Jane’s Intelligence Weekly Comments on Obama’s Criticisms of U.S. Intelligence Community Failings

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Robert Munks, Americas editor for Jane’s Intelligence Weekly, commented today that “President Obama’s 7 January criticism of systemic failings within the intelligence community illustrates that the huge task of overhauling an unwieldy, multi-agency security apparatus after 9/11 has not yet been completely achieved. However, his measured response to the aftermath of the failed Detroit plot avoids further and unnecessary institutional reforms that would be destabilising and even cosmetic”

Munks continued, “What is now needed is a genuine push within the U.S. intelligence community to achieve greater inter-agency coordination, eschewing the turf wars of the past for properly streamlined operations and analysis, as well as ensuring that procedures within bodies such as the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) are sufficiently rigorous.”

Nevertheless, it is also vital to stress that the disparate nature of the terrorist threat – along with frequently unpredictable innovations in terrorist tactics – means that future intelligence gaps and failures remain inevitable. Refining existing systems to reduce the potential for gaps and failures to a minimum is now the priority for Obama’s administration.

“In the meantime, Western democracies will continue to work on the basis that the possibility of future terrorist attacks is impossible to eliminate, and that prevention and incident response strategies are equally as important as intelligence collection and analysis,” concluded Munks.

Additional Background From Robert Munks, Americas editor, Jane’s Intelligence Weekly

The profound shake-up of the U.S. intelligence community following 9/11 included the creation of the post of Director of National Intelligence (DNI), currently held by Dennis Blair, with a brief to better co-ordinate the country’s 16 separate intelligence agencies. This inevitably led to friction with the CIA, which had previously enjoyed primacy in central analysis and presentation of intelligence.

Differences over responsibilities between the DNI and CIA continued into 2009: Blair wished to be able to appoint non-CIA representatives of his office to foreign embassies and international organisations in rare circumstances; he wanted DNI oversight of CIA covert operations, where previously the CIA had been able to report directly to the president; and he wanted to name the intelligence community representatives to meetings of the National Security Council (NSC).

Arbitration by National Security Adviser James Jones settled these jurisdictional issues in November 2009 by allowing CIA station chiefs to continue as overseas DNI representatives, while Blair would be allowed to name his representatives to the NSC. On CIA covert operations, the CIA would continue to report directly to the president although reporting its oversight findings to the DNI. Overall, the CIA therefore made some bureaucratic gains, although leadership of the intelligence community by the DNI was explicitly re-affirmed.

Instances such as this illustrate the extent to which resolution of inter-agency disputes remains absolutely key to achieving better coordination and therefore addressing terrorist threats. Also of prime importance will be reviewing procedures and IT systems for sharing intelligence to ensure that reports emanating from HUMINT and SIGINT operations abroad are rapidly fed into the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) and immediately flagged, where necessary, as actionable intelligence to agencies such as the FBI, responsible for maintaining the no-fly watchlists. The ability of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board a flight to Detroit, despite the existence of several pieces of actionable intelligence suggesting he represented a threat, was the preeminent failing of the system in the 25 December plot.

Jane’s Intelligence Weekly is a publication of IHS Jane’s, an IHS (NYSE: IHS) company.

To interview Robert Munks, Americas editor, Jane’s Intelligence Weekly, please contact Mandy Castle, senior manager public relations IHS Jane’s.

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