Kent And Gates Approach Essay

Paper 1: What are the capabilities and limitations of intelligence in supporting homeland security efforts?

The analysis is then given to consumers and policy makers, once it is checked by the analyst supervisor and peers. The analyst should also be ready to give a briefing on short notice. But both the analyst and the policy maker or consumer have to be aware of at all times, is that the intelligence field does not know everything. “On any given subject, the intelligence community faces what is in effect a field of rocks, and it lacks the resources to turn over every one to see what threats to national security may lurk underneath” (Pillar).

Good evening to all. I hope all is well this week. As many of you have stated, I thought I had a descent grasp of the United States Intelligence oversight. However, to my surprise I found that I actually did not have as good of an understanding as I thought. My shortcoming was in understanding just how convoluted the system is. The system has evolved over the years just as many things do. However, the system still has a long way to go before it’s as effective as it could be. Former Under Secretary Charles Allen noted that “virtually any terrorist attack on the homeland that one can imagine must exploit a border crossing, a port of entry, a critical infrastructure, or one of the other domains that the department has an obligation to

In this paper the subject of interest is the role of congress in the oversight of strategic intelligence, or the lack there of. Does congress have a proper role in the oversight of strategic intelligence? If not what should the proper role be? These are the questions best answered by looking at the history of congressional over sight and where it is at today. The next few pages will cover the topics above and shed light on what it is congress calls oversight.

The United States (U.S) Intelligence community has come a long way since the revolutionary war. After winning independence from England, the U.S would not invest much into intelligence or foreign policy until the 20th century. Foreign policy was simply not a priority for our young nation, having an ocean on eastern and Western boarders of the country severely limited potential threats. President Franklin D. Roosevelt would be the first president since Washington to understand the importance of intelligence and lay the groundwork for what we now consider national intelligence. Unfortunately, it has taken two catastrophic failures in intelligence for the U.S to realize the need for good intelligence and take steps to improve itself. The

Since the birth of America the United States has made the use of intelligence known through the purposes of warfare, defense, and diplomacy. Intelligence is the gathering of information which is analyzed and converted into data to serve as an asset to the decision making process. This is possible by identifying what the national interest is at the time. We use intelligence to provide information based off everyday observations and activities to give us a sense of patterns to form an idea of the “big picture” and identify what threats may be imminent at the time. With reference to Homeland Security Intelligence is not to solely acquire life threatening data, rather than should be to analyzes and share information between the private sector,

As our readings covered this week, the attacks on September 11, 2001 opened up a whole new world of requirements that are needed in order to defeat the terrorist threat the world is faced with now. The domestic threat that creeped up onto the shores of the United States on that fateful day raised significant concern on how it could prevented in the future. As James Burch mentioned in our reading, “the very term domestic intelligence raises significant questions, as well as concerns about civil liberties” (Burch 2010, 184). He went on to state even further that even though domestic intelligence may raise concerns about civil liberties, “it also supports an equally vital need – the preservation of the nation-state” (Burch 2010, 184). The US was forced to adapt and by doing so had to create a new set of rules and put certain safeguards and methods in

One of the most controversial issues regarding our intelligence agency is the consolidation of the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies in a massive post 9/11 overhaul, this policy problem is about how to restructure our current intelligence system for a better national security. A number of critics and public polls stated that this act could add potential a large amount of unnecessary cost to bureaucracy, on the contrary, supporters claim that this help the agencies share information and work on the same goal.

Prior to 9/11, the structural framework of the U.S. national security apparatus was based on “organizational stovepiping.” In other words, various government agencies pursued their own goals and objectives in the absence of any real measure of synchronicity and outside of a larger strategic context. The lack of synchronization among government agencies was the main cause of the inability of the U.S. national security apparatus to prevent the 9/11 terror attacks from taking place. This is evidenced by the fact that the 9/11 Commission cited deficiencies in information-sharing and coordination among government agencies, both of which are essential to strategic agency synchronization, as the primary reasons

In this presentation, I will discuss some examples of failed cooperation and the impact on the failure to prevent the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001; the likelihood of improving cooperation, given the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission; verify whether the reforms recommended have been implemented and of course give some recommendation if any. However, before I dabble into that, I will like to start with intelligence definition, brief history and evolution of intelligence in the United.

When I examine recent blunders within the Intelligence Community (IC) such as the 2012 Benghazi Attack, I notice that there are significant concerns regarding the IC’s capabilities in intelligence analysis and policy support. The IC’s focus on using technical methods of analysis often fail to address cultural and political aspects that could bring perspective of how key pieces of evidence were brought to light. Thus, technical forms of analysis have a high potential to be flawed and misleading, which could also help support untested assumptions of policy makers. I am motivated to develop security policies that would diversify intelligence gathering to bring background and contextual information that would also overlap with technical analysis.

The United States Intelligence community draws on advanced technology and analytical techniques. An intelligence process that sets objectives, collects, analyzes, and report findings, with feedback loops integrated throughout. Explicitly, the intelligence community advantages technology and tradecraft within a proscribed process. However, estimation of threats and decision-making are outcomes of human thinking. Analysts and policymakers create mental models, or short cuts to manage complex, changing environments. In other words, to make sense of ambiguous or uncertain situations, humans form cognitive biases. Informed because of personal experience, education, and specifically applied to intelligence analysis, Davis

Way before technology was available to everyone, policymakers relied on the Intelligence Community to provide the critical answers to them in order to create policies and craft national security. Policymakers understood that the Intelligence Community was there to provide information to what they did not know. Essentially, the Intelligence Community’s role was to support the policymaker by filling in the knowledge gaps. As technology progressed further, traditional means of leaning on the analysts from the IC for information has decreased, as more responsibility has been given to outside influences/consumers to conduct business. Outside influences refer to any group that is not part of the Intelligence Community. Groups such as think

This “intermestic” condition demands a national security strategy that adequately addresses both international and domestic threats (Snow, 2014, p. 1). However, since the end of the Cold War the United States has failed to create a widely accepted national security strategy (Korb, 2003, p. 1). It is imperative, therefore, that decision-makers take a realistic and comprehensive inventory of the threats to national security and be willing to commit to a strategy that will serve to guide American policies and actions.

Abstract: In this analysis, it is shown throughout the many different agencies how the intelligence cycle is interpreted. Within each of the different agencies everyone has their own way of obtaining information and different policies that they follow, within the constriction of the US constitution. The intelligence cycle states the many different steps taken to obtain intelligence from domestic to foreign information.