Trump obsessively hunts 'celebrity' terrorist targets and ignores other threats to the US, former CIA officer says
- President Donald Trump is obsessed with hunting down big name terrorist targets for "immediate gratification" and tends to ignore "substance, impact, and consequences," Douglas London, a former senior CIA counterterrorism officer, wrote in Just Security.
- During Trump's presidency, a number of high-profile terrorist targets like Hamza bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden; Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS; and Qassem Soleimani, Iran's most powerful military officer, have been killed.
- London wrote that Trump opted to eliminate some of those targets even though US intelligence showed other individuals posed "greater dangers" in an attempt to grab headlines.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
President Donald Trump is obsessed with hunting down big name terrorist targets to the point that he ignores other potential threats, as well as the impact on US interests, a former CIA officer who served during his presidency wrote Wednesday.
"President Donald Trump likes big names," former CIA officer Douglas London, who served in the agency for decades, wrote Wednesday in an op-ed for Just Security. "It's this focus on celebrity, headlines, and immediate gratification - versus substance, impact, and consequences - that so often motivates him."
"As a senior CIA counterterrorist manager, my team and I often struggled in persuading the president to recognize the most important threats," added London, who retired in late 2018 as a senior CIA operations officer after 34 years in the CIA's clandestine service.
During Trump's presidency, a number of high-profile terrorist targets, namely Hamza bin Laden, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Qassem Soleimani, have been eliminated.
"Trump's obsession in focusing resources against Osama bin Laden's son Hamza is one example of the president's preference for a 'celebrity' targeted killing versus prioritizing options that could prove better for US security," London wrote.
Trump announced that the US killed Hamza bin Laden last September, saying that "the loss of Hamza bin Laden not only deprives al-Qa'ida of important leadership skills and the symbolic connection to his father, but undermines important operational activities of the group."
London downplayed Hamza's significance compared to Ayman Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden, or his lieutenants. The president, he explained, opted to go after Hamza despite intelligence indicating that other targets posed "greater dangers."
"He was dismissive of our prioritization," London said, adding that Trump "regularly demanded updates on Hamza and insisted we accelerate our efforts to go after him."
In October, Trump announced that the US had successfully terminated ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. "The United States brought the world's number one terrorist leader to justice," the president said in a statement.
London revealed that Trump was obsessed with removing the ISIS leader and had shown less interest in operations targeting other leaders, no matter how dangerous those other individuals were.
"Although US efforts to target key ISIS leaders and operatives had preempted what might have been any number of devastating terrorist attacks, the president's lack of familiarity with their names made such efforts, and their accomplishments, less consequential to him," London wrote.
Trump treats sensitive military operations like televised events
The president, formerly a real estate mogul and boisterous television celebrity, has a penchant for treating sensitive military operations like televised events.
He invited scrutiny, for instance, by dramatizing the raid on al-Baghdadi's and comparing it to the raid that took down Osama bin Laden during the Obama administration.
Shortly after reports surfaced that an operation targeting al-Baghdadi had been carried out, Trump tweeted, "Something very big has just happened!"
And while Obama's remarks about bin Laden's death were brief and didn't reveal much information about the details of the operation itself, Trump deviated from his prepared remarks, provided graphic details about the al-Baghdadi raid, and took questions from reporters for almost 40 minutes afterward.
Earlier this month, the US military conducted a drone attack on Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, a killing that dramatically escalated tensions with Iran and even led the IRGC to launch a barrage of missiles at US forces in Iraq.
"At my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qassem Soleimani," Trump said after the strike.
London argued that Soleimani's killing "appears to have been more about Trump, and the potential for headlines, rather than the intelligence."
Since the strike was first announced, questions have swirled about whether US intelligence supported the strike and whether Soleimani really posed an "imminent threat," as Trump and his deputies have said. The New York Times reported that the intelligence was "razor thin," adding that one US official called the reading of the intelligence an illogical leap.
"I do not debate we had intelligence regarding any number of prospective attacks Iran was facilitating through proxies in Iraq, and elsewhere," London wrote. "But don't we always?"
Trump, without citing evidence, has suggested that Soleimani and his forces were plotting to "blow up" a US embassy, if not multiple diplomatic posts.
"The US government would have been legally bound to warn the public of a threat against an American embassy," London explained, noting that the skepticism following the president's claims is warranted. The State Department was also not told of any imminent threat to its embassies before the strike.
Over the weekend, Esper, who receives the same intelligence briefing as the president, told CBS News he "didn't see" specific intelligence showing Iran was planning to target four US embassies before Soleimani was killed.
"What the President said was he believed it probably could have been," Esper said. "He didn't cite intelligence."