Robin beats me to a story on bounties in the Washington Post. I couldn’t have said it better so here is his full post.
A Post article today, Bounties a Bust in Hunt for Al-Qaeda:
Jaber Elbaneh is one of the world’s most-wanted terrorism suspects. In
2003, the U.S. government indicted him, posted a $5 million reward for
his capture and distributed posters bearing photos of him around the
globe. None of it worked. Elbaneh remains at large, as wanted as ever.
…Since 1984, the program has handed out $77 million to more than 50
tipsters, according to the State Department. … In 2004, Rep. Mark
Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) visited Pakistan to assess why Rewards for Justice
had generated so little information regarding al-Qaeda’s leadership. He
discovered that the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad had effectively shut down
the program. There was no radio or television advertising. …In 2004, Congress passed a law authorizing the State Department to post
rewards as high as $50 million apiece — a provision with bin Laden in
mind. Last fall, Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) went further, introducing a
bill that would raise the cap to $500 million. The State Department has
declined to boost the reward for bin Laden, arguing that more money was
unlikely to do any good and would only add to his notoriety.Let’s see, billions spent via ordinary means, and millions offered
in bounties, and it is the bounties they blame for Al-Qaeda’s notoriety
and failing to catch leaders? The billions are spent and gone, while
the millions in bounties we only lose when they actually work. How
then is this data suggesting we should prefer ordinary means to
bounties?
Here is one of my previous posts on bounties. The Rewards for Justice program has actually brought in some big catches.
Alex,
I am in total agreement with you in general, but in the case of Osama bin Laden and other leaders like this, I have never really seen that bounties would be that useful.
Presumably bin Laden is hiding out somewhere remote and poor, and at least a handful of people in the area know he is there. If someone calls the US to tip them off, won’t he be afraid that he might get killed before he gets the payout? Is he really going to trust the American on the phone who says, “You can trust us to protect you. We’re the good guys!” ?
Even if the guy gets out of dodge and gets $50 million (although I would imagine a goatherd in Afghanistan doesn’t really distinguish between $5 million and $50 million), won’t his extended family get killed?
And on the other hand, if he gets paid but tries to play it cool, then what’s the benefit of having that much money in a Swiss bank account?
I think it’s the problem that came up in 3:10 to Yuma.
(BTW I am not trying to be a jerk with the goatherd comment; I’m not saying rich Westerners are better people, I’m just saying I don’t see how outrageous rewards would be as appealing to some people as they would to, say, a poor family in the U.S.)
Classic case of price fixing by a government monopoly.
Our current methods are not working, so raising the bounty seems like an idea worth trying.
And the key point is that bounties only pay out if successful. I’m trying to imaging the downside. Certainly bounties aren’t that useful if you believe that capturing Al Qaeda leaders is unimportant because new leaders will just spring up from the terrorists (although capturing via bounties may have less backlash than through the military), or that capturing individual leaders is much less important than preventing attacks or preventing Al Qaeda (and allies like the Taliban) from controlling entire countries and regions.
However, it seems like many of the critics of bounties are precisely people who seem upset that we have not captured Osama personally, and seem particularly unpersuaded by arguments that capturing Osama is less important than making sure that the Taliban don’t control Afghanistan, fighting terrorists trying to take over areas in Iraq, or preventing new terrorists attacks, etc. I think that in general people who think that the top priority and best strategy is to find and arrest Osama, not invade other countries or look for other, non Osama terrorists to destroy, should welcome bounties. However, many seem to have a particular objection to bounties that overrides what I would think would be a naturally attractive policy.
Kapkool raises an interesting point. Distrust of the American govt seems high even among those who may be sympathetic to US’ goals. The US does have a record of leaving folks high and dry. And conspiratorial thinking runs high. It doesn’t surprise me at all that there are few takers.
And the key point is that bounties only pay out if successful. I’m trying to imaging the downside. Certainly bounties aren’t that useful if you believe that capturing Al Qaeda leaders is unimportant because new leaders will just spring up from the terrorists…
Not that I at all would endorse this line of thinking, but I imagine the hostility here would be the same as the fear of privately-run prisons. E.g. someone might say, “Well we can’t control what those private bounty hunters do in order to reap the reward. Maybe they go around torturing people to find out where Osama is.”
Again, what with the record of State employees in this regard, I think the objection is silly, but I imagine that could be part of the resistance to bounty hunters.
