Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world
Why do major terror attacks frequently succeed, even though post-mortem investigations invariably reveal that intelligence information had been available that might have prevented the attack?
Why do major terror attacks frequently succeed, even though post-mortem investigations invariably reveal that intelligence information had been available that might have prevented the attack? Erik Dahl’s dissertation research examines this question through a comparative study of cases of intelligence failure and intelligence success, and by comparing the threat of terrorist attack today with the problem of conventional surprise attack during the Cold War.
Conventional wisdom holds that disasters such as the 9/11 attacks have been caused largely by failures of analytical imagination and the inability to "connect the dots." But Dahl’s preliminary findings are that the key problems are a lack of tactical-level intelligence and a poor relationship between the intelligence and policy communities — and that most often attacks are foiled after a prior successful attack acts as a focusing event to stimulate both intelligence collection and policy response.
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