Posted on 02/22/2010 8:11:26 PM PST by Jet Jaguar
The nation’s main counterterrorism center, created in response to the intelligence failures in the years before Sept. 11, is struggling because of flawed staffing and internal cultural clashes, according to a new study financed by Congress.
The result, the study concludes, is a lack of coordination and communication among the agencies that are supposed to take the lead in planning the fight against terrorism, including the C.I.A. and the State Department. The findings come just weeks after the National Counterterrorism Center was criticized for missing clear warning signs that a 23-year-old Nigerian man was said to be plotting to blow up a Detroit-bound commercial airliner on Dec. 25.
The counterterrorism center’s mission is to gather information from across the government, pull it all together and assess terrorist threats facing the United States, then develop a plan for the government to combat them. But the new report found that the center’s planning arm did not have enough authority to do its main job of coordinating the White House’s counterterrorism priorities.
The center’s planning operation is supposed to be staffed by representatives of various agencies, but not all of them send their best and brightest, the report said. It also cited examples in which the C.I.A. and the State Department did not even participate in some plans developed by the center that were later criticized for lacking important insights those agencies could offer.
As a result, the center’s planning arm “has been forced to develop national plans without the expertise of some of the most important players,” the report determined.
The counterterrorism center was part of the overhaul of the government after Sept. 11, including the creation of the director of national intelligence. -snip- raising fundamental questions about who is in charge of the nation’s counterterrorism policy and its execution.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“raising fundamental questions about who is in charge of the nation’s counterterrorism policy and its execution.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.