Piecing It Together
The events of Sept. 11 have given the U.S. intelligence community a green light to achieve better operations through synergy.
By Shelley Davis

Picture in your mind a group of five-year-olds playing soccer. How do they play? They run to the ball, wherever it is. Eventually, the young players figure out that the best strategy is to run not to the ball itself, but to where the ball is going to be. And that, says Army Brig. Gen. George R. Fay, deputy commander of the Army's Intelligence and Security Command (inscom), is the situation in which military intelligence finds itself today.

A decade ago, Fay asserts, the situation was more akin to a pair of sumo wrestlers, with two world superpowers staring each other down in the ring. Today, the world political environment is more like a soccer team. "A soccer team must be agile. It must play offense and defense at the same time," says Fay, adding that the mission of military intelligence in the current environment is to figure out where the ball is going to be, not where it has been. "Sept. 11 is past," he says. "That type of incident is highly unlikely to happen again."

The challenges facing America's multilayered intelligence organizations are perhaps greater than ever before. For the first time in history, largely due to unintended consequences of advances in science and technology, small groups can terrorize and threaten the stability enjoyed by larger groups. In addition to searing the national psyche and the American sense of security, Sept. 11 served to clarify the nature of the new threats facing the United States in the post-Cold War environment. Conventional battle on land, sea, or air has been eclipsed by terrorism, transfer of weapons of mass destruction, and instability and upheaval in many regions of the world.

Fay characterizes the goal of military intelligence in the post-Sept. 11 world as "zero tolerance," meaning no more victories for the terrorists. "It's our objective to figure out how to do that," says Fay. That's no easy task. "Our only guide is a blank sheet of paper," says William Black, deputy director of the National Security Agency (nsa), who describes the current state of military intelligence as a "momentous change era."

Despite the challenges, intelligence operations are on the front line in the war against terrorism. "The long pole on the tent in the strategy of defeating terrorism is intelligence," says Navy Capt. Bill McRaven, director of strategy and defense issues in the National Security Council's Office on Combating Terrorism. "We must make sure that terrorism is never a viable alternative to those seeking to create change," he says. McRaven points to the "four ds" guiding the war against terrorism: defend (the United States), diminish (conditions that spawn terrorism), deny (opportunity to terrorists), and defeat (identify, isolate, and destroy would-be terrorists).

"We need to maintain the momentum in what will clearly be a long fight," says McRaven. "And we need to clearly articulate our long-term goals, both domestically and internationally."

The best and worst of times

In some ways, these might be considered the best of times for the U.S. intelligence community. The light to move forward practically unimpeded is green, money is flowing, and critical assignments are flooding all branches of the intelligence community. And yet, the current times also could be considered the worst of times. The challenges are massive, and the expectations are high. On top of that, questions held in check in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 are beginning to be voiced. Fingers are being pointed, and Congress soon will demand answers to the tough question, "How did this happen?"

Meanwhile, the military intelligence community must continue a vast transformation that began more than a decade ago, when the Gulf War shone a spotlight on the need to alter the way in which the United States viewed the rest of the world in the post-Cold War era. Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (dia), says today's world of military intelligence already is "remarkably and dramatically transformed from where we were in 1991."

Despite much progress, especially in the areas of joint operations and improved technology, more changes are necessary. Wilson says the goal for the future will be to make "as much progress in the next 10 years in interpreting and understanding information as we have in the last 10 years in moving and disseminating information."

Shifting the emphasis

The new emphasis on interpreting intelligence is perhaps the most obvious sign of change in the intelligence community post-Sept. 11. A January 2002 Congressional Research Service report on the status of the U.S. intelligence system cited the "imbalance between resources devoted to collection and those allocated to analysis" as a major concern. nsa's Black describes the mission of America's premier code-breaking organization as "get it, know it, use it." The "get it" portion of the nsa mission traditionally has been dominant, resulting in a focus on accumulating data. The challenge of this new era has caused the agency to shift its focus to the "know it" step, says Black. "There's been a change in emphasis on where we are going in a changing time," he says. "The mission has not changed, but we go about it in a newly created way — a way that wasn't on our shelf, and ... isn't in industry."

