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FINAL 9 11 Review Commission Report Unclassified - Fichier PDF
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(U) The FBI: Protecting the Homeland
(U) Report of the Congressionally-directed
(U) 9/11 Review Commission
(U) The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(U) Commissioners
(U) March 2015
Introduction: The 9/11 Review Commission…..……….………........
Baseline: The FBI Today……………………………..
The Sum of Five Cases………………….…………….
Anticipating New Threats and Missions………….......
Collaboration and Information Sharing……………….
New Information Related to the 9/11 Attacks…………
Key Findings and Recommendations………………………………….
Appendix A: Briefs Provided by FBI Headquarters’ Divisions.…..…
Appendix B: Interviews Conducted………………………………….
Appendix C: Select FBI Intelligence Program Developments…….…
Appendix D: Acronyms………………………………………………
THE FBI 9/11 REVIEW COMMISSION
(U) The FBI 9/11 Review Commission was established in January 2014 pursuant to a
congressional mandate.1 The United States Congress directed the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI, or the “Bureau”) to create a commission with the expertise and scope to
conduct a “comprehensive external review of the implementation of the recommendations
related to the FBI that were proposed by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the
United States (commonly known as the 9/11 Commission).”2 The Review Commission was
tasked specifically to report on:
1. An assessment of the progress made, and challenges in implementing the
recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that are related to the FBI.
2. An analysis of the FBI’s response to trends of domestic terror attacks since
September 11, 2001, including the influence of domestic radicalization.
3. An assessment of any evidence not known to the FBI that was not considered by the
9/11 Commission related to any factors that contributed in any manner to the
4. Any additional recommendations with regard to FBI intelligence sharing and
counterterrorism policy.3
(U) The Review Commission was funded by Congress in Fiscal Years 2013, 2014, and 2015
(FY13, FY14, and FY15) budgets that provided for operations for one-year ending with the
submission of its review to the Director of the FBI. The enabling legislation also required the
FBI Director to report to the Congressional committees of jurisdiction on the findings and
recommendations resulting from this review.4
(U) In late November 2013, the FBI Director, in consultation with Congress, appointed three
commissioners to what became known as the 9/11 Review Commission: former Attorney
General Edwin Meese, former Congressman and Ambassador Tim Roemer, and Professor and
counterterrorism expert Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University. In February 2014, the
1 (U) The relevant legislation includes: Title II, Div. B, Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act,
2013, P.L. 113-6 (March 26, 2013) (Salaries and Expenses, Federal Bureau of Investigation) and accompanying
Explanatory Statement, S1287, S1305 (March 11, 2013); Title II, Div. B, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014,
P.L. 113-76 (January 17, 2014) (Salaries and Expenses, Federal Bureau of Investigation) and accompanying
Explanatory Statement, H475, H512 (January 15, 2014); Title II, Div. B, Consolidated and Further Continuing
Appropriations Act, 2015, P.L. 113-235 (December 16, 2014) (Salaries and Expenses, Federal Bureau of
Investigation) and accompanying Explanatory Statement, H9307, H9346 (December 11, 2014).
2 (U) Explanatory Statement accompanying P.L. 113-6 at S1305 (March 11, 2013).
3 (U) Ibid.
4 (U) Title II, Div. B, Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013, P.L. 113-6 (March 26, 2013)
(Salaries and Expenses, Federal Bureau of Investigation) and accompanying Explanatory Statement, S1287, S1305
commissioners appointed as Executive Director, John Gannon, former Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) Deputy Director for Intelligence and ex-Chairman of the National Intelligence
(U) The Executive Director, working with the commissioners and coordinating with the Bureau,
assembled a staff that eventually numbered 12 individuals: two former senior intelligence
officers, one former assistant US Attorney (and previously a Senior Counsel on the original 9/11
Commission) detailed from the MITRE Corporation, one trial attorney detailed from the
Department of Justice (DOJ), one retired senior Congressional (intelligence committees) staffer,
two senior counterterrorism experts detailed from the RAND Corporation, two senior analysts
detailed from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), two personnel detailed from the FBI, and
one former federal and military prosecutor currently in private practice in Washington. 5
(U) The Review Commission produced a conceptual framework to guide the staff’s review and
production of a report fully addressing its legislative mandate. The framework contained five
objectives around which four staff teams were organized. The commissioners presented this
framework in testimony before the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies
Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on March 26, 2014.
(U) Four team leaders were identified and assigned to lead the specific lines of inquiry stated in
the commissioners’ March Congressional testimony: (1) a baseline assessment of where the
Bureau is today in its transition to a threat-based, intelligence-driven organization and “the
development of an institutional culture imbued with deep expertise in intelligence and national
security;” (2) an analysis of institutional lessons learned and practical takeaways from the
assessment of five high-profile counterterrorism cases that occurred in the past six years; (3) an
evaluation of the FBI’s current state of preparedness to address the rapidly evolving, global
threat environment of the next decade—including escalating cyber intrusions, proliferating
numbers of foreign fighters, and increasingly adaptive terrorist activities; and (4) an examination
of the Bureau’s current and future need for closer collaboration and information sharing with
strategic partners inside and outside government, and with other federal, state, local, tribal, and
international counterparts. In addition, the Review Commission produced a fifth chapter
summarizing its effort to identify any evidence now known to the FBI that was not considered by
the 9/11 Commission related to any factors that contributed in any manner to the terrorist attacks
5 (U) The staff, hired over several months, consisted of seven full-time and five part-time employees. Delays in
hiring slowed the progress of the review, but never halted it. All staff members reported administratively to the FBI.
The three commissioners, the executive director, and three of the staff members worked under personal services
contracts (PSCs), three staff members served pursuant to Intergovernmental Personnel Agreements (IPAs), with the
remaining staff under rotational or specialized agreements with the FBI. With regard to access, we experienced a
“pull system”—we received what we asked for—but the responsiveness and collaborative spirit of our two
substantive FBI liaison officers, Elizabeth Callahan and Jacqueline Maguire, provided us invaluable access to key
people and relevant data that enabled us to produce an objective, comprehensive, and constructive review. They
also conducted, in collaboration with the commission staff, an exhaustive fact-based review of the draft report that
improved its accuracy and clarity.
(U) Scope of Effort
(U) The Review Commission received over 60 extensive briefings on a broad range of subjects
from the FBI headquarters’ divisions. A comprehensive list of the briefing topics can be found in
Appendix A. 6 No briefing requests were denied. The Review Commission made numerous
document and information requests and in turn generated internal documents and Memoranda for
the Record. The Review Commission conducted meetings at the training and science and
technology facilities at Quantico, Virginia, to gain firsthand knowledge regarding the changes to
the training program as well as developments in the scientific realm.
(U) The Review Commission interviewed over 30 Bureau and United States Intelligence
Community (USIC) officials and other experts, including former FBI Director Robert Mueller,
Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, Director of CIA John Brennan, former
DIA Director Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Michael Flynn, former National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)
Directors Michael Leiter and Matthew Olson, Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Administrator
John Pistole, and had several meetings with current FBI Director James Comey. A
comprehensive list of the interviewees can be found in Appendix B.7
(U) The Review Commission traveled to eight field offices (Washington, Boston, Denver,
Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, San Diego, and New York) interviewing key personnel, including
members of counterterrorism squads, analytic units, Joint Terrorism Task Force members, field
office leadership, and key external partners such as local police chiefs. The Review Commission
also visited six Legal Attaché (LEGAT) posts (Ottawa, Beijing, Manila, Singapore, London, and
Madrid) for extensive discussions and meetings with the LEGATs (and members of his or her
team), ambassadors, relevant members of the country teams, and participated in outside meetings
with the Bureau’s key foreign liaison partners.
(U) The Review Commission and staff selected field office and LEGAT visits based on issues
related to the cases reviewed, on significant US border issues, on important internal US and
foreign collaborative relationships, and on specific local or regional counterterrorism challenges.
The Review Commission also interviewed at Headquarters the LEGATS from Abu Dhabi,
Ankara, Hong Kong, Kiev, Nairobi, and Tel Aviv.
(U) The Review Commission received outstanding support from Headquarters divisions, from
the field offices, and from the LEGAT posts in response to its extensive requirements. At
Headquarters, Elizabeth Callahan and Jacqueline Maguire, who were in daily contact with the
staff, deserve special mention for their unfailing positive response to the Review Commission’s
steady flow of requirements for briefings, meetings, and documents. We are also grateful to
Patrick Findlay, who provided guidance on legal, contracts, and logistical issues. The
commissioners also wish to thank Sarah Maksoud, a graduate student in the Security Studies
Program at Georgetown University, for her generous preparation of exceptionally useful
summaries of relevant unclassified reports.
6 (U) A complete list of briefings and meetings is contained in Appendix A.
7 (U) A complete list of interviews conducted is contained in Appendix B.
(U) It is important to acknowledge the report’s limitations. The Review Commission took
several months to assemble staff and hire personnel, due to bureaucratic, clearance, and other
unpredictable and administrative issues. The staff worked for 11 months to address an extremely
broad and challenging mandate from Congress, which required continuous focus on the most
challenging issues. In particular, the staff devoted extensive time to the Bureau’s intelligence
collection and analysis programs, its collaboration and information sharing practices, and its
strategic planning and implementation. The staff also derived practical lessons from recent FBI
(U) 9/11 Commission Recommendations
(U) The Review Commission recognized that its report must move beyond the baseline of 2004,
when the country was at the peak of launching reforms to prevent another catastrophic terrorist
attack on the Homeland, to a decade later when those enacted reforms have arguably helped to
prevent another such attack. Many of the findings and recommendations in this report will not
be new to the FBI. The Bureau is already taking steps to address them. In 2015, however, the
FBI faces an increasingly complicated and dangerous global threat environment that will demand
an accelerated commitment to reform. Everything is moving faster. The box below summarizes
the Bureau’s response to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, a good place to start.
(U) The FBI’s Response to the 9/11 Commission’s Recommendations8
(U) Overarching Recommendation:
(U) “A specialized and integrated national security workforce should be established at the FBI
consisting of agents, analysts, linguists, and surveillance specialists who are recruited, trained,
rewarded, and retained to ensure the development of an institutional culture imbued with a deep
expertise in intelligence and national security.”
(U) Review Commission Finding: The Bureau has established comprehensive structures,
programs, and policies to build an end-to-end intelligence architecture for intelligence
requirements, collection, analysis, production, and dissemination. It has assigned analysts,
including reports officers, and human intelligence (HUMINT) collectors to the field. It has
introduced a well-conceived, entity-wide threat prioritization process. Intelligence support has
been prioritized, though it requires faster progress and deeper execution. Its detailees to other
agencies, including the NCTC and the National Intelligence Council (NIC), have had a positive
impact. Fundamentally, however, the Review Commission’s report highlights a significant gap
between the articulated principles of the Bureau’s intelligence programs and their effectiveness in
practice. The Bureau needs to accelerate its pursuit of its stated goals for intelligence as a matter
of increased urgency.
(U) Subordinate Recommendations:
8 (U) The 9/11 Commission’s recommendations quoted from The 9/11 Review Commission Report: Final Report of
the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission Report) (US Government
Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 2004): 425-427.
1. (U) “The president, by executive order or directive, should direct the FBI to develop this
intelligence cadre.”
(U) Review Commission Finding: In the aftermath of the events in 9/11, the FBI had already
taken steps to improve and expand its intelligence cadre. However, the FBI was first formally
directed to create a Directorate of Intelligence through a November 18, 2004, Presidential
Memorandum for the Attorney General (titled “Further Strengthening Federal Bureau of
Investigation Capabilities”). 9 The Bureau has responded with the creation of an Executive
Assistant Director for Intelligence.
2. (U) “Recognizing that cross-fertilization between the criminal justice and national security
disciplines is vital to the success of both missions, all new agents should receive basic training in
both areas. Furthermore, new agents should begin their careers with meaningful assignments in
(U) Review Commission Finding: Subsequent to the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, the
FBI re-engineered new agent training to encompass both criminal and national security training
and increased the training from 16 weeks to 21 weeks. New agents are required to complete
certain developmental tasks that cover foundational skills as well as skills needed for National
Security Branch (NSB) and Intelligence functions.
3. (U) “Agents and analysts should then specialize in one of these disciplines and have the option to
work such matters for their entire career with the Bureau. Certain advanced training courses and
assignments to other intelligence agencies should be required to advance within the national
security discipline.”
(U) Review Commission Finding: Through the Agent Operational Designation Program
(AODP), agents are assigned career path designations in order to increase program-specific and
intelligence expertise of agents by providing clear guidance for career progression and high
quality, job-relevant training, and developmental opportunities. While the option to choose an
area of focus exists for intelligence analysts, for some the development of advanced courses and
required interagency rotations their progression in the national security field is still a work in
progress. The FBI is engaged in the USIC joint duty program and requires USIC joint duty credit
experience for all senior executive positions within the FBI’s national security and intelligence
components. Its personnel are increasingly enrolled in the certificate and degree awarding
programs of the National Intelligence University (NIU). These new efforts must be expedited and
4. (U) “In the interest of cross-fertilization, all senior FBI managers, including those working on law
enforcement matters, should be certified intelligence officers.”
(U) Review Commission Finding: There is a lack of clarity regarding the qualifications of a
“certified” intelligence officer as directed by the original 9/11 Commission. The FBI Intelligence
Officer Certification (FIOC) program was established in response to the recommendation;
however, it is currently under suspension and review for its effectiveness in promoting the FBI’s
goals for integrated professional development. To broaden intelligence experience, the FBI is
9 (U) “Memorandum for the Attorney General: Further Strengthening Federal Bureau of Investigation Capabilities”
creating intelligence operations training and education for the workforce, scheduled to be rolled
out in FY15 and FY16.
5. (U) “The FBI should fully implement a recruiting, hiring, and selection process for agents and
analysts that enhances its ability to target and attract individuals with educational and professional
backgrounds in intelligence, international relations, language, technology, and other relevant
(U) Review Commission Finding: The Bureau has made a concerted effort over the past decade
to upgrade its skills-based recruitment for its increasingly complex missions, including cyber. This
effort will need to be accelerated to meet the diverse personnel and technology challenges ahead.
6. (U) “The FBI should institute the integration of analysts, agents, linguists, and surveillance
personnel in the field so that a dedicated team approach is brought to bear on national security
(U) Review Commission Finding: In response to the need for greater integration of agents and
analysts and to provide a firm foundation of working on a team, over the past decade the FBI
instituted some shared training for new analysts and agents to integrate them together at the
beginning of their FBI careers. Once deployed to the field, many of these analysts have been
embedded in operational squads in the field, though their work favors support to tactical and case
work at the expense of strategic analysis. The FBI launched a more structured Integrated
Curriculum Initiative (ICI) in 2014, with the primary goal to develop a comprehensive basic
training program for new agents and analysts that teaches them to operate in a threat-based,
intelligence-driven, operationally-focused environment. According to data provided by the FBI,
the newly developed curriculum will be the foundation for the FBI’s 20-week Basic Field Training
Course (BFTC) for new agents and analysts and consist of over 300 hours of integrated training,
reinforced with joint practical exercises. The BFTC will be piloted in April 2015, with full
implementation to begin in September 2015. Except for the larger field offices, linguists, who are
still in short supply, are principally accessed by a virtual system. The Review Commission
recognizes this is a challenging process; however, hiring additional linguists and integrating them
into operations should be a high priority
7. (U) “Each field office should have an official at the field office's deputy level for national security
matters. This individual would have management oversight and ensure that the national priorities
are carried out in the field.”
