Gathered Intelligence Case Study

DNI Negroponte stated “The aim was to direct the required changes in intelligence practices but to accomplish that goal by empowering the intelligence agencies themselves to help lead the reform agenda.” Taking this approach Negroponte was able to mitigate the inherent weakness of his position by reaching out to the various agencies and getting them to advance his agenda. One of the ways he did this was by overhauling the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), the DNI “changed the process to ensure multiple intelligence agencies contributed to the PDB, which fostered collaboration, distributed the daily production burden, and encouraged agencies not accustomed to writing for the Oval Office to improve the quality of their product.” Moreover, Negroponte leveraged his direct access to the president in the PDB to continue to effect reform in the IC. “All of these meetings with the President reinforced and often drove the DNI’s intelligence reform

In my opinion, one of the main intelligence failures of 9/11 was the lack of information sharing, an issue that has plagued the Intelligence Community (IC) for years; federal agencies chose when and with whom they shared collected intelligence all under the umbrella of ‘secrecy’ and the ‘need-to-know.’ The 9/11 Commission Report found that there were two weaknesses in the IC and operational capabilities during the conduction of counter terrorism.

Congress has for a long time has tried in various ways to oversee the intelligence community which have shown to be sometime controversial, and a very difficult responsibility. What make this task so hard is the secrecy and sensitivity intelligence information finding, the sources, and the methods in which the information is obtain. Congressional oversight has evolved since the mid-1970s and a lot more since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The critics about Congressional oversight by some as being inadequate, ineffective, or worse, while at the same time proposal that was made in the 9/11 commission report was met with challenges from within the Legislature Branch and from the Executive Branch

Issues pertaining to Intelligence oversight are intricate ; complicated at best and confusing at worst . By the virtue of its very nature , intelligence and open scrutiny do not mix although that is what Congress is mandated to do . Historically , the debate over Intelligence reform & oversight was a bloody uphill battle between the legislative & executive bodies . To further illustrate that point , a study that researched history of 58 of congressional record , titled “ US INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

Congress built upon the reforms of the 1970s by passing the Intelligence Oversight Act in 1980. This Act was an amendment to the Hughes-Ryan Act and obligated the IC to report covert actions to both the SSCI and the HPSCI prior to their implementation, unlike the ambiguous previous requirement of a timely manner. The Intelligence Oversight Act was noteworthy in that it constrained the intelligence community more than any previous legislation (Riley 2010). The two biggest shortfalls I see to the system is the number of contributors there are to the system on such a large scale. When I think about all of the redundancy built within the system, I think about all of the possible breakdown in communications that could take place. The second shortfall I see is the legislative leverage that is held over the Intelligence community. I personally believe this to be a mistake because this power could be held in a negative manner and to gain a political stance or agenda. The Congress can withhold money and resources, can leak information to the media and which could cause a mission or operation to

Various factors like the nature of bureaucratic organizations, unsuccessful diplomacy, lack of military actions, legislators, the uneven structure of the Federal government, advances in technology, backdrops of police surveillance, and policy formation promote organizational problem s in U.S intelligence communities. Intelligence officials and law enforcement experts have made conscious effort in handling terrorist threats before 9/11 attack. Unsuccessful diplomacy and the uneven structure of the Federal government accelerated organizational problems and absence of information sharing among the intelligence agencies. U.S Intelligence strategies have failed to recognize their new enemy and intelligence agencies lacked resources and manpower. U.S Intelligence agencies like CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency have faced organizational crisis from the side of Federal government and bureaucrats, and this organizational crisis contributed failure in their activities.

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence “post 9/11 investigations proposed sweeping change in the Intelligence Community, resulting in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA). The IRTPA created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to oversee a 17-organization Intelligence Community (IC) and improve information sharing and ensure integration across the nation's IC.” The efforts of the ODNI and the IC to find and kill Usama bin Laden (UBL) following the events of 9/11 were more than sufficient in achieving their mission. It may have taken the IC 10 years of working together to successfully track down the location where UBL was hiding in Pakistan, but they did it and

This led to a lack of communication between these agencies as the federal government followed their intelligence sharing policies leaving everyone else on the outside looking in. On top of this, the different federal agencies never developed appropriate methods of sharing intelligence information amongst themselves. This provision of the Patriot Act has helped to change this problem, and has now opened lines of communication within the entire law enforcement community. This should result in better intelligence gathering as different law enforcement agencies may develop different pieces of the same puzzle and now can put them all

The CIA is one of the U.S. foreign inteligency agencies, responsible for getting and analyzing information about foreign government, corporations, individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. government. The State Department 's Bureau or intelligence

At the same time the information gathered could prevent another large scale attack on the United States. One suggestion is to merge all the different agencies that gather intelligence into a single domestic intelligence agency which may be easier to oversee and prevent abuse similar to Great Britain’s MI5. But changing the whole construct could cost a lot and burden the budget (Burch,

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

To effectively analyze programs, intentions and ideological motives of Hezbollah several collection programs of the five types could be utilized to gather intelligence on Hezbollah. Collected information must undergo further conversion before it reaches the analysis phase to be used against Hezbollah (Gay, 2005) First, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) could be used to gather intelligence information from open sources such as websites, social media sources, publishing’s and news outlets in the Middle East and even other countries where Hezbollah has an influence or followers. OSINT can be gathered in Palestinian enclaves in other countries as well.

The attack on the World Trade Center was not the first attack and was not the first time the US Intelligence Community had heard of Al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden. The role of counterintelligence from both sides the US and Al-Qaeda, lent to the information flow not only form the attackers but also to the ones who would ultimately respond. The FBI, the CIA, the DIA, have integral parts in these series of events from the information collection to the information flow. In a time where it was realized that Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism have a similar need, as well as information sharing across agencies, have led to the CI and IC we see today.

intelligence, he briefs the President, has authority to develop the budget for the national intelligence effort and manage appropriations made by Congress, and, to some extent, can transfer personnel and funds from one agency to another.3 I believe that the creation of the DNI position had been on the table for a few years, but the intelligence failures of communication between the agencies and being able to connect the dots to see the events leading up to 9/11 was the last drop in the bucket. I do not think that this organization has worked out all there kinks along with the other organizations in the Intelligence Community completely being open with them, however, I do feel that their roles and placement in the chain is a much needed

Intelligence collection and apprehension of criminals have occurred for many years; however, with the exception of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, these actions were performed by different organizations. Nonetheless, roles and responsibilities have changed since the attacks on September 11, 2001. Intelligence-led policing and the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing program were incorporated, and fusion centers were established to help gather intelligence from different levels of the government. Although law enforcement at the local, state, and tribal levels aid in intelligence collection, it is important to ensure that intelligence gathered to protect national security and law enforcement