This change in emphasis was well under way long before Sept. 11, an event that worked as an accelerant in the intelligence community. "We were full tilt into this change on Sept. 11," says Black. "Then we were really tested. The first two weeks, we worked hours equivalent to 1,000 extra people. We had people [who] didn't go home." Black says the nsa continues to run at the same full-speed-ahead schedule today. "Burnout is our biggest worry," he says, but adds, "We cannot relax for even a moment."

The theme of acceleration echoes throughout the military intelligence community. On Sept. 11, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. was in St. Louis receiving a briefing on the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (nima), of which he was scheduled to become the first civilian director a few days later. "So much for my impeccable sense of timing," says Clapper, with chagrin. After an overnight drive back to Washington, D.C., Clapper, a former head of dia, was in place on schedule Sept. 13.

"It's been an intense time; a lot more intense than I bargained for," he says. "The crisis accelerated a lot of change that was already under way at nima." Clapper calls nima "one of the most studied intelligence agencies" but says there seems to be an "expectation that somehow a miracle happens and the recommendations [from various studies] get implemented." He characterizes his focus at nima since September as "trying not to wait on a miracle" as he works toward posturing the agency "to have the best organization conducive to [making] changes."

The greatest impact of Sept. 11, says Clapper, was to speed up many transformational changes along with the emphasis on homeland security, noting that there is a "huge role for the intelligence community at large" in this area, with major policy, legal, and resource implications.

Breaking down barriers

Integrating the products and abilities of the military intelligence community, traditionally focused on missions outside the United States, into the requirements for homeland security presents a challenge. Despite recent efforts to encourage greater cooperation between intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, the Congressional Research Service reports that the concern that information from both sources may not be reaching those responsible for dealing with immediate terrorist threats has grown since Sept. 11.

But the barriers already are falling. "After Sept. 11, a lot of barriers and parochialisms disappeared overnight," says Black, with a cautionary note that many areas of increased cooperation have "less to do with policy and more to do with law and the protection of the U.S. citizen, which are not minor things to mess with."

Perhaps one of the closest collaborations since the attack has been forged between Navy and Coast Guard intelligence operations. Rear Adm. Richard B. Porterfield, director of Naval Intelligence, describes the two organizations as a team. "We had two magnificent organizations working together before [Sept. 11], but we are now living together." While these organizations may not have talked to each other in the past because of what Porterfield describes as "some arcane rivalry," he says that has changed. "We have achieved a synergy of effort. Our country is a rich environment to a [terrorist], and we have to be vigilant."

Nowhere is the juxtaposition between military intelligence and domestic law enforcement more pronounced than in the Coast Guard, which traditionally has carried both authorities. Adding to the complexity was the official integration of the Coast Guard intelligence operation into the National Foreign Intelligence Program Dec. 28, 2001, when it joined the ranks of other Department of Defense intelligence organizations as an official member of the military intelligence community. Dennis Hager, chief of the Coast Guard's Office of Intelligence, calls this combination of authorities "an exceedingly complex task."

Getting it right

The question of failure looms large before the intelligence community these days as a joint congressional investigation into the events leading up to Sept. 11 gets under way, but Wilson of the dia puts a different spin on the issue. "If we do our jobs perfectly in intelligence and law enforcement and government agencies react accordingly, the events will not occur," he says. Wilson says Sept. 11 was a national tragedy that caused the intelligence community to take a hard look inward.

Wilson is well-qualified to address the question of failure as it relates to the performance of the intelligence community before Sept. 11. Less than a year earlier, Wilson predicted a terrorist attack against the United States in congressional testimony. In retrospect, Wilson calls his testimony "tragically accurate and tragically generic," because the intelligence community did not know "where or when" such an attack would occur.