(U) Review Commission Finding: Each field office has at least one Assistant Special Agent in
Charge (ASAC) responsible for the intelligence program and national security matters. The FBI
has further instituted changes to ensure national priorities are carried out in the field through
systematic mechanisms such as the Threat Review and Prioritization Process (TRP) and Integrated
Program Management (IPM); however, it is unclear the extent to which the program metrics are
effective or ensure priorities are addressed.
8. (U) “The FBI should align its budget structure according to its four main programs: intelligence,
counterterrorism and counterintelligence, criminal, and criminal justice services—to ensure better
transparency on program costs, management of resources, and protection of the intelligence
(U) Review Commission Finding: In direct response, the FBI adjusted its budget structure to
meet the objectives of the recommendation and further consolidated all national security and
intelligence programs under the NSB in 2005. In 2014, the FBI further re-aligned its intelligence
program by creating the new Intelligence Branch (IB). It is important to note that sequestration in
FY14 severely hindered the FBI’s intelligence and national security programs.
9. (U) “The FBI should report regularly to Congress in its semiannual program reviews designed to
identify whether each field office is appropriately addressing FBI and national program priorities.”
(U) Review Commission Finding: The FBI, according to the data it provided, reports regularly to
Congress on these programs through its meetings, testimony, and general oversight process. For
example, during the 111th Congress, the FBI presented 15 briefings and participated in two
hearings that addressed issues related to national security and intelligence program priorities.
During the 112th Congress, the FBI provided 16 briefings and participated in six hearings that
addressed these issues. In addition, Congress must actively perform its oversight responsibilities
to ensure the implementation of these Review Commission recommendations.
10. (U) “The FBI should report regularly to Congress in detail on the qualifications, status, and roles
of analysts in the field and at headquarters. Congress should ensure that analysts are afforded
training and career opportunities on a par with those offered to analysts in other intelligence
(U) Review Commission Finding: According to data provided to the Review Commission by the
FBI, the above-mentioned Congressional briefings and hearings on national security program
priorities also addressed issues related to the intelligence program, to include the qualifications,
status, and roles of analysts in the field and at headquarters. The Review Commission found that
the training and professional status of analysts has improved in recent years. The Intelligence
Community Analysis Training and Education Council (ICATEC) in December 2014 found that the
FBI’s analytic training was on par with CIA, DIA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
(NGA), and National Security Agency (NSA). The Review Commission found, however, that
access to continuous FBI training, to external education, and to developmental career opportunities
lags behind other USIC agencies.
11. (U) “The Congress should make sure funding is available to accelerate the expansion of secure
facilities in FBI field offices so as to increase their ability to use secure e-mail systems and
classified intelligence product exchanges. The Congress should monitor whether the FBI's
information-sharing principles are implemented in practice.”
(U) Review Commission Finding: The FBI continues to make progress in acquiring adequate
secure facilities for its field offices and LEGAT posts, though it is still behind where it needs to be.
It also is investing in IT infrastructure improvements to enhance communications with the USIC
and state and local partners. The Review Commission found that the FBI’s information sharing
practices have progressed markedly, with continuing room for improvement with local law
(U) EDWIN “ED” MEESE III
(U) Ed Meese is currently associated with the Heritage Foundation as the
leading think tank’s Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus. In that
capacity, Meese oversees special projects and acts as an ambassador for
Heritage within the conservative movement. He is also a distinguished
visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California
and lectures, writes, and consults throughout the United States on a variety of
subjects. From 1977 to 1981, Meese was a law professor at the University of
San Diego, where he also directed the Center for Criminal Justice Policy and
Management. From January 1981 to February 1985, Meese held the position of counselor to the
President—and functioned as President Reagan's chief policy adviser. Meese then served as
Attorney General under President Reagan from 1985-1988. In May 2006, Meese was named a
member of the Iraq Study Group and co-authored the group's final December 2006 report.
Meese also served on the National War Powers Commission and the Commission for the
Evaluation of the National Institute of Justice. Meese has authored several books, including
Leadership, Ethics and Policing, Making America Safer, and With Reagan: The Inside Story.
Meese is a retired Colonel in the United States Army Reserve, where he served in the military
intelligence and civil affairs branches.
(U) TIM ROEMER
(U) Tim Roemer, former six-term US representative for Indiana’s 3rd
congressional district, most recently served as US ambassador to India. He
has a strong background in international trade and investment, education
policy, and national security.
(U) During his tenure as the lead diplomat in India, Ambassador Roemer was
charged with leading one of America’s largest diplomatic missions. Under
the leadership of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he
was responsible for broadening and deepening the US-India partnership. He
oversaw the implementation of several key policies and initiatives, including increasing
cooperation, technology transfer and commercial sales in the defense and space industries;
signing the Counterterrorism Cooperation Initiative to further expand cooperation in areas such
as intelligence and homeland security, border security, money laundering and terrorist financing;
and working with the United States to assist India on its Global Center for Nuclear Energy
Partnership. He also emphasized commerce and exports, helping move India from America’s
25th-largest trading partner to 12th.
(U) Prior to his diplomatic appointment, Ambassador Roemer served for 12 years in the US
House of Representatives, where he was deeply engaged in efforts to improve access, standards,
and achievement for American education. He was a member of the 9/11 Commission and one of
the first members of Congress to advocate for a more dynamic and entrepreneurial Department
of Homeland Security. He also served on the Washington Institute’s Presidential Task Force on
Combating the Ideology of Radical Extremism. Additionally, Ambassador Roemer has served
on national commissions and advisory panels and on the board of directors for Oshkosh
(U) Known as a consensus-builder and problem-solver, Ambassador Roemer was also president
of the Center for National Policy, where he brought together experts and policy-makers to
facilitate political cooperation to address critical national security challenges.
(U) Ambassador Roemer has served as a distinguished scholar at George Mason University and
has taught at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. He earned a BA degree from the
University of California at San Diego and his M.A. and Ph.D. in American government from the
University of Notre Dame. He has received distinguished alumnus awards from both schools.
(U) BRUCE HOFFMAN
(U) Professor Bruce Hoffman has been studying terrorism and insurgency for
nearly four decades. He is a professor in Georgetown University’s Edmund
A. Walsh School of Foreign Service where he is also the Director of both the
Center for Security Studies and of the Security Studies Program. Professor
Hoffman is also a visiting Professor of Terrorism Studies at St. Andrews
University, Scotland. He previously held the Corporate Chair in
Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency at the RAND Corporation and was
also Director of RAND’s Washington, D.C. office. He was Scholar-inResidence for Counterterrorism at the Central Intelligence Agency between
2004 and 2006; an adviser on counterterrorism to the Office of National Security Affairs,
Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Iraq, in 2004; and from 2004-2005 an adviser on
counterinsurgency to the Strategy, Plans, and Analysis Office at Multi-National Forces-Iraq
Headquarters, Baghdad. Professor Hoffman was also an adviser to the Iraq Study Group. He is
the author of Inside Terrorism (2006). His most recent book is The Evolution of the Global
Terrorist Threat: From 9/11 to Osama bin Laden’s Death (2014). Anonymous Soldiers: The
Struggle for Israel, 1917-1947 will be published in 2015.
(U) COMMISSION STAFF
(U) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
(U) John Gannon served as CIA’s Director of European Analysis (1992-1995), as Deputy
Director for Intelligence (1995-1997), Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and
Production (1998-2001), and as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council (1997-2001).
After his retirement from CIA in 2001, he served in the White House as the head of the
intelligence team standing up the Department of Homeland Security (2002-2003) and later on the
Hill as the staff director of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security (2003-2005). In
2004, President George W. Bush awarded him the National Security Medal, the nation’s highest
intelligence award. Gannon retired from BAE Systems (2005-2012) as President of the
Intelligence and Security Sector. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University in the
Security Studies Program. Gannon is a member of the Board of Visitors of the National
Intelligence University. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Voices of September 11th
(9/11 families), of the Homeland Security Project, of the National Academies of Science (NAS)
Division Committee on Engineering and Physical Sciences, and of the Council on Foreign
Relations. Gannon earned his BA in psychology at Holy Cross College, and his M.A. and Ph.D.
in history at Washington University in St. Louis. He is a former Naval Officer (retired captain)
and Vietnam veteran. He was an elected member of the city council and Chairman of the
Planning Commission in his home town of Falls Church, Virginia.
(Staff Members in Alphabetical Order)
(U) Kim Cragin, MPP, Ph.D., is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation focusing
on terrorism-related issues. She has taught as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and
the University of Maryland. In spring 2008, she spent three months on General David Petraeus’s
(Ret.) staff in Baghdad. Cragin also has conducted fieldwork in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt,
northwest China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, among others. She is the author of
Women as Terrorists: Mothers, Recruiters, and Martyrs (Praeger, 2009), and her RAND
publications include a contribution to The Long Shadow of 9/11: America’s Response to
Terrorism; Social Science for Counterterrorism; and Sharing the Dragon’s Teeth: Terrorist
Groups and the Exchange of New Technologies. Cragin also has published in such journals as
Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and the Historical Journal.
(U) William Giannetti is a Senior Intelligence Analyst from DIA. His 18-year career spans
time as a civil servant, Philadelphia cop and military intelligence officer. He served two tours in
Afghanistan and has a M.A. in Criminal Justice from St. Joseph’s University.
(U) Barbara A. Grewe is a Principal Policy Advisor for the MITRE Corporation where she
serves as a trusted advisor to senior government leaders and has been responsible for leading
interagency efforts to address high priority issues. She previously served as a Senior Counsel on
the 9/11 Commission where she was responsible for investigating several key areas. She has
also served as an Associate General Counsel in the Government Accountability Office and as an
Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. She has a J.D. from the
University of Michigan Law School, an M.A. (Oxon.) from the University of Oxford (where she
was a Rhodes Scholar), and a B.A. from Wellesley College.
(U) Christine “Chris” Healey served as the top legal advisor to the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence. She worked for the Government Affairs Committee on the landmark legislation
that reformed the intelligence community and created the position of the Director of National
Intelligence. Healey also served as a Senior Counsel and team leader on the 9/11 Commission.
Prior to that, she was on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, including as
(U) Seth G. Jones is director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the
RAND Corporation, as well as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's School for
Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He served in numerous positions in US Special
Operations Command, including as an advisor to the commanding general in Afghanistan. He is
the author of Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of al Qa'ida after 9/11 (W.W. Norton, 2012),
and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
(U) Johanna Keena is a Staff Operations Specialist for the FBI focusing on counterterrorism.
She previously served at a legal and lobbying firm. Keena has received an M.S. in Intelligence
Management from the University of Maryland University College.
(U) Joseph Moreno is a former federal prosecutor with the United States Department of Justice
in the National Security Division. Currently a Major in the United States Army Reserve Judge
Advocate General Corps, Joseph is a two-time combat veteran of Operations Iraqi Freedom and
Enduring Freedom, and recipient of the Bronze Star Medal for his service in Iraq. He currently
works in private practice at the law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham &amp; Taft LLP in Washington
DC. Moreno has a B.A. from Stony Brook University, a J.D./M.B.A. from St. John’s University,
(U) Jamie Pirko is a Security and Intelligence Analyst, in the area of National Security for US
government agencies including the DOD, FBI, and the Congressional Commission on the
Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Before joining the Commission, she served as an
Intelligence Analyst in the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Domain Awareness program.
(U) Elisabeth Poteat is an attorney with the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism
Section in US Department of Justice, where she has served on the National Security Cyber
Specialists Network and the Antiterrorism Advisory Council. She is a former organized crime
prosecutor at the US Attorney’s Office for Washington, D.C., and a former Deputy Public
Defender for Los Angeles. She is the author of two recent works on classified information:
“Discovering the Artichoke: How Omissions Have Blurred the Enabling Intent of the Classified
Information Procedures Act” (Journal of National Security Law and Policy Vol. 7); and a
chapter, “How Classified Information is Handled in Leak Cases,” in the book Whistleblowers,
Leaks, and the Media: The First Amendment and National Security, ABA, 2014.
(U) William Richardson served 32 years at CIA, where he held numerous senior leadership
positions in the Directorate of Intelligence at CIA Headquarters and overseas. He also served as
the DNI’s National Intelligence Manager for South Asia, and as the intelligence briefer to
President Barack Obama and Vice President Al Gore.
(U) Amy Buenning Sturm is an analyst for US Special Operations Command and has eight
years of government and non-profit experience focused on counterterrorism and national security
issues. She is a Ph.D. student at University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and earned an
M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University in 2010. Sturm is a Truman Scholar and a
former Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow.
(U) Caryn Wagner is a former Under Secretary of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department
of Homeland Security. Prior to that, she was a 30-year intelligence professional who began her
career as a Signals Intelligence officer in the United States Army. Wagner spent seven years at
DIA, where she served as the Deputy Director for Analysis and Production, and on the staff of
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and as Budget Director. She also served
as Director of the IC Community Management Staff, the Assistant Deputy Director of National
Intelligence for Management, and as first Chief Financial Officer for the National Intelligence
(U) BASELINE: THE FBI TODAY
(U) The mandate of the FBI 9/11 Review Commission, (hereafter Review Commission) is to
measure the Bureau’s progress over “yesterdays” since 9/11 and to assess its preparedness for
“tomorrows” in a rapidly evolving and dangerous world. To accomplish this, the Review
Commission worked to determine how close the Bureau is today to its goal of becoming a threatbased, intelligence-driven organization, and to ascertain the extent to which this complies with
the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that the Bureau transform itself into America’s premier
domestic intelligence agency. The report also looks ahead to an evolving and increasingly
complex threat environment that should drive reform in the Bureau.
(U) This first chapter will provide background and perspective on the Review Commission’s
findings developed in the following chapters, a broader look at relevant national and global
trends that have driven FBI reforms in recent years, a summary of the related initiatives put forth
by former Director Robert S. Mueller, III, and a description of where the Review Commission
sees the Bureau’s transformation today—its 2015 baseline.
(U) 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. This imbalance needs urgently to be addressed to meet growing and
increasingly complex national security threats, including from adaptive and increasingly tech-savvy
terrorists, more brazen computer hackers, and more technically capable, global cyber syndicates.
(U) 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 recommendations from the 9/11
and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) commissions, and by the negative impact of sequestration
on multiple reform initiatives.
