5 La Guerra de Vietnam
5.7 Tratamiento médico
▸Who? (target): US officials or tourists attending the Olympics
▸
▸What? (tactics): Assassination or hostage taking/
kidnapping
▸
▸Where? (location): In metropolitan Athens or outside Athens (including other Olympic Games events)
These pairs of dimensions then must be paired to create three different matrices with a total of twelve combinations.
For ease of discussion, each quadrant has been given a num-ber identifier. For example, in the first matrix, Quadrant 1 refers to an attack scenario involving an attack on a US Embassy official in Athens. The twelve possible combina-tions are shown in Table 13.7.
Step 6: Generate one or two credible scenarios for each quadrant.
For each cell in each matrix, generate one or two exam-ples of how this scenario could play out. In some quad-rants, the most likely scenario might be relatively easy to identify. For example, the scenarios generated for Quad-rants 1 and 5 would look like traditional 17N attacks. The terrorists probably would stay within their comfort zone, selecting an embassy official with an established pattern
who would offer an easy target in Athens—a city whose chaos and crowds afford a certain level of camouflage for the operatives.
The scenario for Quadrant 10 would require 17N to carry out a shooting outside of downtown Athens, its usual domain. Staging an attack in a less-populated location such as Olympia or Marathon, where some of the Olympics events will be held, might mean that the drivers would opt for the motorcycle approach, and limit their exposure before the attack. The scenario for Quadrant 11 and would require consideration of the risk of hurting innocent bystanders, something 17N had avoided in the past.
In other quadrants, it could prove difficult to come up with a credible scenario, but generating scenarios for all the quadrants will usually stretch the analysts’ thinking, forcing them to reframe the problem in a variety of ways.
In so doing, they are almost certain to gain new insights and come up with a more creative set of potential attack scenarios.
Step 7: Arrange all the scenarios generated in a single list with the most cred ible scenario at the top of the list and the least credible at the bottom using preestablished criteria.
In this example, possible criteria might include those scenarios that are targeting lower-level officers with less security protection or multiple attacks designed to heighten the perception of the group’s capabilities. After establishing a solid set of criteria, rate each scenario on a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 indicating the scenario that is highly deserving of attention and 1 indicating that officials should give this sce-nario a relatively low priority. Place the scesce-nario deserving the most attention at the top of the list, and the least credi-ble scenario at the bottom.
If a scenario makes little sense or is highly unlikely, place an “x” in the box and eliminate it from further consider-ation. For example, a scenario involving a hostage taking outside Athens during the Olympic Games (Quadrant 12) would be well outside the scope of 17N’s practice, difficult to organize, and probably could be dropped from the list.
Once the unlikely scenarios are dropped, the next task is to prioritize the remaining scenarios. A useful template is provided in Table 13.8. Different analysts might rate each scenario depending on its vantage point. For example, were they primarily concerned about security for the Olympic Games or the security of the embassy staff? Had they worked on previous cases involving the taking of hostages and believed this was a viable threat too often discounted by other analysts?
Table 13.7 ▸ Foresight Quadrant Crunching™:
Potential Attack Scenarios
Target/Location
1 US official 3 US official
In metropolitan Athens Outside Athens 2 Tourists at Olympics 4 Tourists at Olympics
In metropolitan Athens Outside Athens Target/Tactics
5 US official 7 US official
Assassination Hostage taking/kidnapping 6 Tourists at Olympics 8 Tourists at Olympics
Assassination Hostage taking/kidnapping Location/Tactics
9 In metropolitan Athens 11 In metropolitan Athens Assassination Hostage taking/kidnapping 10 Outside Athens 12 Outside Athens
Assassination Hostage taking/kidnapping
Analytic Value Added: Which scenario is the most deserving of attention? The terrorists have shown a con-sistent pattern of conducting well-planned, focused attacks on US government or military officials while avoiding the killing of innocent civilians. They also are more practiced at operating in metropolitan Athens and probably would continue to prefer that area of operations.
