No.

> a better understanding of the information
> the government has already collected and
> that are derived from conventional law
> enforcement and intelligence methods.

No. Nothing called "intelligence" is the answer.

Protection of American lives, interests and virtues doesn't come from knowing things that other people don't know, or things that other people don't want us to know. These protections come from being more decent than other kinds of people.

In my early 20's I read this book. That was a long time ago. The book dispositively demonstrated that "intelligence" agencies have no business doing "operations" in any sphere, national or international. They are just not up to it. They are not decent enough. They are not smart enough.

30+ years later, CIA drone operations are routine, internationally and domestically.

I'm ashamed of what my generation has done to my country. And as with so many crises —real estate, health care, finance— the problem isn't with elites, it's with the small-mindedness of the man on the street. The bright guys gave the people what they asked for.

"Decency" as a defense?

Marvelous idea. Too bad this depends on everyone being decent – not just the United States.

We always knew you were secret-prisons, record-everybody's-phone-calls kind of authority enthusiast. You loves them power structures....

Let me start off with "Minnesotans for Global Warming."

Let me end with a technique used by Nathaniel Brandon. We need spies because .....
Keep repeating and fill in with new answer each time. The answer will appear.

The failure to respond adequately to these warnings was a policy failure by the Bush administration, not an intelligence failure by the U.S. intelligence community.

We even knew the operation would involve airplanes. However, what no one knew (or guessed) was that is would involve using airplanes as missiles. Until then, hijackers hijacked planes, flew them someplace, parked them, and demanded something for the release of the passengers.

Anti-hijacking security measures were, before 9/11, mostly on the back-end - rescuing passengers, negotiating with the hijackers, securing military access if the plane was parked in a foreign country, securing the extradition of suspected hijackers, etc.

The cost of preventing a hijacking with front-end measures is high and the infrastructure required is large. The cost of a successful hijacking then was the cost of the plane and the lives of however many passengers the hijackers killed. The death toll by default was limited to the mid-hundreds. Nothing like the billions of dollars and thousands of lives that 9/11 would claim.

Think back to the Achille Lauro hijacking. Reagan sent F-14s to intercept the fleeing hijackers. They were apprehended, tried, and convicted. That was how anti-hijacking operations were carried out then. Since the hijacker did not want to go to prison for life, he was, in theory, deterred from committing hijackings by the apprehension and prosecution of hijackers. A suicide mission was not on the radar.

9/11 was, however, at least partly, an intelligence failure. Until it actually happened, no one had any inkling that a large hijacking operations would include the hijackers flying the planes on suicide missions into buildings. Even the guy who noticed that the suspicious persons were taking flying lessons but not landing lessons didn't fathom why that was. No one put together the first World Trade Center Bombing (under Clinton), the flying lessons, and the buzz involving a big operation to hijack planes to come up with a group suicide mission involving four planes.

On 9/11 the paradigm shifted without a clutch. It immediately necessitated that most countries switch the bulk of anti-hijacking operations to the front-end - to build an infrastructure to prevent hijackings in the first place, to prevent bombers from getting onto a plane, to prevent the things no one had considered until then. The PATRIOT Act was a clumsy attempt to adapt to that shift.

The attack on Pearl Harbor similarly represented such a paradigm shift. Theorists had to revise everything on December 8th. Until December 7th, few leading military theorists believed a successful carrier attack could be carried out over such long distances (despite Taranto) - and many in the chain of command still refused to believe that airborne bombs could sink battleships (despite Billy Mitchell and the British proving otherwise). Because of the distance involved, most political and military leaders believed Japan's actions would be in the Western Pacific (the Philippines, Indonesia, etc.) and would come with a warning period (despite Japan's 1904 surprise attack on Russia). For the senior leadership's failure to anticipate and adapt to the paradigm shift, the commanders on the scene were accused of negligence and court martialed (later exonerated). It wasn't our failure, it was their failure.

We want to lash out and blame someone for collective failures that led to 9/11. Since Bush was in charge that day, some of the blame rightly falls on him. However, to sit back with a self-satisfied smirk that it was all Bush's fault is to ignore the chain of failure that began even before he was in office. 9/11 was a collective failure that spanned at least two presidential administrations and violently ripped away our illusion of security; and we're trying to get it back by saying it's not that the world has changed, it's that our leadership failed us.

