FBI 9/11 Commission Releases Report

The FBI 9/11 Commission has released its congressionally mandated report on the "implementation of the recommendations related to the FBI that were proposed by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States." The report, principally authored by Edwin Meese, Tim Roemer, and Bruce Hoffman, issued three key findings:

• The FBI has made measurable progress over the past decade in developing end-to-end intelligence capabilities and in significantly improving information sharing and collaboration with key partners at home and abroad. This has undoubtedly contributed to protecting the Homeland against another catastrophic terrorist attack. But progress in building key intelligence programs, analysis and Human Intelligence (HUMINT) collection in particular, lag behind marked advances in law enforcement capabilities. The imbalance needs urgently to be addressed to meet growing and increasingly complex national security threats, including from adaptive and increasnigly tech-savvy terrorists, more brazen computer hackers, and more technically capable, global cyber syndicates.
• The FBI's reform efforts have been impeded--but never halted--by early confusion with regard to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Director of National Intelligence (DNI) guidance on intelligence activities, by the uneven commitment of mid-level leadership to intelligence-focused transformation, by a one-year budget process out of sync with the five-year cycle of the major intelligence agencies, by an initial cultural clash between seasoned special agents and a vastly expanded cadre of inexperienced analysts, by conflicting structural recommendation from the 9/11 and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) commissions, and by the negative impact of sequestration on multiple reform initiatives.
• The FBI requires a five-year, top-down strategic plan to provide the resources needed to upgrade its support services--including information technology (IT), procurement, contracting, and security--and to achieve its growing mission as a global, intelligence-driven investigative service. The plan must enable the professionalization of FBI analysis, the improvement of HUMINT capabilities, a more focused and long-term attention to the Legal Attaches (LEGAT) program, the recognition of science and technology (S&T) as a core competency for future investment, and closer relations with Congressional committees of jurisdiction to ensure that the Bureau has both the state-of-the-art capabilities to counter increasingly dangerous threats and the effective internal safeguards to protect civil liberties.

Read the full report here. The New York Times also carries the story.