9/11 Terrorist Attack Case Study

The Intelligence Community has had successes and failures, many of which have made history. One of the most prominent failures in U.S history was the attacks on September 11, 2011. Now most people would start to read this essay and think they know everything about what happened that day because it has been so publicized. However, for me it was different. Yes, I was alive when it happened, but I was too young to understand. The September 11th attacks have been of particular interest to me due to the fact that they happened right in my backyard. One of them even occurred in the same state in which I live. For this reason I wanted to know why an event of this magnitude occured in the U.S. The safety of Americans has changed since then leaving many people affected. The collection and analysis of intelligence in our nation changed dramtically after the 9/11 attacks.

Beginning in 2001 Intelligence about the impending nature of an attack was increasing, not only from US Intelligence sources but also from 11 other countries such as Britain, Israel, India, Egypt, Morocco and even a top Taliban commander from Afghanistan (Thompson.) Beginning in August warnings become coming in from everywhere, foreign governments, CIA and FBI sources and so on however, next to none of this information was shared between the many intelligence agencies. In April, NORAD launched a training scenario in which the pentagon was to be incapacitated by a hijacked airliner however the Joint Chiefs of Staff disregarded the scenario as “too unrealistic” (September 11 attacks advance-knowledge debate.) On august 19th the Israeli’s gave US intelligence personnel credible information including, the list of 19 suspected terrorist’s names and the fact that a large aircraft would be the primary weapon involved. The names were not shared by the CIA with other intelligence agencies (Robinson.)

September 11, 2001 forever impacted America and gave a new challenge to our government that went far beyond any challenges that a natural disaster had presented in decades. The terrorist attacks were definitely a wake up call to being more prepared for natural disasters and reevaluating our intelligence agency jobs and communication levels. In chapter 2, one of the key points that Kettl discuss is connecting the dots. We can see that in the midst of 9/11, America focused on the nation’s intelligence services for answers. As the American people we wanted to know, who were the hijackers, where was security and most importantly, and who do we hold accountable? Furthermore, that the intelligence agencies failed to piece together information that already had about terrorism speculations. In chapter 1, Kettl talks about the warnings and signs that the government has before catastrophes (such as September 11, Hurricane

The intelligence community has undergone some major changes in the past thirty years. During the cold war this section of defense had massive funding. There needed to be an ability to predict what the Soviet Union was planning to do and what they were actually doing in order to prevent a nuclear war. After this period in time ended there was again large changes. The budget to the intelligence community was cut astronomically because there was perceived to be less of a threat to the United States (“9/11 Intelligence Failures Report”, 2002). This misperception was actually due to a lack of ability to shift to a new changing threat. This mind set allowed many unwelcomed risks to enter into the United States.

We always had a communication issue between agencies, but when 9/11 happened it showed us just how much we needed to change how these organizations communicate, as well as change certain policies that would address these issues. Because of the lack of communication, and new requirement for terrorist attacks which can happen at any time or anywhere, this was a very harsh lesson to learn, at that pivotal time. The CIA, the FBI, and other agencies did not share all the chatter, from another terrorist or want to be terrorist. Therefore, this power point will address why this topic was chosen as an influential event, and the impact this event had on the ICS (Incident Command

The events of 9/11 showed that there were flaws in intelligence. There were failures on how government agencies connected the dots. (Blum,

It is practically impossible for a nation’s intelligence community to detect and prevent every attack on its soil. However, the American failure to uncover the 9/11 plot should be considered a massive failure considering the scope of the attack which involved careful planning, training many perpetrators, and a high profile target with many victims. Furthermore it can be demonstrated that there were many signals and opportunities to discover the plot that the intelligence machinery missed. “Hindsight is 20/20” and there needs to be an understanding of how easy it is to look back at how the intelligence gathered before the attacks should have signaled a serious threat, and thus provoked the unraveling of the 9/11 plot had the intelligence community

In the heat of extremist organizations rising up across America, ranging from white supremacy to Islamic extremism, investigating organizations as well as intelligence offices are looking for greater ways of being able to access information to preserve public safety. In the wake of September 11, 2001, the country based one of its most disastrous mishandling of intelligence in decades. It was well-documented that the information presented that Osama bin Laden was planning an attack on America had been presented and yet nothing was done.

Throughout the seventy-three year history of the Central Intelligence Agency, there have been mistakes and successes. Both the achievements and failures of the CIA have greatly influenced the history of the United States. Although intelligence activities have occurred since the birth of the United States of America, it was not until WWII that intelligence activities first became part of a centralized organization. “The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor highlighted the need to separate “signals” from “noise”.” Even though the United States had managed to break the Japanese top-secret code, the United States underestimated Japan’s capacity to follow through with such a bold attack. The failure of Pearl Harbor in 1941 emphasized the need for a

This paper will focus on the Intelligence Communities lessons learned prior to September 11, 2001 and what changes have occurred through to present day; regarding specifically information sharing. The review of literature in this paper focused to two questions: (1) Has the Intelligence Community improved its information sharing since 9/11? (2) What changes have taken place and what has been the impact of those changes?

One of the primary responses of the U.S. government after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), in addition to declaring war on terrorism, was to perform an in-depth analysis of the intelligence community. The sole purpose of this was to: (1) understand the issues that prevented or hindered the intelligence community from knowing about, stopping or mitigating attacks, and (2) determine what steps should be taken to ensure that an “intelligence failure” of similar kind would not occur again. To carry out this, Congress authorized the creation of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) with the mandate to specifically investigate the performance of the

The perception of the intelligence community prior to the September 11th attacks was basically there was virtually no “homeland security intelligence”, per se. The intelligence arena almost solely focused on activity outside the United States in an effort to keep terrorism from entering the borders. The intelligence and collection that was conducted inside the borders was done from a criminal aspect. This was executed by law enforcement agencies in an effort to keep criminals off the streets. The problem with this was there was no focus on terrorism or counterterrorism at this time.

In the aftermath of 9/11 the intelligence community (IC) felt pressure from all directions. Employees of the IC, Congress, and the general public wanted questions answered as to why our nation didn’t know an attack was imminent. This “failure” of intelligence caused a shake up within the entire IC, leading to many future changes. One such change was in communications intelligence (COMINT) collection. According to Cummings (2006), “President George W. Bush said that he authorized NSA to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and

Marrin, S. (2011). The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks: A Failure of Policy Not Strategic Intelligence Analysis. Intelligence and National Security, 26(2-3), 182-202. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2011.559140

The U.S. put greater emphasis on intelligence since September 11, 2001 events. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established and soon after the IC. The IC consists of multiple federal agencies such as the Office of the