…and skeptics might be right, too. How long does it take a bounty to be credited, after how much paperwork? How much time do you have to spend somewhere in person away from your job? How easy a time do callers have getting themselves believed and (hardest) acted on?
Alex, YOU don’t trust USG much, do you? Why should others?
Last I read the state department policy positions that make decision on things like this are positions that have been filled with filled with administration appointees since before 9/11.
So tell me John Thacker when you say:However, it seems like many of the critics of bounties are precisely people who seem upset that we have not captured Osama personally, and seem particularly unpersuaded by arguments that capturing Osama is less important than making sure that the Taliban don’t control Afghanistan,
exactly who are you talking about. If the people you are referring to or not Bush appointees, exactly how did they get the State Department to not use the bounty programs?
It has been republicans that did this, but almost every comment seems to assume that it is the product of some liberal conspiracy.
Good points. Letters of Marque and Reprisal?
Bounties are clearly of limited utility. We can utilize them along with other strategies.
I remember in 2000, Harry Browne (the LP candidate) was campaigning on the theory that the mere threat of bounties would be sufficient: we needn’t have a military. Typical vulgar libertarian idiocy.
But bounties have costs due to errors too:
Arizona bounty hunters kill 2 after invading wrong house
By Associated Press, 09/02/97
PHOENIX – Nine bounty hunters wearing black ski masks and looking for a bail jumper kicked in the front door of a house, held children at gunpoint and shot a young couple to death in a case of mistaken identity, police said.
…. and of course those bounty hunters might, unlike cops, might have to do some time for their killing.
Bounty hunters make errors, no surprise there. The Arizona case, however, did not involve bounty hunters. It was a home robbery where the perpetrators claimed they were bounty hunters. Of course, the second part of the story never made the national news. Not as sexy when thugs murder people.
The government of Pakistan is the one that needs to be offered a bounty. The cash for no performance paid to them since 9/11 hasn’t bought much.
Another reason hundreds of billions of conventional spending is preferred over bounties: lobbyists can actually steer some of that cash to their employers. One more way the government pursues private interests over our common interests.
Do we, in fact, know this for sure?
If the US did capture or kill Osama, it might make perfect sense to keep quiet about it. If he’s known to be dead, it would give him immortality as a martyr and leave an open path for a successor to make a bid for unchallenged leadership legitimacy. If he’s known to be captured, it might inspire acts of massive terrorist blackmail against civilians to force his release (think of some of the things the Chechens tried in Russia). On the other hand, if he’s perceived to be alive and on the run but completely ineffectual, he gradually fades into irrelevance while still blocking the emergence of a new, possibly more effective leader (a “Brigham Young” or “Saint Paul” figure, perhaps).
Something to think about: We can do interesting things with CGI to create very realistic artificial images by modeling the reflective properties of a material and running ray tracing Monte Carlo simulations (although we still can’t produce fake photographs of people let alone fake videos)… perhaps the technology exists to do the same thing by modeling a person’s mouth, nose and vocal tract (perhaps working backwards to deduce these parameters from actual vocal samples of their speech, or measuring them directly from a corpse) and then doing computation-intensive “air molecule tracing” to realistically reproduce sounds and words. American intelligence authorities keep certifying each new Osama audio tape as genuine… but then they would, wouldn’t they?
A disembodied artificial Osama voice would also be useful for spreading misinformation to followers (through private audio tapes not released for public broadcast), or for directing followers to locations where they could be killed or captured (although the latter would have to be used sparingly to avoid giving the game away).
Whoops. I was wrong about that case.
Interesting responses though. Alex had the valid one.
Burger flipper essentially said “cops do it too”. Does that mean he finds it an OK thing to do? Oh, and cops DO sometimes get convicted for things like that: just not as often as we’d like.
Keith and mrsinister respond as the usual claque does: with ad hominem.
$500 million may make more of a difference than presumed. For a $500 million reward, I would not be surprised to see venture capital flowing towards firms set up specifically to find Bin Laden. A company that has ex-intelligence, informants, and high technology people on their books should be able to find the money they need to go set up in Pakistan and run an operation to find him.
$500 million may also be large enough to get the attention of the Pakistan and Afghanistan governments.
Welcome to our company which sells all kinds of eve isk.
Comments on this entry are closed.