accused Team B of
moving into a fantasy world.
The CIA was very loath to deal with issues
which could not be demonstrated
in a kind of mathematical form.
I said they could consider the soft evidence.
They deal with realities,
whereas this was a fantasy.
That's how it was perceived.
And there were battles all
the time on this subject.
Did you think it was a fantasy?
No!
I thought it was absolute reality.
I would say that all of it was fantasy.
I mean
they looked at radars out
in Krasnoyarsk and said
"This is a laser beam w*apon,"
when in fact it was nothing of the sort.
They even took a Russian military manual
which the correct translation
of it is "The Art of Winning."
And when they translated
it and put it into Team B
they called it "The Art of Conquest."
Well, there's a difference between
"conquest" and "winning."
And if you go through most of
Team B's specific allegations
about weapons systems,
and you just examine them one by one
they were all wrong.
All of them?
All of them.
Nothing true?
I don't believe anything in
Team B was really true.
The neoconservatives set up a lobby group
to publicize the findings of Team B.
It was called the Committee
on the Present Danger
and a growing number
of politicians joined
including a Presidential hopeful,
Ronald Reagan.
Through films and television
the Committee portrayed a world
in which America was under
threat from hidden forces
that could strike at any time
forces that America
must conquer to survive.
A concentration of world evil,
of hatred for humanity
is taking place.
And it is fully determined
to destroy your society.
Must you wait until the young
men of America have to fall
defending the borders of their continent?!
This dramatic battle between good and evil
was precisely the kind of myth
that Leo Strauss had taught
his students would be
necessary to rescue the country
from moral decay.
It might not be true,
but it was necessary
to re-engage the public in a
grand vision of America's destiny
that would give meaning
and purpose to their lives.
The neoconservatives were succeeding
in creating a simplistic fiction -
a vision of the Soviet Union
as the center of all evil in the world
and America as the only country
that could rescue the world.
And this nightmarish vision
was beginning to give
the neoconservatives
great power and influence.
The Straussians started to create
a worldview which is a fiction.
The world is not divided into good and evil.
The battle in which we are
engaged is not a battle
between good and evil.
The United States,
as anyone who observes understands
has done some good and some bad things.
It's like any great power.
This is the way history is.
But they wanted to create a
world of moral certainties
so therefore they invent mythologies
- fairytales -
describing any force in the world
that obstructs the United
States as somehow Satanic
or associated with evil.
By the late s,
Egypt had been transformed.
On the surface,
it had become a modern
Westernized state with a
prosperous middle class
who were benefiting from
a flood of Western capital
that was being invested in the country.
One member of this
prosperous Egyptian elite
was Ayman Zawahiri.
He was now a young doctor
just starting his career.
Ayman, he was an ideal person
who was a doctor coming
from a very good family.
His father was a professor in the university
his grandfather was an ambassador
his other grandfather
was Sheikh of Al-Azhar;
very well-respected family.
He used to be the the sort of person
that acted by the book.
Not looking for prestige
not looking for money,
not looking for propaganda.
Ayman became a leader
because of his attitudes.
In reality
Zawahiri was the leader of
an underground Islamist cell.
The group that he had
started as a schoolboy
which he had modeled on the
ideas of Sayyed Qutb, had grown.
Sayyed Qutb's ideas were now
spreading rapidly in Egypt -
above all,
among students -
because his predictions about
the corruption from the West
seemed to have come true.
The government of President Sadat
was controlled by a small
group of millionaires
who were backed by Western banks.
The banks had been let in by
what Sadat called his open-door policy.
To the Western media,
Sadat denied any corruption.
All Egyptians knew that this was a blatant lie.
Who has benefited now
from the open-door policy?
Taxi drivers.
The liberals.
All of those have benefited
from the open-door policy.
It is not like they say
that there are millionaires here and so.
No, not at all.
This is pure, um
pure black propaganda from
the side of the Soviet Union
and agents here in the country.
Zawahiri was convinced that the time
was now approaching to fulfill Qutb's vision.
The vanguard should rise up and
overthrow this corrupt regime.
And the man who would give
the Islamists that opportunity
would be Henry Kissinger.
As part of his attempt to create
a stable and balanced world
Kissinger had persuaded President Sadat
to begin peace
negotiations with the Israelis.
To Kissinger,
the ruthless pragmatist
religious divisions and
hatreds were irrelevant.
The most important thing
was to create a safer world.
And in ,
Sadat had flown to Jerusalem
to start the peace process.
To the West, it was a heroic act.
But to the Islamists
it was a complete betrayal.
It showed that Sadat's mind had
become so corrupted by the West
that he was now completely
under their control.
And under the theories of Sayyed Qutb
this meant that he was
no longer a Muslim
and so could justifiably be k*lled.
And then, in ,
the Ayatollah Khomeini showed Zawahiri
that his dream of creating
an Islamist state was possible.
God is Great! that his dream of
creating an Islamist state was possible.
God is Great!
God is Great! Khomeini had inspired
an uprising against the Shah of Iran.
Khomeini had inspired an
uprising against the Shah of Iran.
The Shah was another leader
who had allowed Western
banks to corrupt his country.
Armed struggle is the read to
freedom! who had allowed Western
banks to corrupt his country.
Armed struggle is the read to freedom!
Armed struggle is the read to
freedom! Khomeini had put forth
the idea of an Islamist state
Khomeini had put forth the
idea of an Islamist state
Death to the Shah's mercenary
army! Khomeini had put forth
the idea of an Islamist state
Death to the Shah's mercenary army! that
was remarkably similar to Qutb's ideas.
Death to the Shah's mercenary army!
He acknowledged this
by placing Qutb's face
on one of the postage stamps
of the new Islamic republic.
In his first sermon,
Khomeini addressed the West.
"Yes," he told them,
"we are reactionaries
and you are enlightened intellectuals.
You who want freedom for everything
the freedom that will corrupt our country,
corrupt our youth
and freedom that will pave
the way for the oppressor
freedom that would drag
our country to the bottom."
You sound very dissatisfied
with what's happening in Iran now.
Not MORE than dissatisfied,
this is disgraceful! Really!
I was myself
I was the Secretary-General of
the Muslim Congress at one time.
This, putting the name "Islamic revolution,"
is a crime.
A crime against Islam in the first hand.
President Sadat,
do you expect
that the Shah will accept the invitation?
It seems like a good solution right now.
Quote me: My aeroplane is ready
to bring him here. Any moment.
At the end of ,
Ayman Zawahiri
with a number of other followers
of Qutb who had formed cells
came together.
They created an organization
they called Islamic Jihad.
Its leader was a man
called Abdel Salam Faraj.
And Faraj argued that they should k*ll Sadat
in a spectacular way that
would shock the masses.
It would make them see
the true reality of the
corruption surrounding them
and they would rise up
and overthrow the regime.
The jihadi movement – some of
the leaders are still alive – I was
one and so was Ayman Zawahiri.
We spearheaded the jihadi
state of mind rather than the
earlier more moderate ideas..
in the liberal era that
simply accepted reality.
Psychologically we thought
we were superior to reality.
We despised the everyday vision
of the world. And we wanted to
transform or change this reality.
Therefore our dream was to get rid of Sadat.
Those who carried out the assassination
were a group of Army officers
who were a part of Islamic Jihad.
They were immediately arrested
and the regime launched a
massive manhunt for those
behind the plot.
But the effect of the assassination
on the Egyptian people
was not what Zawahiri had hoped for.
That night, Cairo remained calm.
The masses failed to rise up.
And in the following weeks, Zawahiri
and many other
conspirators were arrested.
The assassins were tried
immediately and ex*cuted.
But then, nearly Islamists,
including Zawahiri
were put on trial in a pavilion
in Cairo's industrial exhibition park.
It was agreed that Zawahiri
would be their spokesman.
for (unintelligible), for the whole world,
this is our world Doctor Ayman Zawahiri!
Now, we want to speak to the whole world!
Who are we?
Who are we? Why did they bring us here?
And what we want to say?
About the first question:
we are Muslims!
We are Muslims who
believed in their religion
in their broad feelings,
as both an ideology and practice.
We believed in our religion,
both as an ideology and practice.
And hence,
we tried our best
to establish Islamic
state and Islamic society!
La illah la-illallah!
La illah la-illallah!
Zawahiri, the man is an aristocrat.
He comes from a major
Egyptian -Saudi family.
And he thinks that,
you know, he is a visionary
and the means do not matter,
just as in Lenin -
I mean, revolution in one
country or revolution worldwide.
He was convinced that this was a
means to mobilize the masses
that they had tried something,
that it had not worked
then he failed that
- you know
the masses that were still
under the spell of ideology
the ideology of America.
And he is looking for a new strategy.
At the trial, Zawahiri was sentenced
to three years in prison
along with many others of Islamic Jihad.
He was taken to cells behind
the Police National Museum
where, like Sayyed Qutb,
he was tortured.
And under this t*rture,
he began
to interpret Qutb's theories
in a far more radical way.
The mystery, for Zawahiri,
was why the Egyptian people
had failed to see the truth and rise up.
It must be because the infection
of selfish individualism
had gone so deep into people's minds
that they were now as
corrupted as their leaders.
Zawahiri now seized on a terrible
ambiguity in Qutb's argument.
It wasn't just leaders like Sadat
who were no longer real Muslims,
it was the people themselves.
And Zawahiri believed that this meant
that they too could legitimately be k*lled.
But such k*lling
Zawahiri believed,
would have a noble purpose
because of the fear and the terror
that it would create in the
minds of ordinary Muslims.
It would shock them into
seeing reality in a different way.
They would then see the truth.
Ayman Zawahiri came to the conclusion
that because you have what you
believe to be a sublime objective
then the means can be
as ugly as they can get.
You can k*ll as many people as you wish
because the end means is noble.
The logic is that "we are the vanguards
we are the correct Muslims,
everybody else is wrong.
Not only wrong,
but everybody else is not a Muslim
and the only means available to us today
is just to k*ll our way to perfection."
And at this very same moment
religion was being mobilized
politically in America
but for a very different purpose.
And those encouraging this
were the neoconservatives.
Many neoconservatives
had become advisers
to the Presidential
campaign of Ronald Reagan.
And as they became more
involved with the Republican Party
they had forged an alliance
with the religious wing of the party
because it shared their aim of
the moral regeneration of America.
The notion that a purely secular society
can cope with all of the
terrible pathologies
that now affect our society
I think has turned out to be false.
And that has made me
culturally conservative.
I mean,
I really think religion has a role now
to play in redeeming the country.
And liberalism is not prepared
to give religion a role.
Conservatism is,
but it doesn't know how to do it.
By the late ‘ s
there were millions of
fundamentalist Christians in America.
But their preachers had
always told them not to vote.
It would mean compromising with
a doomed and immoral society.
But the neoconservatives and
their new Republican allies
made an alliance with a
number of powerful preachers
who told their followers to
become involved with politics
for the first time.
I'm sick and tired of hearing
about all of the radicals
and the perverts,
and the liberals, and the leftists
and the Communists
coming out of the closet!
It's time for God's people
to come out of the closet
out of the churches,
and change America! We must do it!
The conservative movement,
up to that point
was essentially an intellectual movement.
It had some very powerful thinkers
but it didn't have many troops.
And as Stalin said of the Pope
"Where are his divisions?"
Well, we didn't have many divisions.
When these folks became active
all of a sudden the conservative
movement had lots of divisions.
We were able to move
literally millions of people.
And this is something that
we had no ability to do prior to that time.
Literally millions?
Literally millions.
And at the beginning of
Ronald Reagan took power in America.
The religious vote was crucial in his election
because many millions
of fundamentalists
voted for the first time.
And as they had hoped
many neoconservatives were given power
in the new administration.
Paul Wolfowitz became
head of the State Department policy staff
while his close friend Richard Perle
became the Assistant
Secretary of Defense.
And the head of Team B,
Richard Pipes
became one of Reagan's chief advisers.
The neoconservatives believed
that they now had the chance
to implement their vision
of America's revolutionary destiny -
to use the country's power aggressively
as a force for good in the world
in an epic battle to defeat the Soviet Union.
It was a vision that they shared
with millions of their new religious allies.
I take a personal and public
stand as a minister
a stand against Communism.
To destroy it
to wipe it from the face of the Earth
because believe you me,
these people are dedicated
to the destruction of the
United States of America
and freedom as we know it.
But the neoconservatives
faced immense opposition
to this new policy.
It came not just from the
bureaucracies and Congress
but from the President himself.
Reagan was convinced that the
Soviet Union was an evil force
but he still believed that he
could negotiate with them
to end the Cold w*r.
Reagan at first didn't quite understand
that their aggressiveness
is rooted in the system.
He had a rather benign
view of human beings.
He was a very kindly man
and he attributed kind motives to others.
There was another form of mirror imaging.
And he would say on
more than one occasion
something like this:
"If I could just sit down
with the Soviet leaders
and explain to them that they're
following a wrong ideology
and if they adopt the right ideologies
they could make their people
happy and prosperous."
So we says "Mr.
President..
..That is not going to do it!
You have to go after the system.
Force them to reform the system."
It took him a very long time
to assimilate this view.
To persuade the President
the neoconservatives set out to prove
that the Soviet threat was
far greater than anyone
even Team B,
had previously shown.
They would demonstrate that
the majority of terrorism
and revolutionary
movements around the world
were actually part of a secret network,
coordinated by Moscow
to take over the world.
The main proponent of this theory
was a leading neoconservative
who was the special adviser
to the Secretary of State.
His name was Michael Ledeen
and he had been influenced
by a best-selling book
called The Terror Network.
It alleged that terrorism was not
the fragmented phenomenon
that it appeared to be.
In reality,
all t*rror1st groups
from the PLO to the
Baader-Meinhof group in Germany
and the Provisional IRA
all of them were a part of a
coordinated strategy of terror
run by the Soviet Union.
But the CIA completely disagreed.
They said this was just another
neoconservative fantasy.
The CIA denied it.
They tried to convince people
that we were really crazy.
I mean, they never believed
that the Soviet Union was a driving force
in the international terror network.
They always wanted to believe
that t*rror1st organizations were
just what they said they were:
Local groups trying to avenge
terrible evils done to them
or trying to rectify
terrible social conditions
and things like that.
And the CIA really did buy into the rhetoric.
I don't know what their motive was.
I mean
I don't know what people's motives are,
hardly ever.
And I don't much worry about motives.
But the neoconservatives had a powerful ally.
He was William Casey,
and he was the new head of the CIA.
Casey was sympathetic to
the neoconservative view.
And when he read the Terror Network book,
he was convinced.
He called a meeting of the
CIA's Soviet analysts
at their headquarters,
and told them
to produce a report for the President
that proved this hidden network existed.
But the analysts told him that
this would be impossible
because much of the
information in the book
came from black propaganda
the CIA themselves had invented
to smear the Soviet Union.
They knew that the terror
network didn't exist
because they themselves had made it up.
And when we looked through the book,
we found very clear episodes
where CIA black propaganda
- clandestine information
that was designed under
a covert action plan
to be planted in European newspapers -
were picked up and put in this book.
A lot of it was made up.
It was made up out of whole cloth.
You told him this?
We told him that,
point blank.
And we even had the operations
people to tell Bill Casey this.
I thought maybe this might have an impact
but all of us were dismissed.
Casey had made up his mind.
He knew the Soviets were
involved in terrorism
so there was nothing we
could tell him to disabuse him.
Lies became reality.
In the end,
Casey found a university professor
who described himself as a terror expert
and he produced a
dossier that confirmed
that the hidden terror network did,
in fact, exist.
Under such intense lobbying
Reagan agreed to give the
neoconservatives what they wanted
and in he signed a secret document
that fundamentally changed
American foreign policy.
The country would now fund covert wars
to push back the hidden
Soviet threat around the world.
The specter of Marxist-Leninist
controlled governments
with ideological and political
loytities to the Soviet Union
proves that there's a direct
challenge to which we must respond.
They are the focus of
evil in the modern world.
It was a triumph for the neoconservatives.
America was now setting out to do battle
against the forces of evil in the world.
But what had started out
as the kind of myth
that Leo Strauss had said
was necessary for the American people
increasingly came to be seen as the truth
by the neoconservatives.
They began to believe their own fiction.
They had become what they called
"democratic revolutionaries,"
who were going to use
force to change the world.
We were aiming for an expansion
of the zone of freedom
in the world. And in part that had
to do with fighting Communism
and in part that had to do with
fighting other kinds of tyrannies.
But that's what we were about,
and that's what we're still about.
When you say you were
democratic revolutionaries
what do you mean?
It meant that we wanted
to support the people
who wanted to carry out revolutions
against tyrannical regimes
in the name of democracy
in order to install a democratic system.
As simple as that.
Yeah. It's not nuclear physics,
you know.
I mean,
freedom is a fairly simple thing to get.
It's a chancy job
- makes a man watchful and a little lonely.
But somebody has to do it.
The neoconservatives now set
out to transform the world.
In next week's episode,
they find themselves joining forces
with the Islamists in Afghanistan
and together they fight an epic
battle against the Soviet Union.
And both come to believe that
they had defeated the Evil Empire.
But this imagined victory would
leave them without an enemy.
And in a world disillusioned
with grand political ideas
they would need to invent new
fantasies and new nightmares
in order to maintain their power.
Power of Nightmares, The : The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004)
Moderator: Maskath3
Re: Power of Nightmares, The : The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004)
Part 2:
In the past,
politicians promised to create a better world.
They had different ways of achieving this.
But their power and authority
came from the optimistic visions
they offered to their people.
Those dreams failed.
And today,
people have lost faith in ideologies.
Increasingly, politicians are seen
simply as managers of public life.
But now, they have discovered a new role
that restores their power and authority.
Instead of delivering dreams,
politicians now promise to protect us
from nightmares.
They say that they will rescue
us from dreadful dangers
that we cannot see and do not understand.
And the greatest danger of
all is international terrorism.
A powerful and sinister network
with sleeper cells in
countries across the world.
A threat that needs to be
fought by a w*r on terror.
But much of this threat is a fantasy
which has been exaggerated
and distorted by politicians.
It?¯ a dark illusion
that has spread unquestioned through
governments around the world
the security services,
and the international media.
This is a series of films about how and why
that fantasy was created : : ,
--] : : , and who it benefits.
At the heart of the story are two groups:
the American neoconservatives,
and the radical Islamists.
In this week's episode,
the two groups come together
to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
And both believe that they
defeat the Evil Empire
and so had the power
to transform the world.
We will fight for an Islamic State,
we will die for it!
But both failed in their revolutions. We will
fight for an Islamic State, we will die for it!
In response, the neoconservatives
invent a new fantasy enemy
Bill Clinton,
to try and regain their power.
While the Islamists descend into a
desperate cycle of v*olence and terror
to try and persuade the
people to follow them.
Out of all this come the seeds
of the strange world of fantasy
deception, v*olence,
and fear in which we now live.
The Power of Nightmares
The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Part The Phantom Victory
In , Ronald Reagan dedicated
the Space Shuttle Columbia
to the resistance fighters in Afghanistan.
Just as the Columbia, we think,
represents man's finest aspirations
in the field of science and technology
so too does the struggle
of the Afghan people
represent man's highest
aspirations for freedom.
I am dedicating,
on behalf of the American people
the March nd launch of the Columbia
to the people of Afghanistan.
Since , the mujaheddin
resistance had been fighting
a vicious w*r in Afghanistan
against the Soviet invasion.
But now,
a small group in the Reagan White House
saw in these fighters a way of achieving
their vision of transforming the world.
To them,
they were not just nationalists
they were freedom fighters
who could bring down the Soviet Union
and help spread
democracy around the world.
It was called the Reagan Doctrine.
It was a small group of people and yes,
we did have
Everyone thinks, "Oh, the Reagan Doctrine,
the Reagan Administration,"
like everybody was for. No.
It was a small little cabal, within the Soviet
within the Reagan White House,
that really pulled this off.
What united this small group
of ours was the vision
of bringing more freedom to the world,
more security to the world
to actually get rid of the Soviet Union itself!
As a result,
supporting the freedom fighters
became the premier cause for the
entire conservative movement
during the Reagan years.
But the Americans were setting out
to defeat a mythological enemy.
As last week's episode showed,
the neoconservatives
who were now in power
in Reagan's White House
had created an exaggerated
and distorted vision
of the Soviet Union as the
source of all evil in the world.
One of their main influences were the
theories of the philosopher Leo Strauss.
He believed that liberal
societies needed simple
powerful myths to inspire
and unite the people.
And in the s,
the neoconservatives had done just this.
Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle,
and other neoconservatives
had set out to reassert the myth
of America as a unique country
whose destiny was to struggle
against evil throughout the world.
Now in power,
they had come to believe this myth.
They saw themselves as revolutionaries
who were going to transform the world
starting with the defeat of the Evil Empire.
We're closer to being revolutionaries
than conservatives
in the sense that we want to change
some deeply entrenched notions
about the proper role of
American power in the world.
