Scott Stewart
U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of
State Wendy Sherman announced April 3 that the U.S. government's "Rewards
for Justice" (RFJ) program was offering a $10 million reward for
information leading to the capture and conviction of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the
founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
In other Rewards for Justice cases involving Pakistan, suspects such as Osama
bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abdel Basit and Mir Amal Kansi have hidden in
Pakistan and maintained relatively low profiles. In this case, Saeed is a very
public figure in Pakistan. He even held a news conference April 4 in Rawalpindi
announcing his location and taunting the United States by saying he was willing
to share his schedule with U.S. officials.
While the Saeed case is
clearly a political matter rather than a pure law enforcement or intelligence
issue, the case has focused a great deal of attention on Rewards for Justice,
and it seems an opportune time to examine the history and mechanics of the program.
Rewards for Justice
In the shadow of the 1983 and
1984 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, the 1983 bombing of the U.S.
Embassy in Kuwait and the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon, the U.S.
Congress established the Rewards for Justice program under the 1984 Act to Combat
International Terrorism. The program is administered by the U.S. Department of
State's Diplomatic Security Service, which was established by the Omnibus
Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act of 1986.
The program was intended not
only to reward people who provide information that leads to the arrest or
conviction of people who plan, commit or attempt terrorist attacks against U.S.
targets but also to obtain information that prevents such attacks. U.S.
government employees and the employees of other governments are not eligible
for the program. The law also authorizes program participants to be entered
into the U.S. Department of Justice witness protection program to ensure their
safety after providing information. The statute covers arrests of and convictions
for the subjects sought and contains a clause for "favorable
resolution" of such cases that can be applied when a military strike
results in the death of the suspect.
While the RFJ program
currently offers large rewards -- $25 million for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader
of al Qaeda, and $10 million for figures such as Saeed and Taliban leader
Mullah Mohammad Omar -- the rewards initially offered by the program were much
smaller, up to $500,000. That amount was increased to $1 million in 1990, and then
augmented to $2 million total through matching funds provided by the Air
Transport Association and the Air Line Pilots Association. The program gained
the ability to offer large payments for figures such as al-Zawahiri under the
2001 Patriot Act, which was passed after the 9/11 attacks.
The RFJ got off to a slow
start and didn't really begin to have much of an impact until the early 1990s.
Its first significant success occurred during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when
an informant in Bangkok tipped off American officials to a pending attack
against U.S. interests there by agents of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. The
informant received a significant reward and was relocated to a safe place along
with his family. However, rewards paid for information leading to the
prevention of attacks have proved to be the exception rather than the rule for
the RFJ.
The program also figured
prominently in the February 1995 capture of Abdel Basit in Pakistan. Basit,
widely known as Ramzi Yousef (the name on one of his fraudulent passports), is
a Pakistani citizen born in Kuwait. He was the principal operational
leader and bombmaker in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. After fleeing the
United States he also planned a number of other failed or thwarted attacks in
Manila, Bangkok and Pakistan. Basit is also the nephew of alleged 9/11 planner
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with whom he conspired. The widespread use of the
Ramzi Yousef name and Iraqi passport provided a great deal of confusion
regarding his true identity, but it also allowed the government of Pakistan to
extradite the Pakistani citizen to the United States with very little public
backlash.
The RFJ was also used by the
CIA to entice Pakistani tribesmen in June 1997 to hand over Mir Amal Kansi, who
was convicted and executed in Virginia, for a January 1993 shooting outside the
CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Kansi, a Pakistani citizen, was rendered from
Pakistan instead of extradited, which generated a great deal of controversy
inside Pakistan.
While the RFJ advertises that
it has paid out more than $100 million in rewards, it must be pointed out that
a great deal of that money has been paid in Iraq, where the reward paid for the
deaths of Udai and Qusay Hussein alone was $30 million. More than $11 million
has been paid out in recent years for leaders of the Abu Sayyaf group in the
Philippines. Although $25 million rewards were offered each for Saddam Hussein
and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, rewards were not authorized in their cases.
