Eyes on Spies: The 9/11 attacks were the clearest possible call for effective national intelligence. Why are we still waiting?
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Ten years after 9/11, the least reformed part of America’s intelligence system is not the CIA or the FBI, but Congress. The September 11 terrorist attacks sparked major efforts to transform executive branch intelligence agencies such as the CIA and the FBI. These include the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the most sweeping intelligence restructuring since the establishment of the CIA in 1947; the formation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which combined twenty-two agencies and two hundred thousand employees to provide “one face at the border”; dramatic initiatives to transform the FBI from a law enforcement to a domestic intelligence agency; and the proliferation of more than seventy regional, state, and local terrorist fusion centers to integrate terrorist-threat reporting across the country.
Although reforms have generated some major successes—including the killing of Osama bin Laden this year—not all intelligence improvement efforts have actually produced improvements. Some reforms have failed. Many have not gone far enough or fast enough. Others have proven counterproductive, creating more red tape and fatigue than results. Recent terrorist plots, including the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, the 2009 Christmas Day underwear bomber, and the May 2010 Times Square car bomb plot, remind us all too well that serious weaknesses remain in the American intelligence system.
Despite this record, it is clear that the seventeen agencies that comprise the United States intelligence community are expending considerable energy attempting to adapt to ever-changing terrorist threats. As one senior FBI official put it, “This is all I do, OK? Twenty-four/seven, 365 days a year. I don’t have a wife. I don’t have kids. It’s all I think about.” The same is true in the field. “The burnout rate in my Al-Qaeda squad is terrible,” noted one FBI agent in May 2010. “And these are agents who have done other CT [counterterrorism] work, where the pace is already tough. They’re just getting crushed by the load.” Just above the doorway that leads to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center hangs a sign that reads, “Today’s date is September 12, 2001.” Spend any time there, or in a military unit in Afghanistan, the New York Police Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or any of the other federal intelligence agencies charged with collecting and analyzing intelligence, and you will quickly realize just how many people are working feverishly to adapt to what they call, simply, “the mission.”
“This is all I do, OK?” one senior FBI official said of the antiterror effort. “Twenty-four/seven, 365 days a year … it’s all I think about.”