|
US
Intelligence failure: Deja Vu
B
Raman
Immediately
after 9/11, it was apparent to those with some experience of
intelligence and security management that the intelligence and
physical security agencies of the US had let themselves be caught
napping by Al Qaeda and that there had been major failures in
collection, analysis, assessment, dissemination and follow-up action
inside the US intelligence community which had enabled Al Qaeda to
successfully carry out the terrorist strikes.
2.
In the initial wave of patriotism, not only the Executive and the
Congress, but even large sections of the media and the public
refrained from criticizing the agencies lest their criticism cause
demoralization at a time when all the energies and concentration of
the agencies needed to be focused on the war against terrorism under
the US leadership.
3.
Now that the war has entered the second year, the need for a
professional critical analysis, which was earlier overlooked, is
receiving greater attention, resulting in a Congressional
investigation into the state of knowledge of the intelligence
community before 9/11 and into the follow-up action taken on the
basis of the intelligence available.
4.
This investigation, which is still on-going, has already brought to
light serious deficiencies in the functioning of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) which could be held to have facilitated the success of the
terrorists. These deficiencies could be broadly categorized as
follows:
-
Lack
of serious attention by the senior leadership of the agencies to
concerns expressed by their junior officers over matters such as
the unusually large number of Arabs enrolling themselves for
flying training in US institutions.
-
Lack
of adequate communication amongst different agencies--- and
particularly between the CIA and the FBI--- resulting in a
failure to share promptly intelligence about the movements of
suspected or confirmed Al Qaeda operatives inside the US and to
place them under surveillance.
-
Lack
of adequate linguists in the technical intelligence (TECHINT)
agencies resulting in a delay in the translation of vital
communications intercepts.
-
Lack
of adequate analysis and assessment of even the available
intelligence, however limited and imprecise they might have
been, which contributed to self-complacency and lethargy in the
follow-up action.
5.
These deficiencies have been taken seriously even by President Bush,
who has already indicated his intention to order an independent
enquiry into the matter. As one reads the details of the
investigation coming out of the Congress, one is reminded of the
famous Congressional enquiry into the case relating to the betrayal
of the CIA by Aldrich Ames, one of its senior officers, who worked
for years for the Soviet and Russian agencies and sent valuable US
sources to death without being detected in time by the
counter-intelligence set-ups of the CIA and the FBI.
6.
The Aldrich Ames intelligence disaster took place not for want of
intelligence, but for want of communication, trust and co-ordination
between the CIA and the FBI and for want of professionalism amongst
the senior intelligence officers of the two agencies. Innumerable
warning signals about deficiencies in the personal character of Ames
were overlooked and when the CIA's leadership realized that Moscow
had a mole inside it, it did not inform the FBI whose responsibility
it was to investigate such suspicions. Instead, the CIA chose to
make its own secret investigation without informing the FBI.
7.
The FBI had in its records a report from one of its officers that
Ames had been secretly visiting the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC,
but it did not alert the CIA. Nor did it follow it up with its own
investigation. These are just a few of the shocking instances of
slipshod intelligence management highlighted in the Congressional
report.
8.
The Congressional investigation and the criticism of James Woolsey,
Director of the CIA, during President Clinton's first term, for his
shoddy handling of the case led to his resignation, which was
followed by a revamping of the US Counter-Intelligence apparatus.
The present investigation into 9/11 shows that no lessons were drawn
from the systemic failure of the US intelligence community as a
whole in the Ames case and that the necessary correctives were not
enforced. It should be as clear as daylight to anyone with an open
mind that the US Counter-Terrorism apparatus had been functioning in
as shoddy a manner as its Counter-Intelligence apparatus was before
1995.
9.
The US has more laws regulating the functioning of its intelligence
agencies, more Congressional and other watchdog bodies to monitor
their performance, more governmental and private experts in
intelligence craft, it has had more blue-ribbon commissions to go
into the working of its agencies and spends more money (US $ 20
billion plus per annum) on intelligence collection and assessment
than any other country in the world. In spite of all this, it has an
intelligence community which does not do credit to the sole super
power of the world.
10.
The CIA is one of the most politicised agencies in the democratic
world. Very often, it tells the President what he wants to hear and
not what he ought to hear. If Ronald Reagan looked upon the
erstwhile USSR as an evil empire, Bob Casey, his CIA Director, and
Robert Gates, the then head of its Analysis Division, went around
collecting intelligence and producing assessments which would show
that the President was right. Remember the famous Senate hearing of
the 1980s on the
suitability of Gates to succeed Casey during which many instances
came to light as to how the Analysis Division of the CIA had
allegedly been politicised by Gates to produce assessments
acceptable to the President?
11.If
Bush calls North Korea, Iran and Iraq the axis of evil and Saddam
Hussain as great a
threat as Osama bin Laden, the CIA must be working overtime to prove
how perspicacious he is . During and after the Gulf war of 1991,
Saudi Arabia was looked upon as a stalwart ally just as Pakistan is
today. The result: Indicators of Saudi nexus with Al Qaeda brand
terrorists were ignored just as similar indicators of Pakistani
nexus are not receiving the attention they deserve today.