(U) 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 Attachés (LEGAT) program, the recognition of
science and technology (S&amp;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
(U) The full report, which is based on 10 months of formal internal briefings and research,
extensive outside interviews, and 14 field visits, concludes that the Bureau has made important
progress in building a “specialized and integrated national security work force” yet must
accelerate its efforts and deepen progress in several critical areas.10 Director Mueller pursued
this goal relentlessly for a dozen years, by centralizing key functions in a field-dominated
bureaucracy, launching multiple programs and processes to build an end-to-end intelligence
process within the FBI, and significantly improving collaboration and information sharing with
partners at home and abroad. A list of select intelligence program developments can be found in
Appendix C. These changes, consistently implemented year-after-year, demonstrate the
Bureau’s commitment to its national security and intelligence program reform. The Review
Commission evaluated several of these reform efforts, many of which were well intentioned but
fell short in execution, with an eye toward recommendations for the future.
(U) The Review Commission also responded to the Congressional mandate to identify obstacles
to reform efforts. Director Mueller’s initiatives were impeded by the early institutional struggle
to reconcile the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG) and the (DNI) guidance
on intelligence activities, the initial cultural clash between special agents and a suddenly vastly
expanded cadre of new analysts, conflicting structural recommendations from the 9/11 and
WMD commissions, and the severe impact of sequestration on multiple reform initiatives.
Progress also was hindered by the uneven commitment to reform of FBI leadership in the field.
The Bureau’s efforts to integrate its intelligence and law enforcement missions continue to be
constrained by a bifurcated annual budget process—versus five-year cycles of other intelligence
agencies—that runs through the rigorous review of separate DOJ and Office of the Director of
National Intelligence (ODNI) budget offices and on to Congressional committees of jurisdiction,
which are similarly divided between intelligence and law enforcement priorities. This lack of
alignment between Executive and Legislative overseers needs to be addressed as the Bureau
develops a multi-year strategic plan. The Review Commission took all this into account in
assessing the Bureau’s progress.
(U) The Bureau’s goal for intelligence during the Mueller era, which is consistent with the basic
recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, was stated in the FBI Strategic Plan, 2004-2009: “The
FBI has a mandate from the President, Congress, the Attorney General, and the DCI (Director of
Central Intelligence) to protect national security by producing intelligence in support of its own
investigative mission, national intelligence priorities, and the needs of other customers.”11 The
Review Commission has taken the Director’s commitment to these three customer sets as the
standard for testing the Bureau’s performance today.
(U) The Urgency of the Threat
(U) The Review Commission recognizes that national security threats to the United States have
multiplied, and become increasingly complex and more globally dispersed in the past decade.
Hostile states and transnational networks—including cyber hackers and organized syndicates,
space-system intruders, WMD proliferators, narcotics and human traffickers, and other organized
10 (U) The 9/11 Commission Report, 425.
11 (U) Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Strategic Plan, 2004-2009 (2003): 20.
criminals—are operating against American interests across national borders, and within the
United States. In the coming decade, these evolving threats will increasingly challenge the FBI’s
leadership at every level, its traditional culture, and all of its core capabilities in criminal
investigation, counterintelligence, intelligence collection and analysis, and technology. The
extensive reforms of the past decade must be accelerated to fulfill the Bureau’s expanded global
mission as a fully integrated, intelligence-driven investigative organization.
(U) Decentralized terrorist networks and militias— so evident today in the Middle East, subSaharan Africa, and South Asia—are recruiting homegrown violent extremists from Western
countries to their fights that are suffused in jihadist rhetoric but also fueled by the growing
instability and widening violence of failing states. These foreign fighters, including growing
numbers of US citizens, are a clear and present security threat to the United States due to their
training and experience on the jihadist battlefield and to the prospect of their return to the United
States and other countries. Extremists, who are now inspired through social media and recruited
on the internet, increasingly pose a domestic threat given the propaganda and encouragement
emanating from overseas to carry out attacks at home.
(U) All of these state and non-state adversaries of the United States are becoming more adaptive
and sophisticated in their strategies, more advanced in their use of technology, and more
successful in their counterintelligence operations. They are exploiting rapid advances in IT,
including sophisticated use of social media, to accelerate the real-time flow of their operational
information (including bomb-making expertise), and of their people, finances, and transfers of
weapons across borders. The continuing broader IT-driven revolution in dual-use
technologies—including biotechnology, nanotechnology, material sciences, neuroscience, and
robotics—challenges the FBI to understand how these technologies, separately and in synergistic
combination, outpace its own current tradecraft and strengthen that of its adversaries.
(U) What is the Goal?
(U) The Review Commission based its findings and recommendations on its vision of what a
fully operational threat-based, intelligence-driven FBI would look like. The FBI, as the core of
US domestic intelligence, can never be identical to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or any
other national intelligence agency. Criminal investigators openly pursue and handle evidence
under strong internal and external constraints—including the US Constitution and generations of
law aimed at protecting civil liberties. In contrast, intelligence officers in national agencies
pursue information abroad in secret with fewer of these constraints and with an abundance of
incentives to assess risk and probability virtually unconstrained.
(U) A Model for US Domestic Intelligence
(U) The Review Commission’s vision of the future FBI is one in which criminal investigation,
counterintelligence, intelligence collection and analysis, and science and technology applications are seen
as complementary core competencies of a global intelligence and investigative organization. These
competencies are applied to the same criminal and national security missions, and intersect synergistically
in mission support—with a budget that incentivizes the integration. But these competencies remain as
distinct professional disciplines requiring their own investment strategies, specialized training, and
discipline-managed career services. The FBI will fulfill its domestic intelligence role with analysts and
collectors who are grounded in criminal investigation; who have ready access to state-of-the-art
technology; who continuously exploit the systems, tools, and relationships of the national intelligence
agencies; and who both cultivate and benefit from robust Continental United States (CONUS) and outside
the Continental United States (OCONUS) collaborative relationships that widen the Bureau’s access to
both investigative leads and reportable intelligence. Achieving this should not be a zero-sum game
between intelligence analysis and investigation. It should mean a continued FBI commitment to a
growing criminal investigation mission, a tighter and smoother integration of intelligence analysts and
collectors into the USIC, and increasingly closer collaborative relationships with US and foreign partners.
US domestic intelligence, with the FBI at its hub, will be a collaborative enterprise optimizing the
integration of international, federal, state, local, and community players.
(U) Enduring Drivers of Reform
(U) The FBI has been slow to adapt at times in its 106-year history, but it has never stood still.
Its progression has not been linear. Some eras were more challenging than others, some
responses were bolder, and some lapses—including the covert and frequently illegal
Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that peaked in the 1960s—blemished the record.
But the Bureau’s success against a wide range of targets over the years has been impressive by
any reckoning. Its targets for investigation have included WWI-era anarchists, notorious bank
robbers in the post-WWI decades, Prohibition-era gangsters, Nazi saboteurs, Soviet spies, illegal
drug traffickers, violent militias, white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan “dragons,” air-land-and-sea
hijackers, legions of corrupt politicians, domestic and foreign organized crime bosses, human
traffickers, weapons proliferators, child pornographers, crooked corporate executives, identity
thieves, cyber criminals, and both domestic and international terrorists. And from the beginning,
the Bureau has always supported its law enforcement mission by collecting and analyzing
(U) For the past several decades, however, the Bureau’s job has gotten much harder as
increasingly complex threats have demanded unprecedented intelligence support and analytic
capability in the midst of a global information revolution. For this more focused intelligence
mission, it is still a work in progress. Since the early 1980s, three intersecting trends have
pushed the FBI to change the way it does business. First, the Cold War world order has been
transformed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and by nuclear Russia’s troubling response to its
loss of global stature, the dramatic rise of China, and the emergence of multi-polar regional
powers in the European Union, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, South Korea, and India. Regional
instability has grown with the proliferation of new terrorist organizations unaffiliated with nation
states, insurgent groups, and countless violence-prone militias that flow across defenseless
borders of failing states in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. America now exists in a
world of globally distributed threats, and this complicated picture will only expand and become
more complex in the decades ahead.
(U) The second trend involves the rapid pace of technology research and development (R&amp;D),
which is now a challenging global phenomenon that was once wholly dominated by the United
States. According to the National Academies of Science, China— with 1.3 billion people—
today has the capacity for technological innovation, as does the tiny island nation of Singapore
(5.5 million people) in the Malaccan Straits, along with several Western countries.12 Foreign
R&amp;D continues to make rapid advances in key areas such as IT, biotechnology, DNA
applications, nanotechnology, material sciences, neuroscience, and robotics—all with worrisome
dual-use implications.
(U) IT-driven globalization has led individuals, nations, non-government organizations, and
multi-national corporations to leverage international networks for the good of mankind. At the
same time, terrorists, organized criminals, and other state and non-state actors hostile to the
United States are able to move people, ideological information, finance, and catastrophic
destructive know-how across borders in real time with unprecedented ease. Al-Qa’ida exploited
global networks—below the radar of Western intelligence agencies—to plan and execute the
9/11 attacks. Homegrown jihadists in Madrid and London, connected to al-Qa’ida terrorists,
carried out catastrophic attacks against urban transportation in 2004 and 2005. Today, a
proliferation of terrorist groups—including the formidable Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL)—and militias in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa are exploiting social media with
increasing sophistication and effectiveness.
(U) The internet gave Usama bin Laden a global platform to energize and expand his jihadist
following. It also gave rise to other charismatic leaders like the infamous US-born cleric, Anwar
al-Aulaqi, who effectively exploited the internet to recruit young Islamic extremists, including
his fellow Americans, and to lead them to jihadist violence. A growing number of US citizens or
permanent residents—Jose Padilla, Najibullah Zazi, David Coleman Headley, Faisal Shahzad,
Nidal Hasan, and Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, were radicalized,
in part, via the internet and/or emboldened by jihadist training and/or contacts abroad. So was
22-year-old Moner Mohammad Abusallah, an impressionable Florida-raised basketball fan, who
succesfully traveled to and from Syria and died a suicide bomber there in May 2014, while
avoiding disruption by western intelligence agencies.
(U) The third trend concerns the growing US demand in recent years for a more capable
domestic intelligence service. This results from the unprecedented intersection of adverse
geopolitics and advancing technology since the 1980s, punctuated by the national trauma of the
9/11 terrorist attacks. Americans were understandably rattled by the “backyard” proximity of the
al-Qa’ida terrorist threat. Not surprisingly, new national security stakeholders emerged at the
12 (U) The National Research Council of the National Academies, S&amp;T Strategies of Six Countries: Implications
for the United States (Washington, D.C., The National Academies Press, 2010): 81-91.
state and local levels, including first-responders who claimed a legitimate need for intelligence
support from the Federal Government and a collaborative hand from the FBI. First responders
today have been encouraged, for good reason, to see the Bureau as the core of US domestic
intelligence. Many say that it could do a better job keeping them informed.
(U) Relevant Pre-9/11 Reforms
(U) The USIC, the police community, and Congress responded to this new, distributed threat
environment in the mid-1980s, with the pace picking up dramatically in the ensuing decade. A
brief synopsis of the period reveals two critical facts to be gleaned about the FBI’s reformist
efforts. First, the FBI leadership had impressive insight into its challenges before 9/11 and
developed a visionary strategic plan in the late 1990s to address them. Second, it did not
implement its own well-crafted plan to change the way it was doing business in the face of a
growing terrorist threat. Anecdotal testimony indicates that the plan lost momentum for a variety
of reasons, including competing pressures on leadership, DOJ reluctance to buy into the growing
counterterrorism mission, the inattention of Congressional oversight, and the inherent difficulty
of moving a field office-dominated bureaucracy. Whatever the cause of the plan’s demise, the
lesson of history is that the FBI and the United States would have been well served by its
(U) The FBI supported United States Intelligence Community (USIC) reforms and participated
in many joint efforts. In 1982, Director William H. Webster, in response to an upsurge in global
terrorist attacks, made counterterrorism a fourth Bureau priority. In 1984, the Hostage Taking
Act (18 U.S.C. §1203) extended FBI jurisdiction to investigate terrorist acts against US citizens
abroad. In 1986, Congress passed the Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Antiterrorism Act (HR4418), which established a new extraterritorial statute related to terrorist acts against US citizens
or interests abroad. The DCI stood up the Counterterrorism Center (CTC) at CIA in 1986,
integrating FBI agents, followed by the Counternarcotics Center and several iterations of a
counter-proliferation center—all mandated to promote interagency rotations, to focus collection,
to integrate analysis, and to promote information sharing. Both CIA and the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) reorganized their intelligence units in the mid-1990s to meet new
threats and to enable technology. The FBI took similar steps later in the decade, including
stepping up its collaborative dialogue and leadership exchanges with the CIA. The White House
in 1998 established the position of National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection,
(U) In 1989, DOJ authorized the Bureau to arrest terrorist suspects without the consent of their
country of residence. The FBI launched a new counterterrorism division in 1999. The FBI,
along with other USIC components, introduced commendable reform initiatives in the 1990s,
though they did not all take hold. Every CIA directorate, along with many counterparts in other
agencies, developed strategic plans and multiple reorganizations in the 1990s. Advancing
technology drove the controversial creation of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency
(NIMA) in 1996. NIMA (later named National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency-NGA) launched
a major push to get ahead of the geospatial technology curve, while the National Security
Agency (NSA) began a fundamental transformation to adapt to the global revolution in
communications technology. In 1998, the Ballistic Missile Commission, headed by Donald
Rumsfeld, included with its report a side letter critiquing USIC analytic performance that was an
impressive blueprint for reform. The FBI significantly increased its overseas LEGAT presence
and developed a five-year strategic plan in the late 1990s that included goals to develop a
comprehensive global intelligence collection and analytic capability.
(U) The Bureau issued the FBI Strategic Plan, 1998-2003: Keeping Tomorrow Safe in May
1998. The plan, seven months in the making under the leadership of Deputy Director Robert
“Bear” Bryant, included the strategic goal to “prevent, disrupt, and defeat terrorist operations
before they occur.”13 It pointed to the imperative for the Bureau to boost its performance in
intelligence collection and analysis, threat prioritization, S&amp;T, IT systems and applications, and
in collaboration with other United States government (USG) agencies and with state and local
partners. It also upgraded multiple management and business processes essential to
(U) The FBI leadership in the era of Director Louis J. Freeh experienced an intelligence world
turning upside down and was closely involved in the establishment of the USIC centers. DCI
William Webster went from the FBI to CIA in 1987 committed to a counterterrorism mission
that was growing rapidly along with international organized crime—including the Sicilian mafia
operating in the United States. In December 1988, Libyan terrorists blew up Pan Am 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, and raising the investigative profile of both the FBI and
a leading DOJ official, Robert Mueller. In June 1996, Saudi Hizballah bombed Khobar Towers,
a US military residence in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 19. An FBI investigation ensued, led by
then Assistant United States Attorney James Comey.
(U) In this unsettling period, the FBI and the USIC generally increased their appreciation for
analysis to help guide collection and to focus operations against complex global threats. In 2000,
the new FBI Executive Assistant Director (EAD) for Counterterrorism, Dale Watson, produced a
prescient strategic plan called MAXCAP05, which sought sensibly to build intelligence and
analysis capacity against the terrorist threat over the next five years. The FBI also participated
with USIC analytic units in the work of the Community-wide National Intelligence Producers
Board (NIPB), which did a baseline assessment of USIC analytic capabilities and followed it up
early in 2001 with a strategic investment plan for community analysis.14 The FBI was
emphasizing a stronger attention to counterterrorism and a greater reliance on intelligence long
(U) The investment plan flagged to Congress the alarming decline in investment in analysis
across the USIC and the urgent need to build or strengthen interagency training, database
interoperability, collaborative networks, a system for threat prioritization, links to outside
experts, and an effective open-source strategy. A strong consensus, which included the FBI,
13 (U) Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Strategic Plan 1998-2003: Keeping Tomorrow Safe (1998): 12.
14 (U) Central Intelligence Agency, Strategic Investment Plan for Intelligence Community Analysis (2000-2001): 776. Special agent Steven McCraw, who represented the FBI on the NIPB, became the Assistant Director of the
Office of Intelligence and Inspections under the first Executive Assistant Director of Intelligence, Maureen
Baginski, prior to his retirement in 2004.
concluded that the USIC needed to transform, and it was transforming but not fast enough to
counter the growing threat from the flat, agile, global network of al-Qa’ida.
(U) The principal lesson learned from this brief history of USIC and FBI reform is that the
Bureau has talented and dedicated leaders capable of identifying and addressing its weaknesses
and of laying out a clear multi-year plan to do so.
(U) Baseline 2004
(U) In its report published in July 2004, the 9/11 Commission found there were significant
inadequacies in the capabilities and management of the FBI, in particular with respect to its
domestic intelligence mission and its role within the USIC, that had contributed to the USG’s
failure in preventing the 9/11 attacks.15 The 9/11 Commission found that before the attacks the
FBI favored its traditional criminal justice mission over its national security mission. While the
9/11 Commission noted that the FBI “maintained an active counterintelligence function and was
the lead agency for the investigation of foreign terrorist groups operating within the United
States,” the 9/11 Commission did not believe the FBI’s analytical and preventative efforts were
as strong as the criminal investigative abilities it was able to bring to bear after terrorist attacks
occurred, such as with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 East Africa embassy
bombings, and the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.
(U) In view of the intelligence and security failures it found at the FBI and across the USG, the
9/11 Commission considered, but explicitly rejected, recommending the creation of a completely
new domestic intelligence agency, separate and apart from the FBI—generally referred to as the
British MI5 (also known as the British Security Service or BSS) model for an internal security
service. The Review Commission strongly agrees with the 9/11 Commission’s judgment that
there were many factors against creating a new agency, first among them that the FBI was
already “accustomed to carrying out sensitive intelligence collection operations in compliance
with the law.”16 Instead, the 9/11 Commission saw a reformed FBI playing a “vital” role within
the context of the 9/11 Commission’s full set of recommendations for structural changes to the
USIC. These were intended to organize and equip the Federal Government, and the USIC in
particular, to conduct joint operational planning and joint analysis, “not just for countering
terrorism, but for the broader range of national security challenges in the decades ahead.”17
(U) While the 9/11 Commission applauded what it described as “significant progress” that had
already been made under Director Mueller since the attacks to improve intelligence capabilities
15 (U) The 9/11 Commission Report, 352.
16 (U) The 9/11 Commission Report, 423. In addition, the Commission concluded the FBI benefited from the
oversight it received as a component of the Department of Justice; creation of a new agency would divert the
attention of high-level officials while the threat of terrorism remained high; any new agency would require a range
of assets and personnel already present within the FBI; and with both intelligence and law enforcement authorities,
revised by the USA PATRIOT Act, within one agency there were new opportunities for cooperative action as
counterterrorism investigations quickly become matters that result in criminal prosecutions.
17 (U) The 9/11 Commission Report, 407, 423. These recommendations, among others, for counterterrorism, were
“to create a strong national intelligence center, part of [the National Counterterrorist Center (NCTC)], that will
oversee counterterrorism intelligence work, foreign and domestic, and to create a National Intelligence Director
“who can set and enforce standards for the collection, processing and reporting of information.”
within the Bureau, the 9/11 Commission worried that the FBI might ultimately fall short in
reforming and restructuring itself to address the transnational issues faced by the United States. 18
In particular, the 9/11 Commission found “gaps between some of the announced reforms and the
reality in the field,” fearing that at some point the system could “revert to a focus on lowerpriority criminal justice cases over national security requirements.”19 The current Review
Commission has found this concern to be justified.
(U) Emphasizing the need for the FBI to “make an all-out effort to institutionalize change,”
particularly in its field offices, the 9/11 Commission recommended that the Bureau establish “a
specialized and integrated national security workforce. . . consisting of agents, analysts, linguists,
and surveillance specialists who are recruited, trained, rewarded, and retained to ensure the
development of an institutional culture imbued with a deep expertise in intelligence and national
security.”20 The 9/11 Commission recommended the creation of a culture where “FBI agents
and analysts in the field [would] have sustained support and dedicated resources to become
stronger intelligence officers.” The 9/11 Commission also recommended that agents and
analysts be brought into the Bureau with appropriate educational and professional backgrounds
and work together with linguists and surveillance personnel in the field so that “a dedicated team
approach is brought to bear on national security intelligence operations.”21
(U) As the 9/11 Commission noted, the FBI had already embarked on internal reforms prior to
the issuance of the 9/11 Commission report.22 The FBI was operating under new
counterterrorism authorities, with new resources, provided by Congress in the immediate
aftermath of the attacks.23 New entities had been created to improve intelligence analysis and
respond to terrorism threats. At the most senior level, the FBI Director began to work closely on
a daily basis with the DCI and other officials in the USIC to brief the President and address
threats.24
(U) Progress in the Mueller Era
(U) The Review Commission reviewed multiple initiatives under Director Mueller to build an
intelligence collection and analysis capability. Some programs fared better than others, and
several needed deeper implementation along the way. The Bureau under Director Mueller was
required to respond to inconsistent structural recommendations from successive commissions,
disruption from the rapid infusion of minimally trained analysts, “reorganization fatigue” from
repeated efforts to hit the target, and the devastating impact of sequestration to its transformation
18 (U) The 9/11 Commission Report, 425.
19 (U) Ibid., 425.
20 (U) Ibid.
21 (U) The 9/11 Commission Report, 426.
22 (U) Federal Bureau of Investigation, Report to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United
States: The FBI’s Counterterrorism Program Since September 2001, 2004, http://www.fbi.gov/statsservices/publications/fbi_ct_911com_0404.pdf (accessed on December 11, 2014): 1-3.
23 (U) Jerome P. Bjelopera, The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Terrorism Investigations (FBI Terrorism
Investigations) (Congressional Research Service, April 24, 2013): 2-9.
24 (U) Garrett M. Graff, The Threat Matrix (The Threat Matrix) (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011):
efforts. All this notwithstanding, the Review Commission has observed a continued strong
commitment in the Bureau to build the intelligence capacity that Mueller initiated.
(U) By the time the 9/11 Commission issued its report on July 22, 2004, Director Mueller had
announced a new list of the Bureau’s 10 priorities, with “protect the United States from terrorist
attack” at the top.25 In immediate response to the 9/11 attacks, most of the FBI’s 11,000 special
agents and thousands of additional personnel were transferred to the PENTTBOM
investigation.26 After the initial response, the FBI reprioritized its efforts, particularly with
respect to traditional law enforcement activities that could be handled by other federal, state or
local law enforcement agencies. On a permanent basis, by FY05, the number of authorized
counterterrorism personnel had doubled from FY2000 levels.27 In October 2001 Director
Mueller ordered the creation of Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), in every field office.28
Expansion of the JTTFs was coupled with additional efforts to work with state and municipal
law enforcement.29 Specialized counterterrorism entities, such as the terrorism financing
operations section and the document exploitation unit, were created or expanded both within the
FBI and as collaborative, multi-agency task forces.30
(U) The FBI also took a number of steps before the 9/11 Commission issued its report to
improve its intelligence mission and the integration of intelligence into its investigations. An
Office of Intelligence was created separate from operational divisions at the end of 2001.
Intelligence training was expanded for agents and analysts and intelligence reporting increased
dramatically.31 In recognition of the connection of the terrorist threat with other criminal
activity, the intelligence effort was extended across all FBI programs and was headed by an EAD
for Intelligence, Maureen Baginski, an accomplished regional analyst with extensive experience
in technical collection, from NSA. In October 2003, under Baginski’s leadership, Field
Intelligence Groups (FIGs) were established in every field office to coordinate, manage, and
conduct FBI intelligence functions in the field.32 Intelligence was seen, at least by FBI
Headquarters, as the mechanism by which the FBI would become threat-driven versus casedriven and integrated into the larger USIC’s requirements. The FIGs responded directly to a core
recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.
25 (U) FBI Terrorism Investigations, 5. The other nine priorities were: protect the United States against foreign
intelligence operations and espionage; protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology
crimes; combat public corruption at all levels; protect civil rights; combat transnational and national criminal
organizations and enterprises; combat major white-collar crime; combat significant violent crime; support federal,
state, municipal and international partners; and upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI’s mission.
26 (U) PENTTBOM was the name given to the FBI’s investigation into the 9/11 attacks. Its name is derived from
the fact that the attacks took place at the Pentagon, in Pennsylvania, and at the Twin Towers.
27 (U) FBI Terrorism Investigations,7.
28 (U) As of 2014, there were 103 JTTFs (71 created after 9/11), as well as the National Joint Terrorism Task Force
(NJTTF) and the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force (FTTTF).
29 (U) FBI Terrorism Investigations, 37-39.
30 (U) The NJTTF, FTTTF, and Special Technologies and Applications Section (STAS), for example, were created
in 2002. The creation of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, a multi-agency organization primarily including
CIA, FBI, and DHS personnel, was announced in January 2003.
31 (U) Federal Bureau of Investigation Training Division Briefing, Integrated Curriculum Initiative, June 26, 2014:
32 (U) FBI Terrorism Investigations, 28.
(U) The FBI also reported to the 9/11 Commission that it was making substantial progress
upgrading its information technology and re-engineering its administrative processes, both to
modernize, and streamline its operations and to improve the recruiting, training and leadership
development of its personnel.33
(U) Many of the FBI’s new authorities were contained in the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001,
enacted in October 2001. 34 The USA PATRIOT Act amended several existing statutes, such as
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. §1801 et. seq), the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (47 U.S.C. §§ 1001-1010 ), and the laws governing the
issuance of National Security Letters (NSLs) (12 U.S.C. § 3414(a)(5)(A); 15 U.S.C.§§ 1681u
and 1681v; 18 U.S.C. § 2709, and; 50 U.S.C. § 436) , facilitating the collection of information
relevant for authorized international terrorism investigations. Importantly, the Act broke down
the perceived wall that had impeded the sharing of information between intelligence and criminal
investigators. Director Mueller later testified to Congress that “the USA PATRIOT Act has
changed the way the FBI operates. Many of our counterterrorism successes are the direct result
of the provisions of the Act.”35
(U) The FBI also centralized command and control of counterterrorism operations at
Headquarters.36 This was a significant departure from past practice at the FBI and not without
controversy. Special Agent in Charge (SACs) of field offices no longer had sole control of their
counterterrorism cases and did not have the authority to adjust resources within their offices
away from the national counterterrorism priority.37 Every terrorism lead was to be investigated
with results reported back to Headquarters.38 While some agents and the counterterrorism
squads in the New York Field Office, in particular, had been conducting sophisticated
investigations to map their multi-jurisdictional and international targets, develop intelligence,
and disrupt ongoing activities, the FBI did not have the policies and protocols to realize the
benefits of intelligence analysis of this kind within the Bureau as a whole or with other
intelligence agency partners.39 The FBI’s information technology was inadequate to support
intelligence analysis within a case, and the FBI lacked the mechanisms to allow for the
information sharing necessary to support intelligence analysis on a broader basis.40
33 (U) Ibid., 51-62. FBI’s assessment of its Virtual Case File (VCF) was optimistic, though the system had
inherent flaws. VCF was eventually scrapped after $170 million was spent and eventually replaced by Sentinel in
2005. Sentinel, an information and investigative case management system, was not finally made available to all FBI
employees until July 1, 2012. The Department of Justice Inspector General has completed ten interim audits of
Sentinel. See US Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, Audit of the Status of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation’s Sentinel Program, Audit Report 14-31, September, 2014,
https://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/2014/a1431.pdf (accessed on December 11, 2014): 1.
34 (U) Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct
Terrorism Act of 2001 (USA PATRIOT Act), P.L. 107-56.
35 (U) FBI Investigations, 9 (citing U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Sunset Provisions of the
USA Patriot Act, Testimony of Robert Mueller, Director, FBI, 109th Cong., 1st Sess., April 5, 2005.)
36 (U) FBI briefing, The Evolution of the National Security Branch, January 2014.
37 (U) FBI Terrorism Investigations, 11.
38 (U) Ibid.
39 (U) The Threat Matrix, 425.
40 (U) FBI Terrorism Investigations, 51-56.
(U) International activities, which had grown under Director Freeh’s tenure with the opening of
21 additional LEGAT offices and the temporary deployment of hundreds of agents overseas for
investigations such as the East African embassy and USS Cole bombings, further intensified. 41
The FBI sent teams of agents, analysts, and other professionals to Kuwait and Iraq starting
before the March 2003 beginning of the second Gulf War to work cooperatively with the US
military and other government agencies on the exploitation of Iraqi Government documents and
investigations of improvised explosive devices, among other duties. An Arabic-speaking FBI
agent was the team leader responsible for the seven-month interrogation of Saddam Hussein after
his capture in December 2003.42
(U) Following the publication of the 9/11 Commission report, the FBI continued to evolve both
as a result of internal and external reviews and in response to the direction of the President and
Congress. Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004
(IRTPA) to enact the recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission.43 The second of the
Act’s eight titles was devoted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and directed the President to
establish a Directorate of Intelligence (DI) and maintain an intelligence career service within the
FBI. By a memorandum to the Attorney General, dated November 16, 2004, the President had
already directed the FBI to create a DI.
(U) Even as Congress was setting forth in legislation the majority of the recommendations of the
9/11 Commission, a presidential commission was investigating the pre-war judgments of the
USIC with respect to the presence of WMD within Iraq. 44 During its tenure, the WMD
Commission was asked by President George W. Bush to make recommendations regarding how
IRTPA should be implemented.
(U) Although the WMD Commission found the FBI has “made significant strides in creating an
effective intelligence capability,” it nonetheless mandated far-reaching changes in the
organization and management of intelligence.45 In a letter to President Bush on March 29, 2005,
the WMD Commission argued that the establishment of the DI was insufficient to create a
“specialized and integrated national security workforce” because it did not provide the EAD for
the DI with authority for “vertically integrating foreign intelligence collection, analysis, and
41 (U) FBI Terrorism Investigations, 46. As of December 2014, there are 64 FBI LEGAT offices around the world.