We want to see that power
used constructively
and to enlarge the opportunity for
decent governance around the world.
We're not happy about the old,
cozy relationships with dictators.
And the man who was going to
help the neoconservatives do this
was the new head of the CIA,
William Casey.
He was convinced that Afghanistan was one
of the keys to this aggressive new policy.
America was already sending limited
amounts of aid to the mujaheddin.
But now,
Casey ordered one of his agents
to go and form an alliance
with the freedom fighters
and give them as much
money as they wanted
and the most sophisticated weapons
to defeat the Soviet military forces.
For Casey, Afghanistan seemed
to be possibly one of the keys.
So he tapped me one day to go.
He says, "I want you to go out to
Afghanistan, I want you to go next month
and I will give you whatever
you need to win." Yeah.
He said,
"I want you go to there and win."
As opposed to, "Le? go there and bleed
these guys," make it be a Vietnam
"I want you to go there and win.
Whatever you need, you can have."
He gave me the Stinger
missiles and a billion dollars.
God if Great!
American money and
weapons now began to pour
across the Pakistan border into
Afghanistan. : : , --]
: : , CIA agents trained the
mujaheddin in the techniques
of assassination and terror,
including car bombing.
And they gave them satellite images of
Russian troops to help in their att*cks.
Move your far arse and
sh**t the f*cking rocket!
At the very same time, another group
began to arrive in Afghanistan
to fight alongside the mujaheddin.
They were Arabs from
across the Middle East
who had been told by
their religious leaders
that their duty was to go and free
Muslim lands from the Soviet invader.
I saw the fatwa,
the order saying that
every Muslim has a duty to help
the Afghans to liberate their land.
But I had no idea, where is this Afghanistan?
How can I go there?
I've never heard about Afghanistan,
and I've never heard in the map.
Which airline goes there?
From where can I take the visa?
It questions!
But I did meet Abdullah Azzam.
Abdullah Azzam was a
charismatic religious leader
who had begun to organize the
Arab volunteers in Afghanistan.
He had set up what he
called the Services Bureau
in Peshawar on the Afghan border.
It became the headquarters of an
international brigade of Arab fighters.
Azzam quickly became one
of the most powerful figures
in the battle against the Soviets.
He was allowed to visit
America on many occasions
both to raise funds and
recruit volunteers for the jihad.
When, Abdullah Azzam
became so instrumental
in marketing the Afghan
cause among the Arabs
he became very important.
He became called "the emir
of the Arab mujaheddin."
The leader of the Arab mujaheddin.
And he set up
an office in Peshawar
which provided services to
Arabs who came and wanted
to participate in the jihad.
There were no doors closed,
all doors were opened
because the Americans, the Saudis,
the Pakistanis, and many other people
wanted the Soviet Union to lose in
Afghanistan, and to be humiliated.
That brought about huge numbers of Arabs
from different backgrounds
in the jihad in Afghanistan.
He went to America,
he went to Saudi Arabia
he traveled wherever he wanted,
because the Afghan cause
was a cause that everybody
was happy supporting.
But like the neoconservatives
Azzam also saw the
struggle against the Soviets
as just the first step in
a much wider revolution.
He was a member of the
Muslim Brotherhood
who wanted Islam to play a political
role in governing Muslim societies.
And Abdullah Azzam believed
that the Arabs in Afghanistan
could be the nucleus
of a new political force.
They would return to their own
countries and persuade the people
to reject the corrupt, autocratic
regimes that dominated the Middle East.
But these regimes, Azzam insisted,
must be overthrown by political means.
He made every fighter pledge
they would not use terrorism
against civilians in the
pursuit of their vision.
One of Azzam's closest aides was a Saudi,
Osama Bin Laden.
Osama came to participate in ' .
When he was
when he came
as you know, he is
He came from a rich family from Saudi
and he had much,
much money to spend.
Sheikh Abdullah Azzam was a scholar,
he can organize the Afghans
but he is not a rich man.
So when Osama came,
he filled in this gap.
So the main duty of Osama in
that time was spending money.
Beside his good personal qualities.
But then, in ,
a new force began to arrive in Afghanistan
who were going to
challenge Azzam's approach.
They were the extreme radical Islamists
who were being expelled from
prisons across the Arab world.
And then, very quietly,
most of the
governments in the Middle East,
the Arab governments
began to empty their prisons
of their bad guys
and send them off to the jihad with
the very fondest hope that they
would become martyred.
Many of them were the people in Egypt
that had not been ex*cuted
after the m*rder of Sadat
but were implicated in it and
had been in prison. Off they go.
One of the most powerful of these
newcomers was Ayman Zawahiri.
He was the leader of a radical faction
from Egypt called Islamic Jihad.
And he was convinced that they,
not the moderates, were the true Islamists.
We are here! We are here!
The real Islamic front! We are here!
The real Islamic front and the real
Islamic opposition against Zionist.
We are here!
The real Islamic front against Zionism,
Communism, and imperialism.
Ayman Zawahiri was a follower of the
Egyptian revolutionary Sayyed Qutb
who had been ex*cuted in .
As last week's program showed
Qutb believed that the liberal
ideas of Western societies
corrupted the minds of Muslims
because they unleashed the most
selfish aspects of human nature.
Zawahiri had interpreted Qutb's
theories to mean that this corruption
included the Western system of democracy.
Democracy, Zawahiri believed,
encouraged politicians
to set themselves up as
the source of all authority
and by doing this, they were rejecting
the higher authority of the Koran.
This meant they were no longer
true Muslims, and so they
and those who supported them,
could legitimately be k*lled.
The terror this created, he said,
would shock the masses
into seeing the truth behind
the corrupt facade of democracy.
When the Egyptians,
the jihadi group, came from Egypt
with their own explanation,
with their own ideas
that anybody participating in any
parliament, or any political party
or going to elect,
or call people for the election
and sort of these activities,
is totally rejecting the Koran.
So when you say that, it means when
a Muslim is rejecting the Koran
simply must be k*lled.
And should be k*lled,
must be k*lled!
And tha? what happened.
Zawahiri and his small
group settled in Peshawar.
They began to spread this new
idea among the foreign fighters
radicalizing the Islamist movement.
It was not only a drect challenge to the
moderate ideas of Abdullah Azzam
but it also involved a militant rejection
of all American influence over the jihad
because America was the
source of this corruption.
The only times that I ever ran into
any real trouble in Afghanistan
was when I ran into these guys.
You know,
there'd be kind of a moment or two
where it looked a little bit like
the bar scene in Star Wars
each group kind of jockeying around
and finally somebody has to
sort of defuse the situation.
The indicator lights aren't on.
Please adjust them.
Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev has issued a decree.
Then, in ,
the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
decided he was going to withdraw
Russian troops from Afghanistan.
Gorbachev was convinced that the whole
Soviet system was facing collapse.
He was determined to try and
save it through political reform
and this meant reversing the
policies of his predecessors
including the occupation of Afghanistan.
The state of the Soviet
Union and its society
could be described very
simply with a phrase used
by people across the country:
"We can't go on living like this any longer."
And that applied to everything.
The economy was stagnating.
There were shortages.
And the quality of goods was very poor.
We had to finish this w*r,
but in such a way that the Russian people
would understand why
tens of thousands had died.
We couldn't just run away
from there in shame, no.
We needed to find a process.
Gorbachev asked the Americans
to help him negotiate a peace
that would create a stable
government in Afghanistan.
But the hard-liners in
Washington refused point-blank.
They would continue to
help the mujaheddin
until the last Russians left,
without any negotiation.
The future of Afghanistan would
then be decided, they said
by the freedom fighters.
I think that basically, we've asked the
United States to help us get out
if you're really interested
in stopping the bloodshed.
But can you get out and leave
a government in Afghanistan
that supports
that is a friend of the Soviet Union?
I believe that we can get out, provided
that indeed no more aid is given to what
people here call freedom fighters,
and we call counterrevolutionaries.
I believe tha? possible,
provided that
the United States is also
interested in the same.
Well, I? not very complicated.
they could be home by Christmas Eve,
if they decided to
leave Afghanistan and let the
Afghans decide their own future.
If you leave, the problem of support
to the mujaheddin solves itself.
Gorbachev was shocked by the
intransigence of the U.S. Administration.
He sent a private message through the KGB,
warning the Americans
that if they allowed the mujaheddin
to take control in Afghanistan
it would not produce democracy.
Instead, he predicted,
the most extreme forms of Islamism
would rise up and triumph.
But Gorbachev's warning was ignored.
As Soviet troops left Afghanistan,
both the Americans and the Islamists
came to believe that they had not
only won the battle for Afghanistan
they had also begun the
downfall of the entire Evil Empire.
I felt we won,
because I was part of it.
I'm sure that the Afghan
Arabs thought "We won,"
and then all summer long,
the East Germans begin to gather
a hundred here, a thousand,
tens of thousands
until November th,
when the wall was opened. And tha? it.
Start the clock running on the Soviet Union.
And it was over. The Soviet Union
was all crapped up and broken.
And that was done.
For the neoconservatives, the collapse
of the Soviet Union was a triumph.
And out of that triumph was
going to come the central myth
that still inspires them today:
that through the aggressive
use of American power
they could transform the
world and spread democracy.
But in reality, their victory was an illusion.
They had conquered a phantom enemy
an exaggerated and distorted fantasy
they had created in their own minds.
The real reason the Soviet Union collapsed
was because it was a decrepit system,
decaying from within.
I think probably one of the greatest myths
in American political discourse now
right now,
is that actions of the American government
were responsible for the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union collapsed
like a house of cards
because it was a house of cards.
It rotted away from within.
The economy was rotten,
the political process was rotten
they had developed a central
government that was no longer believed
by people outside of Moscow,
there was total cynicism
throughout the Soviet system of
governance, there was no real civil society.
But the Reagan Administration and their
the minions of the Reagan Administration
will tell you that Afghanistan led to
the collapse of the Soviet Union itself
the collapse of the Berlin Wall in
the collapse of the East European empire.
We were saying that this was entirely fanciful.
And the United States missed all of this
because they believed their own
myths and their own fanciful notions.
They had become their own
victims of their own lies.
And for the Islamists too
a great myth was born out of
the struggle in Afghanistan
that it was they who had
conquered the Soviet Union.
God is Great!
Death to Gorbachev!
Long live Afghanistan!
The Islamists believed that
this great victory would start
a revolution that would sweep across the
Arab world and topple the corrupt leaders.
But as with the neoconservatives,
this dream was built on an illusion.
The Islamists were convinced
that they were the key
instrument in the demise of
the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.
They just would not like to
remember that without
U.S. military help and training,
they couldn't have done anything.
And also the Afghans were the
ones who ousted the Soviets
not the Arab jihadis,
who didn't really fight
they were trained,
but they were not the fighters.
But the myth has it that
they were the ones who won.
I mean,
this was a jihad that had triumphed.
This was something very powerful
that was a mobilizing force
for Islamists worldwide.
But there was a deep rift within the
Islamist fighters based in Peshawar
between the moderates,
led by Abdullah Azzam
who believed this revolution
could be accomplished politically
and the extremists,
like Ayman Zawahiri
who saw violent revolution as the only way.
And Zawahiri now set out to extend
his influence over the movement
and to undermine Abdullah Azzam.
To do this, he seduced Osama Bin Laden,
and his money, away from Azzam.
He promised Bin Laden that
he could become the emir
the leader of Zawahiri's small
extremist group, Islamic Jihad.
Ayman Zawahiri and another group
of Egyptians,
they refused to
pray behind Abdullah Azzam,
in Peshawar.
They used to create rumors in Peshawar
against Abdullah Azzam.
Tha? why we became angry about Osama,
why he became
he closed these people to him.
They accepted hm as an emir,
and he accepted them as a group.
Finally, I don't know who did use the other.
What do you think?
I think the other used him.
Because he had the money?
Yes.
Then, at the end of
Abdullah Azzam was assassinated
by a huge car b*mb in Peshawar.
It is still unknown who carried
out the assassination.
But despite his death
it seemed as if Azzam's vision of
a political revolution might prevail.
In the early ' s,
in countries across the Arab world
Islamist parties began
to gather mass support.
Islamic State!
In Algeria,
the Islamic Salvation Front
won overwhelming
victories in local elections
and looked certain to win
the coming general election.
And at the same time in Egypt,
the Muslim Brotherhood
began to win mass support,
and a growing number of seats in Parliament.
Both parties were riding to
power on an idealistic vision.
They would use Islam in a political way
to create a new type of model
society through peaceful means.
We can change people
throught education
and religional conviction.
We want to build a popular base.
This is the right way.
We do not want a military coup.
We do not want v*olence.
We want our rights.
If people believe in us
the goverment must comply
with the people's wishes.
But the governments in both Egypt
and Algeria faced a terrible dilemma.
At the heart of the Islamist vision
was the idea that the Koran
should be used as the political
framework for the society.
An absolute set of laws, beyond debate,
that all politicians had to follow.
The implication of this was that
political parties would be irrelevant
because there could be no disagreement.
The people were about to vote in
parties that might use that
power to end democracy.
But what a dilemma!
Do you find a way of stopping
the electoral process
and cancelling the second round?
Or do you let power go
to a party witch claims:
One man, one vote,
but only once!
We won't have any elections after this
because democracy is non-religious
Once we're in power,
we'll stay there forever
because we alone are the
keepers of religous truth
and we alone shall apply the Koran.
Faced by this dilemma,
in Algeria the army decided to step in
and in June they
staged a coup d'? at
and immediately canceled the elections.
Mass protests by the Islamists
were repressed violently
and their leaders arrested.
At the same time, in Egypt,
the government also clamped down.
They arrested hundreds of
Muslim Brotherhood members
and banned the organization
from any political activity.
What happened is a wave of
arresting Muslim brothers, a wave of
military courts for Muslim brothers
going to k*ll some of Muslim
brothers under t*rture.
And this wave, in this manner,
you open the doors of hell
for the violent groups who
were hidden underground
and stopped the moderates,
open the door for the v*olence.
For Ayman Zawahiri, this was a
dramatic confirmation of his belief
that the Western system of
democracy was a corrupt sham.
Groups of radical Islamists
who had developed his theories
into even more extreme forms
now set out to create violent
revolutions in Algeria and Egypt.
It would be the start of a jihad
that would liberate the
Muslim world from corruption.
The only way to eradicate
the humiliation and Kufr
that has overcome the
land of Islam is Jihad
b*ll*ts, and martyrdom operations.
Bin Laden and the others
started, from now on,
to wage their own jihad, I.e.
not to compromise, not to try to
compromise with more moderate groups
but thinking that an armed vanguard
would be able to implement
the seizing of power.
They were convinced that they could
duplicate the Afghan "victory"
that they could establish an Islamist
state in Algeria, in Egypt, and the like.
They thought that would capture the hearts
and minds of of the Muslim masses
that people would realize that the strength
and victory were on the side of the jihadis.
At this same time,
in Washington
the other group who believed that they
had brought down the Soviet Union
the neoconservatives
were also determined to push
on with their revolutionary agenda.
They were convinced that the
Soviet Union was just one of
many evil regimes in the world led
by tyrants that threatened America.
Regimes they had to conquer to liberate
the world and spread democracy.
We want, you know,
down with tyranny.
We want free countries.
We think that America is
better off if we live in a world
primarily populated with free countries,
who make their own
who have to appeal to their own
people for the source of their power
and to ratify their decisions.
And we think that if
if the whole world were like that,
then we would be much more secure
and that typically we
were att*cked by tyrants.
I think I? America's destiny
because I think that America's always
going to come under attack from tyrants.
So I think that our only choice is
whether we're going to win or lose,
and when we will fight..
and under what circumstances,
but that we're gonna have to fight.
Tha? a*t*matic,
because they're gonna come after us.
One of the most evil of these tyrants,
the neoconservatives decided
was S*ddam Hussein.
In the s, S*ddam had been America's
close ally. But in , he invaded Kuwait.
The neoconservatives
now saw him as a key
to pursuing the next stage of
their transformation of the world.
An American-led coalition had been
created by President Bush senior
to liberate Kuwait.
But the neoconservatives,
like Paul Wolfowitz
who was Undersecretary of Dfense,
wanted to push on to Baghdad
and bring about a
transformation of the Middle East.
It would fulfill America's unique
role to defeat evil in the world.
You see already in '
the hopes of Wolfowitz and others,
that the battle
against S*ddam Hussein,
or other petty tyrants
could take the place of the
battle against the Soviet Union
and could bear this interpretation
of a battle between good and evil.
So, what you're seeing is
the attempt to keep alive
the idea that America is engaged in a
battle of pure good against pure evil
and to preserve that framework for a
world after the end of the Soviet Union.
But President Reagan
was no longer in charge.
The neoconservatives now had a
leader who did not share their vision.
Kuwait is liberated.
Iraq's army is defeated.
Our military objectives are met.
And I am pleased to announce all
United States and Coalition forces
will suspend combat operations.
Once Kuwait was freed,
Bush ordered the fighting to stop.
His view was that America's role
was to create stability in the world
not to try change it.
Like Henry Kissinger
who had been the enemy of the
neoconservatives in the s
Bush saw questions of
good and evil as irrelevant.
The higher aim was to achieve a stable
balance of power in the Middle East.
S*ddam Hussein is not a threat
to his neighbors. He's a nuisance,
he's an annoyance
but he's not a threat.
That we achieved.
It was never our objective
to get S*ddam Hussein.
Indeed, had we tried,
we still might be occupying Baghdad.
That would have turned a great success
into a very messy probable defeat.
In private, the neoconservatives
like Paul Wolfowitz were furious.
Not just because S*ddam
Hussein had been left in power
but because they saw
this as a clear expression
of the corrupt liberal values
that dominated America
a moral relativism that was
prepared to compromise
with the forces of evil in the world.
Wolfowitz' anger is fundamentally
an anger against
the weakness of American liberalism:
the compromising nature of
a man like George Bush senior.
His willingness to make concessions,
to negotiate, not to drive to the bitter end.
And his anger is motivated, interestingly
less by hatred of S*ddam Hussein,
than by hatred of American liberals
who are a source of weakness, and a
source of rot, and a source of relativism
that had been corroding
American society for decades.
Faced by this defeat, the neoconservative
movement now turned inwards
to try and defeat the forces of
liberalism that were holding it back.
And to do this, they turned again
to the theories of Leo Strauss.
Strauss believed that good
politicians should reassert
the absolute moral values
that would unite society
and this would overcome the moral
relativism that liberalism created.
One of the most influential Straussians
was the new assistant to the
Vice-President, William Kristol.
For Strauss,
liberalism produced a decent way of life
and one that he thought
was worth defending
but a dead end where nothing
could be said to be true
one had no guidance on how to live,
everything was relative.
Strauss suggests that maybe
we didn't just have to sit there
and accept that that was our fate.
That politics could help
shape the way people live
teach them some good lessons about
living decent and noble human lives.
And can we think about what cultures,
and what politics
what social orders produce
more admirable human beings?
I mean, that whole question was put
back on the table by Strauss, I think.
The neoconservatives set
out to reform America.
And at the heart of their project
was the political use of religion.
Together with their long-term allies,
the religious right
they began a campaign to
bring moral and religious issues
back into the center
of conservative politics.
It became known as the "culture wars."
Your tax dollars are being used to sponsor
obscene and pornographic displays.
I don't like Jesus Christ,
who is my Lord and Savior
being dumped in a vat of
urine by a h*m*
and then have my money to pay for
it! I think tha? obscene! : : ,
--] : : , Satan, be gone!
Out from this moment on! C'mon!
For the religious right,
this campaign was a genuine attempt
to renew the religious
basis of American society.
But for the neoconservatives,
religion was a myth
like the myth of America as a unique
nation they had promoted in the Cold w*r.
Strauss had taught that
these myths were necessary
to give ordinary people meaning and
purpose, and so ensure a stable society.
Do you ever worry that they're
playing too much Nintendo?
Oh, not anymore.
See, Matt has Bible Adventures.
They're actually learning Bible stories
while they're playing Nintendo.
For the neoconservatives, religion is
an instrument of promoting morality.
Religion becomes what
Plato called a "noble lie."
It is a myth which is told to
the majority of the society
by the philosophical elite in
order to ensure social order.
What better way to enjoy God's
creation than a Praise Walk?
In being a kind of secretive elitist approach
Straussianism does resemble Marxism.
These ex-Marxists,
or in some cases ex-liberal Straussians
could see themselves as a kind
of Leninist group, you know
who have this covert vision which they
want to use to effect change in history
while concealing parts of it from
people incapable of understanding it.
Out of this campaign,
a new and powerful moral agenda
began to take over the Republican Party.
It reached a dramatic climax at the
Republican Convention in
when the religious right seized control
of the party's policy-making machinery.
George Bush became
committed to run for President
with policies that would ban abortion,
gay rights, and multiculturalism.
Speakers who tried to promote the
traditional conservative values
of individual freedom
were booed off the stage.
I happen to think that individual freedom
should extend to a
woman's right to choose.
I want the government out of your
pocketbook and your bedroom!
