Joint Action
Much of the public commentary about the 9/11 attacks has dealt with "lost
opportunities," some of which we reviewed in chapter 11.These are often
characterized as problems of "watchlisting," of "information
sharing," or of "connecting the dots." In chapter 11 we explained
that these labels are too narrow. They describe the symptoms, not the disease.
In each of our examples, no one was firmly in charge of managing the case and
able to draw relevant intelligence from anywhere in the government, assign
responsibilities across the agencies (foreign or domestic), track progress, and
quickly bring obstacles up to the level where they could be resolved.
Responsibility and accountability were diffuse.
The agencies cooperated, some of the time. But even such cooperation as there
was is not the same thing as joint action. When agencies cooperate, one defines
the problem and seeks help with it. When they act jointly, the problem and
options for action are defined differently from the start. Individuals from
different backgrounds come together in analyzing a case and planning how to
manage it.
In our hearings we regularly asked witnesses: Who is the quarterback? The
other players are in their positions, doing their jobs. But who is calling the
play that assigns roles to help them execute as a team?
Since 9/11, those issues have not been resolved. In some ways joint work has
gotten better, and in some ways worse. The effort of fighting terrorism has
flooded over many of the usual agency boundaries because of its sheer quantity
and energy. Attitudes have changed. Officials are keenly conscious of trying to
avoid the mistakes of 9/11. They try to share information. They circulate-even
to the President-practically every reported threat, however dubious.
Partly because of all this effort, the challenge of coordinating it has
multiplied. Before 9/11, the CIA was plainly the lead agency confronting al
Qaeda. The FBI played a very secondary role. The engagement of the departments
of Defense and State was more episodic.
- Today the CIA is still central. But the FBI is much more active, along
with other parts of the Justice Department.
- The Defense Department effort is now enormous. Three of its unified
commands, each headed by a four-star general, have counterterrorism as a
primary mission: Special Operations Command, Central Command (both
headquartered in Florida), and Northern Command (headquartered in Colorado).
- A new Department of Homeland Security combines formidable resources in
border and transportation security, along with analysis of domestic
vulnerability and other tasks.
- The State Department has the lead on many of the foreign policy tasks we
described in chapter 12.
- At the White House, the National Security Council (NSC) now is joined by a
parallel presidential advisory structure, the Homeland Security Council.
So far we have mentioned two reasons for joint action-the virtue of joint
planning and the advantage of having someone in charge to ensure a unified
effort. There is a third: the simple shortage of experts with sufficient skills.
The limited pool of critical experts-for example, skilled counterterrorism
analysts and linguists-is being depleted. Expanding these capabilities will
require not just money, but time.
Primary responsibility for terrorism analysis has been assigned to the
Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), created in 2003, based at the CIA
headquarters but staffed with representatives of many agencies, reporting
directly to the Director of Central Intelligence. Yet the CIA houses another
intelligence "fusion" center: the Counterterrorist Center that played
such a key role before 9/11. A third major analytic unit is at Defense, in the
Defense Intelligence Agency. A fourth, concentrating more on homeland
vulnerabilities, is at the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI is in the
process of building the analytic capability it has long lacked, and it also has
the Terrorist Screening Center.1
The U.S. government cannot afford so much duplication of effort. There are
not enough experienced experts to go around. The duplication also places extra
demands on already hard-pressed single-source national technical intelligence
collectors like the National Security Agency.
