Homeland Security: Intelligence Indications and Warning; Strategic Insights: v.1, issue 10 (December 2002)

Abstract

September 11, 2001 demonstrated that policy makers and intelligence organizations had conducted business in traditional ways, not in response to today's threats to our nation. The attacks in September suggest that inadequate information sharing between law enforcement and national intelligence agencies led to lost opportunities to thwart the attacks launched by Al-Qaeda. Little has yet been done to fix many of these problems. The nation has failed to formulate significant changes in the way it tasks, collects, analyzes, produces and disseminates intelligence information. The architecture needed to provide intelligence for homeland defense has not yet emerged. The September 11 attacks are a watershed event that should change our current intelligence organization, perhaps resulting in legislation as important as the National Security Act of 1947.