For the neoconservatives, the aim of this
new morality was to unite the nation.
But in fact,
it had completely the opposite effect.
Mainstream Republican
voters were frightened away
by the harsh moralism that
had taken over their party.
They turned instead to Bill Clinton
a politician who connected with
their real concerns and needs
like tax and the state of the economy.
In the week after the
Republican Convention
Republican moderates, young people,
and particularly women
saying, "I've been sort of
torn between the two parties
but where do I sign up to help
Clinton get elected? I am
frightened by this ultraconservative
agenda I hear coming out of Houston."
I've been a lifelong Republican.
I'm a registered Republican.
I am voting for Bill Clinton this time.
Enough is enough.
It is time for a change.
At the end of ,
Bill Clinton won a dramatic victory.
But the neoconservatives were
determined to regain power.
And to do this,
they were going to do to Bill Clinton
what they had done to the Soviet Union.
They would transform the President of
the United States into a fantasy enemy
an image of evil that would
make people realize the truth
of the liberal corruption of America.
We realise that other
nations have surpassed us
In what?
In knowledge.
And Islam
In the early ' s, Algeria, Egypt,
and other Arab countries
were being torn apart by a
horrific wave of Islamist terror.
The jihadists who had
returned from Afghanistan
were trying to topple the regimes.
At the heart of their strategy
was the idea that Ayman Zawahiri
and others had taught them.
That those who were involved in
politics could legitimately be k*lled
because they had become corrupted
and thus were no longer Muslims.
This v*olence, they believed,
would shock people into rising up
and the corrupt regimes
would then be overthrown.
"They must die!"
Not only "must die," they DID k*ll.
They did k*ll people.
Not just any
I? not just an idea from far
it became true.
People k*lled.
Many many rulers, many many holy men,
many many scholars
many many politicians in Islamic world
have been k*lled because of these idea.
Why? Because simply they are against
the Koran. They rejected the Koran.
Ayman Zawahiri was now based with
Bin Laden on this farm in the Sudan.
He used it as a base for his group,
Islamic Jihad
to launch att*cks on politicians in Egypt.
But as one of the leading
ideologues of the revolution
he also traveled throughout the Arab world,
advising other groups on their strategy.
But the revolutionaries soon found that the
masses did not rise up and follow them.
The regimes stayed in power,
and the radical Islamists were hunted down.
Faced by this,
the Islamists widened their terror.
Their logic was brutal:
it was not just those who were involved
with politics who should be k*lled
but the ordinary people who supported it.
Their refusal to rise up showed that
they too had become corrupted
and so had condemned
themselves to death.
There was definitely a logic.
The logic is that you as*ault the leaders
you as*ault those who are associated
with them, and eventually you as*ault
the people who have consented to the
presence of such a despotic leader
even if they are passively
supportive through their silence.
And then you start attacking
economic institutions
you start attacking the tourists, because
the tourists bring money to the country
and that money goes into
the pockets of the corrupt elite.
So, it is an endless process.
In Algeria,
this logic went completely out of control.
The Islamist revolutionary groups
k*lled thousands of civilians
because they believed that all
these people had become corrupted.
All these innocents,
what did they ever do?
Legs blown off!
Such horror!
Even the French extremists
never did things like this.
Why? What have we done?
What have out children done?
Leave me alone!
I want do die!
In turn, the generals running Algeria
inftitrated the revolutionary groups.
They told their agents to persuade the
Islamists to push the logic even further
to k*ll even more people.
This would create such horror that the
groups would lose any remaining support
and the generals could use the fear and
revulsion to increase their grip on power.
The generals inftitrated the jihad ideas,
the jihad groups
to put the society under fear.
By creating terror and v*olence
to stop everything in the society,
no politic, no economy, no everything
just to stay and saying to the West,
"We are facing terror."
Using fear?
Using fear to stay on the power.
Today the k*ll,
they k*ll everybody
innocent people, children,
old people.
They have een cut up their victims.
Who will trust them
if tomorrow they take power?
Down with fundamentalism!
By ,
the Islamist revolution was failing.
There were mass demonstrations
against the Islamist groups
by thousands of people
horrified by the v*olence.
And then, in June of that year,
a group of Egyptian Islamists
att*cked Western tourists
at the ruins of Luxor.
were k*lled in three
hours of random v*olence.
The m*ssacre shocked the Egyptian people
and the leaders of the revolutionary
groups agreed to call a cease-fire.
In Algeria, a few groups held out.
But they began to tear each other apart
as they followed the logic that
had driven their revolution
to its ultimate,
and logical, end:
they started to k*ll each other.
It led to their own destruction.
A group that believes in % pure Muslim
will not see that purity in
anybody else but themselves.
So whoever disagrees with
them becomes the enemy
becomes out of the House of Islam
and then if they happen to disagree
with each other themselves
then they will start liquidating each other.
And they keep fighting each other,
there will be infighting.
Eventually it ends in su1c1de.
The main Islamist group in Algeria,
the GIA
ended by being led by a Mr.
Zouabri, a chicken farmer
who k*lled everyone
who disagreed with him.
He issued a final communique
declaring that the whole of
Algerian society should be k*lled
with the exception of his tiny
remaining band of Islamists.
They were the only ones
who understood the truth.
By the mid-' s,
politics in Washington
was dominated by one issue:
the moral character of the
President of the United States.
If you believe you've been a victim of
sexual harassment by the President
we want to help.
Behind this were an extraordinary
barrage of allegations against Clinton
that were obsessing the media.
These included stories
of sexual harassment
stories that Clinton and his wife
were involved in Whitewater
a corrupt property deal
stories that they had m*rder*d
their close friend Vince Foster
and stories that Clinton was
involved in smuggling dr*gs
from a small airstrip in Arkansas.
But none of these stories were true.
All of them had been orchestrated by
a young group of neoconservatives
who were determined to destroy Clinton.
The campaign was centered on
a small right-wing magazine
called the American Spectator
which had set up what was
called the "Arkansas Project"
to investigate Clinton's past life.
The journalist at the center of this
project was called David Brock.
In the crossfire: David Brock,
of the American Spectator magazine.
She was dressed in a raincoat and a hat,
and came in at : in the morning
and had a liaison with
Clinton in the game room
in the bottom floor of the
Governor's mansion. David, David,
David, this is getting a little bizarre.
Next thing we gonna see
I? bizarre! But hey,
Bill Clinton is a bizarre guy.
Since then, Brock has turned against
the neoconservative movement.
He now believes that the
att*cks on Clinton went too far
and corrupted conservative politics.
Was Whitewater true?
No! There was no
I mean
there was no criminal wrongdoing
in Whitewater. Absolutely not.
It was a land deal that the
Clintons lost money on.
It was a coplete inversion of what happened.
Was Vince Foster k*lled?
No.
k*lled himself.
Did the Clintons smuggle dr*gs?
Absolutely not.
Did those promoting these stories
know that this was not true
that none of these stories were true?
They did not care.
Why not?
Because they were having
a devastating effect.
So why stop?
It was terrorism.
Political terrorism.
And you were one of the agents?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
The stories began to grip America,
and despite Clinton's denials
the Republicans in Congress
seized on the scandals
and began to press for investigations
into this immorality at
the heart of government.
Basically, the press
has editorialized and pressured
the politicians into saying
"Here's a guy that as far as we
know hasn't done anything wrong
nobody's accused him
of doing anything wrong
there's no evidence that
he's done anything wrong
but we think the presumption
of guilt almost should be on him.
He should somehow prove his innocence."
Out of this pressure,
Clinton was forced to agree
to an independent
investigation into Whitewater.
It was headed by a senior judge in
Washington called Kenneth Starr.
But what was not widely known
was that Starr was a member
of a right-wing group of lawyers
called the Federalist Society
that had financial and ideological
links to the neoconservatives.
And like the neoconservatives,
they saw Clinton as a danger to the country
and they were determined to
prove this to the American people.
In the Merck manual.
Merck is a pharmaceutical company,
they have a manual listing
various disorders,
and they listed "sociopath."
And if you look at "sociopath,"
it tracks Clinton exactly.
Somebody who's charming
who has no particular feeling at
all for the people he's charming
unable to resist instant gratification
and so on and so on.
Goes right down the list.
We had a very dysfunctional
man in the Presidency.
That was very dangerous,
both as a model and as
if crisis had arisen,
I had no confidence that he would meet it.
But despite all his efforts
Kenneth Starr could find no
incriminating evidence in Whitewater.
Nor could he find any evidence to
support any of the sexual scandals
that had come from the Arkansas Project.
Until finally,
his committee
stumbled upon Clinton's affair with
Monica Lewinsky, which Clinton denied.
And in that lie,
the neoconservative movement
believed they had found what
they had been looking for:
a way to make the American
people see the truth
about the liberal corruption of their country.
A campaign now began
to impeach the President.
And in the hysteria,
the whole conservative movement
portrayed Clinton as a depraved monster
who had to be removed from office.
But yet again, the neoconservatives
had created a fantasy enemy
by exaggerating and distorting reality.
They were trapped by a mythological
person that they had constructed,
or persons, the Clintons, these
scheming, terrible people who they,
the noble pursuers, were going to vanquish.
I think,
in the leadership of conservatism
during the Clinton era there
was an element of corruption.
There was an element of a
willingness to do anything
to achieve the goal of
bringing Clinton down.
There was a way in which the people
who perceived Clinton as immoral
behaved immorally themselves.
They ended up behaving worse than
the people who they were attacking.
All the moral fury,
and the deception, came to nothing.
The impeachment failed because
the polls consistently showed
that Americans still did not
care about these moral issues.
One leading neoconservative,
William Bennett
wrote a book called The Death of Outrage,
which blamed the people.
He accused the public of
making a deal with the devil.
Their failure, he said,
to support the impeachment
was evidence of their moral corruption.
By , Bin Laden and Ayman
Zawahiri had returned to Afghanistan
where they had first met ten years before.
Back then,
it had seemed as if Islamism
might succeed as a popular
revolutionary movement.
But now,
they were facing failure.
All attempts to topple regimes in
the Arab world had not succeeded.
The people had turned against them
because of the horrific v*olence
and Afghanistan was the
only place they had left to go.
Well, was their failure.
Egypt, Algeria, it worked nowhere.
It went wrong because
populations would not back them.
Because people, even people who were
sympathetic of them in the beginning
were frightened away by their v*olence,
by their incapacity to communicate
and to have access to the people,
and this was very clear
in Zawahiri's book "Knights
under the Prophe? Banner,"
where he sort of goes back from
this experiment, and laments
over their incapacity to raise the
consciousness of the masses
and feels that, you know, as a vanguard
they did not manage to communicate.
They remained isolated,
and this is why they failed.
And this is when they
started this new strategy.
In May ,
Bin Laden and Zawahiri
invited a group of journalists
to this press conference
where they announced a new jihad.
Zawahiri was convinced
that it was not their theories
that were to blame for the failure
it was the fault of the Muslim masses.
Their minds had been corrupted
by the liberal ideas from the West.
But rather than give up
he believed that the solution was to
attack the source of the corruption directly.
The new jihad would be
against America itself.
As I mentioned before
we focus our efforts
to fight against Jews and
Christians or Americans.
We have no objection against
any party or any person
who fights Americans all over the world.
And we want to tell you that we
will win the w*r against Americans.
America will be defeated.
Americans know our power, and
This was a strategy of desperation
born out of failure by a small
group whose revolution had failed.
And the anger that came from that failure
was about to be directed
at the United States.
What Zawahiri and Bin
Laden were about to do
would dramatically affect the future
of the neoconservative movement.
By ,
all their attempts to transform America
by creating a moral revolution had failed.
Faced with the indifference of the people
the neoconservatives had
become marginalized
in both domestic and foreign policy.
But with the att*cks that
were about to hit America
the neoconservatives would
at last find the evil enemy
that they had been searching for ever
since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And in their reaction to the att*cks
the neoconservatives would transform
the failing Islamist movement
into what would appear to be
the grand revolutionary force
that Zawahiri had always dreamed of.
But much of it would exist
only in people's imaginations.
It would be the next phantom enemy.
In the past,
politicians promised to create a better world.
They had different ways of achieving this.
But their power and authority
came from the optimistic visions
they offered to their people.
Those dreams failed.
And today,
people have lost faith in ideologies.
Increasingly, politicians are seen
simply as managers of public life.
But now, they have discovered a new role
that restores their power and authority.
Instead of delivering dreams,
politicians now promise to protect us
from nightmares.
They say that they will rescue
us from dreadful dangers
that we cannot see and do not understand.
And the greatest danger of
all is international terrorism.
A powerful and sinister network
with sleeper cells in
countries across the world.
A threat that needs to be
fought by a w*r on terror.
But much of this threat is a fantasy
which has been exaggerated
and distorted by politicians.
It?¯ a dark illusion
that has spread unquestioned through
governments around the world
the security services,
and the international media.
This is a series of films about how and why
that fantasy was created : : ,
--] : : , and who it benefits.
At the heart of the story are two groups:
the American neoconservatives,
and the radical Islamists.
In this week's episode,
the two groups come together
to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
And both believe that they
defeat the Evil Empire
and so had the power
to transform the world.
We will fight for an Islamic State,
we will die for it!
But both failed in their revolutions. We will
fight for an Islamic State, we will die for it!
In response, the neoconservatives
invent a new fantasy enemy
Bill Clinton,
to try and regain their power.
While the Islamists descend into a
desperate cycle of v*olence and terror
to try and persuade the
people to follow them.
Out of all this come the seeds
of the strange world of fantasy
deception, v*olence,
and fear in which we now live.
The Power of Nightmares
The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Part The Phantom Victory
In , Ronald Reagan dedicated
the Space Shuttle Columbia
to the resistance fighters in Afghanistan.
Just as the Columbia, we think,
represents man's finest aspirations
in the field of science and technology
so too does the struggle
of the Afghan people
represent man's highest
aspirations for freedom.
I am dedicating,
on behalf of the American people
the March nd launch of the Columbia
to the people of Afghanistan.
Since , the mujaheddin
resistance had been fighting
a vicious w*r in Afghanistan
against the Soviet invasion.
But now,
a small group in the Reagan White House
saw in these fighters a way of achieving
their vision of transforming the world.
To them,
they were not just nationalists
they were freedom fighters
who could bring down the Soviet Union
and help spread
democracy around the world.
It was called the Reagan Doctrine.
It was a small group of people and yes,
we did have
Everyone thinks, "Oh, the Reagan Doctrine,
the Reagan Administration,"
like everybody was for. No.
It was a small little cabal, within the Soviet
within the Reagan White House,
that really pulled this off.
What united this small group
of ours was the vision
of bringing more freedom to the world,
more security to the world
to actually get rid of the Soviet Union itself!
As a result,
supporting the freedom fighters
became the premier cause for the
entire conservative movement
during the Reagan years.
But the Americans were setting out
to defeat a mythological enemy.
As last week's episode showed,
the neoconservatives
who were now in power
in Reagan's White House
had created an exaggerated
and distorted vision
of the Soviet Union as the
source of all evil in the world.
One of their main influences were the
theories of the philosopher Leo Strauss.
He believed that liberal
societies needed simple
powerful myths to inspire
and unite the people.
And in the s,
the neoconservatives had done just this.
Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle,
and other neoconservatives
had set out to reassert the myth
of America as a unique country
whose destiny was to struggle
against evil throughout the world.
Now in power,
they had come to believe this myth.
They saw themselves as revolutionaries
who were going to transform the world
starting with the defeat of the Evil Empire.
We're closer to being revolutionaries
than conservatives
in the sense that we want to change
some deeply entrenched notions
about the proper role of
American power in the world.
We want to see that power
used constructively
and to enlarge the opportunity for
decent governance around the world.
We're not happy about the old,
cozy relationships with dictators.
And the man who was going to
help the neoconservatives do this
was the new head of the CIA,
William Casey.
He was convinced that Afghanistan was one
of the keys to this aggressive new policy.
America was already sending limited
amounts of aid to the mujaheddin.
But now,
Casey ordered one of his agents
to go and form an alliance
with the freedom fighters
and give them as much
money as they wanted
and the most sophisticated weapons
to defeat the Soviet military forces.
For Casey, Afghanistan seemed
to be possibly one of the keys.
So he tapped me one day to go.
He says, "I want you to go out to
Afghanistan, I want you to go next month
and I will give you whatever
you need to win." Yeah.
He said,
"I want you go to there and win."
As opposed to, "Le? go there and bleed
these guys," make it be a Vietnam
"I want you to go there and win.
Whatever you need, you can have."
He gave me the Stinger
missiles and a billion dollars.
God if Great!
American money and
weapons now began to pour
across the Pakistan border into
Afghanistan. : : , --]
: : , CIA agents trained the
mujaheddin in the techniques
of assassination and terror,
including car bombing.
And they gave them satellite images of
Russian troops to help in their att*cks.
Move your far arse and
sh**t the f*cking rocket!
At the very same time, another group
began to arrive in Afghanistan
to fight alongside the mujaheddin.
They were Arabs from
across the Middle East
who had been told by
their religious leaders
that their duty was to go and free
Muslim lands from the Soviet invader.
I saw the fatwa,
the order saying that
every Muslim has a duty to help
the Afghans to liberate their land.
But I had no idea, where is this Afghanistan?
How can I go there?
I've never heard about Afghanistan,
and I've never heard in the map.
Which airline goes there?
From where can I take the visa?
It questions!
But I did meet Abdullah Azzam.
Abdullah Azzam was a
charismatic religious leader
who had begun to organize the
Arab volunteers in Afghanistan.
He had set up what he
called the Services Bureau
in Peshawar on the Afghan border.
It became the headquarters of an
international brigade of Arab fighters.
Azzam quickly became one
of the most powerful figures
in the battle against the Soviets.
He was allowed to visit
America on many occasions
both to raise funds and
recruit volunteers for the jihad.
When, Abdullah Azzam
became so instrumental
in marketing the Afghan
cause among the Arabs
he became very important.
He became called "the emir
of the Arab mujaheddin."
The leader of the Arab mujaheddin.
And he set up
an office in Peshawar
which provided services to
Arabs who came and wanted
to participate in the jihad.
There were no doors closed,
all doors were opened
because the Americans, the Saudis,
the Pakistanis, and many other people
wanted the Soviet Union to lose in
Afghanistan, and to be humiliated.
That brought about huge numbers of Arabs
from different backgrounds
in the jihad in Afghanistan.
He went to America,
he went to Saudi Arabia
he traveled wherever he wanted,
because the Afghan cause
was a cause that everybody
was happy supporting.
But like the neoconservatives
Azzam also saw the
struggle against the Soviets
as just the first step in
a much wider revolution.
He was a member of the
Muslim Brotherhood
who wanted Islam to play a political
role in governing Muslim societies.
And Abdullah Azzam believed
that the Arabs in Afghanistan
could be the nucleus
of a new political force.
They would return to their own
countries and persuade the people
to reject the corrupt, autocratic
regimes that dominated the Middle East.
But these regimes, Azzam insisted,
must be overthrown by political means.
He made every fighter pledge
they would not use terrorism
against civilians in the
pursuit of their vision.
One of Azzam's closest aides was a Saudi,
Osama Bin Laden.
Osama came to participate in ' .
When he was
when he came
as you know, he is
He came from a rich family from Saudi
and he had much,
much money to spend.
Sheikh Abdullah Azzam was a scholar,
he can organize the Afghans
but he is not a rich man.
So when Osama came,
he filled in this gap.
So the main duty of Osama in
that time was spending money.
Beside his good personal qualities.
But then, in ,
a new force began to arrive in Afghanistan
who were going to
challenge Azzam's approach.
They were the extreme radical Islamists
who were being expelled from
prisons across the Arab world.
And then, very quietly,
most of the
governments in the Middle East,
the Arab governments
began to empty their prisons
of their bad guys
and send them off to the jihad with
the very fondest hope that they
would become martyred.
Many of them were the people in Egypt
that had not been ex*cuted
after the m*rder of Sadat
but were implicated in it and
had been in prison. Off they go.
One of the most powerful of these
newcomers was Ayman Zawahiri.
He was the leader of a radical faction
from Egypt called Islamic Jihad.
And he was convinced that they,
not the moderates, were the true Islamists.
We are here! We are here!
The real Islamic front! We are here!
The real Islamic front and the real
Islamic opposition against Zionist.
We are here!
The real Islamic front against Zionism,
Communism, and imperialism.
Ayman Zawahiri was a follower of the
Egyptian revolutionary Sayyed Qutb
who had been ex*cuted in .
As last week's program showed
Qutb believed that the liberal
ideas of Western societies
corrupted the minds of Muslims
because they unleashed the most
selfish aspects of human nature.
Zawahiri had interpreted Qutb's
theories to mean that this corruption
included the Western system of democracy.
Democracy, Zawahiri believed,
encouraged politicians
to set themselves up as
the source of all authority
and by doing this, they were rejecting
the higher authority of the Koran.
This meant they were no longer
true Muslims, and so they
and those who supported them,
could legitimately be k*lled.