42 (U) The team consisted of CIA analysts and FBI agents, intelligence analysts, language specialists and a
behavioral profiler. Interviewing Saddam: FBI Agent Gets to the Truth,
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2008/january/piro012808 (accessed on January 9, 2015); The Threat Matrix, 456 –
463. George Piro later served as head of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group from 2011-2013.
43 (U) Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, P.L. 108-458 (December 17, 2004).
44 (U) Later legislation on implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission was enacted as well. See
Implementing the Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 P.L. 110-53 (August 3, 2007). See also
http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/implementing-9-11-commission-report-progress-2011.pdf;
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-110publ53/content-detail.html;
https://www.nsa.gov/civil_liberties/_files/pl_110_53_sec_803_9_11_committee_act.pdf;
https://it.ojp.gov/default.aspx?page=1283.
45 (U) The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD Commission), Report to the President, March 31, 2005,
http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/wmd_report.pdf (accessed on December 11, 2014): 331.
operations.”46 Instead, the WMD Commission asserted that “all three national security
missions—intelligence, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism—should be jointly managed at
the strategic level and fully integrated in planning, targeting, and operations.”47
(U) The WMD Commission recommended to the President “an organizational reform of the FBI
that pulls all of its intelligence capabilities into one place and subjects them to the coordinating
authority of the DNI.”48 By recommending the consolidation of the FBI’s Counterterrorism and
Counterintelligence Divisions (CTD and CD) and the DI within a single National Security
Service under a single senior FBI official, the WMD Commission linked intelligence and
investigations in counterterrorism and counterintelligence but was effectively recommending the
demotion of the head of intelligence within the FBI. This forced the EAD responsible for
counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations to also be responsible for intelligence
activities for those two areas. But this arguably made more difficult the FBI’s efforts to improve
the status of intelligence analysts, even as the WMD Commission identified improving analytic
capability as one of the three areas where the FBI had made insufficient progress in its
intelligence work.49 To this day, the FBI has not promoted or hired an intelligence analyst to a
level above deputy assistant director. Nevertheless, while the DI was structurally assigned
within the National Security Branch (NSB), the directorate continued to have responsibility for
the management of the intelligence program across all parts of the Bureau.50
(U) The President directed the creation of a National Security Service under a senior FBI official
on June 28, 2005.51 The FBI shortly thereafter stood up the NSB under a single EAD, a special
agent executive whose sole FBI experience was in criminal investigation.52 The FBI continued
to evolve as other parts of the Federal Government were also going through significant changes.
Among other recommendations of the 9/11 Commission codified by the Congress in IRPTA that
related to the transformation of the FBI, the establishment of the National Counterterrorism
Center (NCTC) was perhaps the most important with respect to counterterrorism.53 The 9/11
Commission recommended that this center be based on the existing Terrorist Threat Integration
Center (TTIC) and combine strategic intelligence and joint operational planning, staffed by
personnel from various agencies.54 As established by Congress, the Senate-confirmed NCTC
director was to serve as the principal adviser to the Director of National Intelligence on
intelligence operations relating to counterterrorism and provide strategic operational plans,
including “effective integration of counterterrorism intelligence and operations across agency
46 (U) WMD Commission, Letters to the President on FBI and CIA Transformation Plans, March 29, 2005,
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/wmb/report/fbicia/pdf (accessed on January 9, 2015).
47 (U) Ibid.
48 (U) Ibid., 3.
49 (U) Ibid., 454. The other two areas were validation of human sources of intelligence and information
50 (U) See FBI Intelligence Strategy, 2014-2018.
51 (U) CNN. “Bush Creates National Security Service,” http://www.cnn.com2005/POLITICS/06/29/bush.intel
(accessed on December 11, 2014).
52 (U) See Electronic Communication, September 12, 2005. The senior intelligence officer who had served as
EAD for Intelligence left the Bureau. The NSB EADs were not intelligence professionals. See
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special0506/chapter6.htm.
53 (U) See Section 1021 of IRTPA.
54 (U) The 9/11 Commission Report, 403.
boundaries, both inside and outside the United States.”55 FBI personnel from CTD were
assigned to the NCTC. Additional collaboration was facilitated when the CTD, NCTC, and the
CIA’s CTC moved resources into the same state-of-the-art office building in Northern Virginia.
(U) As these changes were being implemented, at the request of Congressman Frank Wolf,
chairman of the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee on the House
Appropriations subcommittee (CJSR), the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA)
conducted reviews of the FBI’s operations.56 The NAPA panel had endorsed the thrust of
Director Mueller’s priorities and reorganization efforts in 2002 and 2003. In 2005, the NAPA
panel reported that it, “like the 9/11 Commission, is convinced that the FBI is making substantial
progress in transforming itself into a strong domestic intelligence entity, and has the will and
many of the competencies required to accomplish it.”57 Nevertheless, the panel had 37
recommendations for the FBI related to transformation, counterterrorism, intelligence, and
(U) In late 2005, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, formed by the 10 members of the 9/11
Commission, issued reports on the progress made by the government in implementing the 9/11
Commission’s recommendations. Amid grades ranging from “B” to “F”, the 9/11 Public
Discourse ranked the creation of the FBI national security workforce as “C”. It found progress
was being made “but it is too slow.” In addition, the 9/11 Public Discourse Project expressed
concern that there were still “significant deficiencies in the FBI’s analytic capability” and that
“initiatives to improve information technology capabilities have failed.”58
(U) Further work reviewing the FBI’s transformation was done by the Congressional Research
Service. It had begun a series of reviews after 9/11, some also at the request of Chairman
Wolf.59 Its attention to the FBI’s counterterrorism mission continues today.60 DOJ’s Office of
the Inspector General also conducted oversight of FBI’s national security activities.61 The FBI’s
55 (U) Section 119 of the National Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. § 404 et. seq.).
56 (U) See, A Report of a Panel of the National Academy of Public Administration for the U.S. Congress and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, Transforming the FBI: Progress and Challenges, January 2005. The NAPA panel
was chartered to review the FBI’s “divisional reorganizations and major process, personnel, and cultural changes.”
It endorsed the thrust of Director Mueller’s priorities and reorganization in 2002 with recommendations to “improve
the prospects of success.”
57 (U) Ibid., xi.
58 (U) 9/11 Public Discourse Project, Report on the Status of 9/11 Commission Recommendations, Part II:
Reforming the Institutions of Government, December 5, 2005, http://www.npr.org/documents/2005/dec/911_commission/2005-12-05_report.pdf (accessed on December 11, 2014): 2.
59 (U) See, e.g., Alfred Cummings and Todd Masse, Intelligence Reform Implementation at Federal Bureau of
Investigation; Issues and Options for Congress, (Congressional Research Service, August 16, 2005) RL33033.
60 (U) See, e.g., Jerome P. Bjelopera, The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Terrorism Investigations,
(Congressional Research Service, February 19, 2014).
61 (U) See http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/fbi.htm, including: Department of Justice Office of Inspector
General, A Review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Use of Exigent Letters and Other Informal Requests for
Telephone Records, January 2010 (November 24, 2013 version); Department of Justice Office of Inspector General,
A Review of the Handling and Storage of Information Prior to the April 15, 2013 Boston Bombings (Unclassified
Summary); April 10, 2014, and Department of Justice Office of Inspector General, Audit of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation Management of Terrorist Watchlist Nominations (Redacted version), Audit Report 14-16 (March 25,
2014). In addition, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) conducted audits and reviews of FBI activities,
production of intelligence reports dramatically increased, although questions continued to be
raised about quality control.62
(U) Further Refinement and Lessons Learned
(U) Even after implementing these changes in 2001–2005, the FBI continued to seek ways to
achieve its goals more effectively. The CTD in 2005 sought lessons from business management
theories to improve its practices. CTD developed what it called a strategy map by which it could
“communicate its strategy, prioritize initiatives, measure progress, and identify each person’s
role in pursuing the Division’s strategy.”63 The strategy map identified the intelligence cycle as
the core of the FBI’s internal process.64 In 2006, Director Mueller asked the EAD for criminal
investigations, who had participated in the CTD process, and a team of other senior executives to
build a strategy map for the FBI as a whole.
(U) By 2007, the team created such a map with 25 objectives in four categories. Director
Mueller then established a Strategic Execution Team (SET) “to build the FBI’s intelligence
capabilities and make intelligence more central in FBI operations.”65 The effort involved more
than 100 special agents, intelligence analysts, and other personnel from Headquarters and dozens
of field offices. The SET started with intelligence operations in the field offices and
development of human capital for intelligence. It also took on management of transformation
efforts and initiatives within the FBI.66
(U) The SET process sought to standardize and upgrade the FIGs, with best practices identified
for small, medium, and large offices; and produced a training program for agents, supervisors,
and executives in the 56 field offices by the end of 2008. The SET also sought to ensure nonspecial agent personnel were “as capable of and devoted to completing the intelligence cycle as
FBI agents had traditionally been capable of and devoted to closing criminal cases.”67 The FBI
increased its recruiting and training efforts and made clearer how intelligence analysts would
progress through their careers. The FBI also identified 12 key focus areas including leadership
and resource management to achieve the goal of being “a threat-based, intelligence-driven
see, e.g., Government Accountability Office, FBI Counterterrorism: Vacancies Have Declined, but FBI Has Not
Assessed the Long-Term Sustainability of Its Strategy for Addressing Vacancies (April, 2012).
62 (U) The FBI's production of IIRs saw a fourfold increase between FY2006 and FY2014. ; Memorandum for the
Record, August 11, 2014.; Memorandum for the Record, November 11, 2014.
63 (U) Jan W. Rivkin, Michael Roberto, Ranjay Gulati, Harvard Business School Case Study: Federal Bureau of
Investigation, 2009, 9-710-452 (HBS Case Study) (Revised May 18, 2010): 1.
64 (U) The four key elements of the intelligence cycle are requirements, collection, analysis, dissemination.
65 (U) HBS Case Study, 3.
66 (U) HBS Case Study, 4. The head of the effort stated, “For a while after 9/11, it seemed that someone in the FBI
would launch a new change effort every month. In the field, the workforce was exhausted and, because agents and
analysts couldn’t tell the difference between efforts that would be sustained and those that wouldn’t, they became
skeptical of all the efforts. With each initiative, they assumed that ‘This too shall pass.’ SET aimed to focus on
fewer initiatives but to push each one harder.”
67 (U) HBS Case Study, 4.
organization” and now describes itself this way in congressional testimony and internal
briefings.68
(U) The FBI, working with other federal entities, continued to establish new entities and
reorganize to address terrorism and cross-border issues. In July 2006 it established a Weapons of
Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD) within the NSB to integrate all FBI components working
on WMD issues. The Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), which had been established in 2003,
was brought under the NSB in 2008. The FBI was made the executive agent for the new HighValue Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) in 2010, established with the Department of Defense
(DOD) and the CIA to ensure that interrogation expertise and resources from across the
government would be available for deployment on an immediate basis for the interrogation of
certain high-value detainees.
(U) The period from late 2008 to 2010 was a period of intense challenge for counterterrorism
within the FBI and the USIC. Among the significant terrorism events that brought the FBI’s
counterterrorism capabilities into play were: the Mumbai attack of November 2008 and the
eventual arrest of David Coleman Headley; the tracking and arrest of Najibullah Zazi and his
associates in late summer 2009; the attack on US military personnel at Fort Hood by Major Nidal
Hassan in November 2009; and the attempted Times Square bombing by Faisal Shahzad on May
1, 2010. (These cases and the Boston Marathon Bombing of April 2013 are discussed in Chapter
II.)69 At the same time, however, FBI offices were also conducting much lower-profile
operations to detect and disrupt terrorist attacks within the United States.70 The FBI was also
simultaneously conducting criminal investigations from simple bank robberies to complex white
collar criminal conspiracies.71
(U) The Fort Hood attack in 2009 prompted intense scrutiny of the USG’s failure to act in ways
that might have prevented Army Major Nidal Hasan from the mass shooting that left 13 DOD
employees dead and another 32 wounded in the worst terrorist attack within the United States
since September 11, 2001. The chairman and ranking member of the US Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee issued their special report, A Ticking Time Bomb:
Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government’s Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack,
on February 3, 2011. While acknowledging that the detection and interdiction of terrorists who
68 (U) The Evolution of the National Security Branch, 2. The other metrics include measurement of success;
information sharing; intelligence community; scope; internal and external communications; organization; human
capital; workforce culture; and information technology. See FBI Intelligence Program (2014); James B. Comey,
Statement before the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related
Agencies, Washington, D.C., March 26, 2014. (Comey testimony).
69 (U) In addition to these four high-profile cases and the April 2013 Boston bombing discussed in a later section of
this report, the FBI also responded to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to bring down a US airliner on
December 25, 2009; AQAP operative Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame and a number of other investigations, such as
those into Somali pirates; and Mansour J. Arbabsiar, the Iranian-American charged with plotting to kill the Saudi
70 (U) The Threat Matrix, 3-10, 596-597 (four sting operations in which young men planned to detonate explosives
at different locations around the country); (monitoring the 2009 Presidential Inauguration threat stream).
71 (U) The Threat Matrix, 598 (noting the following “huge cases” during Director Mueller’s tenure of “Enron,
Global Crossing, Bernard Madoff, Russian spy rings, drug and gang-related cases of mind-goggling complexity,” as
well as more than “60,000 bank robberies, and 2,000 civil rights cases,” among others.)
act alone is one of the most difficult challenges facing law enforcement and intelligence
agencies, the Committee found that the DOD and FBI “collectively had sufficient information to
have detected Hasan’s radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed to understand and
to act on it.”72 The report found that “The FBI has made significant strides since 9/11 in
transforming itself into America’s lead counterterrorism agency and an intelligence-driven
organization to prevent terrorist attacks domestically, but it is clear from the Hasan case that the
transformation is incomplete.”73
(U) Senators Lieberman and Collins, in their committee report, found that the FBI’s handling of
information that it had concerning Hasan was “impeded by division among its field offices,
insufficient use of intelligence analysis, and outdated tradecraft.”74 In addition, they found that
the inquiry into Hasan was “focused on the narrow question of whether he was engaged in
terrorist activities and not whether he was radicalizing to violent Islamist extremism and could
thus become a threat.”75 Looking at the interaction between the FBI and the DOD, they were
also concerned that the FBI’s JTTFs were not fully effective “interagency coordination and
information-sharing mechanisms” and that the question of lead responsibility for
counterterrorism investigations of service members was unresolved between the FBI and DOD.76
Senators Lieberman and Collins made detailed recommendations for the FBI and the DOD, some
of which were instituted at the FBI during the Congressional investigation.77
(U) FBI Director Mueller also commissioned former FBI Director Webster to review issues
involving the FBI’s counterterrorism program, including whether its authorities were sufficient.
