Letnik 9/2, september 2007 - Slovenska vojska

John J. Le Beau
going through the right door, at the right time; the silent weapon of actionable
intelligence.
To be sure, intelligence collection and direct action against terrorist targets is a
decidedly high-risk enterprise. This does not refer so much to the physical risk
to intelligence, law enforcement or military officers involved (although this can
of course be considerable) but rather to the significant chances that information
may be inaccurate, fraudulent or dated. With the best of planning and intentions,
the boot can still go through the wrong door or, more tragically, the bullet can
go through the wrong head. (Gall and Jehl, 2006) Much of this has to do with
the nature of the intelligence beast. The “craft of intelligence” is a useful phrase,
suggesting that intelligence collection and analysis is a composite of science and
art. Statistical modeling, link analysis and the empirical examination of evidence
share the stage with a Case Officer’s personal assessment of a human penetration
of a terrorist organization or his reading of a liaison partners’ integrity. There
is substantial room for error which, in the counterterrorist arena, can have fatal
consequences. Accordingly, any joint intelligence arrangement to share information
and act upon it should acknowledge and accept this element of risk at the inception,
to avoid recriminations at a later stage.
At the present juncture in the post-9/11 struggle against Islamist terrorism, a
number of observations can be made with some certainty. First, intelligence
information, obtained via human and technical means, has in the last five years
played a significant role in eliminating individual terrorists through killing or
capture, and in seriously degrading the operational capabilities (to include the
ability to conduct specific attacks, support infrastructure and financial mechanisms)
of al-Qaeda and other organizations. This holds true in war zones such as Iraq
and Afghanistan as well as in areas not experiencing combat. Indeed, the muchremarked-on
transformation of al-Qaeda from a structured organization to a
more diffuse movement (as noted by former DNI John Negroponte) would seem
to be a direct consequence of the effectiveness of applied intelligence. Second,
the amount of intelligence cooperation between U.S. and foreign intelligence
services has increased steadily since the attacks on New York and Washington.
This interservice cooperation against terrorist targets extends from the Middle
East to Asia to Europe. Although these liaison relationships are often complicated
and occasionally contentious, they do for the most part endure, built on a plinth of
information sharing and based firmly on the principle of mutual interests. Third, the
requirement for action-oriented intelligence collection and operations (including
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