The terror this created, he said,
would shock the masses
into seeing the truth behind
the corrupt facade of democracy.
When the Egyptians,
the jihadi group, came from Egypt
with their own explanation,
with their own ideas
that anybody participating in any
parliament, or any political party
or going to elect,
or call people for the election
and sort of these activities,
is totally rejecting the Koran.
So when you say that, it means when
a Muslim is rejecting the Koran
simply must be k*lled.
And should be k*lled,
must be k*lled!
And tha? what happened.
Zawahiri and his small
group settled in Peshawar.
They began to spread this new
idea among the foreign fighters
radicalizing the Islamist movement.
It was not only a drect challenge to the
moderate ideas of Abdullah Azzam
but it also involved a militant rejection
of all American influence over the jihad
because America was the
source of this corruption.
The only times that I ever ran into
any real trouble in Afghanistan
was when I ran into these guys.
You know,
there'd be kind of a moment or two
where it looked a little bit like
the bar scene in Star Wars
each group kind of jockeying around
and finally somebody has to
sort of defuse the situation.
The indicator lights aren't on.
Please adjust them.
Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev has issued a decree.
Then, in ,
the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
decided he was going to withdraw
Russian troops from Afghanistan.
Gorbachev was convinced that the whole
Soviet system was facing collapse.
He was determined to try and
save it through political reform
and this meant reversing the
policies of his predecessors
including the occupation of Afghanistan.
The state of the Soviet
Union and its society
could be described very
simply with a phrase used
by people across the country:
"We can't go on living like this any longer."
And that applied to everything.
The economy was stagnating.
There were shortages.
And the quality of goods was very poor.
We had to finish this w*r,
but in such a way that the Russian people
would understand why
tens of thousands had died.
We couldn't just run away
from there in shame, no.
We needed to find a process.
Gorbachev asked the Americans
to help him negotiate a peace
that would create a stable
government in Afghanistan.
But the hard-liners in
Washington refused point-blank.
They would continue to
help the mujaheddin
until the last Russians left,
without any negotiation.
The future of Afghanistan would
then be decided, they said
by the freedom fighters.
I think that basically, we've asked the
United States to help us get out
if you're really interested
in stopping the bloodshed.
But can you get out and leave
a government in Afghanistan
that supports
that is a friend of the Soviet Union?
I believe that we can get out, provided
that indeed no more aid is given to what
people here call freedom fighters,
and we call counterrevolutionaries.
I believe tha? possible,
provided that
the United States is also
interested in the same.
Well, I? not very complicated.
they could be home by Christmas Eve,
if they decided to
leave Afghanistan and let the
Afghans decide their own future.
If you leave, the problem of support
to the mujaheddin solves itself.
Gorbachev was shocked by the
intransigence of the U.S. Administration.
He sent a private message through the KGB,
warning the Americans
that if they allowed the mujaheddin
to take control in Afghanistan
it would not produce democracy.
Instead, he predicted,
the most extreme forms of Islamism
would rise up and triumph.
But Gorbachev's warning was ignored.
As Soviet troops left Afghanistan,
both the Americans and the Islamists
came to believe that they had not
only won the battle for Afghanistan
they had also begun the
downfall of the entire Evil Empire.
I felt we won,
because I was part of it.
I'm sure that the Afghan
Arabs thought "We won,"
and then all summer long,
the East Germans begin to gather
a hundred here, a thousand,
tens of thousands
until November th,
when the wall was opened. And tha? it.
Start the clock running on the Soviet Union.
And it was over. The Soviet Union
was all crapped up and broken.
And that was done.
For the neoconservatives, the collapse
of the Soviet Union was a triumph.
And out of that triumph was
going to come the central myth
that still inspires them today:
that through the aggressive
use of American power
they could transform the
world and spread democracy.
But in reality, their victory was an illusion.
They had conquered a phantom enemy
an exaggerated and distorted fantasy
they had created in their own minds.
The real reason the Soviet Union collapsed
was because it was a decrepit system,
decaying from within.
I think probably one of the greatest myths
in American political discourse now
right now,
is that actions of the American government
were responsible for the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union collapsed
like a house of cards
because it was a house of cards.
It rotted away from within.
The economy was rotten,
the political process was rotten
they had developed a central
government that was no longer believed
by people outside of Moscow,
there was total cynicism
throughout the Soviet system of
governance, there was no real civil society.
But the Reagan Administration and their
the minions of the Reagan Administration
will tell you that Afghanistan led to
the collapse of the Soviet Union itself
the collapse of the Berlin Wall in
the collapse of the East European empire.
We were saying that this was entirely fanciful.
And the United States missed all of this
because they believed their own
myths and their own fanciful notions.
They had become their own
victims of their own lies.
And for the Islamists too
a great myth was born out of
the struggle in Afghanistan
that it was they who had
conquered the Soviet Union.
God is Great!
Death to Gorbachev!
Long live Afghanistan!
The Islamists believed that
this great victory would start
a revolution that would sweep across the
Arab world and topple the corrupt leaders.
But as with the neoconservatives,
this dream was built on an illusion.
The Islamists were convinced
that they were the key
instrument in the demise of
the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.
They just would not like to
remember that without
U.S. military help and training,
they couldn't have done anything.
And also the Afghans were the
ones who ousted the Soviets
not the Arab jihadis,
who didn't really fight
they were trained,
but they were not the fighters.
But the myth has it that
they were the ones who won.
I mean,
this was a jihad that had triumphed.
This was something very powerful
that was a mobilizing force
for Islamists worldwide.
But there was a deep rift within the
Islamist fighters based in Peshawar
between the moderates,
led by Abdullah Azzam
who believed this revolution
could be accomplished politically
and the extremists,
like Ayman Zawahiri
who saw violent revolution as the only way.
And Zawahiri now set out to extend
his influence over the movement
and to undermine Abdullah Azzam.
To do this, he seduced Osama Bin Laden,
and his money, away from Azzam.
He promised Bin Laden that
he could become the emir
the leader of Zawahiri's small
extremist group, Islamic Jihad.
Ayman Zawahiri and another group
of Egyptians,
they refused to
pray behind Abdullah Azzam,
in Peshawar.
They used to create rumors in Peshawar
against Abdullah Azzam.
Tha? why we became angry about Osama,
why he became
he closed these people to him.
They accepted hm as an emir,
and he accepted them as a group.
Finally, I don't know who did use the other.
What do you think?
I think the other used him.
Because he had the money?
Yes.
Then, at the end of
Abdullah Azzam was assassinated
by a huge car b*mb in Peshawar.
It is still unknown who carried
out the assassination.
But despite his death
it seemed as if Azzam's vision of
a political revolution might prevail.
In the early ' s,
in countries across the Arab world
Islamist parties began
to gather mass support.
Islamic State!
In Algeria,
the Islamic Salvation Front
won overwhelming
victories in local elections
and looked certain to win
the coming general election.
And at the same time in Egypt,
the Muslim Brotherhood
began to win mass support,
and a growing number of seats in Parliament.
Both parties were riding to
power on an idealistic vision.
They would use Islam in a political way
to create a new type of model
society through peaceful means.
We can change people
throught education
and religional conviction.
We want to build a popular base.
This is the right way.
We do not want a military coup.
We do not want v*olence.
We want our rights.
If people believe in us
the goverment must comply
with the people's wishes.
But the governments in both Egypt
and Algeria faced a terrible dilemma.
At the heart of the Islamist vision
was the idea that the Koran
should be used as the political
framework for the society.
An absolute set of laws, beyond debate,
that all politicians had to follow.
The implication of this was that
political parties would be irrelevant
because there could be no disagreement.
The people were about to vote in
parties that might use that
power to end democracy.
But what a dilemma!
Do you find a way of stopping
the electoral process
and cancelling the second round?
Or do you let power go
to a party witch claims:
One man, one vote,
but only once!
We won't have any elections after this
because democracy is non-religious
Once we're in power,
we'll stay there forever
because we alone are the
keepers of religous truth
and we alone shall apply the Koran.
Faced by this dilemma,
in Algeria the army decided to step in
and in June they
staged a coup d'? at
and immediately canceled the elections.
Mass protests by the Islamists
were repressed violently
and their leaders arrested.
At the same time, in Egypt,
the government also clamped down.
They arrested hundreds of
Muslim Brotherhood members
and banned the organization
from any political activity.
What happened is a wave of
arresting Muslim brothers, a wave of
military courts for Muslim brothers
going to k*ll some of Muslim
brothers under t*rture.
And this wave, in this manner,
you open the doors of hell
for the violent groups who
were hidden underground
and stopped the moderates,
open the door for the v*olence.
For Ayman Zawahiri, this was a
dramatic confirmation of his belief
that the Western system of
democracy was a corrupt sham.
Groups of radical Islamists
who had developed his theories
into even more extreme forms
now set out to create violent
revolutions in Algeria and Egypt.
It would be the start of a jihad
that would liberate the
Muslim world from corruption.
The only way to eradicate
the humiliation and Kufr
that has overcome the
land of Islam is Jihad
b*ll*ts, and martyrdom operations.
Bin Laden and the others
started, from now on,
to wage their own jihad, I.e.
not to compromise, not to try to
compromise with more moderate groups
but thinking that an armed vanguard
would be able to implement
the seizing of power.
They were convinced that they could
duplicate the Afghan "victory"
that they could establish an Islamist
state in Algeria, in Egypt, and the like.
They thought that would capture the hearts
and minds of of the Muslim masses
that people would realize that the strength
and victory were on the side of the jihadis.
At this same time,
in Washington
the other group who believed that they
had brought down the Soviet Union
the neoconservatives
were also determined to push
on with their revolutionary agenda.
They were convinced that the
Soviet Union was just one of
many evil regimes in the world led
by tyrants that threatened America.
Regimes they had to conquer to liberate
the world and spread democracy.
We want, you know,
down with tyranny.
We want free countries.
We think that America is
better off if we live in a world
primarily populated with free countries,
who make their own
who have to appeal to their own
people for the source of their power
and to ratify their decisions.
And we think that if
if the whole world were like that,
then we would be much more secure
and that typically we
were att*cked by tyrants.
I think I? America's destiny
because I think that America's always
going to come under attack from tyrants.
So I think that our only choice is
whether we're going to win or lose,
and when we will fight..
and under what circumstances,
but that we're gonna have to fight.
Tha? a*t*matic,
because they're gonna come after us.
One of the most evil of these tyrants,
the neoconservatives decided
was S*ddam Hussein.
In the s, S*ddam had been America's
close ally. But in , he invaded Kuwait.
The neoconservatives
now saw him as a key
to pursuing the next stage of
their transformation of the world.
An American-led coalition had been
created by President Bush senior
to liberate Kuwait.
But the neoconservatives,
like Paul Wolfowitz
who was Undersecretary of Dfense,
wanted to push on to Baghdad
and bring about a
transformation of the Middle East.
It would fulfill America's unique
role to defeat evil in the world.
You see already in '
the hopes of Wolfowitz and others,
that the battle
against S*ddam Hussein,
or other petty tyrants
could take the place of the
battle against the Soviet Union
and could bear this interpretation
of a battle between good and evil.
So, what you're seeing is
the attempt to keep alive
the idea that America is engaged in a
battle of pure good against pure evil
and to preserve that framework for a
world after the end of the Soviet Union.
But President Reagan
was no longer in charge.
The neoconservatives now had a
leader who did not share their vision.
Kuwait is liberated.
Iraq's army is defeated.
Our military objectives are met.
And I am pleased to announce all
United States and Coalition forces
will suspend combat operations.
Once Kuwait was freed,
Bush ordered the fighting to stop.
His view was that America's role
was to create stability in the world
not to try change it.
Like Henry Kissinger
who had been the enemy of the
neoconservatives in the s
Bush saw questions of
good and evil as irrelevant.
The higher aim was to achieve a stable
balance of power in the Middle East.
S*ddam Hussein is not a threat
to his neighbors. He's a nuisance,
he's an annoyance
but he's not a threat.
That we achieved.
It was never our objective
to get S*ddam Hussein.
Indeed, had we tried,
we still might be occupying Baghdad.
That would have turned a great success
into a very messy probable defeat.
In private, the neoconservatives
like Paul Wolfowitz were furious.
Not just because S*ddam
Hussein had been left in power
but because they saw
this as a clear expression
of the corrupt liberal values
that dominated America
a moral relativism that was
prepared to compromise
with the forces of evil in the world.
Wolfowitz' anger is fundamentally
an anger against
the weakness of American liberalism:
the compromising nature of
a man like George Bush senior.
His willingness to make concessions,
to negotiate, not to drive to the bitter end.
And his anger is motivated, interestingly
less by hatred of S*ddam Hussein,
than by hatred of American liberals
who are a source of weakness, and a
source of rot, and a source of relativism
that had been corroding
American society for decades.
Faced by this defeat, the neoconservative
movement now turned inwards
to try and defeat the forces of
liberalism that were holding it back.
And to do this, they turned again
to the theories of Leo Strauss.
Strauss believed that good
politicians should reassert
the absolute moral values
that would unite society
and this would overcome the moral
relativism that liberalism created.
One of the most influential Straussians
was the new assistant to the
Vice-President, William Kristol.
For Strauss,
liberalism produced a decent way of life
and one that he thought
was worth defending
but a dead end where nothing
could be said to be true
one had no guidance on how to live,
everything was relative.
Strauss suggests that maybe
we didn't just have to sit there
and accept that that was our fate.
That politics could help
shape the way people live
teach them some good lessons about
living decent and noble human lives.
And can we think about what cultures,
and what politics
what social orders produce
more admirable human beings?
I mean, that whole question was put
back on the table by Strauss, I think.
The neoconservatives set
out to reform America.
And at the heart of their project
was the political use of religion.
Together with their long-term allies,
the religious right
they began a campaign to
bring moral and religious issues
back into the center
of conservative politics.
It became known as the "culture wars."
Your tax dollars are being used to sponsor
obscene and pornographic displays.
I don't like Jesus Christ,
who is my Lord and Savior
being dumped in a vat of
urine by a h*m*
and then have my money to pay for
it! I think tha? obscene! : : ,
--] : : , Satan, be gone!
Out from this moment on! C'mon!
For the religious right,
this campaign was a genuine attempt
to renew the religious
basis of American society.
But for the neoconservatives,
religion was a myth
like the myth of America as a unique
nation they had promoted in the Cold w*r.
Strauss had taught that
these myths were necessary
to give ordinary people meaning and
purpose, and so ensure a stable society.
Do you ever worry that they're
playing too much Nintendo?
Oh, not anymore.
See, Matt has Bible Adventures.
They're actually learning Bible stories
while they're playing Nintendo.
For the neoconservatives, religion is
an instrument of promoting morality.
Religion becomes what
Plato called a "noble lie."
It is a myth which is told to
the majority of the society
by the philosophical elite in
order to ensure social order.
What better way to enjoy God's
creation than a Praise Walk?
In being a kind of secretive elitist approach
Straussianism does resemble Marxism.
These ex-Marxists,
or in some cases ex-liberal Straussians
could see themselves as a kind
of Leninist group, you know
who have this covert vision which they
want to use to effect change in history
while concealing parts of it from
people incapable of understanding it.
Out of this campaign,
a new and powerful moral agenda
began to take over the Republican Party.
It reached a dramatic climax at the
Republican Convention in
when the religious right seized control
of the party's policy-making machinery.
George Bush became
committed to run for President
with policies that would ban abortion,
gay rights, and multiculturalism.
Speakers who tried to promote the
traditional conservative values
of individual freedom
were booed off the stage.
I happen to think that individual freedom
should extend to a
woman's right to choose.
I want the government out of your
pocketbook and your bedroom!
For the neoconservatives, the aim of this
new morality was to unite the nation.
But in fact,
it had completely the opposite effect.
Mainstream Republican
voters were frightened away
by the harsh moralism that
had taken over their party.
They turned instead to Bill Clinton
a politician who connected with
their real concerns and needs
like tax and the state of the economy.
In the week after the
Republican Convention
Republican moderates, young people,
and particularly women
saying, "I've been sort of
torn between the two parties
but where do I sign up to help
Clinton get elected? I am
frightened by this ultraconservative
agenda I hear coming out of Houston."
I've been a lifelong Republican.
I'm a registered Republican.
I am voting for Bill Clinton this time.
Enough is enough.
It is time for a change.
At the end of ,
Bill Clinton won a dramatic victory.
But the neoconservatives were
determined to regain power.
And to do this,
they were going to do to Bill Clinton
what they had done to the Soviet Union.
They would transform the President of
the United States into a fantasy enemy
an image of evil that would
make people realize the truth
of the liberal corruption of America.
We realise that other
nations have surpassed us
In what?
In knowledge.
And Islam
In the early ' s, Algeria, Egypt,
and other Arab countries
were being torn apart by a
horrific wave of Islamist terror.
The jihadists who had
returned from Afghanistan
were trying to topple the regimes.
At the heart of their strategy
was the idea that Ayman Zawahiri
and others had taught them.
That those who were involved in
politics could legitimately be k*lled
because they had become corrupted
and thus were no longer Muslims.
This v*olence, they believed,
would shock people into rising up
and the corrupt regimes
would then be overthrown.
"They must die!"
Not only "must die," they DID k*ll.
They did k*ll people.
Not just any
I? not just an idea from far
it became true.
People k*lled.
Many many rulers, many many holy men,
many many scholars
many many politicians in Islamic world
have been k*lled because of these idea.
Why? Because simply they are against
the Koran. They rejected the Koran.
Ayman Zawahiri was now based with
Bin Laden on this farm in the Sudan.
He used it as a base for his group,
Islamic Jihad
to launch att*cks on politicians in Egypt.
But as one of the leading
ideologues of the revolution
he also traveled throughout the Arab world,
advising other groups on their strategy.
But the revolutionaries soon found that the
masses did not rise up and follow them.
The regimes stayed in power,
and the radical Islamists were hunted down.
Faced by this,
the Islamists widened their terror.
Their logic was brutal:
it was not just those who were involved
with politics who should be k*lled
but the ordinary people who supported it.
Their refusal to rise up showed that
they too had become corrupted
and so had condemned
themselves to death.
There was definitely a logic.
The logic is that you as*ault the leaders
you as*ault those who are associated
with them, and eventually you as*ault
the people who have consented to the
presence of such a despotic leader
even if they are passively
supportive through their silence.
And then you start attacking
economic institutions
you start attacking the tourists, because
the tourists bring money to the country
and that money goes into
the pockets of the corrupt elite.
So, it is an endless process.
In Algeria,
this logic went completely out of control.
The Islamist revolutionary groups
k*lled thousands of civilians
because they believed that all
these people had become corrupted.
All these innocents,
what did they ever do?
Legs blown off!
Such horror!
Even the French extremists
never did things like this.
Why? What have we done?
What have out children done?
Leave me alone!
I want do die!
In turn, the generals running Algeria
inftitrated the revolutionary groups.
They told their agents to persuade the
Islamists to push the logic even further
to k*ll even more people.
This would create such horror that the
groups would lose any remaining support
and the generals could use the fear and
revulsion to increase their grip on power.
The generals inftitrated the jihad ideas,
the jihad groups
to put the society under fear.
By creating terror and v*olence
to stop everything in the society,
no politic, no economy, no everything
just to stay and saying to the West,
"We are facing terror."
Using fear?
Using fear to stay on the power.
Today the k*ll,
they k*ll everybody
innocent people, children,
old people.
They have een cut up their victims.
Who will trust them
if tomorrow they take power?
Down with fundamentalism!
By ,
the Islamist revolution was failing.
There were mass demonstrations
against the Islamist groups
by thousands of people
horrified by the v*olence.
And then, in June of that year,
a group of Egyptian Islamists
att*cked Western tourists
at the ruins of Luxor.
were k*lled in three
hours of random v*olence.
The m*ssacre shocked the Egyptian people
and the leaders of the revolutionary
groups agreed to call a cease-fire.
In Algeria, a few groups held out.
But they began to tear each other apart
as they followed the logic that
had driven their revolution
to its ultimate,
and logical, end:
they started to k*ll each other.
It led to their own destruction.
A group that believes in % pure Muslim
will not see that purity in
anybody else but themselves.
So whoever disagrees with
them becomes the enemy
becomes out of the House of Islam
and then if they happen to disagree
with each other themselves
then they will start liquidating each other.
And they keep fighting each other,
there will be infighting.
Eventually it ends in su1c1de.
The main Islamist group in Algeria,
the GIA
ended by being led by a Mr.
Zouabri, a chicken farmer
who k*lled everyone
who disagreed with him.
He issued a final communique
declaring that the whole of
Algerian society should be k*lled
with the exception of his tiny
remaining band of Islamists.
They were the only ones
who understood the truth.
By the mid-' s,
politics in Washington
was dominated by one issue:
the moral character of the
President of the United States.
If you believe you've been a victim of
sexual harassment by the President
we want to help.
Behind this were an extraordinary
barrage of allegations against Clinton
that were obsessing the media.
