CIA and FBI organizational conflicts after September 11

CIA and FBI: Competing interests

The bombings of the World Trade Towers brought the conflict between the FBI and CIA to the surface. These two government agencies are the ones associated with gathering intelligence on activities that might threaten U.S. lives and interests. On September 11, 2001, it became painfully obvious that there were gaps in the system and that these two agencies needed to resolve the longstanding conflicts between themselves. The following will examine the conflict between the FBI and CIA in relation to how it effects the current situation with the war on terrorisms and its ability to manage U.S. interests in the future.

Different Worlds: Cultural Effects

The differences between the CIA and FBI stem from their original set up at their inception. They were initially set up for different functions, and only recently has the need to work closely stood in their way to perform their individual jobs. The key to the problem is communication between the two groups. One must delve into the origins of the two groups to understand these differences fully.

The Central Intelligence Agency began in 1947 as a completely separate entity from the FBI. Interactions between the two groups have even been hostile at times (Gorman, 2007). Both groups share the goal of protecting the United States from hostile attacks, but they each had their own way of handling situations and developed a type of territorial attitude in order to avoid stepping on one another's efforts (Gorman, 2007). This attitude made it difficult for them to work as a team.

The functional nature of the FBI means that they deal in concrete terms and hard evidence. Their world can be quantified and counted. They must have paper trails and live in a world where conditions, terms, and laws are well-defined. The CIA is less formal in its structure and places a strong emphasis on long-term relationships. The FBI is better oriented to individual performance, whereas the CIA operates in a "team" atmosphere (Gorman, 2007). The FBI talks in terms of "arrests and suspects" (Gorman, 2007). The CIA, on the other hand, may deal with hunches and suspicions. These differences represent different ways of looking at the world. They also require different ways to communicating with one another. These differences are at the heart of the conflict between these two interests.

The focus of the FBI is in the law enforcement area of the government. They like to catch the bad guys to preserve the integrity of the law. The CIA is focused on the policy-making segment of the government. The focus of both groups is on national security, but the two groups have an entirely different worldview. The focus of the FBI was internal, whereas the focus of the CIA was external. There an informal line between the domains of the FBI and the CIA. If the problem was within the boundaries, it was an FBI problem. If the threat were outside of U.S. boundaries, it was generally a CIA problem. Seldom did the lines cross. It was a matter of deciding within whose jurisdiction the problem fell.

This system worked as long as the threat lied outside of the U.S. boundaries. However, on September 11, 2001 the U.S. faced a type of threat that was unlike any other threat that they had in the past. The threat was an international threat inside the U.S. borders. The U.S. is a land of many different peoples and cultures, all living within the same boundaries. There is a certain amount of trust inherent in the ability to do this. However, the World Trade Tower bombings shook this and it now became apparent that there was a threat within our borders. We still had to worry about the threat from without, but the threat from within began to take precedence. Now there was a problem with defining the territories of the FBI and CIA that had only existed in theory. Now the two organizations had the need to formally hash out their boundaries when it came to threats within the United States.

The differences between the CIA and FBI are essentially cultural ones (Gorman, 2007). This was not a problem during the Cold War as the two entities worked independently of one another. The system worked well, as long as the two organizations did not have to work together or attempt to communicate with one another. The War on Terrorism is a different type of scenario than the Cold War and requires different strategies and ways of thinking. The difficulty and primary problem facing these two organizations is that they both now recognize the need to work together, but do not know how to accomplish this task (Kitfield, 2000).

Defining New Roles: Gender Effects

The need for the FBI and CIA to work together has become an important issue in the post 9/11 era. It is mandatory that these two organizations, not only learn to share information in a meaningful way, but to work together to develop strategies as well. However, this will require some organizational and cultural changes within both organizations (Kitfield, 2000). The CIA and FBI will have to negotiate new roles and cultural norms in order to form an effective partnership. Conflict resolution and negotiation will be an important part of defining these new roles and new organizational boundaries. This will be a challenge for both organizations involved, especially in light of their inability to compromise in the past.

The cultural differences between the FBI and CIA are not unlike those caused by gender. One typically thinks of fender effects, they typically think of a single male and a single female in conflict with one anther. However, when one examines the cultural constructs of the FBI and CIA, one can see similarities between the two organizations and the stereotypical conflict between males and females.

If one wishes to examine the conflict in this light, one could see the FBI as the decidedly male persona in the conflict. The FBI is a very left brained entity, in that is only deals with concrete evidence and logic. The FBI cannot deal with irrational actions and loose ends. There is a definite order to anything that the FBI does.

