Global Security Newswire

The former head of the Sept. 11 commission said the U.S. intelligence community still does not appear prepared to face the threat posed by terrorists to the United States, the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger reported today (see GSN, Sept. 9, 2008).

"This is the most dangerous time I’ve seen since 9/11," said former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean. "Al-Qaeda is constantly learning our weaknesses, and the U.S. intelligence community is dysfunctional."

The Obama administration has yet "to clarify who is in charge" of the U.S. intelligence community, Kean told U.S. lawmakers during a recent hearing. Washington is without a top intelligence official, following the resignation of National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair (see GSN, May 21).

"If we don’t get our act together, we’re going to be in serious trouble," Kean said.

While there is debate on the threat level facing the country, it is widely believed in national security circles that the terrorist network behind the Sept. 11 attacks has in recent years updated its operations to deal with U.S. pressure, according to the newspaper.

"For several years after 9/11, our government was successful in attacking decision-making centers of al-Qaeda. They responded by reorganizing themselves on a much smaller scale. They may be less sophisticated and less deadly, but they are also much harder to catch," said Princeton University international affairs professor Aaron Friedberg.

It was only due to the "incompetence of the terrorists" that people were not killed in recent terrorist attacks targeting this country, including the unsuccessful bombing attempts in Times Square and on a passenger aircraft landing in Detroit, Friedberg said (see GSN, May 19).

"Thank God no one was hurt, but terrorists have learned that they don’t have to be successful to disrupt our lives and our economy," Kean said. "So now they’re looking to recruit home-grown (American) operatives who can move around at will under the radar of our intelligence community."

The Sept. 11 commission released its national security recommendations six years ago, Kean said, but "we still haven't gotten any action on [intelligence] reform in Congress.

"The FBI is still not fixed, and Homeland Security spends way too much of its time reporting to the 100 congressional subcommittees that claim some type of jurisdiction," he argued. "We can’t count on the terrorists being incompetent forever."

House Homeland Security Committee member Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) said that there has not been enough movement on Capitol Hill to resolve pre-Sept. 11 security vulnerabilities or to deal with the potential for an act of bioterrorism against the United States in coming years (see GSN, July 23, 2004).

"The bureaucracy in Washington and among the intelligence community is cumbersome," said Pascrell, who is preparing new biodefense legislation (see GSN, April 21). "Yet we’re more concerned about turf than protecting our country from a very determined, inventive enemy."