Judge Webster and his commission presented their final report to the Director in late 2011,
including their assessment of FBI’s ongoing remedial actions, an analysis of FBI’s governing
authorities, and recommendations for additional steps the FBI should take with a particular focus
on the FBI’s information technology.78
(U) On October 1, 2008, a full year before the Fort Hood attack on November 19, 2009,
Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued new guidelines for domestic FBI operations (AG
Guidelines). These new AG Guidelines replaced five sets of guidelines that had separately
addressed, among other matters, criminal investigations, national security investigations, and
foreign intelligence collection.79 Significantly, the new AG Guidelines represented a single set
of guidelines that applied to FBI activities within the United States, regardless of whether the
72 (U) Joseph I. Lieberman, Chairman, and Susan M. Collins, Ranking Member, the Senate Homeland Security and
Government Affairs Committee, A Ticking Time Bomb: Counterterrorism Lessons from the U.S. Government’s
Failure to Prevent the Fort Hood Attack (A Ticking Time Bomb) (February, 2011), 7.
73 (U) A Ticking Time Bomb, 51.
74 (U) Ibid., 55.
75 (U) Ibid., 66.
76 (U) Ibid., 67.
77 (U) See Electronic Communication, August 2, 2011.
78 (U) Final Report of the William H. Webster Commission on The Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Counterterrorism Intelligence, and the Events at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009 (Webster Commission
Report) (Undated).
79 (U) Valerie Caproni, General Counsel, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Statement before the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, (Caproni Testimony), September 23, 2008.
purpose was counterterrorism, counterintelligence, or criminal investigation.80 The FBI
explicitly saw these consolidated guidelines as reflecting “the FBI’s status as a full-fledged
intelligence collection agency and member of the United States Intelligence Community”81 as
well as helping the FBI in its “transformation from the preeminent law enforcement agency in
the United States to a domestic intelligence agency that has a national security mission and law
enforcement mission.”82
(U) The FBI had requested the Attorney General to consider revisions to the guidelines in 2007,
in part because the FBI “believed that certain restrictions [in the prior National Security
Investigative Guidelines, last revised in 2003] were actively interfering with its ability to . . .
become an intelligence-driven agency capable of anticipating and preventing terrorist and other
criminal acts as well as investigating them after they are committed.”83 While the new AG
Guidelines continued the distinction between predicated investigations and pre-investigative
activity, known as “threat assessments” on the national security side and “prompt and limited
checking of leads” on the criminal side, substantively the new AG Guidelines represented an
expansion in the range of techniques available at the pre-investigative level for national security
and intelligence matters, bringing consistency to the rules “whether the activity has as its purpose
checking on potential criminal activity, examining a potential threat to national security, or
collecting foreign intelligence in response to a requirement.”84
(U) With the new and almost entirely unclassified AG Guidelines, special agents working on
national security issues could now at the assessment stage “recruit and task sources, engage in
interviews of members of the public without a requirement to identify themselves as FBI agents
and disclose the precise purpose of the interview, and engage in physical surveillance not
requiring a court order”85 just as special agents working on organized crime investigations could
(U) The new AG Guidelines carried over substantial privacy and civil liberties protections from
earlier investigative guidelines and also contained new requirements for notifications and reports
by the FBI to improve oversight of the Bureau’s national security and intelligence activities.87
The five case studies in Chapter II of this report assess the FBI’s effectiveness in applying these
guidelines and in its use of intelligence collection and analysis in the investigations of each case.
80 (U) The underlying guidelines for these three areas had already been revised successfully in 2002, 2003, and
2006. Caproni Testimony, 2.
81 (U) Ibid., 3.
82 (U) Ibid., 1. The Webster Commission found that “the increased flexibility under the AG Guidelines to conduct
assessments using specified techniques is critical to the FBI’s ability to combat terrorism.” Webster Commission
Report, 109.
83 (U) Caproni Testimony, 3.
84 (U) Ibid., 2.
85 (U) Ibid.
86 (U) Ibid., 6-7.
87 (U) Ibid., 7-9. The AG Guidelines were implemented within the Bureau according to the FBI’s Domestic
Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG) which was issued by the FBI Director in 2008, with some
modifications made in 2010 and 2013. The FBI requires all of its operation personnel to complete comprehensive
training on the AG Guidelines and the DIOG.
(U) Leadership Transition and 10 Years after the 9/11 Commission Recommendations
(U) The FBI continued to make efforts to advance its intelligence activities during the last years
of Mueller’s tenure.88 Some of this effort involved sustained discussion of its intelligence
mission although reports regarding its accomplishments were limited to traditional measures of a
law enforcement organization such as 25,186 arrests; 14,807 indictments; 1,147 missing children
located; and $1,125 billion in seizures of drugs and assets. While the 2013-2014 Today’s FBI
report did not provide exact information regarding the FBI’s intelligence program, it did devote
six pages to explaining the Bureau’s intelligence and national security activities before
describing its investigations, people, partnerships, and services.89
(U) Pursuant to the FY10 Intelligence Authorization Act, P.L. 111-259, the FBI was required to
provide annual classified reports to Congress for five years concerning its ongoing
transformation of intelligence capabilities within the FBI. In its third report, submitted in April
2013, the NSB described the completion of a “comprehensive review of the FBI’s intelligence
program and the implementation of recommendations to streamline the organization while
positioning it to more effectively collect, analyze, produce, and disseminate intelligence.” 90
(U) This intelligence program review led to a reorganization of the DI and the transfer of
functions—including domain management, collection management, targeting, tactical analysis,
strategic analysis, and finished intelligence production—from the DI to intelligence personnel
who have been embedded within the FBI Headquarters (FBIHQ) operational divisions.91 The
2013 assessment report noted that threat-based fusion cells within the operational divisions
“serve as intelligence teams to integrate all aspects of the intelligence cycle, providing a more
strategic and nimble approach to identifying and mitigating current and emerging threats.”92 To
implement this approach, the FBI did a comprehensive revision of its Intelligence Program
Policy Guide and established a DI Executive Advisory Group. In 2014, Director Comey
elevated the position of the incumbent Director of Intelligence to Executive Assistant Director
(U) In addition, according to the 2013 report, between 2012 and 2013, the FBI developed and
implemented the Integrated Program Management (IPM) to standardize processes between
FBIHQ and the field on how to prioritize threats, allocate resources, and measure performance.
Coupled with this, the FBI at both the Headquarters and field level continued to utilize the Threat
Review and Prioritization (TRP) process for prioritizing threats and mitigation strategies on both
88 (U) The former director’s tenure was extended two years by an act of Congress.
89 (U) Federal Bureau of Investigation, Today’s FBI: Facts &amp; Figures 2013-2014 (Today’s FBI)
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/todays-fbi-facts-figures/facts-and-figures-031413.pdf (accessed on
January 12, 2015).
90 (U) Federal Bureau of Investigation, Assessment of the Progress on the Transformation of the Intelligence
Capabilities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (Assessment Report) (April, 2013): 1.
91 (U) Ibid., 3.
92 (U) Ibid.
the national and local level, to ensure FBIHQ had a national threat picture, as the threats were
emerging and distributed across the country.93
(U) In the 2013 report, the FBI noted it had increased its production of raw intelligence reports
over the last year. The report stated that, during FY12, “48 percent of FBI’s finished intelligence
products received “Good” or “Excellent” ratings on each of the four analytic Integrity Standards
criteria, and 95 percent of intelligence products were disseminated in a timely manner.”94 The
FBI conducted an Intelligence Analyst Workforce Study (IAWS), after which decided to retain
the organization’s nonsupervisory GS-14 Intelligence Analyst position and implement a new IA
developmental plan.95 The report also addressed issues involving infrastructure support and the
technical backbone of the Intelligence Program and the integration of the NSB into the USIC.96
(U) The FBI’s budget authority increased from $3.81 billion in FY01 to $8.12 billion in FY12.97
Despite the growth of budget authority since FY01, in recent years the FBI faced complex threats
with reduced funds, in part as a result of sequestration. In a May 2014 speech, FBI Deputy
Director Mark F. Giuliano noted that the Bureau had been cutting programs during the last few
fiscal years, and so its allocation of $8.3 billion in FY14 was a “relief.”98
(U) The April 2013 report concluded:
Today, the FBI is an intelligence-driven organization that is more efficiently and
effectively using intelligence to drive operations. Significant advancements have been
made in many areas over the past year to ensure the FBI is positioned to meet its missions
with the constraints of budgetary reductions. The work continues to become more
streamlined and standardized across the enterprise through leveraging new technology,
working in tandem with partner agencies on common missions, and the ongoing
development of FBI personnel.99
(U) The Review Commission has examined several of these initiatives to test how effective they
have been. Our findings and recommendations highlight where resources can be targeted more
efficiently and effectively and where new strategic plans must be implemented strategically and
smoothly to move the FBI forward.100
93 (U) It was recognized, however, that there could be variations among field offices in how their priorities were
ranked as the TRP process reflects the intelligence or “domain management” responsibilities of the individual field
offices. It also represents a mechanism to be “threat-driven.”
94 (U) Assessment Report, 8. The methods by which the FBI measures timeliness should be reviewed. See
discussion in footnote 272. The Assessment Report includes discussion of efforts made to increase the quality of
95 (U) Ibid., 10-16.
96 (U) Ibid., 16-21.
97 (U) Today’s FBI, 9.
98 (U) Mark F. Giuliano, Statement for the Record (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, May 28, 2014): 1.
99 (U) Assessment Report, 22.
100 (U) While the FBI’s budget allocation grew this year, additional budget growth is not a given. If
recommendations are made to increase resources in some areas, recommendations might also be made to eliminate
(U) Baseline 2015
(U) On March 26, 2014, new FBI Director James Comey, in testimony on the FBI’s budget
request for FY15 before the CJSR, stated that “[t]oday’s FBI is a threat-focused, intelligencedriven organization.” According to Director Comey’s testimony, the FBI’s four priorities
“remain focused on defending the United States against terrorism, foreign intelligence, and cyber
threats; upholding and enforcing the criminal laws of the United States; protecting civil rights
and civil liberties; and providing leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state,
municipal, and international agencies and partners.”101
(U) The Review Commission concludes that the FBI has transformed itself over the last 10
years, in alignment with the Director’s four priorities. The Bureau is developing a cadre of
special agents, analysts, and other professionals who understand the importance of intelligence
across the spectrum of FBI operations. Nevertheless, we believe the FBI has not yet met its
potential—or its mandate from the President and Congress—to develop a “specialized and
integrated national security workforce” that can serve as the hub of America’s domestic
intelligence agency.102 Furthermore, we believe that the increasing gravity of transnational
security threats in an era of rapid technological change requires stronger efforts by the FBI to
optimize its capabilities and to maximize its collaboration with strategic partners. The following
current challenges noted by the Review Commission rest on the durable foundation—the
baseline—of the Mueller years but argue for even more accelerated reform in the decade ahead.
(U) Intelligence: The Review Commission concludes that that the FBI’s capability to collect
and analyze intelligence in support of its investigative mission has improved over the past decade
but support for national intelligence level requirements is still a work in progress. FBI analysts
and special agents continue to perform admirably as detailees to United States Intelligence
Community USIC agencies and at foreign posts. The majority of strategic analysis and
engagement with the USIC is conducted at headquarters through the threat-based fusion cells
within the operational divisions. But analysts and collectors in FBI field offices, with some
exceptions, do not collaborate closely enough with USIC counterparts or produce strategic
analysis related to their area of responsibility that is informed by USIC intelligence traffic and
production. This results, in part, from the lack of adequate Sensitive Compartmental Information
Facilities (SCIF) space needed for FBI employees to have desk-top access to USIC systems,
tools, and message traffic—and the analysts who produce it. The inability to fully integrate into
the USIC reduces their professional status both within the Bureau and the USIC, as well as their
effectiveness in producing strategic—versus tactical—analysis in response to field office and
USIC requirements. Well conceived programs intended to boost intelligence capacity, such as
101 (U) Comey Testimony.
102 (U) The 9/11 Commission Report, 425. In our interviews and briefings, no one has told us the FBI has achieved
100 percent in doing all that is necessary to be an intelligence institution. Indeed, Director Comey on June 4, 2014,
identified intelligence as one of his three top priorities as the new director because the integration of intelligence and
operations “is going okay, but it is not going nearly well enough.” Message from Director Comey to FBI workforce,
June 4, 2014. He thus created a new Intelligence Branch to drive the integration of intelligence and operations across
the bureau and institute coordinated training for special agents and new intelligence analysts to promote better
integration in the field.
HUMINT squads and Central Strategic Coordinating Components (CSCC), struggle in the field
in part because of local leadership’s choices amid competing priorities.
(U) Leadership: Leadership at all levels of the FBI impacts this pace of change by advancing it
or slowing it down. The workforce grasps the FBI’s stated intention to transform itself into an
intelligence-driven, threat-based organization, but implementation across the Bureau varies
widely. The Review Commission observed a variety of leaders at Headquarters and in the field,
who were all committed to the Bureau’s mission as they understand it. Still, interviews and
comments from leaders in the field reflected a wide range of responses from high-energy change
agents to passive resistors with regard to the goal of an integrated intelligence and lawenforcement mission. In the Bureau’s critical years ahead, visionary leadership will matter more
(U) Analysis as a Profession: The Bureau, despite its stated intentions to address concerns
from its analysts over time, still does not sufficiently recognize its analysts as a professionalized
workforce with distinct requirements for investment in training and education, rotational
opportunities across the USIC, and a career service that will meet both the professional
expectations of analysts and the growing needs of a global service.
(U) Information Sharing: The FBI’s information sharing practices and collaborative
relationships are markedly improved from a decade ago. But there is still wide room for
improvement in the Bureau’s sharing practices with local law enforcement and the private sector.
Looking ahead, the FBI will be increasingly dependent upon all domestic and foreign
partnerships to succeed in its critical and growing national security missions—including against
the rapidly evolving cyber and terrorist threats.
(U) LEGAT Program: The challenges to the Bureau’s core missions—criminal investigation,
intelligence, and technology—are already and will be increasingly global. The Bureau’s LEGAT
program is growing—today’s 64 LEGAT offices represent a three-fold increase since the early
1990s—and will be required to grow strategically and smartly over the next decade. Investing in
the LEGAT program for both criminal investigation and intelligence collection is wise, but there
are growing pains as the various offices exhibit. The Bureau requires clearer goals for
designating priority countries to assign LEGATs, for candidate selection, for enhanced training
and education, for standardization of business processes, and especially expanding analytic
capability, including analysts embedded in the LEGAT offices. The recently announced plan for
the LEGAT program’s reorganization, which includes enhanced analytic capability, is an
encouraging step as long as it receives commensurate resources.
