A classic bureaucratic blame game is happening in the wake of the nearly successful airplane bombing by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The CIA, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), among others, each have a role in the failure to catch him before he got on board with a bomb.
The U.S. is the best in the world at collecting raw intelligence, especially signals intelligence (SIGINT) and geospatial intelligence (GEOINT). The SIGINT folks at the National Security Agency did their jobs, collecting important intercepts and sharing them with the other intel agencies.
The failure lay in connecting NSA’s broad warning of an imminent al Qaeda attack using a Nigerian operative with the CIA’s specific tips regarding Abdulmutallab — tips practically handed to them on a silver platter by the man’s father in November.
This is a pattern with the CIA. They very often collect useful information and neglect to share it with the people who need it most. Langley had extensive information on two of the 9/11 hijackers, detailing their al Qaeda ties, yet this information did not find its way to the FBI, who back then operated the nation’s “No Fly List.” The CIA is a proud, provincial organization which longs for the days when it was practically the sole analytical shop for threats to American security.
The 9/11 Comission — and the legislation which sought to implement its recommendations, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2005 — sought to force the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community to move past their provincial interests and work together, through the new NCTC, to stop terrorist threats. The CIA and the Defense Department, who combined eat up most of the intelligence budget, pushed back against the reforms and weakened the final version of the bill.
But that hasn’t stopped old CIA hands from defending the agency:
“Last week’s incident is a reminder that rearranging the government organization chart trying to find bureaucratic or organizational solutions to problems about ‘connecting the dots’ and the like, is misplaced,” said Pillar, a former CIA analyst who teaches at Georgetown. “It’s a misdiagnosis. … How the government wiring diagram exactly happens to be arranged is not the cure-all here.”
This is a dishonest, if partially true analysis. The integration of the intelligence community is incomplete, so claiming that “rearranging the government organization chart … is not the cure-all” does not mean it is “misplaced.” Strengthening of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — which contains the NCTC — is a necessary step forward. Don’t let CIA-backers let you believe otherwise.
