| Publication |
2013.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
National intelligence is still organized around the collection disciplines of the home agencies, not the joint mission. The importance of integrated, all-source analysis cannot be overstated. Without it, it is not possible to "connect the dots." No one component holds all the relevant information.
The 9/11 Commission Report, 22 July 2004, p. 408.
Although the 9/11 Commission Report 1 is over 400 pages long, its catchphrase about the Intelligence Community's (IC's) failure to "connect the dots" most succinctly captures one of the principal things that went wrong with the U.S government's efforts in general, and the IC's attempts in particular, to detect al-Qaeda's attack plans. General agreement prevails that the chance of detecting al-Qaeda's plans would have been improved if the IC had been able to pool, fuse, and analyze all of the relevant information about al-Qaeda's plans that various U.S. government agencies possessed prior to the attacks. As a result, the Commission strongly emphasized the need to improve information sharing across multiple IC and other government agencies to improve the IC's chances of detecting future attacks.
|