Homeland Security Intelligence

Many of the current differences we see today between the federal, state and local law enforcement intelligence stemmed from prior to the September 11 attack. Prior to this attack many states lacked a robust intelligence capability, as it was the primary role of federal agencies to protect the United States from both foreign and domestic terrorist threats. In an attempt to mitigate future attacks of this nature state, local, and

While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is one, centralized agency, securing the homeland involves the cooperation and collaboration of many, different agencies and organizations ranging from local law enforcement to national agencies such as the NSA, CIA, and FBI. Each of these agencies contributes to the development of homeland security intelligence. By carefully analyzing and commenting on the objectives, tasks, strengths, weaknesses, and roles of each agency, a larger picture emerges regarding the capabilities and limitation of intelligence in supporting homeland security efforts.

2). Domestic terrorism is usually committed by citizens of the United States, and documentation of terrorist activities on American soil have dated back to the 1950s. The 1970s heighten domestic terrorism by a “rash of skyjacking”, that is, taking a commercial airline hostage (Sauter & Carafano, 2012). Skyjacking incidents compelled the FBI and CIA to develop undercover strategies to enforce terrorist groups; however, these tactics lead to civil right violations. The federal agencies covert tactics and aggressive intelligence collection, “prompted congressional hearings and led to dramatic restrictions on domestic intelligence operations, including the creation of a bureaucratic wall between intelligence gathering and law enforcement” (Sauter & Carafano, 2012, p. 25). The “wall” that was previously stated halted information sharing between the intelligence community and local law enforcement. Communication and information sharing prevents redundancy in high priority investigations, and it could also provide first responders advance notice in life threatening

Crimes are the result of individuals that do not follow established laws of the land. Criminals can either be individuals or they can be organized groups. The best way for law enforcement to handle the challenges of criminal element is to understand their strategies and then counter them. The purpose of this paper is to review domestic terrorism-related intelligence and how it is related to criminal intelligence. Using criminal intelligence is the first step in dealing with criminal elements. The data is compiled, analyzed, and then sent out in an

Upon analyzing 9/11 it was clear to focus on the limitations that the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency had faced. Security breaches and poor intelligence sharing were just some of the critical failures that were encountered. Moreover, the main focus is pointed towards the miscommunication between these two agencies. Evidently, the execution and tactical strategies went unnoticed despite the apparent red flags that presented themselves, in addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency failure to pursue threats and establish a baseline of security resulted in the disaster of 9/11. In conjunction to these mistakes, the restriction of shared information

The terrorist attack that occurred on September 11, 2001 (9/11) is arguably the greatest tragedy the United States has ever faced. This attack was widespread, coordinated and devastating in nature. Many people claim that the government failed to protect us from this event and that it should have been prevented. Over the Course of this paper, we will examine that claim. We will examine how the Intelligence community failed to prevent the 9/11 terror attack. This paper will also examine how the Intelligence community could have used its assets more effectively. The two biggest factors in this attack were the lack of information sharing and lack of action taken on received intelligence. After discussing how those two factors facilitated the 9/11

Two of the important aspects that’s caused the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 to take place was the lack of communication between the FBI, CIA and other various government bodies and pointless bureaucratic standoffs that handicapped counterterrorism efforts. In addition, the United States underestimated the power of al-Qaeda. Prior to 9/11 the United States were aware of multiple threats and events that had taken place, but the lack of communication between departments made it imposable to know that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on US soil. In July 1998, after kidnapping Ahmed Salama Mabruk and another member or jihad the CIA cloned a laptop computer, which contained al-Qaeda organization charts and a roster of Jihad members, but

Subsequent to 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon which compelled the U.S. to imagine the unconceivable. That day things went really wrong, because that was the day that terrorist decided to make their presences know by attacking us. They evolved from using bombs to using airplanes to deliver as there attack weapon because it would cause lethal fatalities on U.S. soil. This was never done before and we were not prepared to handle such a massive attack. This paper will investigate what went wrong before and after 9/11, the effects of post 9/11, surveillance surge on state and local policing, what was the problem why the C.I.A. and the F.B. I. did not communicate with each other, analyze our current and past laws in regards to the dissemination of information between state, local authorities, and federal authorities, and to recommend changes or reforms to policies that are obsolete. We understand that local law enforcement and state agencies will bring specific advantages (there strength) from there organizations, and they will also bring their inherited weaknesses. Thereby, they will bring one important thing to the table which is how they collect local intelligence; as well as them being able to address some of their weaknesses. For example, lack of analytical capacity in order to fully use the data they collect. This paper builds and contributes to how things were before and after 9/11, and the types of changes that were made within law

The Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. is mandated to deal with terrorism problem that has a long history in the U.S. Terrorism has been a threat to U.S. security since the 1800. Terrorists continue to use powerful secret communication strategies and unexpected tools to achieve their intention in the U.S. soil. For example, the 9/11 terrorism attack that killed the highest number of American citizens in history succeeded because terrorist used hijacked passenger planes to perform the attack (Lutz and Lutz, 2013). Although the most notorious terrorism activity in the U.S. soil was performed by Islamic extremist, several other groups among them black militancy, anti-liberal, anti-government, Jewish extremist, fascist extremists, and Palestinian militancy among others have been reportedly caused a terrorist activity in the U.S. in the past and their continued existence still remain a major threat to the U.S. security (Lutz and Lutz, 2013). The counter-terrorism policy administered through the Bureau of Counterterrorism aims at partnering with local security agents, multilateral organizations, non-state actors and foreign governments to defeat local and global terrorism. The policy employs high level of coordinated strategies in securing international partnership to document and monitor and act appropriately to Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) as emerging organizations that coordinate international terrorist

Homeland Security officials and law enforcement are not constrained from sharing information in a timely and accurate fashion before, during and after a terrorist attack, but instead, fail to share information with other agencies. These failures between intelligence agencies and other federal, state and local law enforcement was the reason why Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother were able to commit their heinous crimes.

The concept of border security in the U.S. shares a complex and ever changing relationship with global economics, international crime, and terrorism. In this context border security includes the protection of not only land borders, but also sea and air ports of entry. The relationship between federal, state and local authorities makes for a unique operation that must be ever changing and evolving to meet new and different threats. This massive undertaking falls directly under the Department of Homeland Security. Their mission calls on the agency to prevent the illegal flow of people and goods across U.S. air, land, and sea borders while expediting the safe flow of lawful travel and commerce; ensure security and resilience of global movement

The intelligence community of the United States is a large, robust and bureaucratic system. From this community though, the national objectives of the United States are supported through their gathering and analytical capabilities. The following paper will highlight the intelligence agencies of the Federal government as well as state and local agencies that make up the intelligence community. Within these entities are programs that develop intelligence for use in protecting the homeland as well as analyzing intelligence from across the broad intelligence community spectrum. Along with this information, an overview of the 9/11 Commissions report on intelligence sharing recommendations will be looked at. Finally the domestic and foreign intelligence issue will be defined and addressed. From these discussions the overall capabilities and limitations of intelligence and the intelligence community will be seen through the aspect of supporting the efforts of securing the homeland.

The terrorist attack of September 2001 was a tragedy that could have been prevented by the United States Intelligence professionals. The Islamic radicals such as Al Qaeda and its leader Osama Bin Laden had long declared their objectives to undermine the United States national security since the first World Trade Center Bombing on Feb 26, 1993. The 911 Commission report outlined the deficiencies of several government agencies, principally the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defense, and the National Security Council. The Commission criticized the intelligence community’s effort in anticipating and proactively engaging in counterterrorism to protect and defend the nation from terrorist threats.

Following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Flight 93 on September 11th, 2001, U.S. security and intelligence leaders scrambled for an explanation. While a great many questions over what transpired on 9/11 remain unanswered even to this day, one certainty is that American intelligence experienced its most glaring historical failure since the attack on Pearl Harbor. How these intelligence failures transpired is, according to the 9/11 Commission's report as published in 2004, the product of two substantial conditions: first, that the U.S. intelligence community was highly splintered, decentralized and absent of coordination; second, that the CIA and other key security agencies had no clearly defined or actionable plan for defense against a terrorist attack or a campaign of such attacks.

Questions surrounding the events of 9/11 were met with controversy, confusion, and uncertainty. The biggest and probably the most important question asked was; how did this happen? Amidst the speculations and conspiracy theories, the one thing to be sure; there was a lack of communication between intelligence agencies. In the weeks and months following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a plethora of reports and