A Call For Smarter Intelligence

In a recent Boston Globe op-ed column, a Fletcher School Ph.D candidate calls on U.S. officials to consider our nation’s history of terrorist attacks in order to make intelligence reform effective.

Medford/Somerville, Mass. [12.16.04] In light of the 9/11 commission’s intelligence reform proposals – which were recently approved by both houses of Congress – a Ph.D candidate at the Fletcher School suggests that in order for intelligence to work, it is in need of some serious changes.

“In reality, none of the proposed legislation will do much to prevent another intelligence failure on the scale of 9/11,” Erik Dahl wrote in an op-ed column published in The Boston Globe prior to the legislation’s approval. “In order to truly improve our intelligence capabilities, we must heed the lessons learned from our long history of official investigations following earlier intelligence failures to anticipate surprise attacks against the United States.”

Dahl – a retired naval intelligence officer – said that this problem is not merely a matter of organization and legislation.

“The more fundamental problem lies in a failure to understand the intelligence at hand, and the solution involves changing the mind-set and culture of the intelligence community more than simply passing legislation,” Dahl wrote.

Dahl cited the Pearl Harbor attack, explaining that “while the U.S. military had been planning for a Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor since the 1920s, military commanders simply could not imagine such an attack actually taking place – until some 2,400 died on Dec. 7, 1941.”

A similar example is the 1983 attack on U.S. Marine headquarters in Lebanon, which killed 241 American military personnel. According to Dahl, intelligence officials knew about the dangers but failed to prevent the attacks.

“Despite more than 100 warnings of car bombings during the months leading up to the attack, and even though the U.S. Embassy in Beirut had been attacked by a car bomb earlier that year, the commanders on the scene testified afterward that they had not been warned by intelligence to consider the threat from a much larger truck bomb attack,” Dahl explained.

The Fletcher student proposed several solutions to the problem.

First, according to Dahl, intelligence commanders must spend less time on turnaround in reaction to current information, and focus instead on long-term analysis.

Dahl also suggested that U.S. intelligence needs to anticipate that the enemy will be innovative, emphasizing the importance of making quick – but informed – decisions, rather than expecting precise warnings of when and where attacks will occur.
“In the past, when our leaders have hesitated because the intelligence wasn’t clear, Americans have died,” Dahl wrote.

He did, however, give the current intelligence community some credit for its attempt at reforming the current system – while encouraging policy-makers to consider the country’s past when making reforms.

“True, no nation and no intelligence can ever provide a 100 percent guarantee against disaster,” Dahl wrote. “But history suggests that the footprints of tomorrow’s terrorist attack can be seen today.”