Intelligence and Law Enforcement: Countering Transnational Threats to the U.S., Updated December 3, 2001.

摘要

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact by 1991 significantly altered the international environment. Transnational issues, such as narcotics, terrorism, money laundering, economic espionage, and shipments of materials for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have risen in importance, in some cases becoming more urgent than traditional geopolitical concerns. The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), George Tenet, in his annual assessment of national security challenges in February 2001, renewed the heavy emphasis on transnational issues that had characterized his testimony in previous years: The threat from terrorism is real, it is immediate, and it is evolving. State sponsored terrorism appears to have declined over the past five years, but transnational groups--with decentralized leadership that makes them harder to identify and disrupt--are emerging. We are seeing few centrally controlled operations, and more acts initiated and executed at lower levels.