The first few years of the twenty-first century have witnessed a transformation in the role of secret intelligence in international politics. Intelligence and security issues are now more prominent than ever before in Western political discourse as well as the wider public consciousness. Public expectations of intelligence have never been greater, and these demands include much greater disclosure of hitherto secret knowledge. Much of this can be attributed to the shock of the terrorist attacks of September 11. These events drove home the vulnerability of Western societies and the importance of reliable intelligence on terrorist threats (Scott and Jackson, 2004). For the sake of the arguments and understanding failure of intelligence I will focus my essay mostly on the US intelligence structure particularly stressing role of the CIA. As the dust from the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was still settling, the chants began: The CIA was asleep at the switch! The intelligence system is broken! Reorganize from top to bottom! (Hoge and Rose, 2001) The biggest intelligence system in the world spending upward of $30 billion a year could not prevent a group of fanatics from carrying out devastating attacks. The question: what the intelligence services have to change to fight this war? The short answer is: almost everything. As Charles Cogan states (Scott and Jackson, 2004), we face the greatest threat to our homeland in the history, following on the greatest humiliation in our history: 3,000 people killed by 19 Arab terrorists with box cutters whose sponsors had repeatedly told the world over the previous years that they were going to carry out an attack. Without the shadow of a doubt, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11 involved the worst intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor in 1941. In this essay, I will argue that it was a failure at all phases of intelligence cycle, starting from the setting of priorities and tasking , through the wide range of collection activities, to the analytical assessment and dissemination process which should have provided some warning of the event. At the same time I will propose solutions as to how the intelligence system can be improved to work efficiently.
The first part of the essay will critically evaluate – as far as I’m concerned – two biggest issues that had a major influence on intelligence failure before 9/11. That is: decentralization of intelligence agencies along with their politicization and indecisiveness and lack of cooperation both internally and externally, or in other words – within and outside the US. Following paragraphs will be mainly focused on changing existing concept of intelligence and will provide examples of failures and solutions to specific aspects such as stereotyping terrorists, easy processes of obtaining visa, role of Human Intelligence and so on.
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