(U) Science and Technology (S&amp;T): The FBI has substantially increased its investment in its
S&amp;T programs over the past decade. The Review Commission heard insightful briefings from
the FBI’s Science and Technology Branch (Operational Technology Division, Laboratory
Division, and Criminal Justice Information Services Division) on its ambitious efforts to keep
apace of rapid advances in IT, biometrics, DNA applications, forensics, and other sciences that
relate to both the special agent’s investigative tradecraft and the adversary’s capabilities. S&amp;T
should be seen as a core competency of the Bureau in future planning and resource allocation in
the midst of a global technological revolution of unprecedented scale and scope. The FBI will
need to strengthen its outreach to the scientific community and increase the S&amp;T Branch’s
“touch points” with internal divisions, field offices, and LEGAT posts.
(U) Strategic Plan: The FBI today does not have a comprehensive strategic vision or overall
plan to integrate the national and international responsibilities for a global threat-based,
intelligence-driven investigative organization. Some of the problems that complicate the effort
to develop such a long-term plan are problems that the Bureau can fix on its own, including the
uneven commitment of its leadership to reform. However, it also is hindered by the Bureau’s
one-year budget cycle, which contrasts with the Defense budget five-year cycle by which the
majority of USIC members are funded. The FBI’s bifurcated budget process runs through the
contrasting evaluations of DOJ and ODNI budget offices and then on to Congressional
committees of jurisdiction, also similarly divided between intelligence and law enforcement
interests. This is a discouraging and frustrating picture for a Bureau mandated to integrate what
its overseers view through separate lenses.
(U) Legal Authorities and Civil Liberties: The FBI faces constitutional and legal challenges
in collecting intelligence and rendering analysis of US persons’ information that distinguish it
from other USIC agencies. The Review Commission’s assessment of five recent, high-profile
counterterrorism cases highlights the critical value of the FBI’s existing authorities and related
statutes and performance in detecting and countering the terrorist threat. The Electronic
Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act
(CALEA), the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the USA PATRIOT Act were
all essential to the investigations in each case. The FBI should ensure Congress is aware of the
critical value of these programs as it considers retaining, refining, and expanding the Bureau’s
authorities as the threat evolves. The Bureau also must ensure that, in an escalating threat
environment, its internal safeguards to protect civil liberties meet the highest standard.
THE SUM OF FIVE CASES
(U) The 9/11 Review Commission selected five case studies to examine the Bureau’s response
to high-profile terrorist plots and attacks since 2008. These cases are briefly summarized in the
box below: Najibullah Zazi and the New York City subway plot, David Headley and the Mumbai
attack and Denmark plot, Major Nidal Hasan and the Fort Hood shooting, Faisal Shahzad and the
Times Square attack, and Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the Boston Marathon bombing.
The Review Commission concludes that FBI’s human intelligence (HUMINT), intelligence
analysis, and information sharing practices performed unevenly in the five cases to varying
degrees. In addition, the Review Commission believes, looking forward, counterterrorism legal
authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and other statutory authorities
afforded to the FBI are essential to its ability to fulfill its national security mission.
(U) In none of the five cases did an FBI confidential human source (CHS) provide actionable
(U) Intelligence analysts embedded in counterterrorism squads were valued for the tactical
intelligence support they provided for the cases, but domain intelligence needs to be enhanced to
identify plots in the relevant field offices’ area of responsibility and intelligence analysts must be
empowered to question special agents’ operational assumptions.
(U) The case studies identify lapses in communication, coordination, and collaboration among Joint
Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) in FBI field offices; between FBI Headquarters and the field; and
between the Bureau and its federal, state, and local partners in law enforcement and intelligence.
(U) FBI authorities derived from the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the FISA,
and the USA PATRIOT Act, as well as Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act
(CALEA)’s mandate for specific communications companies, were pivotal in the investigation of all
(U) The Review Commission chose these cases—and the case study approach more broadly—
for two principal reasons. First, they helped us to measure the FBI’s counterterrorism
performance against its professed goal to be a threat-based, intelligence-driven organization.
The FBI’s counterterrorism mission has been a major beneficiary of increased intelligence
support over the past decade. Accordingly, by reviewing these five cases, we were able to assess
the impact that both these policy changes and additional resources have had on the FBI’s
counterterrorism mission. Second, the case studies enabled us to identify specific issues that
need to be addressed by the FBI to fulfill its role as the central hub of US domestic
intelligence—integrating federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement and intelligence
capabilities, as well as liaison with the private sector, local communities, and foreign partners.
The Review Commission discovered that building this collaborative enterprise is still a work in
progress for the FBI, with inconsistency from case to case.
(U) Each of the five cases presented different complexities, allowing the Review Commission to
consider various factors that affected the FBI’s performance. Hasan and the Tsarnaevs were able
to carry out their terrorist attacks. Zazi was arrested in Denver before he and his accomplices
could execute their suicide attack on the New York City subway. Headley was detained in
Chicago after he had already played a pivotal role in the Mumbai attacks, but before he could
return to Denmark to support another terrorist operation. Shahzad’s plan to detonate an
improvised explosive device in New York City’s crowded Times Square was undermined merely
because of his own incompetence. The perpetrators were all either US citizens or permanent
residents, and diverged sharply in their respective family and personal relationships, social
networks, and radicalization experiences. Moreover, in each instance the role of the FBI, local
law enforcement organizations, and national and foreign intelligence agencies in identifying and
investigating the perpetrators also differed. The cases also include significant variation in the
nature and intent of extremist groups and networks, with plotters connected to terrorist
organizations (such as core al-Qa’ida, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and Lashkar-e-Taiba
(LeT)) and local radicalized individuals and networks.
(U) For each of the case studies, the Review Commission conducted site visits and interviews
with many of the FBI field office and Headquarters personnel responsible for the intelligence and
investigative processes, reviewed hundreds of documents, and interviewed dozens of individuals
involved in the cases from United States Intelligence Community (USIC) partner agencies.103
The Review Commission did not duplicate the investigative and intelligence work completed by
the Justice Department, the FBI, or USIC partners. Nor did the Review Commission re-create the
after-action reports produced by the FBI, Inspectors General, USIC, or Congress.
(U) Instead, we focused on the strengths and weaknesses in four areas integral to successful FBI
counterterrorism operations: (1) HUMINT collection; (2) intelligence analysis; (3)
communication, collaboration, and information sharing involving the JTTFs; and (4)
counterterrorism legal authorities. These areas provided an overarching framework to guide our
interviews and the collection of information for each of the five cases. We examined the FBI’s
performance in each to identify both the challenges and opportunities to improve performance
against evolving threats. Although these five cases were the principal focus of this effort, the
Review Commission was nonetheless mindful that other terrorist incidents were prevented by the
FBI since 2001, such as those involving Michael Finton, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, the DC 5,
Daniel Boyd and his accomplices, Tarek Mehanna, Farooq Chaudry, Colleen LaRose, Zachary
Chesser, and numerous others.104
103 (U) Importantly, the Review Commission was not able to discuss the Boston Marathon bombing during our
visit to Boston due to ongoing preparations for the Tsarnaev trial, although we did address issues pertaining to
HUMINT, intelligence analysis, JTTFs, and counterterrorism authorities more broadly during our visit. The Boston
case was the only one where the Review Commission relied primarily on Inspectors’ General reports, outside
interviews, and open source reporting, due to FBI restrictions on discussing the case while the trial is pending.
104 (U) For a more detailed list on interdicted terrorism plots see Bruce Hoffman and Peter Bergen, Assessing the
Terrorist Threat, Bipartisan Policy Center, September 10, 2010: 33-37.
(U) The Review Commission cannot say that with better JTTF collaboration, HUMINT, or even
intelligence analysis that the FBI would have detected these plots beforehand. Rather, the
Review Commission used the case studies as a lens through which to review the FBI’s progress
in these areas. The plots, all of which crossed multiple field offices or included overseas
components, might have benefitted from greater JTTF collaboration, HUMINT, and intelligence
(U) Human Sources
(U) The FBI has a direct responsibility for identifying and preventing homeland attacks, as “no
other Federal, state, or local program shares FBI’s authorities and responsibilities for domestic
intelligence collection.”105 Detecting both Homegrown Violent Extremists (HVEs) and
operatives of a broader terrorist network operating on US soil given the difficulty of accessing
their electronic communications, however, will increasingly require an effective HUMINT
collection network. The Review Commission recognizes that the widespread availability of
sophisticated online communications to conceal extremist activities, combined with rigorous
legal requirements to obtain approval for collection techniques involving US persons in the
United States, compound the difficulties faced by the FBI in identifying potential homeland
terrorist threats.106 The Review Commission determined that none of the five cases benefited
from intelligence acquired through FBI recruited human sources.
(U) Post 9/11, the FBI’s leadership recognized the FBI’s unique role and in 2008 directed
special agents with a HUMINT specialty to focus on developing long-term CHSs “with
placement and access to strategic threat issues in support of critical national intelligence issues
(such as the National Intelligence Priority Framework) or FBI Priorities (such as the TRP Band
I–III threats)” rather than in support of cases.107 Our visits to the field offices affirmed the
importance of the FBI’s HUMINT program, but raised serious questions regarding the lack of
programmatic guidance from Headquarters and its uneven implementation in the field, which we
address more fully in Chapter III.
(U) In January 2009, Najibullah Zazi moved from New York City (which is covered by the New
York Field Office), to Aurora, Colorado (which is under the jurisdiction of the Denver Field
Office). Neither FBI office was aware of Zazi or his associates before September 2009 when
Zazi was preparing to travel to New York City to carry out the plot and after he had traveled to
Pakistan and been trained by al-Qa’ida.108 Neither the FBI nor local US law enforcement had
acquired intelligence on Zazi’s plot before a tip that originated outside the FBI triggered the
investigation. Moreover, the FBI’s outreach into the Afghan and Pakistani communities in
105 (U) Strategic Evaluation Report: FBI from a HUMINT Prospective January 2012, referenced in Scott McBride,
“The Impact of HUMINT Squads on FBI’s Collection Capabilities,” Senior Intelligence Officer Essay (McBride
Essay), August 22, 2013; (U) Memorandum for the Record, November 14, 2014.
106 (U) For more on the limits of domestic collection and how it impacts USIC collection posture against potential
Homeland threats see: National Intelligence Council, Terrorist Threats to the US Homeland 2016, NIE 2013-08D
(Homeland NIE), November 26, 2013:viii.
107 (U) McBride Essay, 2.
108 (U) Memorandum for the Record, July 28, 2014.; Memorandum for the Record, September 18, 2014.
Denver and New York did not result in a community member providing information or
intelligence on Zazi or his associates.109 Zazi’s financial insolvency and his final preparations to
procure enough hydrogen peroxide to make Tri-acetone Tri-peroxide did not rise to the FBI’s
attention.110
(U) Although HUMINT was not critical to raising Major Nidal Hasan to the attention of the
FBI, tasking human sources to better understand Hasan’s interactions with Anwar al-Aulaqi and
his ultimate intentions would have been a prudent step for either the FBI or the Defense Criminal
Investigative Service (DCIS). The FBI first learned of Major Hasan through an e-mail that he
sent to the US-born radical cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi on December 17, 2008. Despite the fact that
an active-duty US Army Major was e-mailing a known al-Qa’ida ideologue and facilitator who
was the subject of an ongoing FBI investigation, the e-mail generated little concern in the context
of what the Webster Commission termed a “crushing” volume of data.111 While the purpose of
the program was intended to be a “strategic intelligence collection platform” in order to generate
intelligence regarding al-Aulaqi’s location, movements, and contacts as a known al-Qa’ida
radicalizer, the e-mails between Hasan and al-Aulaqi were not treated as serious intelligence
leads.112 Senior FBI officials involved in the case readily admitted that the Bureau needs to
better understand the strategic component of preventing terrorist attacks, which the Review
Commission believes requires more pro-active intelligence collection outside of case support.113
One option available to the FBI, for instance, would have been to task its intelligence assets,
including HUMINT, to develop the information further given the number of unknowns regarding
the communications between Hasan and al-Aulaqi, for counterintelligence or counterterrorism
purposes.114 Accordingly, the Review Commission recommends accelerating the further
development and refinement of an agile strategic intelligence program incorporating both
HUMINT and domain awareness to identify individuals susceptible to being radicalized like
Hasan, while preserving protections for First Amendment activities.
(U) Broader domain awareness, might have detected TTP plots in the United States and perhaps
Faisal Shahzad would have been identified before his attempted plot to detonate a bomb.
Shahzad, a Pakistani-born US citizen, had made multiple trips to Pakistan between 2007 and
2008 and had been radicalized by persons associated with the TTP, the group believed to have
been behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.115 The FBI was aware of the
potential homeland threat posed by the TTP, yet it is unclear to the Review Commission how
many HUMINT squads or collection action plans were actively working to mitigate the potential
threat in 2010.
109 (U) Ibid.; FBI Briefing, Operation High Rise (High Rise Briefing), April 1, 2014.
110 (U) Seth Jones, Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of Al-Qa’ida Since 9/11 (Hunting in the Shadows) (New
York: W.W. Norton &amp; Company, 2012): 322-326.
111 (U) Webster Commission Report, 35.; A Ticking Time Bomb: 38.
112 (U) Webster Commission Report, 35; Memorandum for the Record, February 19, 2014.
113 (U) Memorandum for the Record, October 1, 2014.
114 (U) Under the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Domestic Investigation and Operations Guide (DIOG) FBI
employees are required to use the least intrusive means to investigate and analyze possible threats to national
security. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide,§18.5.5.1, and §
5.6.3.1.8.1, October 23, 2014.
115 (U) Memorandum for the Record, September 2, 2014.
(U) In Boston, although Tamerlan Tsarnvaev’s radicalization was known to some friends and
until after the bombings.116 Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) passed a lead to the FBI in
March 2011 that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother Zubeidat were followers of radical Islam
and that Tamerlan intended “to travel to Russia to join unspecified ‘bandit underground groups’
in Dagestan and Chechnya.”117 The FBI opened but then closed an assessment on Tamerlan
concerning his potential threat to national security, concluding on June 24, 2011, that he had “no
link or nexus” to terrorism.118 At the conclusion of the FBI’s assessment, the FBI’s findings
were passed to Russian authorities via tear line with a request for specific information pertaining
to Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s alleged involvement in extremist activities. No response was ever
received from Russian authorities. Given the limited information on Tamerlan, the FBI did not
nominate him for inclusion on the Terror Watchlist. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
however, independently nominated Tamerlan for inclusion on the Terror Watchlist in October
2011––based on the same information lead from the Russians, which had been passed separately
to the CIA the previous month.119 The Inspectors General’s report following the Boston
Marathon bombing, which was provided to the Review Commission in April 2014, agreed that
“there was insufficient derogatory information to establish reasonable suspicion that Tsarnaev
was a known or suspected terrorist.”120
(U) In November 2012, Tamerlan interrupted a sermon discussing Islamic and American
that this information was ever reported to the FBI.121 In January 2013, Tamerlan again became
angry following a sermon at the same mosque.122 This information does not appear to have
made its way to the FBI. While the Review Commission recognizes the civil liberties
sensitivities of source networks within religious institutions, a more extensive HUMINT network
postured within the local community could have made the FBI aware of these outbursts. All of
the cases revealed to the Review Commission that the FBI’s role within the USIC as the primary
collector of domestic human intelligence is of critical importance in the identification of
(U) Intelligence Analysis and Domain Awareness
(U) In all five cases, when the FBI eventually became aware of the plotters, intelligence analysts
played a critical role in the investigations. Still, in three of the five case studies, it was a tip from
116 (U) Inspectors General, Unclassified Summary of Information Handling Prior to the Boston Marathon
Bombings (IG Summary of Information Handling), April 10, 2014: 1,2.
