Director Porter Goss – Don’t Let Ashraf Be a Manifestation of World Leaders’ Failure

NCRI – In an international conference held in Paris on Friday, January 20, 2012 in defense of Ashraf, Mr. Porter Goss, former Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency made the following remarks:
Thank you.  In the interest of time, thank you very much.  I want to tell you I am very happy to see such an active audience after all this time.  To save time I’m going to use a Parliamentary trick.  I’m going to associate myself with the wise and distinguished remarks of my panel who I am very impressed with hearing all afternoon and I think they are doing a brilliant job.
 So I will not be repeating some of the things I’m in total agreement with.  But one of the things I want to start out on is a little bit more sober note.  I was asked to address this general subject on April 10th.  I will assure you that the audience was very sad.  It was shocked, as was the panel that was addressing the subject.  We thought we were going to be speaking on other matters having to do with resistance.  As the evidence of the atrocity unrolled before us we well understood that this was much bigger than just a policy debate about what’s going on in the world today.  This is about real people in real trouble in real places and we are in a position to do something about it.  So to see this active audience today is a measure to me of how far this issue has come towards a solution in a very short time, notwithstanding all the of the remarks that have been made about serious work yet to be done.  That’s for sure.
Now, I am sure that many feel that Camp Ashraf is just a symbol of some sort.  Wrong, it’s a reality and it’s a manifestation of failure of the world’s leadership to do what it’s supposed to do about the values we all cherish.  There’s not getting away from that fact.  And I will directly answer the senator’s question about who listens to Mrs. Clinton in a minute.  I think it’s a fair question.  But first I wanted to tell you something that for years my job has been to identify and find terrorists.  Think of that.  I see no terrorists here.  None. I have been looking closely.  Actually my colleagues tell me there are no terrorists in Camp Ashraf.  My colleagues and friends, the FBI, the military, have all said time and again, we are finding no terrorists.  Actually there are terrorists on my list.  They’re the current leadership of Iran.  [applause] National security is the responsibility for me for the United States and its citizens.  And of course world peace is our desire. Our nightmare is nukes in the hands of terrorists.  That’s the worst scenario we can come up with.  And if you take a look at that scenario there’s only one or two places on the earth in the globe today that quality.  That is why we are so concerned about getting to a conclusion soon in Iran because all of this time that has gone by since we first began to understand their nuclear intent and their capability to getting nuclear capability has been many, many years, and that turns out to have been wasted time and they are having success.  So that policy has not worked very well.
When I go back and take a look at where we are in the United States today we are technically a nation at war.  When I speak to audiences in the United States, I always ask a question: do you think we are a nation at war.  And you would be surprised how many people do not think that we are a nation at war.  This is a different kind of war.  This is not World War II where we have tanks going at each other or navies going at each other. I mean my Lord we just lost a huge warship, the U.S.S. Cole to a rubber dinghy.  How can that happen?  That’s terrorism.  That’s unconventional warfare.  It uses all the tools of deceit and dishonor.  Psychological warfare, violence, atrocity, abuse, picking on innocents, there’s no sanctity of life, there’s nothing sacred it seems except succeeding and maintaining the power.
That’s the enemy we are against and it’s a very, very strong enemy.  We are having trouble in the United States under our present leadership about determining actually who is the enemy?  Where exactly is the battlefield?  Is it just Iraq?  Is it just Afghanistan?  Or is it elsewhere?  We’re having problems with our rules of engagement.  Is this a criminal problem or is this a real war?  Is this a conspiracy?  Are these people actually at war with us?  We weren’t sure about that in 1993 in the Trade Towers.  We’re more sure about it now at 2001 after the Trade Towers.  But our problem is after ten years, think of that, ten years since 9/11, our commitment is understandably in the United States dwindling.  If you asked the question about how committed we are to fighting the war today we’re still having arguments about how to deal with the terrorists and whether to deal with the terrorists.  We actually have some candidates now on the (hustings) in the United States suggesting we should totally disengage and come back inside Fortress America; wildly impractical, but that debate is on and out there.  I also want to say as we go forward, clearly the economy is a huge issue and it’s an important issue for the world.  Because if our economy fails it makes more fertile ground for the terrorists.  So we have to pay some attention to the economy, but not at the expense of taking our eye off the ball of who these terrorists are and what they’re trying to do.
