A new intelligence system that prioritizes information sharing is key to counterterrorism efforts.

Incremental changes are not enough. Policymakers must build a new intelligence system to fight terrorism. The formal, hierarchical, and compartmentalized information strategies of the past need to be replaced with a new architecture featuring flexible, decentralized networks of public and private information providers, analysts, and users. Policymakers should establish procedures to assure access to critical information needed to address national security priorities while taking into account openness and privacy concerns. Public guidelines will ensure that new information strategies are consistent with these goals.

Anti-Terrorism Information Strategies

Policymakers recognize that the intelligence system in place before September 11 failed to get the right information to the right people at the right time. As the joint House-Senate committee that investigated the 9/11 attacks observed: “Serious problems in information sharing . . . persisted, prior to September 11, between the Intelligence Community and relevant non-Intelligence Community agencies. This included other federal agencies as well as state and local authorities. This lack of communication and collaboration deprived those other entities, as well as the Intelligence Community, of access to potentially valuable information in the ‘war’ against Bin Ladin.”

To date, administration and congressional efforts to reorganize national security intelligence have focused mainly on reducing barriers to sharing information among federal agencies, improving federal information technology capabilities, coordinating analysis of federal and local law enforcement and intelligence data, and supporting state and local emergency communication. At the borders, customs officials have enhanced cargo screening using radiation detectors and x-ray scanners and immigration authorities have upgraded checks on foreign visitors using improved databases. Around the country, newly expanded joint terrorism task forces bring together federal and local law enforcement officials. Terrorism investigators more easily combine law enforcement and intelligence data as permitted by the USA PATRIOT Act, which Congress passed one month after the terrorist attacks. Federal airport security officers conduct more rigorous screening of passengers under the terms of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, enacted two months after the attacks. The new Department of Homeland Security, charged with coordinating domestic intelligence gathering and information sharing, has begun collecting data about vulnerabilities in the nation’s critical infrastructure. A new Terrorist Threat Integration Center, under the supervision of the director of central intelligence, is charged with synthesizing counterterrorism intelligence from all sources.