Fool Me Twice: Intelligence Failure and Mass Casualty Terrorism

Fool Me Twice: Intelligence Failure and Mass Casualty Terrorism PDF Author: Thomas Copeland
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047440293
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This study evaluates whether surprise and intelligence failure leading to mass casualty terrorism are inevitable. It explores the extent to which four factors – failures of public policy leadership, analytical challenges, organizational obstacles, and the inherent problems of warning information – contribute to intelligence failure. The study applies existing theories of surprise and intelligence failure to case studies of five mass casualty terrorism incidents: World Trade Center 1993; Oklahoma City 1995; Khobar Towers 1996; East African Embassies 1998; and September 11, 2001. A structured, focused comparison of the cases is made using a set of thirteen probing questions based on the factors above. The study concludes that while all four factors were influential, failures of public policy leadership contributed directly to surprise. Psychological bias and poor threat assessments prohibited policy makers from anticipating or preventing attacks. Policy makers mistakenly continued to use a law enforcement approach to handling terrorism, and failed to provide adequate funding, guidance, and oversight of the intelligence community. The study has implications for intelligence reform, information sharing, congressional oversight, and society’s expectations about the degree to which the intelligence community can predict or prevent surprise attacks.

Fool Me Twice: Intelligence Failure and Mass Casualty Terrorism

Fool Me Twice: Intelligence Failure and Mass Casualty Terrorism PDF Author: Thomas Copeland
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047440293
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This study evaluates whether surprise and intelligence failure leading to mass casualty terrorism are inevitable. It explores the extent to which four factors – failures of public policy leadership, analytical challenges, organizational obstacles, and the inherent problems of warning information – contribute to intelligence failure. The study applies existing theories of surprise and intelligence failure to case studies of five mass casualty terrorism incidents: World Trade Center 1993; Oklahoma City 1995; Khobar Towers 1996; East African Embassies 1998; and September 11, 2001. A structured, focused comparison of the cases is made using a set of thirteen probing questions based on the factors above. The study concludes that while all four factors were influential, failures of public policy leadership contributed directly to surprise. Psychological bias and poor threat assessments prohibited policy makers from anticipating or preventing attacks. Policy makers mistakenly continued to use a law enforcement approach to handling terrorism, and failed to provide adequate funding, guidance, and oversight of the intelligence community. The study has implications for intelligence reform, information sharing, congressional oversight, and society’s expectations about the degree to which the intelligence community can predict or prevent surprise attacks.

Breakdown

Breakdown PDF Author: Bill Gertz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1596987103
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Bill Gertz uses his unparalleled access to America's intelligence system to show how this system completely broke down in the years, months, and days leading up to the deadly terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Intelligence

Intelligence PDF Author: Susan Hasler
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780984058488
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Branded an intelligence failure after the last devastating attack, CIA counterterrorism analyst Maddie James vows not to let tragedy strike again. Believing that a dormant terrorist cell is plotting a mass-casualty assault, Maddie warns the Administration. Unfortunately, her words are off-message in an election year, when the President claims the US is winning the war on terror. Hell-bent on making them listen, Maddie pulls together an elite team of eccentrics--a disgruntled senior analyst, a bioterrorism specialist with hypochondria, and a horn-dog chemical weapons expert. They wage a fight against the extremists plotting the attack and the officials anxious to please their higher-ups.

Spying Blind

Spying Blind PDF Author: Amy B. Zegart
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400830273
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
In this pathbreaking book, Amy Zegart provides the first scholarly examination of the intelligence failures that preceded September 11. Until now, those failures have been attributed largely to individual mistakes. But Zegart shows how and why the intelligence system itself left us vulnerable. Zegart argues that after the Cold War ended, the CIA and FBI failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism. She makes the case by conducting painstaking analysis of more than three hundred intelligence reform recommendations and tracing the history of CIA and FBI counterterrorism efforts from 1991 to 2001, drawing extensively from declassified government documents and interviews with more than seventy high-ranking government officials. She finds that political leaders were well aware of the emerging terrorist danger and the urgent need for intelligence reform, but failed to achieve the changes they sought. The same forces that have stymied intelligence reform for decades are to blame: resistance inside U.S. intelligence agencies, the rational interests of politicians and career bureaucrats, and core aspects of our democracy such as the fragmented structure of the federal government. Ultimately failures of adaptation led to failures of performance. Zegart reveals how longstanding organizational weaknesses left unaddressed during the 1990s prevented the CIA and FBI from capitalizing on twenty-three opportunities to disrupt the September 11 plot. Spying Blind is a sobering account of why two of America's most important intelligence agencies failed to adjust to new threats after the Cold War, and why they are unlikely to adapt in the future.

Intelligence Failure

Intelligence Failure PDF Author: David N. Bossie
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Eight years before 9/11, on February 26, 1993, Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network declared war against the United States with a deadly attack on the World Trade Center. Al Qaeda continued to wage war on the U.S. throughout the Clinton Administration, attacking Khobar Towers in 1996, two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, and the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. How could these attacks happen? How could Al Qaeda wage these assaults against the strongest, best-defended nation in the world? Intelligence Failure is the definitive account of Bill Clinton's greatest failure as president. Using exclusive research and previously unreported findings from congressional investigations and other sources, David Bossie details how Clinton's poor leadership and denigration of both the U.S. military and intelligence services exposed America to terrorist assault. "September 11, 2001, may have happened under Bush's watch," Bossie declares, "but it will always remain Clinton's legacy."

Breakdown

Breakdown PDF Author: Bill Gertz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Intelligence service
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description


Countdown to Terror

Countdown to Terror PDF Author: Curt Weldon
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
ISBN: 9780895260055
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Congressman Curt Weldon provides a rare—indeed unique—insight on what is going on in the war on terrorism through his 'Ali' missives. The book is a case study of an intelligence failure in the process of happening, with potentially catastophic consequences for the United States. Moreover, Curt accurately diagnoses the larger problems in the intelligence community that can result in intelligence failures. He offers a blueprint for solving these problems, and for winning the war on terrorism, that deserves a wide hearing." —R. James Woolsey, former director of Central Intelligence

American Book Publishing Record

American Book Publishing Record PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 746

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Book Description


Intelligence Matters

Intelligence Matters PDF Author: Bob Graham
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Free to adopters.

The CIA and the Culture of Failure

The CIA and the Culture of Failure PDF Author: John Diamond
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781503626492
Category : POLITICAL SCIENCE
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
The 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq sprang in no small part from massive intelligence failures, that much is well understood. How the CIA got to a point where it could fail so catastrophically is not. According to John Diamond, this slippage results from the tendency to overlook the links between seemingly unrelated intelligence failures and to underestimate the impact of political pressure on the CIA: factors we need to examine to understand both the origin and magnitude of the 9/11 and Iraq intelligence failures. To bring these links to light, Diamond analyzes the CIAs role in key events from the end of the Cold War (when the Soviet Union--and thus the CIAs main mission--came to an end) to the war in Iraq. His account explores both CIA successes and failures in the Soviet break-up, the Gulf War, the Ames spy case, the response to al-Qaedas initial attacks, and the US/UN effort to contain and disarm Iraq. By putting into historical perspective the intelligence failures--both real and perceived--surrounding these events, Diamond illuminates the links between lower-profile intelligence controversies in the early post-Cold War period and the high-profile failures that continue to define the War on Terrorism.