One of the lessons of 9/11 is the danger of ‘stovepiping’ in our law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It’s not enough for agencies to collect the data they need to piece together and disrupt a plot; the analysts who ‘own’ those critical nuggets must be able to find others with relevant information and piece it together. Recognizing this problem, the 9/11 commission recommended that new networks be created to facilitate the sharing of data across agencies. The New York Times described the problem last year:
The intelligence community now seems eager to catch-up to the private sector. It has created Intellipedia, blogs, and now a ‘MySpace’-type system in order to boost the sharing of information:
Congressman Pete Hoekstra, Ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, spoke with me on a break from his annual August bike tour of his Congressional district (pictures from the 2006 tour are on Mr. Hoekstra’s website here). Hoekstra said that he’s encouraged to see the CIA and the intelligence community more broadly experiment with new models for information sharing after showing little interest at the onset. He credits DCI McConnell for ‘taking the ball and running with it,’ when it comes to improving the ability of his team to share information. Hoekstra says that Admiral McConnell clearly means to do more than just “keep the seat warm” until the end of the Bush administration, but to “build an intelligence community to keep America safe.” Hoekstra didn’t express an opinion as to whether one or more of these new applications would prove revolutionary, or even beneficial, in improving the security of America and American interests. But he expressed an eagerness to see how they turn out, and, given the community’s past failures, we suspect there’s nowhere to go but up.
