Before 9/11, the United States
had not really focused on terrorism.
Sure, there had been incidences, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and
the World Trade Center bombing, but nothing captured the attention of the American
people the way that the 9/11 attacks did.
It brought, to the forefront, just how vulnerable the United States
actually was to outside forces. It also
allowed us to see where some of our weaknesses were in our defenses and made
clear some of the actions the country could take to mitigate such threats. It was in response to these threats and the
need for ways to prevent future terrorist attacks which the Government
Accounting Office (GAO) laid out strategies to combat terrorism, ways to
protect our critical infrastructure, as well as assessing threats from weapons
of mass destruction, coordinating research and development to better combat
terrorism, revising the Five Year Interagency Counterterrorism And Technology
Crime Plan to be more up to date, and designing a single focal point to oversee
coordination of the various federal programs.
Strategies to combat terrorism and cyber
attacks
By working with the Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), leaders believe this partnership
will have a great impact on securing long-term stability in the United States
and is a critical step in the process of sharing best practices for strengthening
domestic counterterrorism infrastructures and addressing the issue of
recruitment to terrorism (U.S.
Department of State, 2015)..
Within the past few years, there has begun
a new, more serious threat - technology.
With the arrival of the computer and other electronic devices capable of
communication with basically no boundaries, the threat of cyber-terrorism has
become almost insurmountable.
Organizations are using the latest technologies and protocols in order
to protect against cyber-attacks, however, even these measures are incapable of
stopping all attacks. Hackers are
finding new ways, inventing new viruses, and exploiting new weaknesses within
the systems in order to wreak havoc on organizations, private citizens, and
other delicate infrastructure systems (Beggs, Christopher & Butler,
Matthew, 2004).
On February 25, 2015, the President of the
United States, Barak Obama, directed the Director of National Intelligence
(DNI) to establish the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC). The role of this new organization was to find
a link between malicious foreign cyber threats to the nation and cyber-attacks
which affected the U.S. national interests.
It is also tasked with providing U.S. policymakers with an
"all-source analysis of threats (Office of the Press Secretary, 2015).” The CTIIC also joined with The National
Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC), the National Cyber
Investigative Join Task Force (NCIJTF) and U.S. Cyber Command as part of the
U.S. Government's goal of protecting citizens, companies and the nation from
cyber-attacks which threaten our infrastructure and our way of life (Office of
the Press Secretary, 2015).
Ways to better protect our nation's
critical infrastructure
The ability to link our nation's critical
infrastructure to the information superhighway brings with it many benefits,
such as the ability to light our houses, fuel our vehicles, communicate with
each other as well as easily access our bank accounts from anywhere in the
world and learn anything imaginable. However,
with this new found freedom also comes numerous threats, ranging from common
criminals seeking to acquire money to terrorist organizations, such as ISIS or
Al Qaeda, who would be seeking to ferret out our weaknesses (Daniel, 2013).
In response to these threats, the
President issued an Executive Order - Improving Critical Infrastructure
Cybersecurity, on February 12, 2013.
This Executive Order directs "the various federal departments and
agencies to use their existing authorities to provide better cybersecurity for
the nation (Daniel, 2013)."
Ultimately, this order would necessitate better collaboration between
government agencies as a whole and the private sector.
A single focal point to oversee
coordination of federal programs
With so many various agencies and
departments in the Department of Homeland Security, the need for a way to bring
everything together in a more cohesive fashion had become a priority, with each
agency having its own agenda and different ways of achieving similar
goals. However, there was no central
agency, committee or department set aside for such a purpose. Another factor in determining the need for a
central focal point, is funding. Having
different agencies, all focusing on the same agenda and each applying for
financial backing is a redundancy. It is
by creating a single entity to oversee a single mission that this waste of
finances can be mitigated (Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
House of Representatives, Public Buildings and Emergency Management,
Subcommittee on Economic Development, 2001).
Assessing the Threat Values of WMDs
In response to the growing threat of
Weapons of Mass Destruction or WMDs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
established the "Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate", or
WMDD. The purpose of this directorate
was to "build a cohesive and coordinated approach to incidents involving
nuclear, radiological, biological, or chemical weapons—with an overriding focus
on prevention (Federal Bureau of Investigation, n.d.)". Homeland Security Presidential Directive 4
(HSPD-4) seeks to enlist friends and allies of the United States, as well as
other players in the international community, in a joint effort to prevent
enemy states and terrorists from acquiring missiles and other weapons of mass
destruction (President Bush, 2002).
While the United States counterterrorism
efforts have been developed and many governmental agencies have been created
with the intent of preventing, deterring and/or mitigating terroristic
attracts, some have criticized the redundancies among the various programs
saying they do not have a clear strategy for bringing these together in a
cohesive and effective manner (Ackerman, Gary & Pate, James, 2001).
The ability to understand the threat that
WMD terrorism has on the United States today remains poor and this suggests
that there is a need for further study and assessment of emerging threats
(Ackerman, Gary & Pate, James, 2001).
