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Laie CHAPTER THIRTY The Consequences for the ‘War on Terrorism’ “ “Because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal and other actions that make our ability collectively, internationally, to find these terrorists much more challenging.” CIA Director John Brennan in response to the Paris attack, November 2015 In the evening of November 13, 2015, normal life in Paris was brought to a screeching halt by nine Jihadist terrorists acting on behalf of ISIS. Three blew themselves up at the stadium at Saint- Denis, where President Hollande was attending a match between France and Germany, while the others shot killed 130 people at cafes, restaurants and a theater. 388 others had been wounded in the carnage. The attack was planned over many months by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a 28-year old Belgium citizen of Moroccan origins, who served ISIS as a logistics officer in Syria in 2014. To organize the attack, he smuggled three suicide bombers into Europe through Greece, raise financing, set up a base in the Molenbeek section of Brussels, import deactivated assault weapons from Slovenia (which then had to be restored by a technician), buy ammunition, acquire suicide vests, obtain “burner” cell phones, rent cars and make on-line bookings for quarters in Paris for the nine attackers.. Even though Abaaoud was well known to western intelligence services, none of the communications surrounding the preparations for the attack came to the attention of the NSA or its allied services in Europe. Those Paris attackers who did not kill themselves with their suicide vests were killed by the police, but the real challenge in such a terrorist operation is not bringing culprits to justice after the massacre civilians. It is preventing them from carrying it out. As “soft targets,” such as restaurants, cafes, theaters and street gatherings, cannot be continually protected by police, the only practical means by which a government can prevent such attacks is to learn in advance about their planning and preparations. One means of acquiring this information is by listening in on the channels through which members of loosely-knit terrorists organizations, such as ISIS, communicates with one another. This form of intelligence-gathering obviously works best so long as the terrorists remain unaware that the communication channels they are using are being monitored. Once they find out that their messages and conversations are being intercepted, they will likely find a safer means to communicate important information. For that reason, communications intelligence organizations keep the sources and methods they employ for monitoring these channels in a tightly-sealed envelope of secrecy. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020374