Analyzing Underpants: On Intelligence Sharing Problems and Solutions

A lot of articles, columns, blogs, and other material is out there analyzing what happened and why the intelligence community was not able to do its job and stop the Christmas Day "underpants bomber." Of course anyone looking for information should read the White House's own report (I've heard the classified version is much harsher). The Washington Post's infographic is quite good in showing how the system was supposed to work.

For a good insider account of the difficulties involved, especially with different spellings of non-English names, from former intelligence and friend-of-the-blog Jim Arkaedis read his latest post. (Jim's post on AQAP is also quite good, though I disagree with him regarding terrorist safe-havens).

If you want to follow the finger pointing, Josh Rogin is all over it.

If you want to talk about solutions Jennifer Sims and Bob Gallucci have a very sharp piece in the Post today, which echoes some of Malcolm Gladwell's ideas from Blink.

To win against a networked adversary, the intelligence community must share critical information with decision makers but not always with every element of its own community first. Assembling "puzzles" from many pieces is often necessary for planning and strategy; it takes time and the meticulous management of databases by analytical experts. But for day-to-day operations, decision makers often hold as many or more pieces than intelligence agencies do and certainly know better from moment to moment what knowledge they need to act. In terms of tactical decisions, sharing among intelligence agencies so that an "all source" product can be generated can be a form of hoarding. It can result in finished analyses that are irrelevant, unhelpful or even harmful to national security. [Italics mine]

People: the Best Homeland Security

I imagine someone might be reading this on a mobile device as they are in an interminable security line at the airport waiting to go on spring break (they wisely got there early). But know this: the most draconian security measures we are proposing - full-body scans and extensive pat downs/strip searches - still would not have caught the Christmas day "Underpants Bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

I was going to write that because he flew from Nigeria Abdulmutallab wouldn't have gone through a full-body scanner, but it turns out that Nigeria's international airport already has scanners. It doesn't seem Abdulmutallab was scanned, since as the Truman Project's Melissa Skorka points out, the workers in many developing countries' airports are often concerned with things other than safety. But the real story, as Marc Sageman discussed at a Middle East Policy Council event today, is that Abdulmutallab carried only about three ounces of explosive, the equivalent of three packets of sugar, and it is extremely unlikely that either a body scan or a pat down would have discovered the packets. As another panelist today mentioned, Yemen now has a very creative bomb maker, and though both the butt bomb and the underpants bomb have failed, he will keep trying. Three sugar packets worth of powder makes me think he could hide it in actual sugar packets, or as tooth powder, or really just about anywhere.

We'll know more about what exactly led to the breakdown of intelligence in the case of the underpants bomber when the unclassified version of the report is released later today, but we do know this: our best defense is alert, smart people talking to each other. We need our intelligence community to do its job. The National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) is designed to bring representatives from the various agencies to share information with each other and put their heads together. One person should poke their head up over the cubicle and say "hey, this guy in Nigeria says his son is becoming radical" and another says "hey, I know of a Nigerian posting some radical thoughts online" and a third could say "hmm, the British just revoked a Nigerian's visa. Maybe we should do the same thing." But it didn't seem to work. No wonder people are clamoring for NCTC director Michael Leiter's head. Of course the NCTC has bigger problems, but Leiter has had plenty of time to work on them.

We also need as much interaction between governments and people in other countries. As much as an Obama Doctrine currently exists, it is based on the idea of smart power, and that means we need to keep our foot on the gas with diplomacy, exchanges, and training. DHS' Office of International Affairs needs to be fully staffed and step up its mission working on training, cooperation, and increasing security practices around the world. And people need to keep traveling the world and showing the good and productive side of Americans.

Finally, homeland security is everyone's responsibility. Who became suspicious and subdued Abdulmutallab? Not an air marshall (there wasn't one): other passengers. Same thing for Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. The DC Metro system constantly has announcements to report suspicious packages and the like. An alert and educated public can be our best weapon, since even DHS can hire only so many people.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said "the system worked" in the aftermath of the attempted bombing, a quote she clearly regrets. Parts of the system didn't work, the parts we pay billions of dollars a year for, and clearly those parts need to work better. But if you include everyone in the system, than the system did work. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks everyone wanted to help, and many did by donating blood or needed materials. President Bush had an opportunity to tell everyone that they were part of the solution, and that their role was to always be vigilant. Instead he told them to go shopping. Luckily for us many got the message anyway. People are the most important defense against terror.

CIA's Climate Change Center

For those of you still in doubt about the link between national security and climate change - natural security as some have dubbed it - the Central Intelligence Agency, not best known for cutting edge innovation, has opened a new Center on Climate Change and National Security. It seems to be mostly to predict when and where natural disasters or natural resource shortages will cause instability, but it's a start.

Intelligence and Social Networking

The Washington Post has a great article this morning on Intellipedia, the intelligence community (IC)'s wiki. It seems like an extremely valuable tool for helping to destroy some of the "stovepipes" that plague the IC. People in the intelligence business are naturally suspicious people, so they tend not to trust even other intelligence agencies. Combining the intelligence from multiple analysts and multiple agencies can yield far better results.

