Dahl Analyzes Intelligence Failures, Successes

Abstract

Center for Homeland Defense and Security faculty member Erik Dahl has a startling assessment of intelligence practice in the United States for the past half century. "We have misunderstood why intelligence fails for the past 50 years," Dahl said during an interview in his office at Glasgow Hall on the NPS campus. "My major finding is that our conventional understanding about intelligence failure is wrong." Dahl’s book, "Intelligence and Surprise Attack," was released by Georgetown University Press in July. The book studies intelligence failures from Pearl Harbor through the Sept. 11 attacks, and in it Dahl combines his 21-year career as a Navy intelligence officer with his academic research that began as a doctoral student at Tufts University in order to reach a conclusion that challenges the conventional wisdom.