NewsAndAnalysis.org

Preventing terrorism is the mission; intelligence is a tool

 

A NewsAndAnalysis.org Opinion/Editorial

 

On Wednesday, June 29, 2005, the President announced new reforms within the Department of Justice, and particularly within the FBI.  Under the President’s plan, the FBI will consolidate its counterespionage (often called counterintelligence) and counterterrorism components within a single organization.  General William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, preempted the President’s announcement with his June 29 Washington Post OpEd entitled, “Why the FBI Can’t Be Reformed.”  During my years working in America’s national security establishment, I have developed several insights into the operation of the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community that suggest a different view of the FBI and its counterterrorism and counterespionage missions than is offered by the General.

 

General Odom’s argument for a new domestic intelligence agency to replace the national security elements of the FBI is centered on his belief that the FBI, predominantly a law enforcement agency, is incapable of transforming itself into an effective intelligence agency.  He writes, “No one can turn a law enforcement agency into an effective intelligence agency.  Police work and intelligence work don’t mix…. They [FBI agents] have little patience for sustained surveillance of a suspect to gain more intelligence.  They prefer to gamble on an early arrest.”

 

I argue that the General’s criticism highlights common misconceptions about America’s domestic counterterrorism mission.  Specifically, he overestimates the usefulness of intelligence, underestimates the value of disruptive measures, and reveals his apparent misunderstanding or fundamental disagreement with the primary goal of counterterrorism: to prevent acts of terrorism.

 

Traditional counterespionage operations and contemporary counterterrorism operations fundamentally differ from one another.  General Odom’s indictment of the FBI falsely implies that the FBI’s counterespionage agents use the same tactics as its counterterrorism agents.  They do not.  The FBI has numerous long-standing cases that are focused on intelligence collection and have no arrests in site.  Unlike counterterrorism cases, counterespionage cases rarely involve immediate threats of violence, and therefore can enjoy a longer timeline.

 

Counterterrorism cases, however, do involve this risk of violence.  Therefore, collecting intelligence solely for the sake of analysis – no matter how many people are sharing it – is useless. Intelligence is a tool, not a course of action.

 

The General claims, “They [intelligence officials] do not need arrest authority.  They want to follow spies and terrorists secretly, allowing them to reveal their co-conspirators.”  Yet, monitoring terrorists will not stop them from acting.  Preventing a terrorist attack requires a disruptive act, and in the U.S., that disruptive act is an arrest.  Studying a terrorist organization may improve our understanding of the organization but will not disrupt its operations.

 

I observe that many persons in and around the U.S. intelligence community share the misconception that prolonged intelligence collection will ultimately reveal a “smoking gun,” such as a master plot or a terrorist mastermind.  This notion neglects the fact that terrorist individuals, networks, and their sponsors are constantly evolving. Often, yesterday’s facts are obsolete and misleading.  While our intelligence community knows a great deal about our adversaries, its knowledge is never complete and its unknowns are often unknown.  It is prudent to take action against terrorists based on reliable information before our information grows stale.

 

The national security community often defines a threat as a combination of an adversary’s intent (or motivation to attack) and their capabilities.  If left unmolested, an adversary’s capabilities will increase over time.  Their intent to attack at a particular time, however, is unpredictable.  We cannot guarantee that our intelligence system will ever provide us with adequate warning of an attack.  Therefore, disrupting terrorists before their capabilities develop is the only sensible course of action.

 

The President’s plan for the FBI can have positive and negative repercussions depending on the manner in which the plan is implemented.  For example, state sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran, do not differentiate between their espionage and terrorism activities.  In some cases, agents of these states are simultaneously involved in both activities.  The FBI currently divides its counterespionage and counterterrorism efforts into two separate divisions that do not fully coordinate with each other.  This partition creates an artificial barrier between certain kinds of intelligence.  Tearing down these barriers can benefit the FBI.

 

However, as stated above, counterespionage and counterterrorism have distinct missions and require distinct tactics.  Combining these missions in a manner that ignores these distinctions could prove detrimental.

 

 

The author is a counterterrorism analyst within the U.S. intelligence community