[Infowarrior] - Hurdles Hinder Counterterrorism Center

[Richard Forno]

Hurdles Hinder Counterterrorism Center
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/us/politics/23center.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

WASHINGTON — The nation’s main counterterrorism center, created in  
response to the intelligence failures in the years before Sept. 11, is  
struggling because of flawed staffing and internal cultural clashes,  
according to a new study financed by Congress.

The result, the study concludes, is a lack of coordination and  
communication among the agencies that are supposed to take the lead in  
planning the fight against terrorism, including the C.I.A. and the  
State Department. The findings come just weeks after the National  
Counterterrorism Center was criticized for missing clear warning signs  
that a 23-year-old Nigerian man was said to be plotting to blow up a  
Detroit-bound commercial airliner on Dec. 25.

The counterterrorism center’s mission is to gather information from  
across the government, pull it all together and assess terrorist  
threats facing the United States, then develop a plan for the  
government to combat them. But the new report found that the center’s  
planning arm did not have enough authority to do its main job of  
coordinating the White House’s counterterrorism priorities.

The center’s planning operation is supposed to be staffed by  
representatives of various agencies, but not all of them send their  
best and brightest, the report said. It also cited examples in which  
the C.I.A. and the State Department did not even participate in some  
plans developed by the center that were later criticized for lacking  
important insights those agencies could offer.

As a result, the center’s planning arm “has been forced to develop  
national plans without the expertise of some of the most important  
players,” the report determined.

The counterterrorism center was part of the overhaul of the government  
after Sept. 11, including the creation of the director of national  
intelligence. Now, years after the attacks, the entire reorganization  
is coming under scrutiny, raising fundamental questions about who is  
in charge of the nation’s counterterrorism policy and its execution.

“The fluid nature of modern terrorism necessitates an agile and  
integrated response,” the report concluded. “Yet our national security  
system is organized along functional lines (diplomatic, military,  
intelligence, law enforcement, etc.) with weak and cumbersome  
integrating mechanisms across these functions.”

The 196-page report is the result of an eight-month study by the  
Project on National Security Reform, a nonpartisan research and policy  
organization in Washington. It was financed by Congress and draws on  
more than 60 interviews with current and former government and  
Congressional officials, including nearly a dozen officials at the  
counterterrorism center. The study is scheduled to be made public this  
week. The authors provided a copy to The New York Times.

The center noted in a statement on Monday that the study found the  
center had “made progress” in linking national policy with operations,  
adding that the report’s recommendations “provide an extremely  
thoughtful and useful critique of how counterterrorism actions are or  
are not fully synchronized across the U.S. government.”

The report found that the center’s planning arm struggled with  
“systemic impediments” like overlapping statutes, culture clashes with  
different agencies and tensions with two formidable players: the State  
Department’s counterterrorism office and the C.I.A.

Under President Obama, the report determined, counterterrorism issues  
have become more decentralized within the National Security Council’s  
different directorates, leaving the counterterrorism center’s planning  
arm to collect and catalog policies and operations going on at the  
C.I.A., the Pentagon and the Departments of State and Homeland  
Security, rather than help shape overall government strategy.

The planning arm has not yet figured out good ways to measure the  
effectiveness of the steps the government is taking against  
extremists. “The basic but fundamental question remains unanswered:  
How is the United States doing in its attempt to counter terrorism?”  
the report concluded. And the study is critical of Congress for  
failing to create committees that cut across national security issues.  
The planning arm “lacks a champion in either chamber of Congress,” the  
report found.

Since the counterterrorism center was created in 2004, its planning  
arm has been largely focused on a comprehensive review to assign  
counterterrorism roles and responsibilities to each federal agency,  
producing then revising a document called the National Implementation  
Plan. But pointedly, the counterterrorism center does not direct any  
specific operations.

Since the completion of that longer-term project, the study’s authors  
found that the center’s 100-person planning arm had become more  
involved in immediate counterterrorism issues: working on various  
classified projects involving Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and threats  
to the United States at home.

The study called on Mr. Obama to issue an executive order to define  
the nation’s counterterrorism architecture in order to address some of  
the problems and improve coordination. It also recommended giving the  
center’s director, currently Michael E. Leiter, a say in the choice of  
counterterrorism officials at other federal agencies, a step the 9/11  
Commission had recommended but was not adopted.

The report was directed by Robert S. Kravinsky, a Pentagon planner on  
assignment to the group, and James R. Locher III, a former Pentagon  
official and senior Congressional aide who is the group’s president.

Until they joined the administration, Gen. James L. Jones, Mr. Obama’s  
national security adviser, and Dennis C. Blair, the director of  
national intelligence, were members of the group’s board of advisers,  
which now includes Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Brent  
Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush.