Most of us would agree that the terrible events of 9/11 resulted in significant changes in the way we lived our lives. A certain innocence was lost as we struggled to understand what had happened and what it would mean for us and for our children. Our government has also changed the way it saw the world and our role in it. Everything from the TSA checks we undergo when we board an airplane to the wars some of us have fought in, Iraq and Afghanistan being the most notable, resulted from that terrible day.
To our credit, we have adapted to the “new reality” of a post-9/11 world. The government re-organized itself, creating the Department of Homeland Security, beefing up its military, and thoroughly re-vamping the ways in which we collected, processed, analyzed, and disseminated intelligence. No organization has changed more profoundly in this regard than the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Prior to 9/11, the FBI had no centralized management of its intelligence operations. Surprisingly, it didn’t even have an organized cadre of intelligence specialists within its organization. The events of September 11, 2001 proved to be the catalyst to change that. Now, the FBI has a robust career intelligence staff and a rigorous program to train that staff at its academy in Quantico.
While on active duty I had the opportunity to see for myself how far the FBI had come in their effort to make intelligence the driving force of their organization. The FBI’s ability to fuse, analyze and share intelligence across its divisions has far surpassed any previous efforts. There is now a workforce within the FBI dedicated to intelligence work. Those efforts now drive investigations and vastly enhance the government’s ability to protect our country.
An example of their ability to integrate intelligence with investigations occurred in Honolulu, where the FBI used its Field Intelligence Group to catch a defense contractor who was trying to sell the secrets of the B-2 Stealth Bomber to a foreign power.
In a case closer to home, the FBI used Link Analysis (connecting a target of their investigation to other members of his network) to roll-up the “Virginia Jihad Network”, a group of 11 men who wanted to wage war against the U.S. after 9/11. That group was located here, in Northern Virginia.
None of these efforts could have been successful without an FBI focused on integrating intelligence into operations. The fact that these efforts bore fruit is due to the training these professionals received right here in our area: A fact that we can point to with pride.
Cedric Leighton of Lorton and founder and President of Cedric Leighton Associates, a Washington area strategic risk and management consultancy, has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, national radio programs and local TV news stations speaking about security issues that confront our daily lives.
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