These included stories
of sexual harassment
stories that Clinton and his wife
were involved in Whitewater
a corrupt property deal
stories that they had m*rder*d
their close friend Vince Foster
and stories that Clinton was
involved in smuggling dr*gs
from a small airstrip in Arkansas.
But none of these stories were true.
All of them had been orchestrated by
a young group of neoconservatives
who were determined to destroy Clinton.
The campaign was centered on
a small right-wing magazine
called the American Spectator
which had set up what was
called the "Arkansas Project"
to investigate Clinton's past life.
The journalist at the center of this
project was called David Brock.
In the crossfire: David Brock,
of the American Spectator magazine.
She was dressed in a raincoat and a hat,
and came in at : in the morning
and had a liaison with
Clinton in the game room
in the bottom floor of the
Governor's mansion. David, David,
David, this is getting a little bizarre.
Next thing we gonna see
I? bizarre! But hey,
Bill Clinton is a bizarre guy.
Since then, Brock has turned against
the neoconservative movement.
He now believes that the
att*cks on Clinton went too far
and corrupted conservative politics.
Was Whitewater true?
No! There was no
I mean
there was no criminal wrongdoing
in Whitewater. Absolutely not.
It was a land deal that the
Clintons lost money on.
It was a coplete inversion of what happened.
Was Vince Foster k*lled?
No.
k*lled himself.
Did the Clintons smuggle dr*gs?
Absolutely not.
Did those promoting these stories
know that this was not true
that none of these stories were true?
They did not care.
Why not?
Because they were having
a devastating effect.
So why stop?
It was terrorism.
Political terrorism.
And you were one of the agents?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
The stories began to grip America,
and despite Clinton's denials
the Republicans in Congress
seized on the scandals
and began to press for investigations
into this immorality at
the heart of government.
Basically, the press
has editorialized and pressured
the politicians into saying
"Here's a guy that as far as we
know hasn't done anything wrong
nobody's accused him
of doing anything wrong
there's no evidence that
he's done anything wrong
but we think the presumption
of guilt almost should be on him.
He should somehow prove his innocence."
Out of this pressure,
Clinton was forced to agree
to an independent
investigation into Whitewater.
It was headed by a senior judge in
Washington called Kenneth Starr.
But what was not widely known
was that Starr was a member
of a right-wing group of lawyers
called the Federalist Society
that had financial and ideological
links to the neoconservatives.
And like the neoconservatives,
they saw Clinton as a danger to the country
and they were determined to
prove this to the American people.
In the Merck manual.
Merck is a pharmaceutical company,
they have a manual listing
various disorders,
and they listed "sociopath."
And if you look at "sociopath,"
it tracks Clinton exactly.
Somebody who's charming
who has no particular feeling at
all for the people he's charming
unable to resist instant gratification
and so on and so on.
Goes right down the list.
We had a very dysfunctional
man in the Presidency.
That was very dangerous,
both as a model and as
if crisis had arisen,
I had no confidence that he would meet it.
But despite all his efforts
Kenneth Starr could find no
incriminating evidence in Whitewater.
Nor could he find any evidence to
support any of the sexual scandals
that had come from the Arkansas Project.
Until finally,
his committee
stumbled upon Clinton's affair with
Monica Lewinsky, which Clinton denied.
And in that lie,
the neoconservative movement
believed they had found what
they had been looking for:
a way to make the American
people see the truth
about the liberal corruption of their country.
A campaign now began
to impeach the President.
And in the hysteria,
the whole conservative movement
portrayed Clinton as a depraved monster
who had to be removed from office.
But yet again, the neoconservatives
had created a fantasy enemy
by exaggerating and distorting reality.
They were trapped by a mythological
person that they had constructed,
or persons, the Clintons, these
scheming, terrible people who they,
the noble pursuers, were going to vanquish.
I think,
in the leadership of conservatism
during the Clinton era there
was an element of corruption.
There was an element of a
willingness to do anything
to achieve the goal of
bringing Clinton down.
There was a way in which the people
who perceived Clinton as immoral
behaved immorally themselves.
They ended up behaving worse than
the people who they were attacking.
All the moral fury,
and the deception, came to nothing.
The impeachment failed because
the polls consistently showed
that Americans still did not
care about these moral issues.
One leading neoconservative,
William Bennett
wrote a book called The Death of Outrage,
which blamed the people.
He accused the public of
making a deal with the devil.
Their failure, he said,
to support the impeachment
was evidence of their moral corruption.
By , Bin Laden and Ayman
Zawahiri had returned to Afghanistan
where they had first met ten years before.
Back then,
it had seemed as if Islamism
might succeed as a popular
revolutionary movement.
But now,
they were facing failure.
All attempts to topple regimes in
the Arab world had not succeeded.
The people had turned against them
because of the horrific v*olence
and Afghanistan was the
only place they had left to go.
Well, was their failure.
Egypt, Algeria, it worked nowhere.
It went wrong because
populations would not back them.
Because people, even people who were
sympathetic of them in the beginning
were frightened away by their v*olence,
by their incapacity to communicate
and to have access to the people,
and this was very clear
in Zawahiri's book "Knights
under the Prophe? Banner,"
where he sort of goes back from
this experiment, and laments
over their incapacity to raise the
consciousness of the masses
and feels that, you know, as a vanguard
they did not manage to communicate.
They remained isolated,
and this is why they failed.
And this is when they
started this new strategy.
In May ,
Bin Laden and Zawahiri
invited a group of journalists
to this press conference
where they announced a new jihad.
Zawahiri was convinced
that it was not their theories
that were to blame for the failure
it was the fault of the Muslim masses.
Their minds had been corrupted
by the liberal ideas from the West.
But rather than give up
he believed that the solution was to
attack the source of the corruption directly.
The new jihad would be
against America itself.
As I mentioned before
we focus our efforts
to fight against Jews and
Christians or Americans.
We have no objection against
any party or any person
who fights Americans all over the world.
And we want to tell you that we
will win the w*r against Americans.
America will be defeated.
Americans know our power, and
This was a strategy of desperation
born out of failure by a small
group whose revolution had failed.
And the anger that came from that failure
was about to be directed
at the United States.
What Zawahiri and Bin
Laden were about to do
would dramatically affect the future
of the neoconservative movement.
By ,
all their attempts to transform America
by creating a moral revolution had failed.
Faced with the indifference of the people
the neoconservatives had
become marginalized
in both domestic and foreign policy.
But with the att*cks that
were about to hit America
the neoconservatives would
at last find the evil enemy
that they had been searching for ever
since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And in their reaction to the att*cks
the neoconservatives would transform
the failing Islamist movement
into what would appear to be
the grand revolutionary force
that Zawahiri had always dreamed of.
But much of it would exist
only in people's imaginations.
It would be the next phantom enemy.
Re: Power of Nightmares, The : The Rise of the Politics of Fear (2004)
Part 3:
In the past,
politicians promised to create a better world.
They had different ways of achieving this.
But their power and authority
came from the optimistic visions
they offered to their people.
Those dreams failed.
And today,
people have lost faith in ideologies.
Increasingly, politicians are seen
simply as managers of public life.
But now, they have discovered a new role
that restores their power and authority.
Instead of delivering dreams,
politicians now promise to protect us
from nightmares.
They say that they will rescue
us from dreadful dangers
that we cannot see and do not understand.
And the greatest danger of
all is international terrorism.
A powerful and sinister network
with sleeper cells in
countries across the world.
A threat that needs to be
fought by a w*r on terror.
But much of this threat is a fantasy
which has been exaggerated
and distorted by politicians.
It's a dark illusion
that has spread unquestioned through
governments around the world
the security services,
and the international media.
This is a series of films about how and why
that fantasy was created : : ,
--] : : , and who it benefits.
At the heart of the story are two groups:
the American neoconservatives,
and the radical Islamists.
Last week's episode ended in
the late' s with both groups
marginalized and out of power.
But with the att*cks of September th,
the fates of both dramatically changed.
The Islamists,
after their moment of triumph
were virtually destroyed within months
while the neoconservatives
took power in Washington.
But then, the neoconservatives
began to reconstruct the Islamists.
They created a phantom enemy.
And as this nightmare
fantasy began to spread
.politicians realized the newfound power
it gave them in a deeply disillusioned age.
Those with the darkest nightmares
became the most powerful.
The Power of Nightmares
The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Part The Shadows in the cave
At the end of the s
Osama Bin Laden had
returned to Afghanistan.
He was accompanied by Ayman Zawahiri
the most influential ideologist
of the Islamist movement.
For years
Zawahiri had struggled to create
revolutions in the Arab world
but all attempt had ended in bloody failure.
We haven't had any infomation about your
whereabouts for sometime, where were you?
I was just home and clubs.
Not in Afghanistan?
Somewhere else?
Everywhere, everywhere.
Everywhere?
I am a Muslim.
Being a Muslim
you are wanted everywhere.
Because if you
- just if you say no to the superpowers
this immediately in itself is
a crime you are wanted for.
Yes, but isn't what you
do not to do with arms?
It's aggressive but ask Allah,
and he is greater than superpower.
Zawahiri was a follower of the
Egyptian revolutionary, Sayyed Qutb
who had been ex*cuted in .
Qutb's vision had been of
a new type of modern state.
It would contain all of the benefits of
Western science and technology
but it would use Islam as a moral
framework to protect people
from the culture of Western liberalism.
Qutb believed that this culture
infected the minds of Muslims
turning them into selfish creatures
who threatened to destroy the shared
values that held society together.
Throughout the s and s
Zawahiri had tried to persuade the masses
to rise up and topple the rulers
who had allowed this corruption to
infect their countries. : : ,
--] : : , We want to speak
to the whole world. Who are we?
But the revolutionaries became trapped
in a horrific escalation of v*olence
because the masses
refused to follow them.
Islamism failed as a mass movement
and Zawahiri now came to the conclusion
that a new strategy was needed.
They had no revolution at all.
I mean
they had failed in their takeover
they had failed to topple
the powers that be
and, you know,
they became more and more interested
in this idea that only a small vanguard
could be successful.
I mean, they had lost confidence
in the spontaneous capacity of
the masses to be mobilised.
Then they decided to change
strategy completely
and instead of striking at what
they called the "near enemy"
I.e., the local regimes
they decided that they could
strike at the "far away enemy"
I.e., at the West,
at America
and that would impress the masses,
and the masses would be mobilised.
Zawahiri and Bin Laden began implementing
this new strategy in August, .
Two huge su1c1de bombs were detonated
outside American embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania
k*lling more than people.
The bombings had a
dramatic effect on the West.
For the first time,
the name "Bin Laden"
entered the public consciousness
as a t*rror1st mastermind.
The su1c1de bombers
had been recruited by Bin Laden from
the Islamist training camps in Afghanistan.
But his and Zawahiri's operation
was very much on the fringes
of the Islamist movement.
The overwhelming majority of
the fighters in these camps
had nothing at all to do with Bin
Laden or international terrorism.
They were training to fight
regimes in their own countries
such as Uzbekistan, Kashmir,
and Chechnia.
Their aim wa to establish Islamist
societies in the Muslim world
and they had no interest
in attacking America.
Bin Laden helped fund some of the camps
and in return was allowed to look
for volunteers for his operations.
But a number of senior Islamists
were against his new strategy
including members of Zawahiri's
own group, Islamic Jihad.
Even Bin Laden's displays of strength
to the Western media were faked.
The fighters in this video
had been hired for the day
and told to bring their own weapons.
For beyond this small group
Bin Laden had no formal organisation.
Until the Americans invented one for h.
In January,
a trial began in a Manhattan courtroom
of four men accused of the
embassy bombings in east Africa.
But the Americans had also decided
to prosecute Bin Laden in his absence.
But to do this under American law
the prosecutors needed evidence
of a criminal organisation
because, as with the Mafia
that would allow them to prosecute
the head of the organisation
even if he could not be
linked directly to the crime.
And the evidence for that
organisation was provided for them
by an ex-associate of Bin
Laden's called Jamal Al-Fadl.
During the investigation of
the bombings, there is a
walk-in source, Jamal Al-Fadl
who is a Sudanese militant who
was with Bin Laden in the early s
who has been passed around a whole
series of Middle East secret services.
None of whom want much to do with him
and who ends up in
America and is taken on by
the American government, effectively
as a key prosecution witness.
And is given a huge amount of American
taxpayers' money at the same time.
His account is used as raw material
to build up a picture of Al Qaeda.
The picture that the FBI want o build
up is one that will fit the existing laws
that they will have to use to prosecute
those responsible for the bombing.
Now, those laws were drawn up
to counteract organised crime:
the Mafia, dr*gs crime, crimes
where people being a member of an
organisation is extremely important.
You have to have an organisation
to get a prosecution.
And you have Al-Fadl and a
number of other witness
a number of other sources,
who are happy to feed into this.
You've got material that,
looked at in a certain way
can be seen to show this
organisation's existence.
You put the two together and you get what
is the first Bin Laden myth : ,
--] : : , the first Al Qaeda myth.
And because it's one of the first,
it's extremely influential.
The picture Al-Fadl drew for
the Americans of Bin Laden
was of an all-powerful figure at the
head of a large t*rror1st network
that had an organised network of control.
He also said that Bin Laden had given
this network a name: "Al Qaeda".
It was a dramatic and powerful
picture of Bin Laden
but it bore little relationship to the truth.
The reality was that Bin
Laden and Ayman Zawahiri
had become the focus
of a loose association of
disillusioned Islamist militants
who were attracd by the new strategy.
But there was no organisation.
These were militants who mostly
planned their own operations
and looked to Bin Laden
for funding and assistance.
He was not their commander.
There is also no evidence that Bin
Laden used the term "Al Qaeda"
to refer to the name of a group
until after September the th
when he realized that this was the
term the Americans have given it.
In reality, Jamal Al-Fadl was
on the run from Bin Laden
having stolen money from him.
In return for his evidence
the Americans gave him
witness protection in America and
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Many lawyers at the trial believed
that Al-Fadl exaggerated and lied
to give the Americans the picture
of a t*rror1st organisation that
they needed to prosecute Bin Laden.
And there were selective portions
of Al-Fadl's testimony
that I believe was false
to help support the picture that he
helped the Americans join together.
I think he lied in a number
of specific testimony
about a unified image of
what this organisation was.
It made Al Qaeda the new
Mafia or the new Communists.
It made them identifiable as a group
and therefore made
it easier to prosecute
any person associated with Al Qaeda for
any acts or statements made by Bin Laden
who talked a lot.
The idea - which is critical to
the FBI's prosecution
that Bin Laden ran a coherent
organisation with operatives and cells
all around the world of which you
could be a member is a myth.
There is no Al Qaeda organisation. There
is no international network with a leader
with cadres who will
unquestioningly obey orders
with tentacles that stretch out to sleeper
cells in America, in Africa, in Europe.
That idea of a coherent, structured t*rror1st
network with an organised capability
simply does not exist. : : , -]
: : , What did exist was a powerful
idea that was about to inspire a single
devastating act that would lead the
whole world into believing the myth
that had begun to be constructed
in the Manhattan courtroom.
What's this other jet doing? What's
this other jet doing? What the hell's that?
Holy f*ck! Oh my God!
Oh my God! Jesus f*cking Christ!
Don't touch it!
Oh my God! Oh my God!
The attack on America by
hijackers shocked the world.
It was Ayman Zawahiri's new strategy,
implemented in a brutal and spectacular way.
But neither he nor Bin Laden
were the originators of what was
called the "Planes Operation".
It was the brainchilan Islamist militant
called Khalid Sheik Mohammed
who came to Bin Laden for funding
and help in finding volunteers.
But in the wake of panic created
by the att*cks, the politicians
reached for the model
which had been created by the trial earlier
that year: The hijackers were just the tip
of a vast, international t*rror1st
network which was called, "Al Qaeda".
Al Qaeda is to terror what
the Mafia is to crime.
There are thousands of these
t*rrorists in more than countries.
They are recruited from their own nations
and neighborhoods, and brought to camps
in places like Afghanistan,
where they are trained in the tactics of terror.
This one network, Al Qaeda, that's
receiving so much discussion and publicity
make have activities in to countries,
including the United States.
Our w*r is against networks and groups,
people who coddle them
people who try to hide them,
people who fund them. This is our calling.
And the att*cks had another dramatic effect:
they brought the neoconservatives
back to power in America
When George Bush first became president
he had appointed neoconservatives
like Paul Wolfowitz
and their allies like Donald Rumsfeld,
to his administration.
But their grand vision of
America's role in the world was
largely ignored by this new regi.
I just don't think it's the
role of the United States to walk
into another country and say
"We do it this way,
so should you."
But now
We're going to find those who,
uh, who, uh, uh, those evil doers.
But now,
the neoconservatives became all-powerful
because this terror network proved
that what they had been predicting
through the s was correct:
that America was at risk from
terrifying new forces in a hostile world.
A small group formed that began to shape
America's response to the att*cks.
At its heart were Donald Rumsfeld
and Paul Wolfowitz, along with
the vice-president, d*ck Cheney
and Ric Perle,
who was a senior advisor to the Pentagon.
The last time these men had been
in power together was years
before, under President Reagan.
Back then, they had taken on and,
as they saw it
defeated a source of evil that wanted
to take over America: the Soviet Union.
And now they saw this new w*r
on terror in the same epic terms.
The struggle against Soviet totalitarianism
was a struggle between
fundamental value questions.
"Good" and "evil" is about as effective a
shorthand as I can imagine in this regard
and there's something rather
similar going on in the w*r on terror.
It isn't a w*r on terror,
it's a w*r on t*rrorists who want.
to impose an intolerant
tyranny on all mankind
an Islamic universe in which we
are all compelled to accept their
beliefs and live by their lights
and in that sense this is a
battle between good and evil.
But, as previous episodes have shown
the neoconservatives distorted
and exaggerated the Soviet threat.
They created the image of a hidden,
international web of evil run from Moscow
that planned to dominate the world, when,
in reality
the Soviet Union was on its last legs,
collapsing from within.
Now, they did the same with the Islamists.
Now, they did the same with the Islamists.
Can Soviet imperialism be halted?
Can Soviet imperialism be halted?
They took a failing movement
which had lost mass support
Can Soviet imperialism be halted?
and began to reconstruct it into the
image of a powerful network of evil
controlled from the center by Bin
Laden from his lair in Afghanistan.
They did this because it fitted with their
vision of America's unique destiny
to fight an epic battle against the
forces of evil throughout the world.
What the neoconservatives
are doing is taking a concept
that they developed during the
competition with the Soviet Union
I.e., Soviet Communism was evil
It was that kind of concept of evil that
they took - an exaggerated one, to be
sure - and then apply it to a new threat
where it didn't apply at all,
and yet it was layered with the
same kind of cultural baggage.
The policy says there's a network,
the policy says that network is evil
they want to infiltrate our classrooms,
they want to take our society
they want all our women to wear,
you know, veils
and this is what we have to deal
with and therefore since we know
it's evil let's just k*ll it
and that will make it go away.
And so the Americans set
off to invafghanistan
to find and destroy the
heart of this network.
To do this, the Americans allied themselves
with a group called the Northern Alliance.
They were a loose collection
of warlords, fighting a w*r of
resistance against the Taliban
the Islamists who controlled Afghanistan.
The Taliban's best troops
were the thousands of foreign
fighters from the training camps,
who the Northern Alliance hated.
And now, they took their
revenge on the foreign fighters.
The Americans believed that these
men were Al Qaeda t*rrorists,
and the Northern Alliance did
nothing to disabuse them of this
because they were paid by the
Americans for each prisoner they delivered.
Both they and the Taliban were radical
nationalists who wanted to create
Islamist societies in their own countries.
But now, they were either k*lled or
taken off to Guant嫕amo Bay
and Islamism, as an organised
movement for changing the Muslim
world, was obliterated in Afghanistan.
But as it disappeared, it was replaced by
ever more extravagant fantasies about the
power and reach of the Al Qaeda network.
In December, the Northern Alliance
told the Americans that Bin Laden was
hiding in the mountains of Tora Bora.
They were convinced they had
found the heart of his organisation.
The search for Osama Bin Laden:
There was constant discussion
about him hiding out in caves
and I think many times the American
people have a perception that it's a
little hole dug out of the side of a mountain.
Oh, no.
This is it.
This is a fortress.
Yes.
A complex. Multi-tiered. "Bedrooms and
Offices" on the top, as you can see.
"Secret Exits" on the side,
and on the bottom. "Cut Deep
to Avoid Thermal Detection."
A ventilation system, to allow people to
breathe and to carry on. The entrances,
large enough to drive trucks and even tanks.
Even computer systems and
telephone systems. It's a
very sophisticated operation.
Oh, you bet. This is serious business.
And there's not one of se;
there are many of those.
For days, the Americans bombed
the mountains of Tora Bora with the
most powerful weapons they had.
The Northern Alliance had been
paid more than a million dollars
for their help and information
and now their fighters set
off up the mountains to storm
Bin Laden's fortress
..and bring back the Al Qaeda
t*rrorists and their leader.