Wilson prefers to characterize the lack of warning of last year's terrorist attack as a "colossal failure of the system." He explains, "As a country, we didn't do what we had to do with our intelligence laws and resources, with our security, and with homeland defense." Wilson says he hopes that investigations into the attack will "look at the entire spectrum of the decision-making process of what we did and did not do."

The question of failure has focused most intently on Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, who steadfastly refused to accept the label of failure in his first post-Sept. 11 testimony before Congress Feb. 6. "Failure means no focus, no attention, no discipline," Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee, insisting that "those [failings] were not present in what either we or the fbi did, here and around the world."

In fact, like Wilson, Tenet had warned Congress of the threat against America. Months before Sept. 11, Tenet said he told the Senate that "Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat" to U.S. security, capable of "planning multiple attacks with little or no warning."

The missing piece, of course, was the specific plan carried out Sept. 11, which Tenet claims was "in the heads of three or four people."

Who knew what when?

The American tradition of launching immediate investigations into events of great national magnitude has been broken by the events of Sept. 11. In contrast to prior national tragedies, there has been a surprising absence of investigation as the nation's attention has centered on the subsequent war in Afghanistan. That focus is beginning to change, and the joint congressional investigation begins with hearings expected to extend through the summer.

Some members of Congress continue to press for a broader investigation of the events leading to Sept. 11, pointing to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's creation of an independent commission by executive order to examine the events leading to Dec. 7, 1941, just nine days after the Pearl Harbor attack. They recall President Lyndon Johnson's nearly immediate creation of the Warren Commission, also by executive order, Nov. 29, 1963. They point out that the report on the Challenger disaster was completed by June 1986, six months after the explosion. In contrast, the announcement of the agreement to launch a joint congressional investigation into Sept. 11 came Feb. 14, 2002, more than five months after the attack.

While some congressional leaders continue to press for an independent commission, their efforts to date have received scant notice or support. A Feb. 7 Senate Government Affairs hearing on a proposal to establish a "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States" was eclipsed in the national press by a group of Enron executives pleading the Fifth. Nonetheless, the sponsoring legislators continue to push for an investigation beyond that planned by the intelligence committees.

Among the strongest proponents of an independent commission are Sens. John McCain (R-N.M.), Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), and Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.). "We need a blue-ribbon team of distinguished Americans from all walks of life to thoroughly investigate all evidence surrounding the attacks," says McCain, adding that commission members should be "leading citizens not now holding public office but with broad experience in national affairs." Lieberman, who cosponsored legislation with McCain to establish an independent commission, says he is not convinced by those who argue that such an investigation would "distract" from the priority of fighting the war against terrorism.

Torricelli says he supports the establishment of an independent commission "if not for everyone in the nation, if not for history, if not for ensuring this will never happen again, [then] because people deserve an answer." Calling the absence of an investigation "regrettable," Torricelli notes that the increased budget allotments for the intelligence community since Sept. 11 are going to "the same institutions that failed on Sept. 11. ... We need to understand what failed before we invest in them again."

What lies ahead

Former congressman Dave McCurdy spent 14 years in the House of Representatives, including a stint as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. In testimony supporting the effort to establish an independent commission to investigate the events leading up to Sept. 11, McCurdy described the challenges facing the U.S. intelligence community as Darwinian in nature.

"Charles Darwin observed that it is [neither] the strongest nor the most intelligent that survive but the ones most responsive to change," McCurdy told the Senate Government Affairs Committee Feb. 7, 2002. He continued, "The Sept. 11 attack [was] brilliantly evil; [it was] entirely outside the box. ... Now it is our time to adapt. To win this new war, government must change how it thinks and acts and do a much better job of coordinating its assets."

With a massive transformation well under way and still daunting challenges ahead, nsa Deputy Director Black says, "I like to think that at some place and time in the future ‘they' will look back and say, ‘I wonder how they got through all this.' This is a challenge that we in the nation and in the intelligence community will have to meet in new ways for which we have no precedent on how to proceed."