The 9/11 terrorist attacks: a failure of policy not strategic intelligence analysis/ Stephen Marrin

The 9/11 terrorist attacks have been intensively examined as both tactical and strategic intelligence failures but less attention has been paid to the policy failures which preceded them. Perhaps this is due to the presumption that intelligence analysis influences decision-making as a precursor to and foundation for policy. This assumption about the influence of analysis on decision deserves as much closer examination. The 9/11 terrorist attacks provide a good case to study for greater understanding of the influence, or lack of influence, that intelligence analysis has on decision making. Specificallly, the 9/11 Commission Report identifies as a significant failure the lack of a National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat between 1998 and 2001, and implies that if one had been produced it might have helped enable decision-makers to prevent the 9/11 attacks. In other words, a failure of strategic intelligence analysis lay at the foundation of the failure to prevent 9/11. This article takes a closer look at the case of the missing National Intelligence Estimate by first evaluating what decision-makers knew about the threat prior to the 9/11 attacks, the policies they were implementing at the time, and the extent to which the hypothetical National Intelligence Estimate described by the 9/11 Commission would have mattered in terms of influencing their judgement and policy for the better. It concludes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were more a failure of policy than strategic intelligence analysis.

TERRORISM