Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11

by Richard A. Posner

Book Overview

The commission to investigate the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States issued its final report in July of 2004, in which it recommended a dramatic overhaul of the nation's intelligence system. Congress responded by hastily enacting the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which adopts many of the 9/11 commission's specific recommendations, though with a number of alterations. Richard A. Posner, in the first...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 074254947X
• ISBN13: 9780742549470
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Preventing Surprise Attacks

An excellent buy. Book was in good condition, and was shipped in a timely manner.

Thoughtful Outside View with Academic Bent

Judge Posner is not intelligence professional but he is certainly one of the most thoughtful of outside critics, with a legal, academic, and organizational-economic point of view that is helpful. This, his first of two books disagreeing with the 9-11 Commission focus on centralization, has a number of nuggets worthy of study, but this book is largely oblivious to the many recommendations of both insiders and outsiders who can be considered "iconoclastic." Judge Posner is an insider, and he draws primarily from "establishment" sources. He states, I believe correctly, that the Intelligence Reform Act was a "backward step" and provides very professional and detailed support for his view. The biggest mistake in his view was the refusal to remove intelligence from the FBI culture and create a separate domestic intelligence agency (note: since the Department of Homeland Security has steadfastly refused to do its assigned job of integrating intelligence in support of its mission, Judge Posner can be said to be totally correct in this view). He posits a fork in the road for the Director of National Intelligence, between engaging in substance and managing the larger enterprise, and appears oblivious to the fact that the Vice President has ordered the DNI to distance himself from the three national agencies captured by the Department of Defense, which are "hands off" in all practical terms. Judge Posner is at his most articulate and most pointed when he says that the Intelligence Reform Act is a placebo, misleading the public into thinking something has been done, and preventing or lessening focus on other needed defenses including border security, deterrence, and hardening of potential targets. He noted, accurately, that most of the commissioners were lawyers without an intelligence background, but does not mention that most of them were also compromised (as were senior members of the staff) by ties to the Administrations, precisely what Congress did not want. He posits a potential role for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and this would indeed be a good thing for a future president to consider, but first they would have to put the M back into OMB, as it died over a decade ago. He brings to bear a familiarity with the literature on organization but not the literature on "organizational intelligence," nor, as alluded to above, does he appear to have read any of the many works from Allen to Codevilla to Gentry and onwards. He obsesses on the impossibility of predicting and understanding surprise, while acknowledging that we could do better if we had a *deep* understanding of other cultures that he correctly terms *alien* to our own. Never-the-less, he completely avoids the matter of pre-emptive morally based reduction of incentives to surprise attack and he completely avoids any discussion of the degree to which US budgets and behavior might be aggravating rather than ameliorating the global situation that threatens America. Chapter

Essential for Understanding Intelligence Reform

Richard Posner's book will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the rapid changes now taking place in the US intelligence community. This book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the function and organization of intelligence. Posner's arguments are so clear and compelling that you will find yourself saying "Ah-ha!" after almost every chapter. Specifically, Posner takes on the "The 9/11 Commission Report," for offering an organizational solution for a managerial failure. He shows how the Commission's organizational line and block solution led to the enactment of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. He shows how this happened with little or no debate about the Commission's recommendations. Posner explains why surprise attacks happen, and how little the organization of an intelligence apparatus has to do with it. For example, the Arab nations surprised Israel in the Yom Kipur War. An Israel commission determined, after the fact, that the reason for the surprise was lack of decentralization in its intelligence services. The 9/11 Commission, on the other hand, determine the surprise of 9/11 was due to not enough centralization. The fact that there are divergent views on this matter is not surprising. What is surprising is that the 9/11 Commission failed to even investigate them. As Posner explains, surprise attacks happen, because the adversary does something that is essentially stupid and self-defeating. Often, the surprise attack is a miscalculation, not just for the attacked, but for the attacker as well. This makes anticipation of such attacks particularly challenging. As result, the Commission's hindsight was not 20/20, but altogether distorted by its focus on what had already happened, and not on the full range of possible future surprise attacks. The range of such attacks is nearly infinite. According to Posner, the desire of the Commission to create an "Intelligence Czar" will not enhance the US intelligence community's ability to foretell these events. It will have the opposite effect of limiting the scope of vision and the diversity of analysis that will make any accurate and timely prediction possible. An Intelligence Czar will be much more prone to political influence, and he will function well above the horizon of subtle surprise attack indicators. He will also be much more likely to spend his time focusing on the "threat de jure" instead of genuine threats. Posner, however, is not simply beating a dead horse here. While it is true that the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act has been signed into law, the ambiguity of that law still allows for a less destructive interpretation and execution of the law. Under the new law, the Director of National Intelligence may become the "Intelligence Czar," acting as the CEO of the intelligence community. Hopefully, however, he will take on a more constructive role - facilitator of greater coordination, acting as the chair