Political Science Assignment

Political Science Assignment

The National Security Act of 1947 (NSA) created a structure for the
U.S. intelligence community (IC) and created the nation’s first peace
time intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and
the National Security Council to coordinate national security in the
executive branch. The IC was designed to meet the challenges of the
Cold War and particularly the Soviet threat.  The IC remained largely
unchanged for 57 years.

Political Science Assignment

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
(2004) criticized the IC for not “connecting the dots” and for a
“failure of imagination.” The Commission recommended integration and
collaboration.
Executive Order 13354 (2004) and The Intelligence Reform and
Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2004 created and codified the National
Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).   NCTC serves as the primary
organization in the United States Government for integrating and
analyzing all intelligence pertaining to counterterrorism (except for
information pertaining exclusively to domestic terrorism).
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities Regarding Weapons of
Mass Destruction (2005) criticized both the collection and analytical
capabilities of the IC. The Commission said that IC “had broad
responsibilities but only ambiguous authorities” and recommended an
integrated intelligence enterprise.

Political Science Assignment
On December 25, 2009 Umar Farouk Abdulamuttallab boarded Northwest
Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam, Netherlands and attempted to
detonate an improvised explosive device secreted upon his person while
enroute to the United States.  Abdulamuttallab was an identified known
or suspected terrorist whose name had been entered into the Terrorist
Identity Datatmart Environment.
On January 5, 2010, President Barak Obama said “This was not a
failure to collect intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and
understand the intelligence that we already had.”
Denis Blair, the former Director of National Intelligence (DNI),
described the events that preceded the attempted Christmas bombing not
as a “failure to connect the dots,” but rather as a “failure to
understand the intelligence we had.”< /font>

Political Science Assignment
In May 2010, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that “
there were systemic failures across the Intelligence Community (IC),
which contributed to the failure to identify the threats posed by
Abdulmutallab.”  The Committee identified fourteen specific points of
failure- a series of human errors, technical problems, systemic
obstacles, analytical misjudgments, and competing priorities-which did
not prevent Abdulmutallab’s attempted terrorist attack.
Does “connecting the dots” equate to the premise that via proper
intelligence the unknown is knowable? Is the current US intelligence
system(s) working?  In an effort for “jointness” (see 9/11 Commission,
pp. 400-401) and integration –Are we unnecessarily adding levels of
bureaucracy?
How, then, should the United States government conduct “intelligent”
intelligence operations?

Political Science Assignment

By admin in Essays on August 23, 2015