Should attention focus on just one scenario, or could several scenarios play out simultaneously? It probably would be wise to give serious consideration to all scenarios receiving a rating of three or above. Although 17N’s pattern of behavior has been fairly consistent over time, new factors could always come into play, such as the emergence of a new leader or a faction that advocates expanding beyond its traditional patterns.
Are any key themes present when reviewing the most likely set of attentiondeserving scenarios? The most
likely themes are the likelihood that 17N will continue to use small arms or bombs and seek to avoid killing innocent people, but may expand its theatre of operations.
Does this technique help you determine where to devote the most attention in trying to deter an attack?
The technique helps the analyst consider a larger range of attacks and to develop specific criteria for which attacks are most likely to occur. By forcing analysts to think operationally in terms of how easy or difficult it would be to launch various attacks, the analysts get a better sense of what is most feasible, and therefore more likely to occur.
Does it help you challenge any key assumptions regarding how an attack might take place? The technique helped challenge several assumptions. For example, an attack might not necessarily have to take place in Athens. It is possible that some members of the group might be just as familiar with the city landscape of a surrounding town that was also going to play host to some Olympic events. Such a location might also be more attractive as a setting for an attack if it had less police scrutiny.
CONCLUSION
On June 29, 2002, a botched attempted bombing by one of the core members of 17N led to his arrest, confession, and the subsequent unraveling of the group. Savvas Xiros, a name new to Greek police, was seriously injured when a homemade explosive device he had placed behind a Flying Dolphin ferry ticket kiosk in Piraeus exploded prematurely.
Xiros, a largely self-taught bomb maker, lost several fingers and suffered permanent damage to his eyes. The port police who responded to the blast discovered a second bomb and, more significantly, a bag containing a gun that linked to a 17N bank robbery in 1984 in which a police officer had been killed.1 After Savvas’s photo was placed on Greek television, an anonymous caller provided informa-tion connecting him to a safehouse.2 Two apartments were discovered, chock full of all the materials 17N used to carry out its attacks: stolen license plates, keys, forging materials, pvc pipes, guns, bullets, costumes, proclamations, surveil-lance notes, and perhaps most interesting of all, a detailed ledger that chronicled the members’ pay and expenses per operative alias.3
Savvas awoke in the hospital under heavy police guard, and spent the next few weeks being interrogated. Police aggressively pursued all leads stemming from Savvas’s Table 13.8 ▸ Foresight Quadrant Crunching™:
Rating the Attack Scenarios
Quadrant Alternative Scenario Rating
5 US official assassinated in Athens en
route to Olympic event 5
9 US official visiting Games assassinated as he leaves hotel
5
3 US official shot when attending Olympic event in Marathon
4
1 Car with US official sprayed with bullets on Athens street
3
6 Several US tourists assassinated at Olym-pics site by sniper
2
2 Bus taking US tourists from hotel to Athens Olympic event bombed
2
10 US tourist bus en route to Olympic event outside Athens bombed
2
7 Visiting US official taken hostage en route
to Olympic event 2
4 Bus taking Americans to Olympic event outside Athens bombed
2
11 Americans at Athens hotel taken hostage and rooms set afire
1
8 Americans dining at an Olympic site
restaurant held hostage X
12 Americans staying at hotel outside Athens taken hostage
X
Understanding Revolutionary Organization 17 November 155 confession and the safehouses and within days had
arrested three of his brothers, all sons of a Greek Ortho-dox priest from a small village in Northern Greece. By mid-July, another eight operatives had been identified and arrested.
Savvas Xiros’s cohorts included a real estate agent, a schoolteacher, a shopkeeper, a telephone operator, and a musician, many connected through familial and village ties.
He himself was an icon painter by trade.4 The group’s opera-tional leader and account keeper, Dimitris Koufondinas, managed to hide for several weeks on a nude beach on one of the Greek islands but eventually turned himself in. Tak-ing a taxi to police headquarters in Athens, he identified himself to the police officer on duty as the most wanted man in Greece.5 He and his partner had eked out a living as beekeepers.