But all they found were a few small
caves, which were either empty or
had been used to store amm*nit*on.
There was no underground
bunker system, no secret tunnels:
the fortress didn't exist
The Northern Alliance did
produce some prisoners they
claimed were Al Qaeda fighters
but there was no proof of this, and
one rumor was at the Northern Alliance
was simply kidnapping anyone
who looked remotely like an
Arab and selling them to the
Americans for yet more money.
The Americans now began to search all
the caves in all the mountains in eastern
Afghanistan for the hidden Al Qaeda network.
We found a cave.
The rest of it is open. Break.
If nobody went up to look into that cave,
people could've been hiding up there for
days and watching everything that we did.
But wherever they looked, there was
nothing there. Al Qaeda seemed
to have completely disappeared.
But then, the British arrived to
help. They were convinced they
could hunt down Al Qaeda
because of what they said was
their unique experience in fighting
terrorism in Northern Ireland.
They could succeed where others had failed.
The hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban goes on.
And we stand shoulder to
shoulder with the United States
and our other coalition allies
in the global w*r on terrorism.
Five weeks later.
But how many Al Qaeda have you captured?
We haven't, uh,
captured any Al Qaeda, but
And how many have you actually managed
to k*ll here in south-east Afghanistan?
We haven't k*lled any.
Ten thousand pieced of gold for
the body of Ali Baba and the
destruction of the band of thieves.
The terrible truth was that there was
nothing there because Al Qaeda
as an ornisation did not exist.
The att*cks on America had been
planned by a small group that had come
together around Bin Laden in the late s.
What united them was an idea. An
extreme interpretation of Islamism
developed by Ayman Zawahiri.
With the American invasion, that group
had been destroyed, k*lled or scattered.
What was left was the idea
and the real danger was the
way this idea could inspire groups
and individuals around the world
who had no relationship to each other.
In looking for an organisation,
the Americans and the British
were chasing a phantom enemy
and missing the real threat.
I was with the Royal Marines as they
trooped around eastern Afghanistan
and every time they got a
location for a supposed Al Qaeda
or Taliban element or base
they'd turn up and there
was no one there, or there'd
be a few startled shepherds
and that struck me then as being a
wonderful image for the w*r on terror
because people looking for
something that isn't there.
There is no organisation with
its t*rror1st operatives, cells,
sleeper cells, so on and so forth.
What there is is an idea, prevalent
among young, angry Muslim males
throughout the Islamic world.
That idea is what poses a threat.
But the neoconservatives were now
increasingly locked into this fantasy
This is a network that has
penetrated into some countries,
including very definitely our own
and it's got to be rooted out.
Our intelligence priority, in many
ways, is getting after the network
here in the United States first.
We will do whatever we need to do to go
after these networks and dismantle them.
The American government set
out to search for the Al Qaeda
organisation inside its own country.
Thousands were detained as all
branches of the law and the military
were told to look for t*rrorists.
You don't really know what a
t*rror1st looks like, what kind of car
they drive, or anything else
And, bit by bit,
the government found the network:
a series of hidden cells in cities across
the country from Buffalo to Portland.
We've thwarted t*rrorists in Buffalo
and Seattle, Portland, Detroit
North Carolina,
and Tampa, Florida.
We're determined to stop the
enemy before he can strike our people.
The Americans called them "sleeper
cells," and decided that they
had just been waiting to strike.
But in reality there is very little evidence
that any of those arrested had
anything at all to do with t*rror1st plots.
From Portland to the suburb of Buffalo
called Lackawa, yet again the Americans
were chasing a phantom enemy.
They say "t*rror1st sleeper cell."
That's what they call the Lackawanna
people a t*rror1st sleeper cell
the Detroit people a t*rror1st cell,
the Portland people a t*rror1st cell.
But when you look at the details,
the facts just don't support that
and they have not proved that any
group within the United States has
plotted to engage in any t*rror1st
activity within the United States in all of the
cases that they've brought since / .
The evidence behind all of the sleeper
cell cases is flimsy and often bizarre.
This tape was one of the central pieces
of evidence in the first of the cases. It
was found in a raid on this house in
Detroit. : : , ] : : ,
Four Arab men were arrested on suspicion
of being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell.
They had been accused by another
immigrant called Mr. Hmimssa.
But Mr. Hmimssa was, in reality, an
international con man with aliases
and wanted for fraud across America.
Despite this, the FBI offered to
reduce his sentence for fraud
if he testified against the men.
And to back up Mr. Hmimssa's
allegations, the FBI turned to the videotape.
On the surface it was the innocent record of
a trip to Disneyland by a group of teenagers
who had nothing to do with the accused
but the government had discovered a
hidden and sinister purpose to the tape.
The government expert who has
looked into surveillance tapes - "casing
tapes," as he referrd to them -
said that one of the objectives
of making these kinds of tapes
is to disguise the nature,
the real purpose, of the tape
and he explained it that the
tape is made to look benign
made to look like a tourist
tape to obscure its real purpose
as a tape to case Disneyland
and that the very appearance of it
as being just a tourist tape is actually
evidence that it's not a tourist tape.
Al-Jazeera, Hollywood,
Los Angeles, California. Hello?
I could never get past the fact that
the tape just looked like a tourist tape.
The Disneyland ride, for example,
was a lengthy queue, people
just making their way to the ride.
The camera ccasionally pans to look
at the rocks on the wall, made to
look like an Indiana Jones movie
and after several minutes the camera pans
across and shows a trash can momentarily
and then continues off
to look into the crowd.
The expert basically said that,
by flashing on that trash can for a moment
the people who are part of
this conspiracy to conduct these
kinds of t*rror1st operations
they would understand what
this is all about: how to locate a
b*mb in Disneyland in California.
Hello!
All the talking and bantering were
intended to disguise the hidden
message contained within the tape.
The government was convinced that
the tape was full of hidden messages.
A brief shot of a tree outside the group's
hotel room was there, they said
to show where to place a sn*per
to attack the cars on the freeway.
And what looked like a camera which
had accidentally been left running
was in reality a t*rror1st secretly
counting out distances to show
others where to place a b*mb.
And the government also said that
the Detroit cell was planning to attack
US military bases around the world.
Yet again, they found hidden evidence
of this in a day planner they discovered
under the sofa in the house in Detroit.
What looked like doodles were in reality, they
said, a plan to attack a US base in Turkey.
The government brought in its
security officer from the base to
testify that he interpreted this
as being the main runways.
She identified these
as being AWACS airplanes
and these as being fighter jets.
She said that these solid lines were
lines of fire and she also said that this
down here was a hardened bunker.
But the drawings in the day planner
were discovered to have actually
been the work of a madman.
They were the fantasies of a Yemeni
who believed that he was the minister of
defence for the whole of the Middle East.
He had committed su1c1de a year before
any of the accused had arrived in Detroit
leaving the day planner lying
under the sofa in the house.
Despite this,
two of the accused were found guilty.
But then, the government's only witness,
Mr. Hmimssa
told two of his cellmates that
he had made the whole thing up
to get his fraud charges reduced.
The terrorism convictions have now been
overturned by the judge in the case
but it was acclaimed by the
President as the first success
in the w*r on terror at home.
We have the t*rrorists on the run.
We're keeping them on the run.
One by one the t*rrorists are learning
the meaning of American justice.
Another case, in the city of
Buffalo, New York, seemed on the
surface to be more substantial.
Six young Yemeni-Americans had gone
to an Islamist training camp in Afghanistan.
: : , - : : ,
They travelled there in early
and spent between and
weeks training and being taught
Islamist revolutionary theory.
Two of them even met Bin Laden
on one of his tours of the camp.
They then returned to the Buffalo
suburb of Lackawanna, where
they lived, but they did nothing.
The FBI heard about their trip
and they watched the six men
around the clock for nearly a year
but there was no suspicious behavior.
But then, one of the men, Mr. Al-Bakri, went
to Bahrain and sent his friends an E-mail.
It said he was going to get married and that
he wouldn't be seeing them for awhile.
The CIA, who had been monitoring
their E-mails, understood
this to be a coded message.
The cell was about to launch a
su1c1de attack on the US Fifth Fleet.
The FBI, the government,
took that phrase to mean something sinister.
They believed that the
word "wedding" was a code.
They believed that the phrase "not
seeing you anymore" indicated that
Muktar Al-Bakri was a su1c1de bomber.
The reality is that Mr.
Al-Bakri was in Bahrain
to get married and the reality
of him getting married was
that he wouldn't be
around his friends anymore.
Good afternoon.
In the past hours
United States law enforcement has
identified and disrupted an Al Qaeda
trained t*rror1st cell on American soil.
The arrests wer announced
proudly by Washington as another
sleeper cell plotting an attack.
But it soon became clear that there was no
evidence for this at all, other than the E-mail.
And the best the government can point
to as a sleeper cell are these, you know,
young men in Lackawanna, in New York
who, yes, went to Afghanistan,
trained in an Al Qaeda training camp
but to all appearances had no intention
to ever take any action on the basis of that.
One of them faked an injury to try to get out
early. They came back to the United States.
We had them under intensive
surveillance and we found no
evidence - not one shred of evidence -
that they ever planned or
intended to engage in any kind of
criminal, much less t*rror1st, act.
That's the best they
can show for a sleeper cell.
Faced with the fact that there was no
evidence, the government quietly dropped
any charges of their being a t*rror1st cell.
Instead, they were prosecuted simply
for having gone to the training camp,
and for having bought uniforms there.
And all the other cases were even flimsier:
A group of students who supported
the liberation of Kashmir were found
paint-balling in the woods of Virginia.
They were convicted of
training to attack America.
A group of African-Americans from
Oregon tried to go to Afghanistan to
support the Taliban but got lost in China.
All these groups, the government said,
were part of a hidden and terrifying Al
Qaeda network. : : , --]
: : , The government had a
legitimate concern at the beginning
but they let that concern,
and they took it, and they made it a panic.
They had reasonable questions
and took them and made a
complete fantasy out of them.
They started out with a conclusion and
then filled in all the blanks to the questions.
So this was totally driven by the need
- or the desire - to have t*rrorists.
You build this conclusion based
on this assumption, and this
assumption, and this assumption
and, sure, if you go - if
you build assumptions upon
assumptions, you can go anywhere!
It's a work of imagination.
It is. It's a fantasy, and it's a fantasy
that it was politically expedieno sell.
And make no mistake about it: we got a
w*r here just like we got a w*r abroad.
In Britain, too, the government and
most of the media have created
the overwhelming impression that
there is a hidden network of Al
Qaeda sleeper cells waiting to attack.
But, yet again,
there is very little evidence for this.
Of the people arrested under the
Terrorism Act since September the th
none of them have been
convicted of belonging to Al Qaeda.
Only people have so far been
convicted of having any association
with any Islamist groups, and
none of those convictions were
for being involved in a terror plot;
they were for fundraising,
or posessing Islamist literature.
The majority of people convicted under the
Terrorism Act since September the th
have actually been members of Irish
t*rror1st groups like the UVF or the Real IRA.
And many of the arrests that were
dramatically announced as being
part of a hidden Al Qaeda network
were, in reality,
as absurd as the cases in America.
For example, the London police
swooped on a Mr. Zain Ul-Abedin
who they said was running an
international network for t*rror1st training.
It turned out to be a self-defence
course for bodyguards.
He called it "Ultimate Jihad
Challenge". His only client was a
security guard from a supermarket
who wanted to learn how to
defend himself against shoplifters.
Mr.
Zain Ul-Abedin was cleared of all charges.
Then there was the Hogmanay
terror cell who, it was alleged,
were planning to attack Edinburgh.
All charges against them were
quietly dropped when it was revealed
that a key part of the evidence
a map that showed the targets they were
going to attack, turned out to have been left
in their flat by an Australian backpacker
who had ringed the tourist
sites he wanted to see.
And even the most frightening and
high profile of the plots uncovered
turned out to be without foundation.
No one was ever arrested for planning
gas att*cks on the London tubes
it was a fantasy that
swept through the media.
Just as in America, there is no evidence
yet of the terrifying and sinister network
lurking under the surface of our society
which both government and the
media continually tell us is there.
So there was no network.
No.
Never?
Probably not.
We invented it.
"Invention" is too string a term.
I think we projected it,
we projected our own worst fears
and that what we see is a
fantasy that's been created.
Al Qaeda is a global
network with global reach.
The target, a deadly web of terror.
What I am saying is that we have an
exaggerated perception of the possibility
of terrorism that is quite disabling
and we only need to look at the
evidence to understand that the
figures simply don't bear out
the way that we have
responded as a society.
What the British and American
governments have done is both distort and
exaggerate the real nature of the threat.
There are dangerous and fanatical groups
around the world who've been inspired
by the extreme Islamist theories
and they are prepared to use
the techniques of mass terror on
civilians. The bombings in Madrid
showed this only too clearly.
But this is not a new phenomeno
What is new is the way the American and
other governments have transformed
this complex and disparate threat
into a simplistic fantasy of an organised
web of uniquely powerful t*rrorists who
may strike anywhere and at any moment.
But no one questioned this fantasy
because, increasingly, it was serving
the interests of so many people.
For the press, television, and
hundreds of terrorism experts, the
fact that it seemed so like fiction
made it irresistible to their audiences.
And the Islamists, too, began to realise
that by feeding this media fantasy
they could become a powerful organisation
- if only in people's imaginations.
The prime mover in this was one
of Bin Laden's associates, who
had been captured by the Americs.
He was called Abu Zubaydah. He began
to tell his interrogators of terrifying
plots that Al Qaeda was preparing
some of which, he said, they had copied
from Hollywood movies like Godzilla,
which they had watched in Afghanistan.
Zubaydah told the interrogators
a set of stories based on what
he thought would alarm us.
He told us,
for example
coming out of a movie that had
been recent at that time, Godzilla,
in which the Brooklyn Bridge
was destroyed by the monster
he told us that Al Qaeda was interested
in destroying the Brooklyn Bridge.
He told us of att*cks on mass
transit sources like subway trains.
He told us there were intentions of attacking
apartment buildings and shopping centers
the Statue of Liberty,
all manner of things.
Recent intelligence reports suggest that Al
Qaeda leaders have emphasised planning
for att*cks on apartment buildings
hotels, and other soft or lightly
secured targets in the United States.
t*rrorists are considering physical
att*cks against US financial institutions.
And Abu Zubaydah also told his
interrogators of a terrifying new
w*apon the Islamists intended to use:
an expl*sive device that could spray
radiation through cities, the "dirty b*mb".
First, a CBS News exclusive about
a captured Al Qaeda leader
who says his fellow t*rrorists have
the know-how to build a very dangerous
w*apon and get it to the United States.
And the media took the bait. They portrayed
the dirty b*mb as an extraordinary w*apon
that would k*ll thousands of people
and, in the process, they made the
hidden enemy even more terrifying.
But, in reality, the threat of a
dirty b*mb is yet another illusion.
Its aim is to spread radioactive material
through a conventional expl*si*n.
But almost all studies of such a
possible w*apon have concluded
that the radiation spread in this way
would not k*ll anybody because the
radioactive material would be so dispersed
and, providing the area was
cleaned promptly, the long-term
effects would be negligible.
In the past, both the American army and
the Iraqi military tested such devices
and both concluded that they
were completely ineffectual
weapons for this very reason.
How dangerous would a dirty b*mb be?
The deaths would be few, if any,
and the answer is, probably none.
Really?
Yes. And that's been said
over and over again, but then
people immediately say after that:
"But, you know, people won't believe that,
and they'll panic."
And then all the people working on this
project, you know, the defence and
so forth, breathe a big sigh of relief
because they got their problem back.
You know,
we're gonna all panic.
I don't think it would k*ll anybody
and I think you'll have troubling a
serious report that would claim otherwise.
The Department of Energy
actually set up such a test
and they actually measured
what happened. And they the
measurements were extremely low.
They calculated that the most exposed
individual would get a fairly high dose
- not life-threatening, but fairly high -
and I checked into how the calculation
was done, and they assume that after
the attack, no one moves for one year.
One year.
Now, that's ridiculous.
The dirty b*mb - the danger from
radioactivity is basically next to nothing.
The danger from panic, however,
is horrendous.
That's where the irony comes. This
- instead of the government saying,
"Look, this is not a serious w*apon
the serious danger of this is the
panic that would ensue, and there is
no reason for panic. Don't panic."
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the end
of our show; however, something very much
like this could happen at any moment.
We just thought we ought to prepare you
and more or less put you in the mood.
Thank you.
And now,
back to our story.
The scale of this fantasy just kept
growing as more and more groups
realised the power it gave them.
Above all, the group that had been
instrumental in first spreading the idea:
the neoconservatives. Because
they now found that they could use
it to help them realise their vision:
that America had a special desiny
to overcome evil in the world
and this epic mission would give meaning
and purpose to the American people.
To do this,
they were going to start with Iraq
and, just as they had discovered
a hidden reality of terror beneath
the surface in America
they now found hidden links that
previously no one had suspected
between the Al Qaeda
network and S*ddam Hussein.
Evidence from intelligence sources,
secret communications, and
statements by people now in custody
reveal that S*ddam Hussein
aids and protects t*rrorists
including members of Al Qaeda.
Imagine those hijackers with
other weapons and other plans, this
time armed by S*ddam Hussein.
I continue to be amazed at the people who
say there are no links. It simply isn't true.
What hasn't been established is
a direct link between S*ddam's
intelligence and the / plotters
although even there there is
evidence that suggests, very possibly
facilitation and assistance
to the / hijackers.
There really is evidence?
There really is evidence.
So, when people say there is no
association between Al Qaeda and
S*ddam Hussein, they're wrong.
They're flatly wrong.
Really?
Absolutely wrong.
The bombing has started. : : ,
--] : : Okay, okay, start buying
The driving force behind these new
global policies in the w*r on terror
was the power of a dark fantasy:
a sinister web of hidden and interlinked
threats that stretched around the world.
And such was the power of that fantasy
that it also began to transform the
very nature of politics because
increasingly, politicians were discovering
that their ability to imagine the future
and the terrible dangers it held
gave them a new and
heroic role in the world.
In the post-w*r years,
politicians had also used their imaginations
but to project optimistic visions
of a better future that they
could create for their people
and it was these visions that
gave them power and authority.
But those dreams collapsed, and
politicians like Tony Blair became
more like managers of public life
their policies determined
often by focus groups.
But now, the w*r on terror allowed
politicians like Blair to portray a
new, grand vision of the future.
But this vision was a dark
one of imagined threats
and a new force began to drive politics:
the fear of an imagined future.
Not a conventional fear
about a conventional threat.
But the fear that one day these new
threats of weapons of mass destruction
rogue states, and international
terrorism combine to deliver
a catastrophe to our world.
And then the shame of knowing
that I saw that threat, day after
day, and did nothing to stop it.
It may not erupt and engulf
us this month or next
perhaps not even this year or next
I just think these dangers are there, I
think that it's difficult sometimes for
people to see how they all come together
I think that it's my duty to tell it to you
if I really believe it, and I do really believe it.
I may be wrong in believing it,
but I do believe it.
What Blair argued was that faced by the
new threat of a global terror network
the politician's role was
now to look into the future
and imagine the worst that might happen
and then act ahead of time to prevent it.
It was called the "precautionary principle".
Back in the s, thinkers within the
ecology movement believed the world
was being threatened by global warming.
But at the time there was little
scientific evidence to prove this.
So they put forward the radical idea
that governments had a higher duty:
They couldn't wait for the evidence
because by then it would be too late.
They had to act imaginatively,
on intuition, in order to save the
world from a looming catastrophe.
In essence, the precautionary principle
says that not having the evidence
that something might be a
problem : : , --]
: : , is not a reason for not
taking action as if it were a problem.
That's a very famous triple-negative
phrase that effectively says that
action without evidence is justified.
It requires imagining what
the worst might be and
applying that imagination upon the
worst evidence that currently exists.
Would Al Qaeda buy weapons of mass
destruction if they could? Certainly.
Does it have the financial
resources? Probably. Would it
use such weapons? Definitely.
But once you start imagining what
could happen, then there's no limit.
What if they had access to it?
What if they could effectively deploy it?
What if we weren't prepared?
What it is is a shift from the sciific,
"What is" evidence-based decision making
to this speculative
imaginary, "What if"
- based, worst case scenario.
And it was this principle that now began to
shape government policy in the w*r on terror.
In both America and Britain, individuals
were detained in high-security prisons,
not for any crimes they had committed
but because the politicians believed
- or imagined - that they might
commit an atrocity in the future
even though there was no
evidence they intended to do this.
The American attorney general
explained this shift to what he
called the "paradigm of prevention."
We had to make a shift in the way we
thought about things. So being reactive
waiting for a crime to be committed,
or waiting for there to be evidence
of the commission of a crime
didn't seem to us to be an appropriate
way to protect the American people.
Under the preventive paradigm,
instead of
holding people accountable for what you
can prove that they have done in the past..
you lock them up based on what you think
or speculate they might do in the future.
