By Ann Roosevelt
The incoming Obama administration appears to be in sync with what the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department is doing, according to the official who leads that office.
“They are more simpatico than we expected them to be and we do see the Obama administration being much, much more aggressive than maybe even the campaign has indicated,” Amb. Dell Dailey, the Department of State’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism, said yesterday at a Defense Writers Group breakfast.
“One of the things from the campaign which we think is very good for counterterrorism is the acronym is the Shared Security Partnership Plan (SSPP), which is $5 billion over three years dedicated to law enforcement and intelligence activities in assisting partner nations in their counterterrorism capability,” he said.
Dailey’s office has a leading role in U.S. counterterrorist activities, developing strategies to defeat terrorists abroad and securing the cooperation of international partners.
Since about a week after the election, a presidential transition team has been at the State Department and members have met with his office about five times, Dailey said.
“We think there is a good focus within the Obama administration on counterterrorism and I think you also heard from his campaign speeches a new emphasis in Afghanistan as well,” he said. “We’re looking forward to their new ideas.”
To continue in his role, Dailey, a political appointee, would have to be reappointed. In response to a direct question, he said, “it is my desire to stay on in the government and government service.”
Specific tactical advice to a potential successor for right now would be “developing our partner nations and our friends’ counterterrorism capability, from terrorist finance to crisis resolution to critical infrastructure protection. We’ve been very aggressive in bilateral [activities]–the United States has probably not been as aggressive in the multi- lateral areas as we should be.”
For example, he said there are a lot of multilateral programs going on in Africa, Southeast Asia and Asia that the United States is not involved in, and it should be more involved.
Dailey said he would encourage a successor to build up the multilateral section in the office and work for more funds to distribute to nations that are putting together multilateral training.
“You don’t necessarily need U.S. troops, you don’t necessarily need U.S. curriculum–a U.S. course of instruction–[but get] funding for these countries to do it because they already feel threatened in the terrorism arena and they’ve got some good activities going on,” he said.
In general, “it looks like post 9/11 for Al Qaeda they have been taken away from the ability to centrally to control activities, we’ve chopped off their arms in doing that, we’ve chopped of their communications, we’ve chopped off their funding to do that. We’ve gone after their leadership and curtailed them, and taken away training sites,” he said. However, his message to a successor would be to keep going, not be lulled into a false sense of security.
Dailey said his feeling is that the Obama administration will work with more countries: “I think their twist is going to be a more aggressive engagement with our partner nations…I suspect it will be more countries and more in depth in countries—that’s just what I sense.”
Engagement has been a priority. “We did reinforce engagement…that’s a key to success in the Bush administration,” Dailey said.
Dailey also is confident in the abilities of Secretary of State-nominee Sen. Hillary Clinton, offering a scene that caught his eye some five years ago when she returned from her first visit to Afghanistan.
“She came straight to the National Press Club and gave a very, very savvy presentation–I’m talking she was just hot off the airplane, she hadn’t, I don’t think, had time to get back to her home, she just came and gave a very understanding appreciation for what was going on,” he said.