Intelligence community changes due to terrorism

Intelligence

Terrorism's Effects on the U.S. Intelligence Community

The threat of terrorism has fundamentally altered the operation and function of the U.S. intelligence community, particularly in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. A recent press release from the Director of National Intelligence reports that there is a continued, perceived threat of terrorist threats against targets within the United States, especially from radical Islamic terrorist groups ("The Terrorist Threat"). Terrorism has always been a registered threat for the United States intelligence community. However, the dramatic attack that occurred in 2001, and the equally dramatic failure of the U.S. intelligence community to provide preventative intelligence at the time, has forced agencies in the United States to reassess their priorities and shift terrorism to a higher position on the list of threats to the nation.

Solid intelligence is a crucial component in preventing terrorism (Martin). One of the significant issues facing the intelligence community is that traditionally their role has only been to collect intelligence and analyze, but not necessarily act in a law enforcement capacity. The CIA, for example, is expressly forbidden from acting domestically; such actions are the purview of the FBI or local law enforcement agencies. Because terrorism blurs the line between intelligence gathering and law enforcement, it has resulted in confusion in the intelligence community as to how best to respond to the continued threat of terrorism (Martin).

One key way that terrorism has fundamentally altered the intelligence community has been in facilitating greater interagency cooperation between intelligence agencies in the United States and other nations, between domestic intelligence agencies, and between intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies ("The Terrorist Threat"). This increased cooperation has resulted in a greater capacity to synthesize raw intelligence data and draw more accurate conclusions about the motivations, plots, and targets of terrorist groups throughout the world. Unfortunately, some in the intelligence community fear that this level of cooperation will ultimately dissolve as the memory of September 11 dulls over time. Whether or not this fear proves to be the case, for the moment the intelligence community in the United States has recognized that they must re-prioritize their position on terrorism and take action to facilitate interagency cooperation, especially with the law enforcement agencies that will have to act on the intelligence that they are gathering.