I’m going to briefly say, the world is sort of a sorry place in this second decade of the new millennium.  We just haven’t gotten off to a very good start so far in this millennium.  I see a spiral downwards toward violence, towards instability in too many places in the globe.  It’s hard for me to think of a lot of places today that were better off today than they were maybe 12 years ago.  So, I think we’ve got a lot of things to consider as the world’s superpower.  Now I say I am an American proudly and we are the world’s superpower.  We didn’t ask to be, we are not occupiers, we are not imperialists.  We are people who are sincerely committed, compassionately committed to the right values of freedom and democracy and we are willing to share those values and to help others who want those values in ways that we are able to do that.  That’s who Americans really are.  We like to be liked, but we’d rather be respected.  These are things that as we go about our business and the global world today that are on our mind.  So it is very hard for us to understand why our friends, as Mr. (Bonet) the director said at the beginning, are puzzled that we aren’t doing something.  Because we too are puzzled.  Why are we not doing the things that we know we should be doing, honoring the things we cherish on a global basis with people who are confronted with problems.  I think that the answer probably comes down to a statement that I want to read, because I think it’s a brilliant one, in a book called Monsoon, recently out by Robert Kaplan.  And he said, “To a significant extent, American power will depend on how it confronts fanatical enemies who believe more fully than it does.”  And that is the question now.  Do we as Americans fully believe in what we say we stand for.  And if we do, we need to act.
And so, I am going to address your question.  What does it take to get America engaged?  First of all, it takes leadership.  I’m going to talk a little bit about things that trigger American action and then I’m going to talk a little bit, very briefly, about regime change. Regime change is a very interesting subject. I think that the answer to your question will come in regime change, but we’ll wait and see.  What gets us going?  What makes American actually commit itself to doing something?  Committing money, forces, resources, capabilities, to problems.  Well, first of all, somebody attacks our homeland, you can bet we’re going to react, and we have and we do.  The Brits will remember that it was a time back when they came and tried to burn the White House, actually they succeeded.  Fortunately the French were there to help us with our own revolution before that. And we are very grateful for the French for that, we’re very grateful for the Brits as allies today.  But in fact they did come and burn our White House and we chased them out.  But we welcome them back all the time now.
I think the questions then go to other areas.  Will we commit ourselves to deny an enemy a terrorist sanctuary?  Well we just did that in Iraq, so the answer is possibly yes.  We’re doing it in Afghanistan so it seems to be yes.  We sort of thought about it in Yemen, but we’re not there.  We sort of thought about it in the Philippines, but we’re not there either.  And there’s a serious problem there.  We sort of thought about it in Somalia.  We didn’t send enough troops, we got hurt badly.  So we learned a lesson, if you’re going to deal, you gotta send enough force to do it.  The second thing we talked about, well will we commit for regional instability?  Well we did that in Kosovo and Kuwait.  We actually have been out taking care of other people’s business for them, trying to do the right thing.  So we do have a track record for getting involved for regional instability.  Will we get involved for disruption of commerce?  Sure.  The American Navy was founded to stop piracy.  Here we are 240 years later and we’ve still got piracy, but we’re e not using the American Navy to stop it.  You’ve got to ask yourself why.  Why is it that we’re not using the capability we have to stop these kinds of things?  Will we use our powers to stop nuclear proliferation?  Well, we say we will, but look at what’s happened in North Korea.  They have proliferated. Look at what’s happened in Pakistan with the (Abdul Khan) network.  They have proliferated and sold to people around the world.  This has been a very hard thing to get involved with.  We’re making an effort but we don’t quite know how to do it, but we know we have to engage on the nuclear proliferation.  Will we get involved to stop genocide?  It is to my great shame that I saw a movie called Hotel Rwanda and thought, where the heck was the United States of America?  What happened in this genocide?  Why were we sitting on our hands?  Good question.  We don’t always act consistently about these things.  Will we respond to humanitarian relief?  Well we went to Haiti.  We did a good job down there.  Darfur, but the situation’s not a whole lot better.
