GailForce: Reflections on 9/11

Been off the blogosphere for the last couple of weeks. My back went out and the only comfortable position I could find was lying down. Guess I went at the bike riding thing too heavily this summer! I’m of the mind that there is a seed of good in every adversity. In this case it gave me time to reflect. With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 coming up I thought this would be time to share some of the thoughts I came up with.

I was actually in Washington D.C. on 9/11. I was serving my last assignment in the Navy. My task was to lead the Department of Defense team charged with setting up the intelligence architecture for what was at the time the Department’s newest challenge, Cyber Warfare. In laymen’s terms that meant defining and setting into action the role the intelligence community was going to play. This involved working with over 30 Department of Defense Commands plus the many intelligence organizations. Many, to include some in the intelligence community, thought it was a problem for the communications folks and did not believe intelligence had a role to play. I was of the mind that just as the intelligence community kept track of potential weapons like ships, aircraft, bombs, cruise missiles, and WMD’s that could be a threat to our national security we now needed to take that same type of focus to the instruments and potential weapons of cyber war.

I talk more about the challenges and great work done by many in this effort in my book A Woman’s War, but I was in town to meet with the military intelligence funding folks to see if I could get some money to implement needed changes to the military’s cyber defense. Two colleagues were going to attend the meeting with me. On the fated day, the plan was I would swing by a couple of hours before the scheduled meeting time to catch a ride with one colleague and then we would go by the Pentagon and pick up the third person. Before we left for our big powwow we wanted to have a brief meeting to go over our presentation to make sure it was strong enough. I didn’t want to ride over to the Pentagon by myself because the place is a maze and although I have been over there many times I still get lost trying to find my way around.

The guy I was catching a ride with not only knew his way around but he had borrowed his Father’s car for the trip. His Dad was a General and had a car pass that allowed the driver to park near one of the entrances. On this day, my friend who was usually punctual was running late and for whatever reason had his hair on fire. I got frustrated as time was running out and decided to go by myself and risk getting lost in the halls of the Pentagon figuring as always someone would point me in the right direction. As I was leaving the building I caught the news report of the first plane hitting the twin towers and like many thought it was a tragic accident and continued on. As I was driving toward the Pentagon I heard news on the radio of the second plane hitting the other tower and then as I approached the Pentagon heard an explosion and saw smoke coming from the building.

I later found out from the third colleague when she realized I was running late she decided to head on by herself to our scheduled meeting with the money folks figuring she’d catch up with us before the meeting. She said she had just picked up her purse to leave when the plane struck the Pentagon. She told me ten people around her were killed. There are many stories like mine. I realized what had appeared to be a frustrating situation with my ride was actually God looking after me and telling me it was not yet my time to go.

In the aftermath of 9/11 there was a lot of criticism of the intelligence community. It angered me. What concerned me was not that people were criticizing intelligence but the fact that most critics were clueless with how the intelligence community was organized and how it works. When you say intelligence to most people they think of the CIA. Critics did not seem to know the CIA is one of 16 government intelligence organizations (17 if you count the DNI) or that 85% of these intelligence assets reside within the Department of Defense. How can you fix what you don’t understand?

After my military retirement, I did lots of radio interviews. I was always asked the question was 9/11 an intelligence failure. My response was always the same: Yes but not in the way you think. Before 9/11 there was actually quite a bit of sharing going on within the intelligence community and that was a major part of the problem. The media is always talking about the intelligence community not connecting the “dots”. About three years or so ago the then Director of National Intelligence stated in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine every 24 hours the intelligence community collects one billion pieces of information. The challenge is to sift through hundreds of 1000’s of pieces of data looking for significant information. You can’t just focus on today, you have to relate data to what happened yesterday, last week, last month’ last year, ten years ago, etc. You know if you don’t get it right, war can break out on any given day.

In 2007 the intelligence community sponsored a conference in Chicago looking for help with this issue from industry and academia. At the conference we were told that of all the information collected less than one percent was able to be analyzed. This is a problem the community is still struggling with today. In March of this year the Navy sponsored the second annual Navy Information Day Conference. During the conference they put up a slide that said it took two centuries for the Library of Congress to be filled with 29 million books and periodicals, 2.4 million recordings, 29 million photographs, 2.4 million maps and 29 million manuscripts. The slide said today that much information is generated by the intelligence community every 5 minutes. The also said the problem will only grow worse with the arrival of new data sources, analytical techniques, and mission areas.

I think it’s a testament to the hard work of the men and woman of the intelligence community that they have performed so well under these extremely challenging circumstances. The fact that we have not had a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil is evidence of the extraordinary work they are doing.

I’ve talked about this before and probably will again until it’s apparent to me that more people understand the real challenges. I’m not saying before 9/11 there were no problems. There were but there were also many successes. Additionally the intelligence community is always reorganizing itself trying to do a better job. Yes before 9/11 the sharing could have been better but my experience was during a war or crisis the collaboration was outstanding. In my 28 year career I can only recall being turned down once when I asked for information I considered critical. Even that wasn’t a total failure; the organization in question provided the information to the 4 star General in charge of my command plus the Generals in charge of planning and intelligence. I thought that wasn’t enough since those folks were not going to be doing the actual intelligence work. One partial failure in 28 years is not bad.

Think I’ll end here, as always my views are my own. Time to go lay down and day dream about being able to get in a few more bike rides before the snow comes.