ONE FIGHT, ONE TEAM: THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT ON INTELLIGENCE, FRAGMENTATION AND INFORMATION
| Published date | 01 June 2006 |
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
| Author | HANS DE BRUIJN |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2006.00002.x |
Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 2, 2006 (267–287)
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
ONE FIGHT, ONE TEAM: THE 9/11
COMMISSION REPORT ON INTELLIGENCE,
FRAGMENTATION AND INFORMATION
HANS DE BRUIJN
In its report published in 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon
the United States (known as the ‘ 9/11 Commission ’ ) analyses the functioning of the
Intelligence Community (ICo). It indicates that the ICo is both over-fragmented and
guilty of not sharing enough information. The Commission recommends that central
control of the ICo needs to be strengthened and that more incentives for information-
sharing should be designed. This article takes a critical look at these two recommen-
dations. Sharing information carries major risks and is therefore not something that
can take place as a matter of course. Moreover, information has to be subject to a
selection process before it can be shared. This selection cannot be measured object-
ively, so mistakes in the selection are unavoidable. Strengthening central control also
poses risks: it engenders more battles over territory, it does not improve understand-
ing of the capillaries of the organization – the capillaries being where the primary
processes of information gathering, validation and assessment take place – and it
involves the destruction of checks and balances. Fragmentation may even be func-
tional since it leads to redundancy, itself a safeguard against the risk of misselecting
relevant information.
INTRODUCTION
‘ One fi ght, one team ’ is one of the mottos in the 9/11 Commission Report
published by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States. The report contains a detailed description of the events of 11 Septem-
ber 2001 and the information that was available about a possible attack prior
to this date (9/11 Commission 2004).
The picture that emerges from both the Commission ’ s descriptions and
analyses is that there were many indications that terrorist actions were being
planned. This information accumulated during the summer of 2001, known
as ‘ The Summer of Threat ’ . According to former CIA director George Tenet,
the system was ‘ blinking red ’ . The Intelligence Community (ICo) was faced
with a high level of threat reporting and there were a large number of leads
suggesting that something was going to happen (9/11 Commission 2004,
p. 277). Thus, unsurprisingly, the Commission pays considerable attention
to the functioning of the ICo.
The organizations that together form the ICo have three major character-
istics. First, they are information-intensive: their effectiveness largely depends
Hans de Bruijn is Professor of Public Administration in the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Manage-
ment, Delft University of Technology.
268 HANS DE BRUIJN
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006 Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 2, 2006 (267–287)
on the quality of the information they have available (for a further discussion
about knowledge-intensive organizations, see Davenport and Prusak 1998 ).
Second, these organizations have high failure costs: mistakes can do consider-
able harm; they can result in victims, public unrest or material damage (for
a further discussion on high-reliability organizations, see Weick et al. 1999;
Frederickson and LaPorte 2002 ). Third, these organizations together make up
a network structure: inevitably, the individual organizations themselves are
both highly autonomous as well as interdependent. Central control of such a
network is, to say the least, problematic (for a further discussion about co-
ordination in networks, see Kickert et al. 1997; Koppenjan and Klijn 2004 ).
This article analyses the Commission ’ s recommendations. First, it sets
out the recommendations themselves. The article then discusses the fact
that information-sharing is, in itself, desirable, However, organizations
with the characteristics outlined above, namely: (1) information-intensive;
(2) high failure costs; and (3) a network structure have major disincentives
for information-sharing. The non-sharing of information may be perfectly
justifi ed.
The section that follows deals with the potential consequences of stronger
central control in an information-intensive network organization that has
high failure costs. In organizations of this type, stronger central control may
be desirable, but may have major adverse effects. It may provoke more con-
fl icts and destroy functional redundancy.
The fi nal section presents an alternative to the Commission ’ s recommen-
dations: the focus should be on the possibilities of horizontal coordination
rather than on central control; it should be on the process rather than on the
structure of the ICo.
In the UK, a report on intelligence appeared almost simultaneously with
the 9/11 Report. This was the Report of the Committee of Privy Councillors,
the Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction (Committee of Privy
Councillors 2004, referred to hereafter as the Butler Committee). This report,
too, is based on a detailed analysis of the functioning of the ICo – that is, the
British ICo. The report focuses on the question of the accuracy of intelligence
on Iraq ’ s weapons of mass destruction. The British government based its
decision to wage war on Iraq partly on intelligence suggesting that Iraq had
these weapons. Later, this intelligence turned out to be false. The fi ndings in
this report are highly relevant to the issues raised by the 9/11 Commission
and shed a critical light on the Commission ’ s recommendations. Thus, this
article uses the fi ndings of the report to add a number of critical comments
to these recommendations.
THE RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE 9/11 COMMISSION
Box 1 gives an overview of the participants that together form the ICo. The
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States has iden-
tifi ed a number of problems in the functioning of this ICo. This article deals
with two of the most important ones.
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