Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence after 9/11

摘要

Still early in its unfolding, the twenty-first century has already been punctuated by several major intelligence-related events in the United States alone. These events include a failure to anticipate the 9/11 attacks (2001) and a gross misjudgment about the likely presence of WMDs in Iraq (2002 - 3). Then came passage of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA), the most sweeping intelligence reorganization plan since 1947 (2004). This intelligence reform effort was followed by a scandal involving warrantless wiretaps against US citizens by the National Security Agency (NSA), a violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, ordered by the second Bush Administration and revealed in the pages of the New York Times (2005). Most recently, revelations from classified documents leaked by a government contractor (Edward J. Snowden) working for the Booz Allen Hamilton Corporation have disclosed NSA programs of unprecedented scope presently in place to gather 'metadata' on the telephone calls and Internet use of all Americans, not just suspected terrorists (2013) - a controversial 'dragnet' approach to intelligence collection inside the United States.