Michael A. Sheehan; counterterrorism expert warned U.S. about bin Laden
Michael A. Sheehan, who led counterterrorism efforts around the globe with the United Nations, State Department and New York City Police Department, and later, as a top Defense Department official, directed the country’s Special Forces units and drone programs, died July 30 at a military hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. He was 63.
The cause was multiple myeloma, said his wife, Sita Graham Vasan.
Sheehan, who began his career as an Army Ranger, first took part in clandestine operations in Panama in 1979. Later, he was part of drug-interdiction and counterterrorism operations in Colombia, El Salvador and Honduras, scaling buildings and jumping out of helicopters as a “real-life Rambo,” in the words of a New York Daily News profile.
He helped investigate the 1993 “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia, in which two U.S. helicopters were shot down, killing 18 service members. In 2000, almost a year before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Sheehan raised alarms about Osama bin Laden and the dangers of al-Qaida.
“What’s it going to take to get them to hit al-Qaida?” he reportedly asked at the time. “Does al-Qaida have to attack the Pentagon?”
After the 9/11 attacks, Sheehan spent two years as an assistant secretary general of the U.N., coordinating antiterror efforts around the world. In 2003, he joined the New York City police as a deputy commissioner and directed what was widely recognized as one of the country’s foremost counterterrorism units. He trained thousands of police officers in how to deal with potential threats, from car bombs to nuclear weapons.
“There are few people in the country, let alone the world, that really have his knowledge and understanding of terrorism as a phenomenon and from the diversity of perspective he brought to bear on it,’’ Rand Corp. terrorism authority Bruce Hoffman told the New York Times in 2006.
Sheehan later founded an international security firm and, from 2006 to 2011, often appeared as an NBC News commentator on terrorism.
His 2008 book, “Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism Without Terrorizing Ourselves,” spelled out his sometimes unorthodox theories of fighting terrorism.
“Having spent the first twenty years of my career as a soldier,” he wrote, “the need to be on the front lines was firmly imbedded in my psyche.”
He believed the most effective way to prevent terrorist cells from attacking the United States and other countries was to stop them from forming in the first place, through diplomacy and what he called a “small-footprint” and low-cost presence in countries that gave rise to militants. He recommended that U.S. spy services and military forces “drain the swamps” through strategic operations to eliminate training camps for terrorists.
“It is important to understand that terrorism is an instrument of the weak,” he said in 2008, “and that the terrorist depends on a psychological overreaction to an attack on an innocent civilian target.”