==============================

The CIA itself also had its own spectacular failure in the run up to 9/11, which wasn't a failure to collect intelligence, but a failure of information sharing. The CIA had quite a bit of information about two of the hijackers and their presence in the United States before 9/11, which the agency didn't share with other government agencies until it was too late to do anything about it.

There was widespread confusion about what the CIA was allowed to share with other agencies.

In 1995, the Clinton Justice Department issued policy memoranda on information sharing that were widely misunderstood and implemented to the effect that little-to-no information was shared between the two agencies - even though the memoranda did not actually apply to CIA-FBI information sharing. This misunderstanding continued into the Bush Administration.

In addition, both the FBI and the FISA courts were having issues with FBI surveillance requests. The FISA courts were becoming concerned that they were seen by the public as rubber-stamping FBI requests. As a result, the FBI was running into judges that were demanding more evidence before approving warrants. Once a warrant is denied, it cannot simply be applied for under another judge, it must be appealed to the FISA Court of Review.

So, while there was no legal "wall" between the two agencies, there was a long-growing procedural "wall" between them.

The nature and mission of both these agencies also complicates their cooperation. From a post-9/11 paper on the ethics of information sharing between the two agencies:

"The CIA and FBI are two agencies which were initially created with specific and separate missions. This separation is to prevent a scenario of an all-powerful government agency which would have the powers of both domestic and foreign intelligence agencies. The intention was for the CIA to focus on gathering information on foreign countries, having no jurisdictional authority over citizens in the US or power to collect information on US citizens. The FBI was created to address crime and terrorism within the US, but also to the protect US from those trying to do harm to the US by addressing counter-espionage and counter terrorism efforts. If the FBI is to collect information on US citizens, it must be done within the framework of the US law."

"There is a clear separation in the abilities and the obligations of the two agencies. The CIA has an array of intelligence gathering techniques such as satellite imagery capabilities and other methods of detecting information. The FBI or any other US law enforcement agency may not use satellites or any other detection devices on US citizens. The only way they may detect information on US citizens is to obtain the authority from US courts and then go about collecting the information in ways what comply with US law."

We're also struggling today with reconciling the scope of these agencies with the global scope of crime and terrorism and the privacy concerns we had when they were both founded (the FBI in 1908 and the CIA in 1947); along with BATF, NSA, DEA, ICE, and a host of other armed and intrusive government agencies. Add in a little mission creep and some advanced technology and....

Sigh. Go ahead, Crid. Make more shit up.

It's become tradition.

Conan -- a fairly cogent and on target analysis. .

On 9/11 the paradigm shifted without a clutch. It immediately necessitated that most countries switch the bulk of anti-hijacking operations to the front-end - to build an infrastructure to prevent hijackings in the first place, to prevent bombers from getting onto a plane, to prevent the things no one had considered until then. The PATRIOT Act was a clumsy attempt to adapt to that shift. -- Conan the Grammarian at January 5, 2014 11:36 AM

I'm going to disagree with the need for most of the front-end prevention. That shift was done within three hours on 9/11 itself as proven by the passengers on United Flight 93.

Yes, there was the shoe bomber and panty bomber post 9/11. But straight bombing of aircraft has always been a failing tactic and has rarely been used by any group. Even Lockerbie only killed 270 people, including those on the ground. The bombing of aircraft is similar blowing up a bus in the long term prospects.

So yes there was an intelligence failure prior to 9/11. But the post 9/11 answer should have been to wake up the American public that they need see to their own security at most times.

The PATRIOT act and expansion of the alphabet soup is an abomination to principles of the Constitution and the freedom and liberty that it enshrines.

> Make more shit up.

You mean like:

> "Decency" as a defense?

Like that? gfy

Actually, anyone can go back on this blog and see that I don't advocate surveillance measures – I explain how they work.
You have just made the same mistake that JimP did when I explained how data-collection measures advocated by the administration would work. At first, I did not think that it was necessary to explain that an explanation of the system did not mean advocacy. Later, I made it clear that I did not in fact advocate such a thing – but the explanation of the methodology stands.

Yes, you make mistakes. It is just that you think so highly of your own opinions you cannot imagine such a thing.

Now you're going to be cute and tell me "GFY", simply because your incredibly articulate prose cannot fill in for you as you fail to understand that intelligence systems are necessary to national defense.

Acting decently as a nation is a laudable goal – but, just as decency is no protection for you against thugs, it is no protection against nations which are not likewise minded.

Can anyone explain for me what has happened to overseas intelligence manpower during the past 20 years?

Just as in the business world, it would seem to make sense to try to automate as many functions as possible.