What I’m trying to convey to you, there are a lot of reasons, a lot of challenges that come across our desk as the great superpower and we are very inconsistent about how we respond to them.  And it is puzzling to our allies, and it is comforting to our enemies.  Because enemies profit on uncertainty and on weakness, and we do know that.  So we have to come to now the question of a possible solution to where we are with our leadership, and this brings me to the subject of regime change.  Usually regime change is discussed when we’re talking about something going on in perhaps Egypt or perhaps Iran or Yemen or, you know ,you can pick a number of places.  Certainly we’ve talked about Libya and Tunisia started it.  So, the problem with regime change is this, who decides to change the regime?  Is that the president of the United States, is it the UN, is it the Security Council, is it a voice from afar, is it a sign in outer space?  I don’t know who makes the decision to decide that somebody needs to go.  That’s a question we haven’t resolved.  But then the deep question comes, if you decide that, and everybody agreed, how the heck do you do it?  What do you commit?  What forces do you use?  And then the last question, which is even more important, what replaces it?  Do you end up with something worse than what you started with?  Now, I will tell you that the hallmark of the United States of America are peaceful elections and peaceful transfer of power.  Sometimes our elections don’t look terribly peaceful but they are relatively speaking, and we do always peacefully transfer power.  The hallmark of despots is to hold on to power, not to let it go.  So what do you do to make them let it go?  In the United States we are going to have elections.  Elections, democratic and free, are the best regime change process I know.  And that is the one we should use if it’s necessary.
I feel that I will answer your questions on this point now.  I think Secretary of State Clinton listens surely to at least two.  One would be the president of the United States and the other would be the people of the United States. And sometimes it is important to make the distinction that the American people and the American administration are not always an entirely tight synchronization.  And I believe that is the situation that we have now, and we will continue to have on this subject.  The question then is about what President Clinton—excuse me, what President Obama is going to do about this I think will be a debate issue.  I think it’s a certainty.  The Republican strength is national security and dealing with these problems.  Once we get through the Republican primary I am relatively certain that this issue will become a front and center issue because it symbolizes all of the values that we want to address in this election on national security and human rights.  So I think it’s a certainty we’re going to get there.
The final point I want to make is another quote from a friend that I think many of you in this room know a man named John Bolton.  And he is quoted in an editorial in the USA Today earlier this week talking about the situation in Iran and whether they will nuclearize.  In his words, and I quote, “the most likely outcome is stark.  The world’s central banker of terrorism will very soon become a nuclear weapon state.  Obama’s irresolution and inaction could well make a nuclear Iran his most lasting legacy.”  Legacy is a huge word politically.  I think there is incredible leverage in the statement that Ambassador Bolton made, and I do think you will see that leverage applied during the election season.
The four things we have to do immediately, obviously, are ensure that the participating parties protect life, provide for quality of life, make sure we have a just refugee status for Camp Ashraf.  No doubt about that, that’s day one.  But the second thing we need to do (agree) the Department of State I have asked twice in my career from an official position, what’s the deal?  Why are these people on the list?  The first answer was a number of years ago and I was told that there were negotiations going on, diplomatic negotiations.  That was many years ago.  That may have been true.  I have asked more recently publicly and I’ve been told that the answer is, “We’re working on it.”  Well, we’ve run out of time and I think we are right to demand a justification from our Department of State of why the listing is there.  And if there is no justification, very clearly there seems to be none, nobody has come up with any, the courts have said there’s none, the observers have said there’s none, you come to the conclusion they’re not going to be able to do anything except delist, and I think sooner the better on that.
And finally, as we talk about our government, and regime change, I would certainly like to have as much attention possible on those who represent pro-democratic, pro-freedom legitimate solutions to the problems, and that of course would be you and your organizations and the work you’re doing.  There’s an old saying in Washington, if you can’t solve the problem get out of the way before you get to be a part of the problem.  And I assure you, the American people are not going to let the United States of America become a part of the problem.  We will be part of the solution.  Thank you.