However, the CIA could be seen as the female entity. They know that there are many irrational acts and emotional reactions behind the actions of people. The CIA does not have to have a logical explanation for everything. The CIA is much more malleable than the FBI when it comes to adapting to new situations. The CIA has different mind-set than the FBI and a different approach to problem solving as a result. The CIA is much more tolerant of other cultures, because it has had to adapt and deal with global changes. The CIA has had to work with different ideologies, whereas the FBI has had to deal almost entirely within the confines of the U.S. justice system.

Technological Barriers

In order for FBI-CIA cooperation to be a success, the technical barriers that prevent them from communicating must be removed. It is easy to build networked computer bases and share information from a technical standpoint. However, it is quite another to remove policy barriers that prevent them from crossing certain lines. The FBI and CIA must not only be able to communicate from a technical standpoint, they must also be permitted to do so.

These two barriers are easy to manage. Technical barriers are simply a matter of developing a network that can facilitate communication. Policy barriers can be solved by legislature. These issues are easy to resolve. However, the cultural differences that exist between the two groups are much more difficult to resolve. Cultural issues cannot simply be written out of the picture and will remain even after the rest of the technical and policy issues have been resolved. In order to develop an effective cooperative effort, the CIA and FBI must treat the issue from a change management perspective. For this reason, there are some experts that say both organizations must be merged into a new entity that meets the emerging needs of the threat at home (Gorman, 2001). However, even this would be difficult if the cultural issues are not dealt with first. A merger would fail without a common ground from which to operate.

Lens Model of Conflict

Each person in a conflict views the situation from their own lens. The ability to resolve conflict often depends on the ability to view the situation from another persons' lens. In this case, the FBI and CIA have developed very different lenses through which to view the situation. The FBI views the war on terrorism from the number of wins that they can tally. The FBI has charged 200 suspected terrorists around the country. These successes can be quantified by one arrest at a time, one case at a time and one conviction at a time (Gorman., 2001). In keeping with their individualistic viewpoint, individual agents are rewarded for their successes. The lens through which the FBI views a case is linear and concrete. Certainty is imperative an there is a nice, clean end to each case (Gorman, 2001).

Information through the CIA lens is much less tangible. Informants often develop friendly relationships with agents. The CIA can act on suspicion and a hunch. The FBI must have concrete evidence. The CIA agent must be able to foresee and predict future events. The CIA agent draws connections and makes inferences, information that might be difficult to connect at the very least. The CIA officer talks in terms of the team. The case is never closed, but it is seen as an ongoing story to tell (Gorman, 2001). The CIA might have an informant for many years and has an interest in protecting that informant. The FBI has one chance to prove their case (Gorman, 2001). One of the key points of contention is over information on the Internet (Smith, 2001).

The CIA and the FBI view the world from two different lenses. The lenses give a very interesting perspective on the same situation. Both of these lenses offer a necessary piece of information and help to get a view of the whole. However, one can also see how these different lenses can be destructive at the same time. Viewing a situation from two different perspectives can be an advantage. However, it can also mean the misinterpretation of communication as well. This is the root of the current conflict between the FBI and CIA (Garamone, 2005).

A good example of this lens is how the FBI views their success in regards to Al-Qaeda. The FBI says that they know more about Al-Qaeda than they did before 9/11, therefore they consider their efforts a success. They had only 17 cases open on Al Qaeda before 9/11 and now have over 75 (Gorman, 2001). The CIA feels that this says nothing about present or future danger and that this is a dangerous myopic viewpoint (Garamone, 2005). This leads to the question as to who is right. The answer in this case appears to be both and neither at the same time.

The CIA is interested in preventing people from blowing things up, whereas the FBI arrests and convicts people after it is done. The cultural exchange program between the two agencies is a step in the right direction. In order to understand how communications between two agencies with same goals can become so mixed up, one can compare it to two people trying to communicate in a foreign language. The World Trade Towers created an escalation spiral of the problems between the two groups.

It is difficult to imagine a world where the two agencies work in an integrated environment, other than in sharing basic information. The two agencies are set up for two entirely different purposes and in order to maintain their strengths, must remain as they are. However, as we have pointed out, this is also their key weakness. It is imperative that this conflict is worked out quickly due to the imminent threat against the U.S. The two agencies might not be able to see eye-to-eye, but they must be able to sit down at the table and have a rational conversation without flinging insults at one another. They can agree to disagree, but they must make an effort to talk to one another is each other's own language.