And how-how can a person who's
locked up based on what you
think they might do in the future
disprove your speculation?
It's impossible, and so what ends
up happening is the government
short-circuits all the processes
that are designed to distinguish
the innot from the guilty
because they simply don't fit
this mode of locking people up for
what they might do in the future.
The supporters of the
precautionary principle
argue that this loss of rights is the price
that society has to pay when faced by
the unique and terrifying
threat of the Al Qaeda network.
But, as this series has shown,
the idea of a hidden, organised
web of terror is largely a fantasy
and by embracing the precautionary
principle, the politicians have
become trapped in a vicious circle:
they imagine the worst about an
organisation that doesn't even exist.
But no one questions this because the very
basis of the precautionary principle
And, instead, those with the darkest
imaginations become the most influential.
You'll hear about meetings where
t*rror1st matters are discussed
in the intelligence community
and always the person with the most
dire assessment, the person with the
who has the kind of, the strongest
sense that something should be done
will frequently carry the day at meetings.
We thus believe the most dire
estimate of what could happen here.
The sense of disbelief has vanished.
So the person with the most vivid
imagination becomes the most powerful.
In a sense, that's correct.
There will be an attack. It is "when" within the
United Kingdom. I think the "if" is academic.
It is only a matter of time,
and its potential is huge.
How will we ever know when it's over? How
will we ever know when the threat is gone?
In the mindset we are now in
once we declare it to be over
- will be exactly the time that
we believe that they will strike.
You know, uh, it's just-it's the way we
live today. We're living on a knife edge.
This story began over years ago as
the dream that politics could create
a better world began to fall apart.
Out of that collapse came two groupse
Islamists and the neoconservatives.
Looking back, we can now see that these
groups were the last political idealists
who in an age of growing disillusion
tried to reassert the inspirational
power of political visions
that would give meaning to
people's lives. We will fight for
an Islamic State, we will die for it!
We will fight for an Islamic State,
we will die for it!
But both have failed in their attempts to
transform the world and We will fight
for an Islamic State, we will die for it!
But both have failed in their
attempts to transform the world
and instead, together they have created
today's strange fantasy of fear which
politicians have seized on. : ,
--] : : , Because in an age when
all the grand ideas have lost credibility
fear of a phantom enemy is all the
politicians have left to maintain their power.
And we have seen Americans in
uniform storming mountain strongholds
and charging through sandstorms.
We have fought the
t*rrorists across the earth
because the lives of our citizens are at
stake. And America and the world are safer.
The stakes are high.
We are a nation at w*r, a global
w*r on terror against the enemy
unlike we've ever known before.
Faced with that choice I will
defend America every time.
In a society that believes in nothing,
fear becomes the only agenda.
Whist the th century was
dominated between a conflict
between a free-market
Right and a socialist Left
even though both of those outlooks
had their limitations and their problems
at least they believed in something,
whereas what we are seeing now is
a society that believes in nothing.
And a society that believes in
nothing is particularly frightened
by people who believe in anything.
And, therefore, we label those people
as fundamentalists or fanatics
and they have much greater purchase
in terms of the fear that they instill
in society than they truly deserve.
But that's a measure of how much
we have become isolated and atomised
rather than of their inherent strength
Butthe fear will not last
and just as the dreams that politicians
once promised turned out to be
illusions, so, too, will the nightmares
and then our politicians
will have to face the fact
that they have no visions,
either good or bad, to offer us any longer.
In the past,
politicians promised to create a better world.
They had different ways of achieving this.
But their power and authority
came from the optimistic visions
they offered to their people.
Those dreams failed.
And today,
people have lost faith in ideologies.
Increasingly, politicians are seen
simply as managers of public life.
But now, they have discovered a new role
that restores their power and authority.
Instead of delivering dreams,
politicians now promise to protect us
from nightmares.
They say that they will rescue
us from dreadful dangers
that we cannot see and do not understand.
And the greatest danger of
all is international terrorism.
A powerful and sinister network
with sleeper cells in
countries across the world.
A threat that needs to be
fought by a w*r on terror.
But much of this threat is a fantasy
which has been exaggerated
and distorted by politicians.
It's a dark illusion
that has spread unquestioned through
governments around the world
the security services,
and the international media.
This is a series of films about how and why
that fantasy was created : : ,
--] : : , and who it benefits.
At the heart of the story are two groups:
the American neoconservatives,
and the radical Islamists.
Last week's episode ended in
the late' s with both groups
marginalized and out of power.
But with the att*cks of September th,
the fates of both dramatically changed.
The Islamists,
after their moment of triumph
were virtually destroyed within months
while the neoconservatives
took power in Washington.
But then, the neoconservatives
began to reconstruct the Islamists.
They created a phantom enemy.
And as this nightmare
fantasy began to spread
.politicians realized the newfound power
it gave them in a deeply disillusioned age.
Those with the darkest nightmares
became the most powerful.
The Power of Nightmares
The Rise of the Politics of Fear
Part The Shadows in the cave
At the end of the s
Osama Bin Laden had
returned to Afghanistan.
He was accompanied by Ayman Zawahiri
the most influential ideologist
of the Islamist movement.
For years
Zawahiri had struggled to create
revolutions in the Arab world
but all attempt had ended in bloody failure.
We haven't had any infomation about your
whereabouts for sometime, where were you?
I was just home and clubs.
Not in Afghanistan?
Somewhere else?
Everywhere, everywhere.
Everywhere?
I am a Muslim.
Being a Muslim
you are wanted everywhere.
Because if you
- just if you say no to the superpowers
this immediately in itself is
a crime you are wanted for.
Yes, but isn't what you
do not to do with arms?
It's aggressive but ask Allah,
and he is greater than superpower.
Zawahiri was a follower of the
Egyptian revolutionary, Sayyed Qutb
who had been ex*cuted in .
Qutb's vision had been of
a new type of modern state.
It would contain all of the benefits of
Western science and technology
but it would use Islam as a moral
framework to protect people
from the culture of Western liberalism.
Qutb believed that this culture
infected the minds of Muslims
turning them into selfish creatures
who threatened to destroy the shared
values that held society together.
Throughout the s and s
Zawahiri had tried to persuade the masses
to rise up and topple the rulers
who had allowed this corruption to
infect their countries. : : ,
--] : : , We want to speak
to the whole world. Who are we?
But the revolutionaries became trapped
in a horrific escalation of v*olence
because the masses
refused to follow them.
Islamism failed as a mass movement
and Zawahiri now came to the conclusion
that a new strategy was needed.
They had no revolution at all.
I mean
they had failed in their takeover
they had failed to topple
the powers that be
and, you know,
they became more and more interested
in this idea that only a small vanguard
could be successful.
I mean, they had lost confidence
in the spontaneous capacity of
the masses to be mobilised.
Then they decided to change
strategy completely
and instead of striking at what
they called the "near enemy"
I.e., the local regimes
they decided that they could
strike at the "far away enemy"
I.e., at the West,
at America
and that would impress the masses,
and the masses would be mobilised.
Zawahiri and Bin Laden began implementing
this new strategy in August, .
Two huge su1c1de bombs were detonated
outside American embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania
k*lling more than people.
The bombings had a
dramatic effect on the West.
For the first time,
the name "Bin Laden"
entered the public consciousness
as a t*rror1st mastermind.
The su1c1de bombers
had been recruited by Bin Laden from
the Islamist training camps in Afghanistan.
But his and Zawahiri's operation
was very much on the fringes
of the Islamist movement.
The overwhelming majority of
the fighters in these camps
had nothing at all to do with Bin
Laden or international terrorism.
They were training to fight
regimes in their own countries
such as Uzbekistan, Kashmir,
and Chechnia.
Their aim wa to establish Islamist
societies in the Muslim world
and they had no interest
in attacking America.
Bin Laden helped fund some of the camps
and in return was allowed to look
for volunteers for his operations.
But a number of senior Islamists
were against his new strategy
including members of Zawahiri's
own group, Islamic Jihad.
Even Bin Laden's displays of strength
to the Western media were faked.
The fighters in this video
had been hired for the day
and told to bring their own weapons.
For beyond this small group
Bin Laden had no formal organisation.
Until the Americans invented one for h.
In January,
a trial began in a Manhattan courtroom
of four men accused of the
embassy bombings in east Africa.
But the Americans had also decided
to prosecute Bin Laden in his absence.
But to do this under American law
the prosecutors needed evidence
of a criminal organisation
because, as with the Mafia
that would allow them to prosecute
the head of the organisation
even if he could not be
linked directly to the crime.
And the evidence for that
organisation was provided for them
by an ex-associate of Bin
Laden's called Jamal Al-Fadl.
During the investigation of
the bombings, there is a
walk-in source, Jamal Al-Fadl
who is a Sudanese militant who
was with Bin Laden in the early s
who has been passed around a whole
series of Middle East secret services.
None of whom want much to do with him
and who ends up in
America and is taken on by
the American government, effectively
as a key prosecution witness.
And is given a huge amount of American
taxpayers' money at the same time.
His account is used as raw material
to build up a picture of Al Qaeda.
The picture that the FBI want o build
up is one that will fit the existing laws
that they will have to use to prosecute
those responsible for the bombing.
Now, those laws were drawn up
to counteract organised crime:
the Mafia, dr*gs crime, crimes
where people being a member of an
organisation is extremely important.
You have to have an organisation
to get a prosecution.
And you have Al-Fadl and a
number of other witness
a number of other sources,
who are happy to feed into this.
You've got material that,
looked at in a certain way
can be seen to show this
organisation's existence.
You put the two together and you get what
is the first Bin Laden myth : ,
--] : : , the first Al Qaeda myth.
And because it's one of the first,
it's extremely influential.
The picture Al-Fadl drew for
the Americans of Bin Laden
was of an all-powerful figure at the
head of a large t*rror1st network
that had an organised network of control.
He also said that Bin Laden had given
this network a name: "Al Qaeda".
It was a dramatic and powerful
picture of Bin Laden
but it bore little relationship to the truth.
The reality was that Bin
Laden and Ayman Zawahiri
had become the focus
of a loose association of
disillusioned Islamist militants
who were attracd by the new strategy.
But there was no organisation.
These were militants who mostly
planned their own operations
and looked to Bin Laden
for funding and assistance.
He was not their commander.
There is also no evidence that Bin
Laden used the term "Al Qaeda"
to refer to the name of a group
until after September the th
when he realized that this was the
term the Americans have given it.
In reality, Jamal Al-Fadl was
on the run from Bin Laden
having stolen money from him.
In return for his evidence
the Americans gave him
witness protection in America and
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Many lawyers at the trial believed
that Al-Fadl exaggerated and lied
to give the Americans the picture
of a t*rror1st organisation that
they needed to prosecute Bin Laden.
And there were selective portions
of Al-Fadl's testimony
that I believe was false
to help support the picture that he
helped the Americans join together.
I think he lied in a number
of specific testimony
about a unified image of
what this organisation was.
It made Al Qaeda the new
Mafia or the new Communists.
It made them identifiable as a group
and therefore made
it easier to prosecute
any person associated with Al Qaeda for
any acts or statements made by Bin Laden
who talked a lot.
The idea - which is critical to
the FBI's prosecution
that Bin Laden ran a coherent
organisation with operatives and cells
all around the world of which you
could be a member is a myth.
There is no Al Qaeda organisation. There
is no international network with a leader
with cadres who will
unquestioningly obey orders
with tentacles that stretch out to sleeper
cells in America, in Africa, in Europe.
That idea of a coherent, structured t*rror1st
network with an organised capability
simply does not exist. : : , -]
: : , What did exist was a powerful
idea that was about to inspire a single
devastating act that would lead the
whole world into believing the myth
that had begun to be constructed
in the Manhattan courtroom.
What's this other jet doing? What's
this other jet doing? What the hell's that?
Holy f*ck! Oh my God!
Oh my God! Jesus f*cking Christ!
Don't touch it!
Oh my God! Oh my God!
The attack on America by
hijackers shocked the world.
It was Ayman Zawahiri's new strategy,
implemented in a brutal and spectacular way.
But neither he nor Bin Laden
were the originators of what was
called the "Planes Operation".
It was the brainchilan Islamist militant
called Khalid Sheik Mohammed
who came to Bin Laden for funding
and help in finding volunteers.
But in the wake of panic created
by the att*cks, the politicians
reached for the model
which had been created by the trial earlier
that year: The hijackers were just the tip
of a vast, international t*rror1st
network which was called, "Al Qaeda".
Al Qaeda is to terror what
the Mafia is to crime.
There are thousands of these
t*rrorists in more than countries.
They are recruited from their own nations
and neighborhoods, and brought to camps
in places like Afghanistan,
where they are trained in the tactics of terror.
This one network, Al Qaeda, that's
receiving so much discussion and publicity
make have activities in to countries,
including the United States.
Our w*r is against networks and groups,
people who coddle them
people who try to hide them,
people who fund them. This is our calling.
And the att*cks had another dramatic effect:
they brought the neoconservatives
back to power in America
When George Bush first became president
he had appointed neoconservatives
like Paul Wolfowitz
and their allies like Donald Rumsfeld,
to his administration.
But their grand vision of
America's role in the world was
largely ignored by this new regi.
I just don't think it's the
role of the United States to walk
into another country and say
"We do it this way,
so should you."
But now
We're going to find those who,
uh, who, uh, uh, those evil doers.
But now,
the neoconservatives became all-powerful
because this terror network proved
that what they had been predicting
through the s was correct:
that America was at risk from
terrifying new forces in a hostile world.
A small group formed that began to shape
America's response to the att*cks.
At its heart were Donald Rumsfeld
and Paul Wolfowitz, along with
the vice-president, d*ck Cheney
and Ric Perle,
who was a senior advisor to the Pentagon.
The last time these men had been
in power together was years
before, under President Reagan.
Back then, they had taken on and,
as they saw it
defeated a source of evil that wanted
to take over America: the Soviet Union.
And now they saw this new w*r
on terror in the same epic terms.
The struggle against Soviet totalitarianism
was a struggle between
fundamental value questions.
"Good" and "evil" is about as effective a
shorthand as I can imagine in this regard
and there's something rather
similar going on in the w*r on terror.
It isn't a w*r on terror,
it's a w*r on t*rrorists who want.
to impose an intolerant
tyranny on all mankind
an Islamic universe in which we
are all compelled to accept their
beliefs and live by their lights
and in that sense this is a
battle between good and evil.
But, as previous episodes have shown
the neoconservatives distorted
and exaggerated the Soviet threat.
They created the image of a hidden,
international web of evil run from Moscow
that planned to dominate the world, when,
in reality
the Soviet Union was on its last legs,
collapsing from within.
Now, they did the same with the Islamists.
Now, they did the same with the Islamists.
Can Soviet imperialism be halted?
Can Soviet imperialism be halted?
They took a failing movement
which had lost mass support
Can Soviet imperialism be halted?
and began to reconstruct it into the
image of a powerful network of evil
controlled from the center by Bin
Laden from his lair in Afghanistan.
They did this because it fitted with their
vision of America's unique destiny
to fight an epic battle against the
forces of evil throughout the world.
What the neoconservatives
are doing is taking a concept
that they developed during the
competition with the Soviet Union
I.e., Soviet Communism was evil
It was that kind of concept of evil that
they took - an exaggerated one, to be
sure - and then apply it to a new threat
where it didn't apply at all,
and yet it was layered with the
same kind of cultural baggage.
The policy says there's a network,
the policy says that network is evil
they want to infiltrate our classrooms,
they want to take our society
they want all our women to wear,
you know, veils
and this is what we have to deal
with and therefore since we know
it's evil let's just k*ll it
and that will make it go away.
And so the Americans set
off to invafghanistan
to find and destroy the
heart of this network.
To do this, the Americans allied themselves
with a group called the Northern Alliance.
They were a loose collection
of warlords, fighting a w*r of
resistance against the Taliban
the Islamists who controlled Afghanistan.
The Taliban's best troops
were the thousands of foreign
fighters from the training camps,
who the Northern Alliance hated.
And now, they took their
revenge on the foreign fighters.
The Americans believed that these
men were Al Qaeda t*rrorists,
and the Northern Alliance did
nothing to disabuse them of this
because they were paid by the
Americans for each prisoner they delivered.
Both they and the Taliban were radical
nationalists who wanted to create
Islamist societies in their own countries.
But now, they were either k*lled or
taken off to Guant嫕amo Bay
and Islamism, as an organised
movement for changing the Muslim
world, was obliterated in Afghanistan.
But as it disappeared, it was replaced by
ever more extravagant fantasies about the
power and reach of the Al Qaeda network.
In December, the Northern Alliance
told the Americans that Bin Laden was
hiding in the mountains of Tora Bora.
They were convinced they had
found the heart of his organisation.
The search for Osama Bin Laden:
There was constant discussion
about him hiding out in caves
and I think many times the American
people have a perception that it's a
little hole dug out of the side of a mountain.
Oh, no.
This is it.
This is a fortress.
Yes.
A complex. Multi-tiered. "Bedrooms and
Offices" on the top, as you can see.
"Secret Exits" on the side,
and on the bottom. "Cut Deep
to Avoid Thermal Detection."
A ventilation system, to allow people to
breathe and to carry on. The entrances,
large enough to drive trucks and even tanks.
Even computer systems and
telephone systems. It's a
very sophisticated operation.
Oh, you bet. This is serious business.
And there's not one of se;
there are many of those.
For days, the Americans bombed
the mountains of Tora Bora with the
most powerful weapons they had.
The Northern Alliance had been
paid more than a million dollars
for their help and information
and now their fighters set
off up the mountains to storm
Bin Laden's fortress
..and bring back the Al Qaeda
t*rrorists and their leader.
But all they found were a few small
caves, which were either empty or
had been used to store amm*nit*on.
There was no underground
bunker system, no secret tunnels:
the fortress didn't exist
The Northern Alliance did
produce some prisoners they
claimed were Al Qaeda fighters
but there was no proof of this, and
one rumor was at the Northern Alliance
was simply kidnapping anyone
who looked remotely like an
Arab and selling them to the
Americans for yet more money.
The Americans now began to search all
the caves in all the mountains in eastern
Afghanistan for the hidden Al Qaeda network.
We found a cave.
The rest of it is open. Break.
If nobody went up to look into that cave,
people could've been hiding up there for
days and watching everything that we did.
But wherever they looked, there was
nothing there. Al Qaeda seemed
to have completely disappeared.
But then, the British arrived to
help. They were convinced they
could hunt down Al Qaeda
because of what they said was
their unique experience in fighting
terrorism in Northern Ireland.
They could succeed where others had failed.
The hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban goes on.
And we stand shoulder to
shoulder with the United States
and our other coalition allies
in the global w*r on terrorism.
Five weeks later.
But how many Al Qaeda have you captured?
We haven't, uh,
captured any Al Qaeda, but
And how many have you actually managed
to k*ll here in south-east Afghanistan?
We haven't k*lled any.
Ten thousand pieced of gold for
the body of Ali Baba and the
destruction of the band of thieves.
The terrible truth was that there was
nothing there because Al Qaeda
as an ornisation did not exist.
The att*cks on America had been
planned by a small group that had come
together around Bin Laden in the late s.
What united them was an idea. An
extreme interpretation of Islamism
developed by Ayman Zawahiri.
With the American invasion, that group
had been destroyed, k*lled or scattered.
What was left was the idea
and the real danger was the
way this idea could inspire groups
and individuals around the world
who had no relationship to each other.
In looking for an organisation,
the Americans and the British
were chasing a phantom enemy
and missing the real threat.
I was with the Royal Marines as they
trooped around eastern Afghanistan
and every time they got a
location for a supposed Al Qaeda
or Taliban element or base
they'd turn up and there
was no one there, or there'd
be a few startled shepherds
and that struck me then as being a
wonderful image for the w*r on terror
because people looking for
something that isn't there.
There is no organisation with
its t*rror1st operatives, cells,
sleeper cells, so on and so forth.
What there is is an idea, prevalent
among young, angry Muslim males
throughout the Islamic world.
That idea is what poses a threat.
But the neoconservatives were now
increasingly locked into this fantasy
This is a network that has
penetrated into some countries,
including very definitely our own
and it's got to be rooted out.
Our intelligence priority, in many
ways, is getting after the network
here in the United States first.
We will do whatever we need to do to go
after these networks and dismantle them.
The American government set
out to search for the Al Qaeda
organisation inside its own country.
Thousands were detained as all
branches of the law and the military
were told to look for t*rrorists.
You don't really know what a
t*rror1st looks like, what kind of car
they drive, or anything else
And, bit by bit,
the government found the network:
a series of hidden cells in cities across
the country from Buffalo to Portland.
We've thwarted t*rrorists in Buffalo
and Seattle, Portland, Detroit
North Carolina,
and Tampa, Florida.
We're determined to stop the
enemy before he can strike our people.
The Americans called them "sleeper
cells," and decided that they
had just been waiting to strike.