The IC needs younger, more technologically savvy people who embrace new forms of communication like wikis, blogging, Twitter, and whatever comes next, or the IC will cease to be relevant. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Twitters (@thejointstaff), and I've heard that he read about Israel entering Gaza within seconds, yet it took the IC over a day to confirm it. I had a former colleague who was denied a job with the IC because when asked if he had ever done something illegal he replied that he had downloaded music from the Internet before that was considered illegal. Isn't that exactly the kind of person on the cutting edge of technological innovations who we should want in the IC? Of course Osama bin Ladin doesn't Tweet (at least not the real one), but more and more open source information is out there if you know how and where to look, and the IC ignores that at their own peril.

None of my IC friends Tweet (that I know of), although most of them are on Facebook. Of course open source can work both ways; you wouldn't want someone to Tweet "off to Yemen to infiltrate a jihadi group," but the IC should encourage both old and new employees to become familiar with social networking/Web 2.0 tools. Imagine how effective Intellipedia could be if everyone in the IC actually used it.

CIA's Assassination Squads

I think the headline of this LA Times article on the CIA's recently-scrapped attempt to form a team to assassinate terrorist leaders says it all: "CIA was a long way from Jason Bourne." More details are still coming out, but this article has the best summary I've read so far.

According to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, the CIA spent seven years trying to assemble teams capable of killing the world's most wanted terrorists but could never find a formula that worked.

This is yet another example of the intelligence community focusing too much on technology and not enough on people. This applies not just to hit squads but also to intelligence gathering. Technology is great, and making some forms of intelligence gathering obselete (I've heard the story that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff heard that Israel had entered the Gaza Strip via Twitter within five minutes, and it took military intelligence over a day to confirm it), but it can never tell you what somebody is thinking, or be able to stand right next to them in a cave in Waziristan. The intelligence community needs to accelerate the process of hiring more people capable of going around the world and blending in, with good language and cultural skills.

Catch-Up Thoughts

Those of you following me on Twitter will know I was out in California for a few days and not posting, so here are my brief thoughts on some of the recent events. I know you all missed my commentary.

• The CIA developed an assassination squad to go after al-Qaeda leadership... and it failed to have any successes that we know about and proved far more difficult than in James Bond movies. Neither of those facts is surprising. In fact I would be shocked if the CIA didn't still have a similar squad with similar goals. As other commenters have pointed out, the difference between firing missiles from drones and potentially firing bullets from sniper teams is mostly semantic, except that the drones seem to have a lot more collateral damage--that and the drones have actually been used. Nor is it shocking that Darth Cheney kept the program a secret from Congress. That fact bothers me more. Congress, or the Intelligence committees or the Gang of Eight at a bare minimum, should be kept appraised of all programs, especially the controversial ones. That's why we have checks and balances in our government.
• Secretary of State Clinton has ordered the first Quadrennial Development and Diplomacy Review (QDDR). Great! We need to know what we are doing, and giving, have a better idea of what is going where and why, and hopefully some oversight. I'll give you a preview of the report: 1) we need a director for USAID, 2) we don't have enough civilian experts on hand to plan much less execute a "civilian surge" in a place like Afghanistan. In the Pentagon the QDR sets the tone and direction for the Department of Defense; we'll see if the QDDR has the same weight and budget power for State and the other agencies involved with foreign aid and development.
• President Obama and Russian President Medvedev signed a Joint Understanding to a new START arms control treaty. The Joint Understanding is good progress, but it is really laying a foundation for more hard work to be done between now and December. By then hopefully the Nuclear Posture Review will be complete, satisfying certain Republican Senators, and real arms reductions can be made, hopefully down to the 1000-1200 range, although I would like to see us get even lower.

One Armed Economist...

With respect to President Harry Truman...

On the one hand, the decision by a Pakistani court to release Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group and alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attacks, is remarkably unproductive for both counter terrorism activities and Pakistan-India relations.

On the other hand the court ruled that the arrest of Saeed and his three colleagues violated Pakistan's already fragile constitution. Any decision that strengthens the secular judicial system at this point in Pakistan is a welcome step. 

I'm not sure how Pakistan's double jeopardy laws work, but I do wish that information/intelligence/evidence sharing between Pakistan, India, and the United States had been a little better so that Saeed could have been brought to justice with sufficient evidence to properly charge him with his crimes. 

Pakistani Government Aid to Militants

A front page article in Thursday's New York Times explores the support that Pakistan's government, specifically the S wing of the Inter-Service Intelligence, or ISI, is still providing to militant groups, including the Taliban, who are conducting attacks in Afghanistan. This support has continued despite repeated requests and high level visits from American and British officials.

These militant connections are partly to counter fears of Indian encirclement, since India has invested heavily in Afghan reconstruction, and most of the Pakistani military still sees India, not the militants, as their main threat and opponent, and Pakistan has a long history of using militants as proxy fighters against India, particularly in Kashmir. This connection fairly clearly led to the bombing of India's embassy in Kabul last summer.

A few key questions remain:

1) How closely was the ISI involved in last November's Mumbai attacks by Lashkar-e-Taiba? Was it just intelligence sharing and protection, as Pakistani officials claim, or was the whole thing a proxy attack planned by Pakistani military, or even civilian, leadership?

2) How deep do the connections between ISI and the militants run? Is it largely the work of a "few bad apples" who maintain their ties, or something much bigger?

3) What can the United States/coalition do to entice Pakistan to renounce support for these groups and leaders? Certainly just sending the Predator drones into Quetta and elsewhere in Baluchistan is possible (and being debated--watch for news of expanded strikes in the next few weeks), but is it worth the cost?