Information Gathered And Activities During World War II

Perhaps the most important change in how the federal government was reorganized after September 11th is the creation of both the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) position and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2004 with the passage of the same IRTPA that created TSA. This concept had been first suggested in 1955 after a study by Congress then and was recommended time and again but only became a reality after the September 11th attacks drove the need for major intelligence reform home and the 9/11 Commission continued the push for the creation of such a position (ODNI, n.d., paras. 1-5). As one can see from the mission and vision of the ODNI, the importance cannot be overstated. The mission includes leading intelligence integration while having the IC produce the most insightful intelligence products possible and the vision is fully integrating the IC thus making the nation more secure (ODNI, n.d., paras. 1-2).

The 9/11 attacks opened the avenue for a scrutiny of the performance and ability of the intelligence community to detect any threats to the safety of the United States. The media, politicians, reformists and other interested parties would not comprehend how such an attack would happen without the knowledge of the intelligence community. However, it is important to consider the fact that the attack was one of its kind and could not be approached with the resources and expertise used in other initiative such as the cold war. Therefore, the need to restructure the intelligence community arose from the view that it was still operating in the mindset and spirit of the cold war even in the modern era that had seen a revolutionary change of warfare

Since 9/11, the intelligence community has improved greatly. It is not that they have been reconstructed from the ground up, or that their mission has completely changed, it is, in the community’s eye anyway, that they now all share information, no matter how important or how small. This information sharing now even includes all the way down to local and tribal authorities. The reasoning is that, even if it might be small or seem insignificant to you at your level, it may be the piece someone somewhere else in the country needs.

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.

The Testimony of Cofer Black, the Director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 1999-2002, greatly affected my thinking about the domestic intelligence ‘failures’ which led to the inability to foresee or prevent the 9/11 attacks. His testimony, paired with both concurring and clashing views from the 9/11 Commission Report, gave a persuasive ‘defense’ of the intelligence community’s actions and capabilities before September 11, 2001. Three of Black 's ‘agreements’ were particularly influential towards my understanding. First, Black presented a strong argument that the inefficiency of counterterrorism had much to do with pre-9/11 domestic priorities, which left those involved with fighting terrorism, including those acts

The Intelligence Community is a cooperative federation of sixteen separate United States government agencies that worked separately and together on matters of foreign relations and national security. One of these agencies is the Central Intelligence Agency which is to collect, analyze, evaluate, disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the President and senior US government policymakers in making decisions relating to national security. Therefore this paper will discuss Central Intelligence Agency history and the role it plays in combating acts of terrorism.

September 11 called for massive reforms for the IC. One of the biggest barriers to circumventing the attack was not being able to connect the dots because federal agencies did not talk to state and local agencies and vice versa. We needed significant change and that happened with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and revamping of FBI intelligence gathering. Now that all the agencies at all levels of government work together and filter information through fusion centers the intelligence gathered is a lot. This brings up the issue of if civil liberties are being violated gathering useless information (Burch, 2010).

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

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.

The beginning of our present day Counter Intelligence (CI) began after WWII with the combined efforts of the U.S. X-2 branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Special Intelligence Services (SIS). These offices gave way to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) responsible for countering activities of foreign intelligence services in the U.S. and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) responsible for coordinating U.S. counterintelligence activities in foreign countries. Within the framework of the development of the United States of America there was not a devised explanation for the use of intelligence within the armed forces. Spies were present during the Revolutionary war. Washington had a spy ring organized called the Culper Ring organized by Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, spying on the British in New York City. The Culper spies sent messages back to Washington divulging information on British activities at their headquarters based in New York city, as explained in Alexander Rose’s book “Washington’s Spies: the story of America’s first spy Ring”. The need for a CI mission in the U.S. during the Cold War after WWII was paramount to the protection of the U.S. against enemy treats and ability to gain information that would support the U.S. power to negotiate. During WWII the OSS and the SIS mirrored the British intelligence services structure and in combination developed methods of signals intelligence that helped to break

Counterintelligence (CI) involves actions aimed at protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage from penetration and disruption by hostile nations or their intelligence services (Lowenthal, 2014). Three main components of Counterintelligence include collection, defensive and offensive. Collection is ability to gather intelligence information about rivalry capabilities against own nation; defensive part of CI involve measures to prevent and thwarting other nations attempts to penetration into own nations intelligence system; while offensive deal with running double agents to penetrate, manipulate, exploit, and control targeted adversaries. CI is said to be the most essential aspect of the intelligence disciplines, in the sense that collecting vast quantities of secret information and produce excellent analysis of the intelligence, but ineffective counterintelligence measures may diminish confidence the final results (Van Cleave, 2013). According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (2011) “Significant advances have been made in clarifying and rectifying intelligence gaps and requirements through the formation of liaison and working relationships with other U.S. intelligence community agencies, foreign partners, the private sector, and academia”. For instance, since 2001, FBI CI program has resulted to total arrests of 249, of which 46 of them were linked to espionage. Counterintelligence (CI)

Counterintelligence has its own distinct logic as an intellectual discipline. As defined at law, counterintelligence embraces both "information gathered" and "activities conducted" to counter foreign intelligence threats. Strategic Counterintelligence is the job of US counterintelligence to identify, assess, neutralize and exploit the intelligence activities of foreign powers, terrorist groups, and other entities that seek to harm us. There is no such thing that is perfect system so we should expect some degree of flaws on strategic counterintelligence since we are dealing with offensive and defensive operations at home and abroad to protect Americans from our adversaries. Van Cleave argues issue is the potential for engaging CI collection and operations as tools to advance national security policy objectives, at the strategic level, to go on the offense to degrade hostile external foreign intelligence services and their ability to work against us.

Counterintelligence (CI) can be controversial at times. CI aims to protect a country by not only defending itself from foreign powers, but also defending itself internally as well. There are several issues with an organization or country like the United States defending itself internally. Within the United States, not only are thorough background checks and entrance criteria strict for entering the Intelligence Community (IC), but also regular CI investigations and polygraphs are conducted to ensure individuals with those top-secret clearances are not being deceitful. Outside of the IC, the United States is a melting pot for various races, cultures, and social classes. Government security clearances are meant to compartmentalize

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

According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (2011) after the 9/11 attacks, “significant advances have been made in clarifying and rectifying intelligence gaps and requirements through the formation of liaison and working relationships with other U.S. intelligence community agencies, foreign partners, the private sector, and academia”. For instance, since 2001, FBI CI program has resulted in total arrests of 249, of which 46 of them were linked to espionage. CI has