But in reality there is very little evidence
that any of those arrested had
anything at all to do with t*rror1st plots.
From Portland to the suburb of Buffalo
called Lackawa, yet again the Americans
were chasing a phantom enemy.
They say "t*rror1st sleeper cell."
That's what they call the Lackawanna
people a t*rror1st sleeper cell
the Detroit people a t*rror1st cell,
the Portland people a t*rror1st cell.
But when you look at the details,
the facts just don't support that
and they have not proved that any
group within the United States has
plotted to engage in any t*rror1st
activity within the United States in all of the
cases that they've brought since / .
The evidence behind all of the sleeper
cell cases is flimsy and often bizarre.
This tape was one of the central pieces
of evidence in the first of the cases. It
was found in a raid on this house in
Detroit. : : , ] : : ,
Four Arab men were arrested on suspicion
of being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell.
They had been accused by another
immigrant called Mr. Hmimssa.
But Mr. Hmimssa was, in reality, an
international con man with aliases
and wanted for fraud across America.
Despite this, the FBI offered to
reduce his sentence for fraud
if he testified against the men.
And to back up Mr. Hmimssa's
allegations, the FBI turned to the videotape.
On the surface it was the innocent record of
a trip to Disneyland by a group of teenagers
who had nothing to do with the accused
but the government had discovered a
hidden and sinister purpose to the tape.
The government expert who has
looked into surveillance tapes - "casing
tapes," as he referrd to them -
said that one of the objectives
of making these kinds of tapes
is to disguise the nature,
the real purpose, of the tape
and he explained it that the
tape is made to look benign
made to look like a tourist
tape to obscure its real purpose
as a tape to case Disneyland
and that the very appearance of it
as being just a tourist tape is actually
evidence that it's not a tourist tape.
Al-Jazeera, Hollywood,
Los Angeles, California. Hello?
I could never get past the fact that
the tape just looked like a tourist tape.
The Disneyland ride, for example,
was a lengthy queue, people
just making their way to the ride.
The camera ccasionally pans to look
at the rocks on the wall, made to
look like an Indiana Jones movie
and after several minutes the camera pans
across and shows a trash can momentarily
and then continues off
to look into the crowd.
The expert basically said that,
by flashing on that trash can for a moment
the people who are part of
this conspiracy to conduct these
kinds of t*rror1st operations
they would understand what
this is all about: how to locate a
b*mb in Disneyland in California.
Hello!
All the talking and bantering were
intended to disguise the hidden
message contained within the tape.
The government was convinced that
the tape was full of hidden messages.
A brief shot of a tree outside the group's
hotel room was there, they said
to show where to place a sn*per
to attack the cars on the freeway.
And what looked like a camera which
had accidentally been left running
was in reality a t*rror1st secretly
counting out distances to show
others where to place a b*mb.
And the government also said that
the Detroit cell was planning to attack
US military bases around the world.
Yet again, they found hidden evidence
of this in a day planner they discovered
under the sofa in the house in Detroit.
What looked like doodles were in reality, they
said, a plan to attack a US base in Turkey.
The government brought in its
security officer from the base to
testify that he interpreted this
as being the main runways.
She identified these
as being AWACS airplanes
and these as being fighter jets.
She said that these solid lines were
lines of fire and she also said that this
down here was a hardened bunker.
But the drawings in the day planner
were discovered to have actually
been the work of a madman.
They were the fantasies of a Yemeni
who believed that he was the minister of
defence for the whole of the Middle East.
He had committed su1c1de a year before
any of the accused had arrived in Detroit
leaving the day planner lying
under the sofa in the house.
Despite this,
two of the accused were found guilty.
But then, the government's only witness,
Mr. Hmimssa
told two of his cellmates that
he had made the whole thing up
to get his fraud charges reduced.
The terrorism convictions have now been
overturned by the judge in the case
but it was acclaimed by the
President as the first success
in the w*r on terror at home.
We have the t*rrorists on the run.
We're keeping them on the run.
One by one the t*rrorists are learning
the meaning of American justice.
Another case, in the city of
Buffalo, New York, seemed on the
surface to be more substantial.
Six young Yemeni-Americans had gone
to an Islamist training camp in Afghanistan.
: : , - : : ,
They travelled there in early
and spent between and
weeks training and being taught
Islamist revolutionary theory.
Two of them even met Bin Laden
on one of his tours of the camp.
They then returned to the Buffalo
suburb of Lackawanna, where
they lived, but they did nothing.
The FBI heard about their trip
and they watched the six men
around the clock for nearly a year
but there was no suspicious behavior.
But then, one of the men, Mr. Al-Bakri, went
to Bahrain and sent his friends an E-mail.
It said he was going to get married and that
he wouldn't be seeing them for awhile.
The CIA, who had been monitoring
their E-mails, understood
this to be a coded message.
The cell was about to launch a
su1c1de attack on the US Fifth Fleet.
The FBI, the government,
took that phrase to mean something sinister.
They believed that the
word "wedding" was a code.
They believed that the phrase "not
seeing you anymore" indicated that
Muktar Al-Bakri was a su1c1de bomber.
The reality is that Mr.
Al-Bakri was in Bahrain
to get married and the reality
of him getting married was
that he wouldn't be
around his friends anymore.
Good afternoon.
In the past hours
United States law enforcement has
identified and disrupted an Al Qaeda
trained t*rror1st cell on American soil.
The arrests wer announced
proudly by Washington as another
sleeper cell plotting an attack.
But it soon became clear that there was no
evidence for this at all, other than the E-mail.
And the best the government can point
to as a sleeper cell are these, you know,
young men in Lackawanna, in New York
who, yes, went to Afghanistan,
trained in an Al Qaeda training camp
but to all appearances had no intention
to ever take any action on the basis of that.
One of them faked an injury to try to get out
early. They came back to the United States.
We had them under intensive
surveillance and we found no
evidence - not one shred of evidence -
that they ever planned or
intended to engage in any kind of
criminal, much less t*rror1st, act.
That's the best they
can show for a sleeper cell.
Faced with the fact that there was no
evidence, the government quietly dropped
any charges of their being a t*rror1st cell.
Instead, they were prosecuted simply
for having gone to the training camp,
and for having bought uniforms there.
And all the other cases were even flimsier:
A group of students who supported
the liberation of Kashmir were found
paint-balling in the woods of Virginia.
They were convicted of
training to attack America.
A group of African-Americans from
Oregon tried to go to Afghanistan to
support the Taliban but got lost in China.
All these groups, the government said,
were part of a hidden and terrifying Al
Qaeda network. : : , --]
: : , The government had a
legitimate concern at the beginning
but they let that concern,
and they took it, and they made it a panic.
They had reasonable questions
and took them and made a
complete fantasy out of them.
They started out with a conclusion and
then filled in all the blanks to the questions.
So this was totally driven by the need
- or the desire - to have t*rrorists.
You build this conclusion based
on this assumption, and this
assumption, and this assumption
and, sure, if you go - if
you build assumptions upon
assumptions, you can go anywhere!
It's a work of imagination.
It is. It's a fantasy, and it's a fantasy
that it was politically expedieno sell.
And make no mistake about it: we got a
w*r here just like we got a w*r abroad.
In Britain, too, the government and
most of the media have created
the overwhelming impression that
there is a hidden network of Al
Qaeda sleeper cells waiting to attack.
But, yet again,
there is very little evidence for this.
Of the people arrested under the
Terrorism Act since September the th
none of them have been
convicted of belonging to Al Qaeda.
Only people have so far been
convicted of having any association
with any Islamist groups, and
none of those convictions were
for being involved in a terror plot;
they were for fundraising,
or posessing Islamist literature.
The majority of people convicted under the
Terrorism Act since September the th
have actually been members of Irish
t*rror1st groups like the UVF or the Real IRA.
And many of the arrests that were
dramatically announced as being
part of a hidden Al Qaeda network
were, in reality,
as absurd as the cases in America.
For example, the London police
swooped on a Mr. Zain Ul-Abedin
who they said was running an
international network for t*rror1st training.
It turned out to be a self-defence
course for bodyguards.
He called it "Ultimate Jihad
Challenge". His only client was a
security guard from a supermarket
who wanted to learn how to
defend himself against shoplifters.
Mr.
Zain Ul-Abedin was cleared of all charges.
Then there was the Hogmanay
terror cell who, it was alleged,
were planning to attack Edinburgh.
All charges against them were
quietly dropped when it was revealed
that a key part of the evidence
a map that showed the targets they were
going to attack, turned out to have been left
in their flat by an Australian backpacker
who had ringed the tourist
sites he wanted to see.
And even the most frightening and
high profile of the plots uncovered
turned out to be without foundation.
No one was ever arrested for planning
gas att*cks on the London tubes
it was a fantasy that
swept through the media.
Just as in America, there is no evidence
yet of the terrifying and sinister network
lurking under the surface of our society
which both government and the
media continually tell us is there.
So there was no network.
No.
Never?
Probably not.
We invented it.
"Invention" is too string a term.
I think we projected it,
we projected our own worst fears
and that what we see is a
fantasy that's been created.
Al Qaeda is a global
network with global reach.
The target, a deadly web of terror.
What I am saying is that we have an
exaggerated perception of the possibility
of terrorism that is quite disabling
and we only need to look at the
evidence to understand that the
figures simply don't bear out
the way that we have
responded as a society.
What the British and American
governments have done is both distort and
exaggerate the real nature of the threat.
There are dangerous and fanatical groups
around the world who've been inspired
by the extreme Islamist theories
and they are prepared to use
the techniques of mass terror on
civilians. The bombings in Madrid
showed this only too clearly.
But this is not a new phenomeno
What is new is the way the American and
other governments have transformed
this complex and disparate threat
into a simplistic fantasy of an organised
web of uniquely powerful t*rrorists who
may strike anywhere and at any moment.
But no one questioned this fantasy
because, increasingly, it was serving
the interests of so many people.
For the press, television, and
hundreds of terrorism experts, the
fact that it seemed so like fiction
made it irresistible to their audiences.
And the Islamists, too, began to realise
that by feeding this media fantasy
they could become a powerful organisation
- if only in people's imaginations.
The prime mover in this was one
of Bin Laden's associates, who
had been captured by the Americs.
He was called Abu Zubaydah. He began
to tell his interrogators of terrifying
plots that Al Qaeda was preparing
some of which, he said, they had copied
from Hollywood movies like Godzilla,
which they had watched in Afghanistan.
Zubaydah told the interrogators
a set of stories based on what
he thought would alarm us.
He told us,
for example
coming out of a movie that had
been recent at that time, Godzilla,
in which the Brooklyn Bridge
was destroyed by the monster
he told us that Al Qaeda was interested
in destroying the Brooklyn Bridge.
He told us of att*cks on mass
transit sources like subway trains.
He told us there were intentions of attacking
apartment buildings and shopping centers
the Statue of Liberty,
all manner of things.
Recent intelligence reports suggest that Al
Qaeda leaders have emphasised planning
for att*cks on apartment buildings
hotels, and other soft or lightly
secured targets in the United States.
t*rrorists are considering physical
att*cks against US financial institutions.
And Abu Zubaydah also told his
interrogators of a terrifying new
w*apon the Islamists intended to use:
an expl*sive device that could spray
radiation through cities, the "dirty b*mb".
First, a CBS News exclusive about
a captured Al Qaeda leader
who says his fellow t*rrorists have
the know-how to build a very dangerous
w*apon and get it to the United States.
And the media took the bait. They portrayed
the dirty b*mb as an extraordinary w*apon
that would k*ll thousands of people
and, in the process, they made the
hidden enemy even more terrifying.
But, in reality, the threat of a
dirty b*mb is yet another illusion.
Its aim is to spread radioactive material
through a conventional expl*si*n.
But almost all studies of such a
possible w*apon have concluded
that the radiation spread in this way
would not k*ll anybody because the
radioactive material would be so dispersed
and, providing the area was
cleaned promptly, the long-term
effects would be negligible.
In the past, both the American army and
the Iraqi military tested such devices
and both concluded that they
were completely ineffectual
weapons for this very reason.
How dangerous would a dirty b*mb be?
The deaths would be few, if any,
and the answer is, probably none.
Really?
Yes. And that's been said
over and over again, but then
people immediately say after that:
"But, you know, people won't believe that,
and they'll panic."
And then all the people working on this
project, you know, the defence and
so forth, breathe a big sigh of relief
because they got their problem back.
You know,
we're gonna all panic.
I don't think it would k*ll anybody
and I think you'll have troubling a
serious report that would claim otherwise.
The Department of Energy
actually set up such a test
and they actually measured
what happened. And they the
measurements were extremely low.
They calculated that the most exposed
individual would get a fairly high dose
- not life-threatening, but fairly high -
and I checked into how the calculation
was done, and they assume that after
the attack, no one moves for one year.
One year.
Now, that's ridiculous.
The dirty b*mb - the danger from
radioactivity is basically next to nothing.
The danger from panic, however,
is horrendous.
That's where the irony comes. This
- instead of the government saying,
"Look, this is not a serious w*apon
the serious danger of this is the
panic that would ensue, and there is
no reason for panic. Don't panic."
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the end
of our show; however, something very much
like this could happen at any moment.
We just thought we ought to prepare you
and more or less put you in the mood.
Thank you.
And now,
back to our story.
The scale of this fantasy just kept
growing as more and more groups
realised the power it gave them.
Above all, the group that had been
instrumental in first spreading the idea:
the neoconservatives. Because
they now found that they could use
it to help them realise their vision:
that America had a special desiny
to overcome evil in the world
and this epic mission would give meaning
and purpose to the American people.
To do this,
they were going to start with Iraq
and, just as they had discovered
a hidden reality of terror beneath
the surface in America
they now found hidden links that
previously no one had suspected
between the Al Qaeda
network and S*ddam Hussein.
Evidence from intelligence sources,
secret communications, and
statements by people now in custody
reveal that S*ddam Hussein
aids and protects t*rrorists
including members of Al Qaeda.
Imagine those hijackers with
other weapons and other plans, this
time armed by S*ddam Hussein.
I continue to be amazed at the people who
say there are no links. It simply isn't true.
What hasn't been established is
a direct link between S*ddam's
intelligence and the / plotters
although even there there is
evidence that suggests, very possibly
facilitation and assistance
to the / hijackers.
There really is evidence?
There really is evidence.
So, when people say there is no
association between Al Qaeda and
S*ddam Hussein, they're wrong.
They're flatly wrong.
Really?
Absolutely wrong.
The bombing has started. : : ,
--] : : Okay, okay, start buying
The driving force behind these new
global policies in the w*r on terror
was the power of a dark fantasy:
a sinister web of hidden and interlinked
threats that stretched around the world.
And such was the power of that fantasy
that it also began to transform the
very nature of politics because
increasingly, politicians were discovering
that their ability to imagine the future
and the terrible dangers it held
gave them a new and
heroic role in the world.
In the post-w*r years,
politicians had also used their imaginations
but to project optimistic visions
of a better future that they
could create for their people
and it was these visions that
gave them power and authority.
But those dreams collapsed, and
politicians like Tony Blair became
more like managers of public life
their policies determined
often by focus groups.
But now, the w*r on terror allowed
politicians like Blair to portray a
new, grand vision of the future.
But this vision was a dark
one of imagined threats
and a new force began to drive politics:
the fear of an imagined future.
Not a conventional fear
about a conventional threat.
But the fear that one day these new
threats of weapons of mass destruction
rogue states, and international
terrorism combine to deliver
a catastrophe to our world.
And then the shame of knowing
that I saw that threat, day after
day, and did nothing to stop it.
It may not erupt and engulf
us this month or next
perhaps not even this year or next
I just think these dangers are there, I
think that it's difficult sometimes for
people to see how they all come together
I think that it's my duty to tell it to you
if I really believe it, and I do really believe it.
I may be wrong in believing it,
but I do believe it.
What Blair argued was that faced by the
new threat of a global terror network
the politician's role was
now to look into the future
and imagine the worst that might happen
and then act ahead of time to prevent it.
It was called the "precautionary principle".
Back in the s, thinkers within the
ecology movement believed the world
was being threatened by global warming.
But at the time there was little
scientific evidence to prove this.
So they put forward the radical idea
that governments had a higher duty:
They couldn't wait for the evidence
because by then it would be too late.
They had to act imaginatively,
on intuition, in order to save the
world from a looming catastrophe.
In essence, the precautionary principle
says that not having the evidence
that something might be a
problem : : , --]
: : , is not a reason for not
taking action as if it were a problem.
That's a very famous triple-negative
phrase that effectively says that
action without evidence is justified.
It requires imagining what
the worst might be and
applying that imagination upon the
worst evidence that currently exists.
Would Al Qaeda buy weapons of mass
destruction if they could? Certainly.
Does it have the financial
resources? Probably. Would it
use such weapons? Definitely.
But once you start imagining what
could happen, then there's no limit.
What if they had access to it?
What if they could effectively deploy it?
What if we weren't prepared?
What it is is a shift from the sciific,
"What is" evidence-based decision making
to this speculative
imaginary, "What if"
- based, worst case scenario.
And it was this principle that now began to
shape government policy in the w*r on terror.
In both America and Britain, individuals
were detained in high-security prisons,
not for any crimes they had committed
but because the politicians believed
- or imagined - that they might
commit an atrocity in the future
even though there was no
evidence they intended to do this.
The American attorney general
explained this shift to what he
called the "paradigm of prevention."
We had to make a shift in the way we
thought about things. So being reactive
waiting for a crime to be committed,
or waiting for there to be evidence
of the commission of a crime
didn't seem to us to be an appropriate
way to protect the American people.
Under the preventive paradigm,
instead of
holding people accountable for what you
can prove that they have done in the past..
you lock them up based on what you think
or speculate they might do in the future.
And how-how can a person who's
locked up based on what you
think they might do in the future
disprove your speculation?
It's impossible, and so what ends
up happening is the government
short-circuits all the processes
that are designed to distinguish
the innot from the guilty
because they simply don't fit
this mode of locking people up for
what they might do in the future.
The supporters of the
precautionary principle
argue that this loss of rights is the price
that society has to pay when faced by
the unique and terrifying
threat of the Al Qaeda network.
But, as this series has shown,
the idea of a hidden, organised
web of terror is largely a fantasy
and by embracing the precautionary
principle, the politicians have
become trapped in a vicious circle:
they imagine the worst about an
organisation that doesn't even exist.
But no one questions this because the very
basis of the precautionary principle
And, instead, those with the darkest
imaginations become the most influential.
You'll hear about meetings where
t*rror1st matters are discussed
in the intelligence community
and always the person with the most
dire assessment, the person with the
who has the kind of, the strongest
sense that something should be done
will frequently carry the day at meetings.
We thus believe the most dire
estimate of what could happen here.
The sense of disbelief has vanished.
So the person with the most vivid
imagination becomes the most powerful.
In a sense, that's correct.
There will be an attack. It is "when" within the
United Kingdom. I think the "if" is academic.
It is only a matter of time,
and its potential is huge.
How will we ever know when it's over? How
will we ever know when the threat is gone?
In the mindset we are now in
once we declare it to be over
- will be exactly the time that
we believe that they will strike.
You know, uh, it's just-it's the way we
live today. We're living on a knife edge.
This story began over years ago as
the dream that politics could create
a better world began to fall apart.
Out of that collapse came two groupse
Islamists and the neoconservatives.
Looking back, we can now see that these
groups were the last political idealists
who in an age of growing disillusion
tried to reassert the inspirational
power of political visions
that would give meaning to
people's lives. We will fight for
an Islamic State, we will die for it!
We will fight for an Islamic State,
we will die for it!
But both have failed in their attempts to
transform the world and We will fight
for an Islamic State, we will die for it!
But both have failed in their
attempts to transform the world
and instead, together they have created
today's strange fantasy of fear which
politicians have seized on. : ,
--] : : , Because in an age when
all the grand ideas have lost credibility
fear of a phantom enemy is all the
politicians have left to maintain their power.
And we have seen Americans in
uniform storming mountain strongholds
and charging through sandstorms.
We have fought the
t*rrorists across the earth
because the lives of our citizens are at
stake. And America and the world are safer.
The stakes are high.
We are a nation at w*r, a global
w*r on terror against the enemy
unlike we've ever known before.
Faced with that choice I will
defend America every time.
In a society that believes in nothing,
fear becomes the only agenda.
Whist the th century was
dominated between a conflict
between a free-market
Right and a socialist Left
even though both of those outlooks
had their limitations and their problems
at least they believed in something,
whereas what we are seeing now is
a society that believes in nothing.
And a society that believes in
nothing is particularly frightened
by people who believe in anything.
And, therefore, we label those people
as fundamentalists or fanatics
and they have much greater purchase
in terms of the fear that they instill
in society than they truly deserve.
But that's a measure of how much
we have become isolated and atomised
rather than of their inherent strength
Butthe fear will not last
and just as the dreams that politicians
once promised turned out to be
illusions, so, too, will the nightmares
and then our politicians
will have to face the fact
that they have no visions,
either good or bad, to offer us any longer.