In order for a high-profile
reward such as that offered for Saeed to be established, a case has to be made
before an interagency rewards program committee, which is chaired by the
director of the Diplomatic Security Service. In addition to State Department
personnel, the committee includes representatives from the Department of
Justice, the FBI, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Department of
Defense, the Department of Treasury and the Department of Homeland Security.
This interagency RFJ committee also authorizes the payment of rewards once
cases are resolved and an informant is nominated to receive a reward. The
secretary of state must personally authorize any reward offer exceeding $5
million, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved the reward for Saeed
after receiving the committee's recommendation.
Intelligence can come into the
program via the Internet, telephone or mail. After a reward is issued and
publicized, the RFJ staff is typically deluged with potential leads -- many of
which come from scammers and mentally disturbed individuals. However, most of
the good sources the program has developed have contacted U.S. embassies or
intelligence officers in person. While the program was once envisioned as an
operational entity that would recruit and run informants, it has for the most
part become an administrative program that provides rewards to informants run
by other agencies.
The CIA also has specially
designated operational funds that can be used as payments for intelligence
pertaining to terrorism, albeit in a much more low-key fashion. Such payments
do not have to undergo the type of public and interagency scrutiny and
limitations that RFJ rewards must endure.
Limitations
The RFJ does have its
limitations. Despite the huge rewards offered, the program has had very little
luck in recent years capturing high-profile figures in Pakistan such as
al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, Hakeemullah Mehsud or Sirajuddin Haqqani.
Additionally, although the
program was instituted in large part as a response to the attacks conducted by
Hezbollah against U.S. interests, the program has not had success in capturing
figures such as Hasan Izz-al Din, Ali Atwa and Mohamed al-Hamadei, who are
accused of hijacking TWA Flight 847 in 1985, despite the $5 million rewards
offered for each of them.
One of the big assumptions
behind the initiation of the program, and the subsequent increases in the
amount of the rewards offered, is that everybody is for sale. If enough money
is offered all the suspects will be turned in. Yet despite the very high
rewards offered for many suspects, people have not come forward to offer
information regarding their locations. This is likely due to two factors.
First, it is clear that not everyone is for sale. Most of the people who are
close enough to the target to provide actionable intelligence are in fact true
believers and can't be bought.
Second, there is a general
distrust of the U.S. government in the parts of the world where most of the
critical suspects are hiding -- places like Lebanon and Pakistan. Individuals
who might otherwise be induced by the cash rewards do not trust the U.S.
intention or capability to protect them or their extended families. This
protection would be required against reprisal not only from the terrorist group
but also from the government itself. A current case in point is the
medical doctor who helped locate Osama bin Laden and who is now in prison in
Pakistan facing possible high treason charges.
As illustrated by the amounts
of the rewards listed above, the program has proved more successful in a place
like Iraq, where the U.S. military had a significant presence and control, or a
location like the Philippines or Thailand, where the U.S. government is viewed
in a somewhat better light.
It is also very difficult to
get suspects out of hostile areas controlled by powerful tribes like the
Pashtun along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border or powerful groups like Hezbollah
in Lebanon, or to nab suspects who are protected by the government in a country
like Iran or Pakistan.
In the Saeed case, the RFJ
program is clearly being used for political purposes. This is firmly
underscored by the fact that the announcement of the reward was made in India,
the site of the 2008 Mumbai attacks and Pakistan's longtime regional rival.
Certainly, due to sentiment on the Pakistani street and the Pakistani
government's need to maintain the use of militant proxies in pursuing its
interests in the region, the U.S. government does not expect the government of
Pakistan to hand Saeed over. This case simply cannot be divorced from the larger
dynamic of U.S.-Pakistani relations in the context of the pending U.S.
withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Saeed's choice of Rawalpindi,
the heart of the Pakistani military establishment, as the location for his news
conference clearly indicates that he feels secure that the Pakistani government
will continue to protect him. The U.S. government certainly knows this.
Therefore, the intent of the U.S. government in this case is not so much to
facilitate the capture of Saeed but to use the reward as a mechanism to
pressure the government of Pakistan to keep under control the militant networks
that have evolved out of the LeT.
Scott Stewart, Stratfor,
12-04-2012
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