Last month, five of the nation’s intelligence and national-security agencies testified before the Senate: The CIA, FBI, DHS, DIA (defense intelligence), and INR (the State Department’s intelligence and research bureau) presented current and projected national-security threats to the United States. There were few surprises–the threat of terrorism and nuclear proliferation dominated the prepared statements. But not all agencies agree on how grave the threats are.
There is agreement that another terrorist attack is inevitable. CIA chief Porter Goss testified that “al Qaeda is intent on finding ways to circumvent U.S. security enhancements to strike Americans and the homeland.” FBI director Robert Mueller echoed this finding: “Al Qaeda continues to adapt and move forward with its desire to attack the United States using any means at its disposal.” DIA director Lowell Jacoby agreed, saying, “the most dangerous and immediate threat is Sunni Islamic terrorists that form the al Qaeda-associated movement.” And Homeland Security deputy secretary Jim Loy believes that “attacking the homeland remains at the top of al Qaeda’s operational priority list.”
It may not be much of surprise, but INR’s assessment differed slightly from that of the other agencies. “We remain vulnerable…but arguably we are now less vulnerable to relatively large-scale, high profile attacks than we were before 9/11.” And DHS added this caveat to its assessment: “[T]he United States is a ‘harder target’ for the terrorist.” Nonetheless, INR assistant secretary Thomas Fingar did underscore the threat: “[T]errorism remains the most immediate, dangerous, and difficult security challenge facing our country and the international community and is likely to remain so for a long time.” And Admiral Loy said that “the probability of an attack in the United States is assessed to be high but very much conditional and circumstantial.”
There is little disagreement on the inevitability of a WMD attack, though the type of attack is open to debate. CIA analysis suggests that “it may be only a matter of time before al-Qa’ida or another group attempts to use chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons.” The FBI concurred: Al Qaeda is “seeking weapons of mass destruction including chemical weapons, so-called dirty bombs or some type of biological agent such as anthrax.” INR agreed that “the quest for WMD…has become more attractive to, and more feasible for, a small but significant set of state and non-state actors.” DIA narrowed down the WMD threat to a biological attack. “Because they are easier to employ [than other WMD], we believe terrorists are more likely to use biological agents.” And DHS sees Weapons of Mass Effect [WME] as a way to fulfill al Qaeda’s intent of inflicting mass casualties.
These testimonies are largely based on speculation and there was a reluctance to deny any possibility. Concern about nuclear terrorism seems to be based more on al Qaeda statements and on the potential devastation of an attack than on the terrorists’ operational ability. But INR, the smallest member of the intelligence community, attempted to be specific. It has “seen no persuasive evidence that al-Qa’ida has obtained fissile material or ever has had a serious and sustained program to do so.” This statement should not only alleviate immediate concerns about nuclear terrorism but also underscore the importance of securing fissile material. Without it, a nuclear device is impossible to create. Programs like Nunn-Lugar (see here) can go a long way to reducing the threat.
In addition to concerns about terrorism and proliferation, the familiar countries made the list of national-security threats. The CIA remains concerned about North Korea’s pursuing a uranium-enrichment program and selling ballistic missiles around the world. The DIA director discussed at length China’s modernizing military, anti-ship cruise missiles, and submarines, but stressed that Beijing will use non-military means to squelch any Taiwanese move toward independence. And FBI’s Robert Mueller didn’t name names, but his bureau is concerned about foreign intelligence services that maintain a “large and active presence in the US” and aggressively target U.S. personnel. (It has been just four years since FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for spying on behalf of Russia.)
While the country threats were presented in a logical way, INR’s Fingar offered a more sobering assessment. In spite of its recent statements from Pyongyang, “there is no evidence that North Korea has produced such [nuclear] weapons and mated them to a missile capable of delivering them to the United States.” He saw the importance of focusing on terrorism largely as a consequence of Soviet collapse and normalized relations with China.
While it is easy to dismiss the State Department’s analysis–it is a mouse walking among elephants–INR has become the model intelligence agency. Its couple hundred analysts produce excellent intelligence products. INR was the only community member to dissent from the infamous national intelligence estimate on Iraq’s WMD programs. It seems INR, like other State Department offices, successfully leverages its small resources by relying on the community for collection but on its own personnel for good analysis. This type of competitive cooperation needs to be encouraged by the new national intelligence director. The agency heads who testified seem to want to maintain their unique organizational identities.
CIA’s Porter Goss called for “deeper collaboration throughout the intelligence community,” but he clearly laid down his marker: “[T]he CIA is and will remain the flagship agency…the other 14 elements in the community will continue to make their unique contributions as well.”
Though he may be pushing back from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte’s effort to unify intelligence activities, Goss’s emphasis on competitive analysis is consistent with 20 years of intelligence-community practice. At first glance, this might seem to be a product of bureaucratic insularity (it is, partly), but competition among intelligence agencies was established by President Reagan’s Executive Order 12333, which states that “maximum emphasis should be given to fostering analytical competition among appropriate elements of the Intelligence Community.” President Reagan hoped to avoid the type of “group think” that plagued other administrations by injecting market principles into the government’s large intelligence bureaucracy.
As the five different testimonies illustrate, terrorism is becoming the single axis on which all intelligence-community resources revolve. Looking beyond terrorism will be difficult for the new national intelligence director.
Yet INR’s Fingar cautioned against group-think. “Focusing on known threats and concerns is necessary but could prove to be very dangerous if we are not equally vigilant in trying to anticipate unknowns and surprises.” Anticipating surprises such as Pearl Harbor, North Korea’s 1950 invasion, and the Soviet collapse remains the challenge for all intelligence agencies. Devoting resources to unknowns might be the greatest challenge of all–but it is a challenge that must be overcome to guarantee national security.
–Derek Reveron is the editor of America’s Viceroys: the Military and U.S. Foreign Policy, associate professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College, and a former intelligence analyst for the FBI.