Missing from this cadre, however, was the ideological leadership. The investigation led police to Lipsi, a remote Dodecanese island where Alexandros Giotopoulos, a French-educated radical and former head of the Junta resis-tance group LEA (Popular Revolutionary Resisresis-tance), lived under an assumed name, Mihalis Economou. Giotopoulos’s father had been a well-known Trotskyite,6 and Giotopoulos and his French wife lived in a pink house on Lipsi, where he often held court at the local tavern on politics and tussled with local authorities over his right to violate the regulations
for whitewashing his home. Authorities from Athens arrived in Lipsi just in time to arrest Giotopoulos as he was waiting to catch the next ferry to Turkey. The earliest crimes of 17N were never tried in court due to a twenty-year stat-ute of limitation on murder in Greece, and Giotopoulos never admitted to any involvement7, but he is largely believed to have been the man who shot and killed Richard Welch in 1975.
The unmasked members of what had become the great Greek unsolved mystery revealed themselves to be a paro-chial assortment of men, but for almost three decades, the unidentified members of 17N had assumed an almost mythical role in Greek society. What was revealed was an autonomous and indigenous violent far-left group, whose time was finally over.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
▸
▸ When information is limited or ambiguous, it is helpful to explore alternative explanations for what appears to be or what might be to help find overlooked explanations and investigative leads.
▸
▸ Multiple Hypotheses Generation helps develop more nuanced explanations, such as the possibility that a group may have changed or evolved over time.
Figure 13.2 ▸▸Mug Shots of the 17N Suspects
The suspects were apprehended in the summer of 2002. Far right is the operational mastermind, Koufondinas, and to his left is the ideological leader, Giotopoulos.
(a) (b) (c)
SOURCE: (a) AP Photo/File. (b) AP Photo/HO/Greek Police. (c) AP Photo/File.
▸
▸Using techniques such as Foresight Quadrant CrunchingTM, analysts can better anticipate the unanticipated and create alternative stories or
“bins” that could prove useful when newly obtained information does not fit comfortably within established investigative categories.
▸
▸The What If? Analysis technique is useful for
refocusing attention operationally on potential threats and vulnerabilities, and assessing their likelihood.
▸
▸ All three techniques allow for a more rigorous and nuanced assessment of the group’s capability and intent, allowing analysts to leapfrog to a new level of understanding.
NOTES
1. Tamara Makarenko and Daphne Biliouri. “Is this the end of 17N?” Jane’s Intelligence Review 14 (2002): 9.
2. Ibid.
3. Kiesling, Brady, Greek Urban Warriors: Resistance and Terrorism 1967–2012, Athens: Lycabettus Press (forthcoming).
4. Shawn Choy, “In the Spotlight” Revolutionary Organization 17 November,” CDI Terrorism Project, August 5, 2002. www.cdi .org/terrorism/17N-pr.cfm
5. George Kassimeris, “Fighting for Revolution? The life and death of Greece’s revolutionary organization 17 November, 1975–2002” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans (6) 2004: 259.
6. Choy, CDI Terrorism Project.
7. Kassimeris, “Fighting for Revolution?” 270-272.
157
I
t is mid-October 2008. You are an analyst working in the Mumbai Police Department, and you just received the US warning about the threat to Mumbai from the Intelligence Bureau in New Delhi. Analysis of the threat has to be done quickly in order to develop guidance to help authorities anticipate and detect the type of attack that is being planned.Although no analyst has a crystal ball, it is incumbent upon analysts to help law enforcement officials and policy makers anticipate how adversaries will behave, outline the range of pos sible futures that could develop, and recognize the signs that a particular future is beginning to take shape. The tech-niques in this case—Structured Brain storming, Red Hat Analysis, Classic Quadrant CrunchingTM, Indicators, and the Indicators ValidatorTM—can help analysts tackle each part of this task.