Five Year Interagency Counterterrorism and
Technology Crime Plan
While the Attorney General's Five Year
Interagency Counterterrorism and Technology Crime Plan may have been introduced
in September of 1999, it can still be very useful today. Each of the 6 points, or goals, laid out
within this document can be just as poignant today as they were back then.
"GOALS
OF STRATEGIC PLAN
·
Goal 1: Prevent and deter terrorism within the
U.S. and against U.S. interests abroad
·
Goal 2: Maximize international cooperation to
combat terrorism
·
Goal 3: Improve domestic crisis and consequence
planning and management
·
Goal 4: Safeguard public safety by improving
state and local capabilities
·
Goal 5: Safeguard our national information
infrastructure
·
Goal 6: Spearhead research and development to
enhance counter-terrorism capabilities (Attorney General, 1999) "
As it stands, the plan can be used almost
as is, it just needs some modern modifications to bring it up to date.
Coordination of Research and Development
to Combat Terrorism
The Office of Terrorism Analysis (OTA)
branch of the CIA Counterterrorism Center works to support other governmental
anti-terrorism agencies by finding terrorists and terrorist group, tracking the
group's activities, analyzing their threat and informing proper authorities of
said threat, identifying where the financial backing of these groups is coming
from and disrupting them and finally, monitoring terrorist activities and
trends around the world and their relationship to other terrorist groups around
the world (CIA, 2015).
The
measures that are currently in place to combat terrorism do seem to be working,
to some extent. With the capture of
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his role in the Boston Marathon bombing, the arrest of
six men from Minnesota who were attempting to fly to Syria to join ISIS (Levs,
Josh & Vercammen, Paul, 2015), and the arrest of two women in New York who
reportedly planned to build a bomb for use in attacks in the United States, it
seems the war on terrorism is in full force across the country (Prokupecz,
Shimon & Sanchez, Ray, 2015). However,
there is still much more work to be done to put a halt to terrorism. There needs to be better interagency
communication as well as better collaboration between terrorism researchers and
policy makers to ensure that all interventions have successful, evidence-based,
and therefore indictable outcomes (Kennedy, Lum & Sherley, 2006).
At this time, neither the
Intelligence Community nor the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is
properly organized to deter terrorism.
Instead, they are designed to detect and eliminate terrorist
machinations before they can be implemented.
Since most terrorist plots are implemented by fanatics, and fanatics
cannot be reasoned with, deterring them is not a realistic option. The
fanatical nature of a terrorist precludes the importance of self, therefore any
attempt to deter them cannot work as deterrents are based upon
self-preservation of the individual. Suicide bombers are an exemplary example
of a fanatic’s lack of self-importance.
By responding to threats, the GAO created
the new strategies, using the Five Year Interagency Counterterrorism and
Technology Crime Plan, to create the system that we use today. The main stimulus for doing this was our
defense weaknesses and vulnerability highlighted by such events as the WTC
bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, and finally driven home by the events of 9/11.
References
Ackerman,
Gary & Pate, James. (2001). Assessing the Threat of WMD Terrorism. CNS
Reports. Retrieved from http://cns.miis.edu/reports/wmdt.htm
Beggs,Christopher
& Butler, Matthew. (2004). Developing New Strategies to Combat
Cyber-Terrorism. Retrieved from http://www.irma-international.org/viewtitle/32381/
CIA.
(2013). the Office of Terrorism Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/intelligence-analysis/organization-1/ota.html
Committee
on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, Public
Buildings and Emergency Management, Subcommittee on Economic Development.
(2001). H.R. 525, THE PREPAREDNESS AGAINST DOMESTIC TERRORISM ACT. Retrieved
from http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/Trans/hpw107-18.000/hpw107-18_0f.htm
Daniel,
Michael. (2013). The White House Blog. Improving the Security of the Nation’s
Critical Infrastructure. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/13/improving-security-nation-s-critical-infrastructure
Federal
Bureau of Investigation. (n.d.) Weapons of Mass Destruction. Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/terrorism/wmd
Kennedy
LW, Lum C, Sherley, AJ. (2006). The effectiveness of counter-terrorism
strategies. Campbell Systematic Reviews. Retrieved from http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/lib/download/53/
Levs, Josh & Vercammen, Paul. (2015). Arrests of ISIS supporters in Minnesota shed light on recruiting, U.S. says. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/20/us/fbi-terrorism-probe/index.html
Office
of the Press Secretary (2015). Statements & releases. FACT SHEET: Cyber
Threat Intelligence Integration Center. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/25/fact-sheet-cyber-threat-intelligence-integration-center
President
Bush. (2002). National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. Retrieved from http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-17.html
Prokupecz,
Shimon & Sanchez, Ray. (2015). 2 New York women accused of ISIS-inspired
bomb plot. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/02/us/new-york-terror-arrests/index.html
U.S.
Department of State. (2015). Preventing Terrorism: Strategies and Policies To
Prevent and Combat Transnational Threats. Retrieved from http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/rm/2010/150068.htm
