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By Root 620 0

President George W. Bush supported him. Congress, meanwhile, began a broad investigation into the performance of the intelligence community. Second, in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, widespread political support emerged for a range of intelligence actions to combat terrorism, including calls to lift the ban on assassinations and to increase the use of human intelligence. The first major legislative response to the attacks, the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act of 2001. allowed greater latitude in some domestic intelligence and law enforcement collection and took steps to improve coordination between these two areas. In 2004, in the aftermath of a second investigation (and also prompted by the failure to find WMDs in Iraq that intelligence had argued were there), legislation passed to revamp the command structure of the intelligence community. (See chap. 3 for details.) Third, in the first phase of combat operations against terrorism, dramatic new developments took place in intelligence collection capabilities, particularly the use of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, or pilotless drones) and more real-time intelligence support for U.S. combat forces. (See chap. 5 for details.) The war on terrorism also resulted in an expansion of some CIA authorities, including its ability to capture suspected terrorists overseas and then render (deliver) them to a third country for incarceration and interrogation. This activity became controversial as some questioned the basis on which people were rendered and the conditions to which they were subjected in these third nations.

By 2004, two intensive investigations had taken place of U.S. intelligence performance prior to the 2001 terrorist attacks. Although both resulting reports noted a number of flaws, neither was able to point up the intelligence that could have led to a precise understanding of al Qaeda’s plans. The tactical intelligence for such a conclusion (as opposed to strategic intelligence suggesting the nature and depth of al Qaeda’s hostility) did not exist.

INTELLIGENCE ON IRAQ (2003- ). The Bush administration was convinced, as was most of the international community, that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction, despite his agreement at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War to dispose of them and to submit to international inspections. (The fall 2002 debate at the United Nations was over the best way to determine if he held these weapons and how best to get rid of them—not over whether or not Iraq had them.) However, more than two years after the onset of the ongoing military conflict, the WMDs had not been found. As a result, the two main issues that arose were how the intelligence could come to such an important conclusion that proved to be erroneous and how the intelligence was used by policy makers. Coupled with the conclusions drawn from the two investigations of the 2001 terrorist attacks, intelligence performance in Iraq led to irresistible calls to restructure the intelligence community. The Senate Intelligence Committee found that groupthink was a major problem in the Iraq analysis, along with a failure to examine previously held premises. At the same time, the committee found no evidence that the intelligence had been politicized. The WMD Commission (formally the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction), established by President George W. Bush, came to the same conclusion regarding politicization but was critical about how the intelligence community handled both collection and analysis on Iraqi WMD and on other issues.

In addition to intelligence that may have provided a casus belli (justification for the acts of war), subsequent intelligence on Iraq continued to be controversial. As Iraq descended into a bloody insurgency, former intelligence officials pointed out prewar estimates that suggested such a possible outcome. In 2007, at the request of Congress, the intelligence community produced an estimate on the likely course of events in Iraq and possible indicators of success