12.Reagan
and Casey were fascinated by covert action. During the Afghan war of
the 1980s against the Soviet troops, more attention was given and
more money allotted for strengthening the covert action capability
and the disinformation apparatus of the CIA than for improving
its intelligence collection and analysis capability. The
result: The CIA went around creating an army of pan-Islamic
terrorists for using them against the USSR without realising that
one day they could become a menace to the democratic world.
13.
And when they started doing so in the 1990s, there was a reluctance
to act against them firmly till 9/11 happened. The CIA’s
counter-terrorism experts rejected tonnes of evidence collected and
shared by countries such as India and Russia to show that they had
become Frankenstein’s monsters with disdain. Even pre-2001
evidence that Al Qaeda brand terrorists based in Afghanistan and
Pakistan were systematically planning to carry their jihad to US
territory through Pakistani organisations such as the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Tablighi Jamaat etc was ignored.
14.
The CIA's soft attitude towards the pan-Islamic terrorists did not
change even after the assassination of two of its officers in
Langley by Mir Aimal Kansi and by the New York World Trade Centre
explosion in 1993.The dramatis personae in both these terrorist
strikes were its sources and collaborators in the 1980s in
Afghanistan. Their past co-operation with the CIA rendered it blind
to the threat which such elements could pose to the USA in future.
It is this soft attitude, which should explain the lack of action
against Al Qaeda operatives in the USA.
15.
The US intelligence community as it has evolved since 1947 is
tailor-made for repeated systemic failures. It has a plethora of
intelligence agencies, but no independent over-all co-ordinator.
Director, CIA, wears two hats. As the head of the CIA, he is
responsible for its over-all functioning. As Director, Central
Intelligence,he acts as the Adviser to the President on intelligence
matters and helps him in the co-ordination of the functioning of the
various agencies.
16.
Not only that. He often chairs the various committees of the
National Security Council Secretariat set up to review intelligence
policy matters. The tremendous influence thus wielded by the head of
one of the agencies of the community over the entire community has
often been criticised in the past on the ground that it does not
encourage fairness and objectivity in co-ordination. Rightly or
wrongly, there is always a perception that Director, Central
Intelligence, tends to be soft and over-generous towards his own
agency. Suggestions made in the past for separating the two posts
and for making the co-ordinating post of Director, Central
Intelligence, tenable by an independent personality unconnected with
any agency had been rejected not only by many Presidents, but also
by Congressional committees and by the joint Brown-Les Apen
congressional commission, which went into the working of the
intelligence agencies during Clinton's term as the President.
17.Before
9/11, despite the New York World Trade Centre explosion of February
1993, the US intelligence community always considered major threats
to the US from terrorist strikes as more likely to be targeted at US
nationals and interests abroad than inside the USA. As a result, the
CIA, as the external intelligence agency, was given the leadership
role in the multi-agency Counter-Terrorism Centre and not the FBI.
18.
The USA was the only country in the democratic world, which did not
have a separate department dealing with internal security similar to
the Home Ministry or Department in India and other democratic
countries. Nor did it have an internal intelligence agency
exclusively devoted to the collection of internal intelligence
similar to the Security Service (MI5) of the UK. The FBI is a
hotchpotch agency, which handles counter-terrorism,
counter-intelligence, investigation of organized and federal crime,
law enforcement etc. It is a mixture of the UK's MI5 and the
Scotland Yard or India's Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI). In this ill-assorted amalgam of
responsibilities, the focus on intelligence collection and analysis
relating to internal security tended to get diluted.
19.
It took the catastrophic consequences of 9/11 to convince the US
policy-makers of the need for a Homeland Security Department to
focus exclusively on internal security. Having realized the need for
it, the Bush Administration has been going about the task of setting
it up in an unwise manner. If and when Bush's ideas are implemented,
what the USA will have is not a lean, hungry and well-motivated
agency, agile and all the time on the look-out for a kill, but a
security leviathan, more cumbersome and much slower than an
elephant.
20.
The US, which often criticizes the bureaucracies of the developing
world, has the shoddiest bureaucracy in the democratic world.
And nothing is shoddier in its bureaucracy than its
intelligence community, which is the most pampered part of the
administration. US investigators---whether from the Executive or the
Congress--- are often thorough in their analysis of the failures of
the intelligence community, but lacking in wisdom and imagination in
prescribing correctives.
21.
They invariably come out with stock responses---more staff, more
money, more gadgets and more powers for the agencies. The CIA has
flourished and bloated after each failure. What the US intelligence
community needs is less staff less funds and
less gadgets, but greater professionalism, better motivation,
more perspicacity, better analytical capability and linguistic
skills, sharper intuition and greater humility in accepting that
there are others in the world who understand terrorism better and
that it should learn from them.
22.
If the present Congressional investigation and the proposed enquiry
by the President do not lead to these results, it will be another
wasted exercise.
By
arrangement with South Asian Analysis Group, New Delhi
>>>
back | 