U.S. officials eye influencing Islamic schools

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that the world must start thinking about how to reduce the number of people who are becoming terrorists through teachings in radical Islamic schools and not just focus on killing or capturing them after they commit violent acts.

In three television appearances yesterday, Rumsfeld expanded on his Oct. 16 internal memo in which he posed the question, "Does the U.S. need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists?"

"We are capturing and killing a lot of terrorists," Rumsfeld said on "Fox News Sunday," "but we also have to think about the number of new ones that are being created." One problem, he said, was lack of knowledge about how many anti-American terrorists are being turned out.

"There is no way to measure it because you don't know what's happening in each one of these radical cleric schools ... how many people are coming out of these radical madrassa schools," he said on ABC's "This Week."

Saying the United States is not organized yet to handle the problem, Rumsfeld said, "We need to find ways to make sure we're winning the battle of ideas and that we're reducing the number of terrorists ... that are being taught to go out and murder and kill innocent men, women and children."

Asked for the solution, Rumsfeld noted that with the dissolution of the United States Information Agency and its merger into the State Department, the country is "not organized, trained or equipped" to fight a war of ideas overseas.

In his Oct. 16 memo, Rumsfeld suggested that the CIA might need a "finding" — a presidential authorization to undertake a covert action — and asked, "Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madrassas to a more moderate course?"

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz used the same theme Thursday in a speech at Georgetown University, where he described madrassas as "schools that teach hatred, schools that teach terrorism" while providing free, "theologically extremist" teachings to "millions" of Muslim children.

One way to counter those schools, Wolfowitz said, would be to cut off the funding that often comes from Saudis promoting Wahhabism, a particularly austere form of Islam. But he suggested that a better way would be to channel support to people who oppose the schools, though he acknowledged that "we're not very good at doing that yet."

The concept of the CIA, the Pentagon or some other U.S. government agency seeking to influence foreign educational or religious institutions through private funding echoes covert CIA operations of the 1950s.

At that time, the agency funneled money through private U.S. foundations to European-based magazine and book publishers as well as youth organizations and labor unions in Europe and the United States. The aim was to support groups and individuals promoting independent or anti-communist ideas that countered Soviet support of the communist parties in those countries.

When covert funding to American foundations and groups such as the National Student Association was publicly disclosed in the 1960s, a scandal erupted. President Johnson set up an investigative panel, which called for a halt to such covert action within the United States. The CIA established internal regulation prohibiting the agency from using U.S. foundations or voluntary organizations as fronts for its covert operations.

Senior intelligence officials say there would be a need to hide the U.S. role in such an activity because the Muslim populace would mistrust and thus not accept open Washington support for its religious schools. In addition, as Wolfowitz noted, "this country isn't very good at supporting religious schools; we have some constitutional difficulties there."

Another problem, a former senior intelligence official said Friday, is "these projects take years and don't show results very quickly. And this country does not have patience."

In 1950s Cold War programs, he said, young people from Eastern Europe and Third World countries were picked out early and aided secretly with CIA funds. The hope was that they would rise to positions where their anti-communist views would be effective in their home countries.

In today's world, Wolfowitz said, "Muslims are the only ones who can dispute theologically the extremist teachings that are distributed free to millions. ... We should do everything that we can to support those moderate voices and assist their courage in speaking out."

Rumsfeld pointed out that the administration had created a Department of Homeland Security and beefed up the Pentagon's special-forces units to meet the new world of terrorism, but had not addressed "reducing the number of people who are being attracted into the terrorist business."

"The world needs to think about other things we can do to reduce the number of schools that teach terrorism," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."