9/11: The Failure of Strategic Intelligence

Professor Goodman analyses the failure of US intelligence prior to 9/11 setting the context in the 1980s and 1990s. He dissects the flaws of the CIA, FBI and the Pentagon. He argues that the State Department should be strengthened because its capabilities are the most important. He also recommends that the FBI be split in two and that the CIA's budget be disclosed.     

The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks: A Failure of Policy Not Strategic Intelligence Analysis

Abstract

The 9/11 terrorist attacks have been intensively examined as both tactical and strategic intelligence failures but less attention has been paid to the policy failures which preceded them. Perhaps this is due to the presumption that intelligence analysis influences decision-making as a precursor to and foundation for policy. This assumption about the influence of analysis on decision deserves a much closer examination. The 9/11 terrorist attacks provide a good case to study for greater understanding of the influence, or lack of influence, that intelligence analysis has on decision-making. Specifically, the 9/11 Commission Report identifies as a significant failure the lack of a National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat between 1998 and 2001, and implies that if one had been produced it might have helped enable decision-makers to prevent the 9/11 attacks. In other words, a failure of strategic intelligence analysis lay at the foundation of the failure to prevent 9/11. But was this really the case? This article takes a closer look at the case of the missing National Intelligence Estimate by first evaluating what decision-makers knew about the threat prior to the 9/11 attacks, the policies they were implementing at the time, and the extent to which the hypothetical National Intelligence Estimate described by the 9/11 Commission would have mattered in terms of influencing their judgement and policy for the better. It concludes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were more a failure of policy than strategic intelligence analysis.     

Institutions, Ideology, and the Tragedy of the Commons: West Texas Groundwater Policy

West Texas is the setting for an unintended experiment in commonsresource management. Dispersed, autonomous, local groundwaterdistricts use nonregulatory strategies to promote conservationand groundwater quality. The central force driving this organizationalform appears to be ideological. West Texans seek alternativesto state management of groundwater pumping. This study useskey-informant interviews to evaluate the strength of ideologyin explaining West Texas groundwater policy and to provide atheoretical framework for discussing the importance of the "localsolution.’ Time-series data substantiate the claim thatlocal groundwater districts succeed in slowing depletion rates.     

从9·11事件到伊拉克战争泥潭——布什政府言论的历史

围绕美国在伊拉克战争受挫过程描述布什政府危机言论的历史。布什总统9·11之后发表了煽情的夸大危机的言论,反恐备战和占领伊拉克过程中将此类言论充分展开,美国陷入战争泥潭后此类言论一度达到高潮,布什第二届总统任期中,他的立场坚定的美名就已失去了修辞的魅力。     

9/11 and the FBI: The organizational roots of failure

Public discussion about the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks has focused on the human causes of tragedy – on individual mistakes, failures of leadership, and the power plays between intelligence officers in the field and policymakers in Washington. But closer examination of the FBI suggests that organizational weaknesses are the root cause of poor agency performance. Longstanding deficiencies in the FBI's organizational structure, culture, and incentive systems proved crippling in the 1990s, when the Cold War ended and the terrorist threat emerged. These lingering weaknesses ultimately prevented the bureau from capitalizing on 12 separate opportunities that might have disrupted the 9/11 plot.     

Securing the Globe: Intelligence and the Post-9/11 Shift from 'Liddism' to 'Drainism'

Significant shifts have been underway in security intelligence agencies and processes since the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States. Whereas the previous quarter of a century had seen a considerable democratization of intelligence, the article examines whether UK and US government responses risk the re-creation of 'security states'. Changes since 9/11 in law, doctrine, the intelligence process - targeting, collection, analysis, dissemination and action - and oversight are considered and it is concluded that there is a danger of the rebirth of independent security states.     

Sovereignty and its Presuppositions: Before 9/11 and After

Is the modern states system in terminal decline? Are we witnessing a great transformation in that regard? Are the events of 9/11 indicative of that? Or is state sovereignty evolving, yet again, in response to scientific, technological, economic and social changes – as it has done throughout the post-medieval era of its existence? That latter line of argument is put forward in this essay.     

The American Right and the Framing of 9/11

On September 11th, 2001, 2 hijacked airliners were crashed into the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. The Bush administration's response, both in regard to civil liberties at home and the launching of military action abroad, has been the subject of considerable controversy. As we might expect, the Bush administration's framing of events met with acclaim among many on the American right But here, as elsewhere on the political spectrum, how to understand and react to 9/11 was also the subject of bitter dispute, a dispute that sheds new light on the ongoing arguments among American conservatives in the aftermath of the Cold War.     

Prometheus embattled: A post-9/11 report card on the National Security Agency

Five years after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the National Security Agency (NSA) has risen to the position of being the largest and most powerful intelligence agency in the US. Working in close conjunction with its English-speaking partners overseas, NSA is today the most prolific producer of top-quality intelligence information reaching senior US government policymakers and field commanders. But press reports over the past year concerning the Agency's controversial domestic eavesdropping program and problem-plagued modernization effort, have raised serious questions once again about the competency of the Agency's long-troubled management practices, as well as whether NSA, at the behest of the Bush administration, exceeded its legal authority by extending its operations into the US for the first time since the mid-1970s in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.     

Terrorism and the Railroads: Redefining Security in the Wake of 9/11

This article examines the impact of the 9/11 attacks on railroad security. Railroad security has been traditionally defined as a problem of trespass and liability for deaths, injuries, and property damage sustained or caused by trespassers. It argues that the private freight railroad industry, not government, has largely directed the efforts to prevent terrorism and share information on suspected terrorist threats, through the prompt formation of a loosely coupled network of organizations coordinated by the industry trade association, the American Association of Railroads. The freight railroad network approach is contrasted with the efforts of Amtrak to gain public funds for its security efforts by connecting its survival with homeland security. Kingdon's model of the policy process is used to explain how 9/11 has presented an opportunity for railroads to use policy windows to gain benefits for the industry while at the same time resisting possible reregulation. It contrasts the network approach with the traditional hierarchical-bureaucratic form of organization used in the design of the Department of Homeland Security, and suggests it poses a valuable case study to see how information can be shared between widely divergent types of organizations, and test how best to prevent future terrorist events.     

The Limits of Control: The Market State,Divided Power,and the Response to 9/11

ABSTRACT

The 9/11 attacks demanded a response from the U.S. government, but designing and executing that response was not easily done. The United States is an advanced market society in which power is highly dispersed. Federal policymakers were confronted with challenges that we now regard as typical of the network form of governance. Their ability to act decisively was constrained by public law, by the political influence and superior knowledge of private industry, and by widespread skepticism about the legitimacy of federal authority. While many commentators worried about the excessive concentration of power in the federal executive branch after 9/11, it might be more accurate to say that the post-9/11 period was typified by a prolonged, and often unsuccessful, effort to induce cooperation and coordination by a range of public and private actors.     

Good literature and bad history: The 9/11 commission's tale of strategic intelligence

Uncritical acceptance of the findings of the 9/11 Commission has obscured how the commission intentionally misrepresented pre-attack strategic intelligence on the threat from Al Qaeda. The commission staff used such techniques as highly selective use of material, partial truths, irrelevant references, plays on words, quotations out of context, and suggestive language leading to false inferences to portray as weak what had been a strong strategic analytical performance. The commission's misrepresentation corrupted history, damaged public understanding of the role of intelligence in counterterrorism, and helped to build support for a reorganization scheme that has made US counterterrorist intelligence worse rather than better.