It was a disaster. Thousands
died in a sneak attack, followed by shock and grief and war. Then
came the blue ribbon commission.
Those statements describe 9/11. They also describe Pearl Harbor,
sixty years before.
In both cases the attacks were a tactical and emotional surprise.
In both cases a commission was formed to find easy and popular
solutions to difficult and human-nature-riddled situations.
The recommendations of the Pearl Harbor commission, in fact,
helped form the basis for the intelligence system investigated
by the 9/11 Commission. Officially called the National Commission
on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, its mandate was "to
provide a `full and complete accounting' of the attacks of Sept.
11, 2001 and recommendations as to how to prevent such attacks
in the future."
The commission's Final Report lays findings and recommendations
before us. They are matched by proposal from Senator Pat Roberts
that re-states one of the commission's key recommendations.
We like creating commissions. We've created more than six hundred
of them in the last twenty years. They give us the illusion of
doing something about a problem. Most commissions labor mightily
and as loudly as they can to produce recommendations that ultimately
go nowhere.
The 9/11 Commission will probably be no different. There are
lots of reasons.
There is the Maginot Line Problem where the commission works
diligently to solve the key problem of the last war.
There is the Political Football Game where the players seek to
score points instead of solve problems.
There is the Sibling Rivalry Issue where organizations seek preferment
and competitive success by not helping each other and hording
information.
There is the Price of Preferment where folks spend their time
trying to figure out what their boss wants and then serve it up
with carefully written justification.
There is the tendency to Kill the Messenger which can be dangerous
for folks who speak a truth the boss doesn't want to here.
And, there is the Complexity Problem where complexity increases
exponentially as the number of players increases arithmetically.
Of course, there are real operational issues, too. The commission
report identified hundreds that should be addressed and that require
hard work. But we Americans have a tendency to try to avoid the
hard work by looking for one of our two favorite magic solutions.
We seek Magic Technology which will remove all the messiness
of complex operations. In war we make the mistake, over and over
again, to believe we can bomb an enemy into submission. When it
doesn't work we have to discover the infantry all over again.
In intelligence we try to rely on satellites and electronic eavesdropping
and just about anything except finding people with the right skills
and appearance, training them and putting them on the ground.
When our technology doesn't work as well as we want we have to
discover human intelligence (HUMINT to the cognoscenti) all over
again.
You will hear that we need the latest computer or knowledge management
system or surveillance technology. But even if we get those, they
are only tools for people who are properly recruited, trained
and led.
The hard part of getting the right human beings into the field
is that you have to dig the well before you're thirsty. Today
we need to be recruiting folks with language and cultural skills
to deal with threats that we must strain to imagine.
Technology is not our only magic solution. We also seek the Magic
Reorganization. Despite mounds of evidence to the contrary we
believe that our country and our organizations will sail successfully
into the future, if only we can change the lines on the organizational
chart.
Nonsense. Pernicious nonsense. Adding one more layer of bureaucracy
to oversee and coordinate the activities of the fifteen agencies
responsible for intelligence gathering and analysis will take
years and years and billions of dollars and divert attention from
real work that could make a difference.
Think about it, if the Department of Defense, which controls
80 percent of the intelligence budget and has a unified command
can't get it right, can we really expect one more bureaucrat to
do better. In the end things will be different and more complex
for sure, stacking the odds against any improvement.
There is no easy answer. There are only intelligent and difficult
choices. But if we want to prevent another Pearl Harbor or another
9/11 they are choices we have to find the vision and the courage
to make.
Top of page
If you'd like
to read the 9/11 Commission Report you have a couple of choices
you can visit the Commission's
official Web site. There are several documents available for
free download in pdf format including the full text of the report
and an executive summary.
You can also order a
bound volume from Amazon.
The expert on commissions is Dr. Amy Zegart of UCLA. Her most
recent book is "Flawed
by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JSC, and NSC."
There are dozens of books about what's wrong or right with the
current establishment, about the recent of intelligence work,
about terrorism and all kinds of related topics. Here are some
of the better ones.
"Intelligence
Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda" by
Thomas Powers
"Intelligence
in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda"
by premier military historian John Keegan
"Ghost
Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden,
from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001" by Steve Coll
"Against
All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" by Richard A.
Clarke
"A
Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency"
by Richard Helms with William Hood
"Charlie
Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation
in History" by George Crile
"A
Pretext for War : 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence
Agencies" by James Bamford
7 September 2004
Reprinting and Reposting This Column
You may reprint or repost this article providing
that the following conditions are met:
- The article remains essentially unaltered.
- Wally Bock is shown as the author.
- The notice Copyright 2004 by Wally Bock or similar appears
on the article.
- Contact information for Wally is included with the article.
You may refer readers to this Web site as a way to meet this
requirement. Please link to http://www.bockinfo.com/
- Here is the wording we suggest when linking to this site.
"The article you've just read can be found on Wally Bock's extensive
Resource Web site along with many other articles and resources."
Any other reprinting or reposting requires specific permission
which is almost always granted. Click
here to request permission if necessary.