The challenge for law enforcement analysts in this case is to forecast how the anticipated attack is most likely to be launched and, in so doing, help local officials and business-people prevent or mitigate the damage of such an attack.
When confronted with this challenge, the first reaction of many students is to propose that the Indian government increase its vigilance, issue an alert to local officials that a terrorist attack on Mumbai is imminent, and ask them to look out for any suspicious activity that would indicate that such an attack is being planned or is underway. Unfortu-nately, such guidance lacks sufficient specificity to be of much value to Mumbai law enforcement officials and busi-nesspeople. The purpose of these exercises is to show that with the use of structured analytic techniques, analysts can generate a plausible set of attention-deserving scenarios and create tailored lists of collection requirements that provide operational value to local officials and businesspeople.
These instructor materials are built around what actually occurred, but a successful student analysis need not mirror the events on the day of the attack. Instead, instructors and the students should judge the resulting analyses on the basis of how well the students apply the analytic process and the extent to which they identify well-considered and action-able steps that intelligence operators, law enforcement offi-cials, and collection agencies can use to counter the threat.
TECHNIQUE 1: STRUCTURED BRAINSTORMING Brainstorming is a group process that follows specific rules and procedures designed for generating new ideas and con-cepts. The stimulus for creativity comes from two or more analysts bouncing ideas off each other. A brainstorm ing ses-sion usually exposes an analyst to a greater range of ideas and perspec tives than the analyst could generate alone, and this broadening of views typically results in a better analytic product. (See eight rules for successful brainstorming in Box 14.2.)
Structured Brainstorming is a more systematic twelve-step process for con ducting group brainstorming. It requires a facilitator, in part because partici pants are not allowed to talk during the brainstorming session. Struc-tured Brainstorming is most often used to identify key driv-ers or all the forces and factors that may come into play in a given situation.
Task 1.
Conduct a Structured Brainstorming exercise to identify all the various modes of transport the assailants might use to enter Mumbai.
14 Defending Mumbai from Terrorist Attack
Cases in Intelligence Analysis: Structured Analytic Techniques in Action
Instructor Materials
Table 14.2 ▸ Case Snapshot: Defending Mumbai from Terrorist Attack
Structured Analytic Technique Used Heuer and Pherson Page Number Analytic Family
Structured Brainstorming p. 102 Idea Generation
Red Hat Analysis p. 223 Assessment of Cause and Effect
Classic Quadrant Crunching™ p. 122 Idea Generation
Indicators p. 149 Scenarios and Indicators
Indicators Validator™ p. 157 Scenarios and Indicators
Box 14.2 EIGHT RULES FOR SUCCESSFUL BRAIN-STORMING
1. Be specific about the purpose and the topic of the brainstorming session.
2. Never criticize an idea, no matter how weird, unconventional, or improbable it might sound. Instead, try to figure out how the idea might be applied to the task at hand.
3. Allow only one conversation at a time and ensure that everyone has an opportunity to speak.
4. Allocate enough time to complete the brainstorming session.
5. Engage all participants in the discussion; sometimes this might require “silent brainstorming” techniques such as asking everyone to be quiet for five minutes and write down their key ideas on 3 × 5 cards and then discussing what everyone wrote down on their cards.
6. Try to include one or more “outsiders” in the group to avoid groupthink and stimulate divergent thinking. Recruit astute thinkers who do not share the same body of knowledge or perspective as other group members but have some familiarity with the topic.
7. Write it down! Track the discussion by using a whiteboard, an easel, or sticky notes.
8. Summarize key findings at the end of the session. Ask the participants to write down their key takeaways or the most important things they learned on 3 × 5 cards as they depart the session. Then, prepare a short summary and distribute the list to the participants (who may add items to the list) and to others interested in the topic (including those who could not attend).
Step 1: Gather a group of analysts with knowledge of the