Class- Politics and Process: Emerging Issues in National Security
Professor – Bobby Inman (class crosslisted in the law and lbj schools)
Week 2
Overhauling intel- mike mcconnell.
· Pre WW2, intel was fragmented, then during war crisis driven collaboration
· 1947- Truman signs national security act to integrate intelligence/military establishments and create robust structure. US goes on to build world’s best system
· post coldwar, peace dividend lead to reduction. NSA mandated vertical but not horizontal sharing. We’ve reformed, but not enough. Need agile agencies that collaborate
· Intel reform and terrorist prevention act
· Director of national intelligence – created to transform and modernize intel institutions and their relationships. Now need to integrate intel/law enforcement. Need centralized direction with decentralized execution. Need to integrate foreign/domestic
· NSA called for areas of responsibility- U.S. intelligence capabilities involve four distinct areas of responsibility: supporting the president, engaging in clandestine activities abroad in support of national policy goals, protecting the United States against Soviet penetration, and supporting strategic military operations. The director of central intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are given responsibility over the first two, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over the third, and military intelligence units over the fourth. Sticking to them would be a mistake today
· Challenge – when to surveil Americans
· 16 agencies with narrow missions. Reform with model provided by the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of the m.ilitary in the late 1980s. The Goldwater-Nichols Act created a unified military establishment and, among other things, laid the foundations for a “joint” military. It created incentives for interservice collaboration (such as requiring joint service to achieve flag rank) and promoted joint training and development. What Goldwater-Nichols did for the military, IRTPA should provide the means to do for the U.S. intelligence community.
o No agency can survey all the info
o Coordination in both collection and analysis
o Find collection gaps, play devils advocate
· Culture- abandon need to know. Data providers rather than owners. Share with states and private parties. Diversity in hiring practices
· Cutting edge- innovation has moved to pvt sector, adversaries quick to adopt. Argus- monitors for epidemics. Us tech tends to take longer/cost more/be more complex than europe
Chapter11 – hindsight bias. Where were the failures?
· Imagination
o Historical perspective – 9-11 carried out with trival resources but had huge impact. US had hoped for peace dividend from cold war end. But new sources of instability and America becomes prominent
o Understanding danger- al qaeda had killed less than 50 americans, us took threat seriously but hadn’t mustered major force. Not an important US topic in 2000. 1995 report had warned of transient terrorists – loose network with worldwide reach. In 1997 it was found out that binladen had his own group and had been involved in past incidents, but new report just reiterated 1995 danger with very small reference to bin laden. Many papers in 1998-2001, but no complete portrait. DCI tenet sees failure of strategic analyis so appoints new manager in CTC
o Some realization of threat by bush-clinton but they don’t see scope. Unsure if it is a totally new kind of danger, or just what America had been dealing with for decades. Clarke writes memo trying to clarify if first order threat…one thought is that they are just a nuisance. Issue of PROPORTION and IMAGINATION.
o Institutionalizing- need to make it part of beurocracy. Problem is that although many agencies had conceived of a suicide hijacking, it was one of thousands of theories. Also, the agencies were fragmented, need a way to test and turn into constructive action. Intel community had developed method to address surprise attacks, but then didn’t use it rigorously – (1) think about how surprise attacks might be launched; (2) identify telltale indicatorsconnected to the most dangerous possibilities; (3) where feasible, collect intelligence on these indicators;and (4) adopt defenses to deflect the most dangerous possibilities or at least trigger an earlier warning…ctc didn’t do these things
· Policy
o
t what us is and leading world, places where we defend muslims
o Don’t cooperate with brutal govts
o Aid + education. Encourage economic and political reform
o Work with allies to develop joint strategy – dentention/Geneva
o Stop WMD proliferation – international regime, expand prolif secur initiative
o Track financing – get facilitators. But some are self funding
· Defending
o Harder to attack+ deter by making failure/capture likely
o Travel – analyze terrorist travel, higher bar for proof of entry. Detect their documents. Frontline training. Biometric screening (how check, who check, what to do about indicators). Possibility of false positives. Don’t exempt Americans from using passports on return. Consolidate border screening
o Immigration/law enforcement- fed govt sets standards for id sources like DL.
o Aviation/trans- 2001 TSA was created and became part of DHS. Need risk based allocation to make sure money spent efficiently
o Protection of civil liberties – put burden on exec to show that power enhances security and there is adequate supervision
o Set priorities for money based on risks and vulnerabilities, not politics
o Unified command structure
o Private sector preparedness
CHAPTER 13 – how – reorganizing govt
unifying strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamist terrorists across the foreign-domestic divide with a National Counterterrorism Center;
joint action- responsibility and accountability too diffuse.virtues- joint planning, unified effort, access to experts. Too much diplication of effort
joint intel+joint planning- integrate all sources of information. Falls to whitehouse but NSC not sized/funded to be exec agency. Suggest creating NCTC to lead strategic analysis (Hypo p 7)
