Intelligence Failure I.

This is coolbert:  

The 9/11 commission has finished it's work and came to some conclusions that they say must be implemented immediately to prevent another disaster like 9/11. And persons alive today just are so startled at the seeming intelligence "failure" of the various U.S. intelligence agencies to detect the 9/11 attacks.

Historically speaking, failure of intelligence agencies is nothing new.

Failures of intelligence agencies to predict "sneak attacks" of the type as seen on 9/11 seem to be a world-wide phenomenon.

At the onset of and during World War Two [WW2], Britain [Malaya], the United States [Pearl Harbor], and the Soviet Union [Barbarossa], and the Germans [Normandy] all had massive intelligence failures. These failures led to catastrophic defeats for all four parties. In the case of the British in Malaya, this failure is even more striking when one realizes that Britain had been engaged in fighting for over two years prior to the outbreak of the war in the Pacific and surely had experience with intelligence gathering and analysis that should have allowed it to see what was coming and make the right decisions.

The list of failures by intelligence agencies world-wide to predict "sneak attacks" did not end with WW2. The CIA was unable to predict the North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950. Nor was U.S. intelligence able to predict the Tet Offensive in 1967. The Israeli was unable to predict the attack by Egypt and Syria in 1973. Again, in 1990, the CIA was unable to predict the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

This is a pretty heavy list of failures. The British, Soviets, Americans, Germans, and Israelis have all had their failures. And the cost of failure can be catastrophic. The worst military defeat EVER in the history of British arms was in Malaya at the hands of the Japanese. The Israeli in 1973 found themselves in a situation where their actual existence as a nation was in peril.

The reasons for these failures seems to due to many factors, factors which seem to be very hard to eliminate.

To be continued.

coolbert.