"War is a different mentality," former CIA Director R. James Woolsey told community members yesterday afternoon. "We will not effectively defeat terror until we bring democracy to the Middle East."
The intelligence expert painted a gloomy picture of the Middle East -- a region of "pathological predators and vulnerable autocracies."
He suggested that the United States has been ensnared in an ancient civil war within Islam, equating the radical fundamentalist movement with 1930s German Nationalism.
"This small minority is the soil in which al-Qaida and Hezbollah have grown," said Woolsey.
Woolsey criticized the United States for not taking firmer action in the Middle East in recent years, emphasizing the need to oppose repressive regimes such as those in Iran and Iraq.
He affirmed U.S. popularity with young Iranians, stressing the need to align with them against brutal leaders but not lose their support with military action.
Woolsey fielded questions about the CIA's effectiveness before and after Sept. 11. Although he acknowledged that the Agency could have had more people trained in languages like Pashtun, he praised its work during the war and gave the CIA credit as the only institution who pursued al-Qaida.
"For all its failings, the CIA was at least paying attention to al-Qaida. The rest of the U.S. government was totally and completely asleep at the switch," said Woolsey, who noted that letters had been coming to the Federal Aviation Administration for years urging them to improve the security of cockpit doors.
Woolsey cited the personal freedoms in American society as a possible cause for the terrorists' anger toward the United States. He quoted the wisdom of a Washington, D.C., cab driver -- "These people don't hate us for what we do wrong, they hate us for what we do right."
In response to a student who questioned the reputation of the CIA, Woolsey acknowledged that the CIA had indeed aligned itself with some ugly states during the Cold War out of necessity. He mocked a rule deterring CIA officers from recruiting agents with violent backgrounds.
"You'll be able to do a dandy job of penetrating the churches and the chamber of commerce in Beirut, but you're not going to do a darn thing about Hezbollah," Woolsey quipped.
Woolsey explained the rarity with which information is leaked from the CIA, placing some of the blame for the failure to stop the Sept. 11 attacks on a 1998 leak which alerted Osama bin Laden to a tap on his satellite phone.
In addition to his presentation in Filene Auditorium -- part of the Montgomery Foundation's American Intelligence Lecture Series -- Woolsey spoke with a smaller group of students at a luncheon with the World Affairs Council, delving deeper into the issues.
Student reaction to Woolsey was mixed.
"I thought he was really funny," said Laura Ferrell, '04. "He sold his ideas really well. I didn't agree with some of the things he said, but by the time he finished explaining them, I could see where he was coming from."
This is not Woolsey's first visit to Hanover. He came to Dartmouth last year to speak about alternative bio-mass fuel. He cited this in his emphatic urge to the United States to reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
A native of Tulsa, Okla., Woolsey has a long list of accomplishments in addition to his work with the CIA. He was General Counsel to the Senate Committee on Armed Services, advisor on the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in Helsinki and Vienna, and delegate to the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in Geneva.
Woolsey is now a partner at the law firm of Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C., and a mediator in commercial disputes between major companies. He is a Montgomery Fellow this term, brought to Dartmouth by an endowment established in 1977 by Harle and Kenneth F. Montgomery '25.