117 (U) Ibid., 8.
118 (U) Ibid., 8-10.
119 (U) Ibid., 11.
120 (U) Ibid.
121 (U) Associated Press, “Remembering the Tragedy: Timeline of Events in the Boston Marathon Bombing,”
Huffington Post, April 14, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/14/boston-marathontimeline_n_5145615.html (accessed December 11, 2014).
122 (U) Ibid.
outside the FBI that triggered the investigation.123 In both the Hasan and Tsarnaev cases, while
the FBI learned of the relevant individuals prior to the attack and conducted initial assessments,
they were both closed prior to the Fort Hood shooting and Boston Marathon bombings after FBI
agents concluded that none of the individuals in question warranted further investigation.
Although a single analyst was spending 40 percent of his or her time reviewing al-Aulaqi’s
communications, intelligence analysts nonetheless played a minor role in the ultimate disposition
of the Hasan and Tsarnaev assessments.124 The Review Commission understands that the gravity
and complexities of the Hasan and Tsarnaev plots were unclear, particularly given the lack of
specific information alongside the high volume of competing and often uncertain threat
information inundating FBI special agents and intelligence analysts. We do not intend to second
guess the decision-making of dedicated special agents and intelligence analysts ex post facto.
However, the cases raise concerns about how effectively the FBI empowers and equips its
analysts to drive the intelligence cycle in the field and what contributions analysts with deep
subject matter expertise might have added to those assessments.
(U) FBI intelligence programs in Denver and New York did not identify Zazi or his two main
accomplices, Zarein Ahmedzay (who, like Zazi, was an Afghan born in a Pakistani refugee
camp) and Adis Medunjanin (a native of Bosnia), in advance of the plot.125 Zazi was unknown
to local authorities, the FBI, or the USIC—despite the fact that he had traveled to Pakistan in
2008 where he had joined al-Qa’ida, been trained in bomb making at al-Qa’ida facilities in South
Waziristan, and was in contact with such senior al-Qa’ida luminaries.126 Back in the United
States, Zazi was not subjected to secondary screening by Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
at the airport and later in Colorado his separate purchases of 6 and 12 bottles of hydrogen
peroxide, a key ingredient in the homemade bomb, went unreported to authorities.127 The
subsequent investigation revealed that Zazi had traveled to Pakistan on August 28, 2008, and
returned to the United States on January 15, 2009.128 Once the FBI learned of the connection
between Zazi and the known AQ-affiliated e-mail account, full investigations and 24-hour
surveillance were initiated on Zazi and subsequently his New York-based associates.129
(U) In the Headley and Shahzad cases, the plotters exhibited distinct travel and behavioral
patterns that might have provided the broader USIC with advance warning of potentially
suspicious activities if the data had been known to or aggregated by the FBI and other USIC
analysts as part of a comprehensive domain awareness program. Headley had previously come
to the attention of US law enforcement authorities, but FBI officials repeatedly concluded that
Headley did not pose a threat at the time. He also came to the attention of US law enforcement
authorities by way of accusations of violence and radicalism from family members, but FBI
123 (U) Zazi, Headley, and Tsarnaev.
124 (U) Webster Commission Report, 35. Additionally, the IG Summary of Information Handling, does not
indicate analyst involvement in the FBI’s final determination on Tsarnaev.
125 (U) Memorandum for the Record, July 28, 2014.; Memorandum for the Record, September 18, 2014.
126 (U) High Rise Briefing. See also Memorandum for the Record, April 1, 2014.; Hunting in the Shadows, 315320.
127 (U) Hunting in the Shadows, 324-325.
128 (U) Hunting in the Shadows, 311, 323.
129 (U) Hunting in the Shadows, 326; Memorandum for the Record, July 28, 2014.; Memorandum for the Record,
officials repeatedly concluded that he did not pose a threat at the time. In December 2007,
Headley’s Moroccan wife complained to US officials at the US Embassy in Islamabad that her
husband was a terrorist. The FBI investigation of Headley did not begin until 2009, and it was
triggered by a tip that originated outside the FBI that revealed his relationships with extremists
abroad.130 One of the main lessons from the Headley case is that absent an intelligence effort
across the USIC to understand the connections among cases and complaints across field offices,
relevant intelligence may fall by the wayside. News outlets have reported, prior to his terrorist
activities, Headley had worked as a DEA informant in the late 1990s and the early 2000s,
following two heroin trafficking arrests.131 A single complaint may be more easily dismissed as
a poison pen motive, but several unrelated complaints should not be dismissed as readily as the
work of a malcontent.
(U) Headley’s Moroccan wife similarly complained to US officials at the US Embassy in
Islamabad in December 2007 that her husband was a terrorist.132 The Headley case raises the
important question faced by all intelligence agencies––certainly important to the FBI––of how to
scan and assess voluminous amounts of collected information strategically and identifying
valuable intelligence leads. Still, more than a decade after 9/11, the FBI must prioritize
empowering and equipping its analytic cadre to make these connections with cutting edge
technology, to minimize the risk of the FBI missing important intelligence information.
(U) Hasan was not initially assessed as posing a terrorism threat, in large part because the full
extent of his e-mail communications with al-Aulaqi were not comprehensively reviewed by the
special agent and intelligence analyst in San Diego, thus missing the connection between
Hasan’s initial e-mail and his subsequent communications with al-Aulaqi.133 Hasan, as a US
military officer communicating with a senior al-Qa’ida facilitator, should certainly have been
regarded as an intelligence––and potentially a counterintelligence––concern by the FBI.134 As
the Webster Commission Report points out, the al-Aulaqi e-mails were reviewed for pertinent
foreign intelligence data and occasionally used to identify “previously unknown persons of
potential interest through their contact with al-Aulaqi.”135 Determining if information from the
al-Aulaqi intercept was of intelligence value fell to the San Diego intelligence analyst, whose
mission was to disseminate “intelligence that has the potential to protect the US against threats to
national security or improve the effectiveness of law enforcement.”136 In this instance, that
responsibility was overridden by his case agent superior.
130 (U) FBI Briefing, April 2, 2014.
131 (U) Sebastian Rotella, “The American Behind India’s 9/11—And How U.S. Botched Changes to Stop Him,”
ProPublica, January 24, 2014, http://www.propublica.org/article/david-headley-homegrown-terrorist (accessed
December 11, 2014).
132 (U) Ibid.; Memorandum for the Record, September 2, 2014.; Memorandum for the Record, September 2, 2014.
133 (U) Webster Commission Report, 46,47; A Ticking Time Bomb, 38.
134 (U) Memorandum for the Record, February 19, 2014.; A Ticking Time Bomb, 10, 62.
135 (U) Webster Commission Report, 40.
136 (U) Ibid.; The FBI Intelligence Policy Manual, § 1.7; FBI Intelligence Information Report Handbook § 4.1.2;
Privacy Impact Statement for the FBI, FBI Intelligence Information Report Dissemination Systems (FIDS) § 1.1,
(U) When Hasan’s e-mail was first identified by the San Diego Field Office, the FBI special
agent and intelligence analyst discussed the risk and value of producing an Intelligence
Information Report (IIR) regarding Hasan’s contact with al-Aulaqi.137 According to the Webster
Commission Report, the special agent decided erroneously in January 2009 that Hasan was a
communications officer and therefore “might have access to IIRs and thus could learn about the
intercept.”138 The desire to protect the program, based on an inaccurate interpretation of Hasan’s
military position, trumped the priority to disseminate the information. The Review Commission
questions whether this decision should have been left to the special agent to determine based on
our understanding of the FBI’s existing intelligence policies at the time.139 The incorrect
assumptions made in the Hasan case highlight the potential benefit of a collaborative special
agent-intelligence analyst relationship, where biases are routinely challenged and decisionmaking is more inclusive. The Review Commission is concerned that special agents be sensitive
to the need of this inclusion when intelligence is prepared for dissemination to the USIC.140 This
(U) The special agent assigned to investigate the Tsarnaevs did not consult any North Caucasus
the information provided by the FSB, although the Commision notes there was ample cause for
skepticism. In April 2011, special agents interviewed both Tamerlan and his parents.141 The
special agents also spoke with Tamerlan in April.142
(U) A more thorough review of Tamerlan’s activities by an intelligence analyst with the
the information, may have led to a different interpretation of the significance of the FSB lead.
The Inspector General’s report on the Boston Marathon bombing noted that the special agents
did not ask questions that were expected by their counterterrorism supervisor regarding
Tamerlan’s lifestyle and travel plans.143 Moreover, the special agent did not contact the local
Cambridge Police Department or complete a comprehensive search of all of baseline databases
required in FBI’s Baseline Collection Plan.144 The Department of Justice’s Office of the
Inspector General concluded in the Boston case that “additional investigative steps would have
resulted in a more thorough assessment,” although it was impossible to know if these additional
steps or searches would have yielded “additional information relevant to the FSB lead.”145
137 (U) Webster Commission Report, 38, 45. According to the Webster report, “Dissemination of this information
would have been appropriate, lawful, and consistent with FBI guidelines.” Webster Commission Report, 74.
138 (U) Webster Commission Report, 44.
139 (U) Ibid.
140 (U) Memorandum for the Record, October 31, 2014.; Memorandum for the Record, November 14, 2014.;
Memorandum for the Record, November 17, 2014.
141 (U) Inspectors General, Review of Information Handling Prior to the April 15, 2012, Boston Marathon
Bombings, April 2014: 56-57.
142 (U) Ibid.
143 (U) Ibid., 61.
144 (U) Ibid., 50, 63.
145 (U) Ibid., 164.
(U) While Chechen terrorists have conducted multiple attacks over the years against Russian
targets, they had never targeted the West, even after the 2007 declaration of the Imirat Kavkaz
(Caucasian Emirate). The Boston Marathon investigation has shown that the Tsarnaevs, though
of Chechen descent, were more likely HVEs. They were inspired by the global jihad, primarily
through the lectures of Anwar al-Aulaqi and the jihadist publications of the online site Tibyan
Publications. The Boston case demonstrates that the path to radicalization can be easily
obscured from law enforcement. The proliferation of social media platforms and their continued
exploitation by terrorist groups—and some of their media-savvy leaders—presents even more
formidable challenges in tracking and identifying homegrown radicalization. Thus, successful
detection is enhanced by the direct involvement of experienced intelligence analysts.
(U) In the Headley case, an analyst was ultimately able to connect him to an ongoing plot in
Denmark, underscoring the value of good intelligence analysis in the field to meet the FBI’s
national security and investigative missions. While reviewing materials and information
gathered during the investigation, FBI analysts and staff operations specialists (SOS) formulated
a tentative theory that the threat posed by Headley was somehow related to the published
cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. An intelligence analyst on the Afghanistan/Pakistan squad
noticed that one of the items included on an apparent operational checklist written by Headley
were the words “Kings Square (French Embassy).”146 The analysts determined that this referred
to the location in Copenhagen of the the Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten newspaper that had been
the subject of numerous threats after publishing the cartoons. The analyst therefore concluded
that Headley might be directly involved in a terrorist plot and alerted his superior.147
(U) After evaluating this case, it appears that Headley exhibited behavior that the FBI, in
collaboration with the USIC, should have identified under its domain intelligence programs. The
Review Commission strongly recommends that the Bureau must make it a high priority to further
improve, refine, and strengthen its intelligence program. Additionally, in the Hasan and
Tsarnaev cases, where the FBI had good information and solid leads pertaining to the plotters,
the Review Commission believes that intelligence analysts should have participated in the
questioning and evaluation of the information derived from the Tamerlan interview and the final
assessment of the e-mails between Hasan and al-Aulaqi. It is heartening to note that a critic of
the FBI’s performance in these cases was especially complimentary in describing the new
generation of special agents who have emerged since the September 2001 attacks and the FBI’s
willingness to collaborate across the USIC.148
(U) Communication, Collaboration, and Information Sharing Involving JTTFs
(U) Each field office involved in the five cases (Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York, San
Diego, and Washington DC) had JTTFs supported by state, local, and other federal agency
cooperation; community outreach; and on-going community engagement efforts. Indeed,
although FBI tripwires were established nationwide, none of the individuals were involved in
any overt illegal activities that warranted a local JTTF’s full investigation. The FBI should work
146 (U) Memorandum for the Record, September 2, 2014.
147 (U) Memorandum for the Record, September 2, 2014.
148 (U) Memorandum for the Record, February 19, 2014.
to balance the JTTF’s investigative role with the Bureau’s intelligence and preventative mission.
Accordingly, wherever possible the JTTF’s information sharing structures should be better
utilized to aggregate disparate intelligence information that might uncover a plot and prevent an
(U) When Zazi and his co-conspirators left for Pakistan in August 2008, the three men were
individually questioned by CBP officers, yet when Zazi returned to the United States in January
2009 he was not subjected to any secondary checks or additional screening.149 The Review
Commission’s inquiries at the various field offices it visited confirmed that in this instance, there
was no information to report to the Denver or New York JTTFs for further investigation.150 We
know now, through the benefit of hindsight, that Zazi did meet with known al-Qa’ida members
in North and South Waziristan.151
(U) David Headley was an even more elusive target. He conducted his activities with all the
skills of a trained intelligence operative—able to travel to and from the United States, Pakistan,
and India with relative ease and eluding authorities.152 The FBI had no knowledge of Headley’s
connections to LeT until provided with a tip that originated outside the FBI that prompted the
investigetion in 2009. In 2007, when Headley’s third wife complained regarding Headley’s LeT
connections to American embassy officials in Islamabad she was reportedly interviewed by the
State Department and US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, who relayed the information
to the USIC.153 This information was not passed to the FBI.154
(U) The Hasan case generally demonstrated poor coordination between JTTFs. Although there
were no outward signs of illegal activity on Hasan’s part from the outset, the FBI had enough
information to establish at least a connection between the radical imam and the US Army officer.
According to the Webster Commission report, the FBI had intercepted communications between
al-Aulaqi and Hasan, who had e-mailed him from the DC metropolitan area.155 The Washington
Field Office’s JTTF was passed a discretionary lead from San Diego, and the Hasan assessment
was passed to the task force officer (TFO) from the DCIS. The DCIS officer concluded that
149 (U) Memorandum for the Record, September 18, 2014.; High Rise Briefing.
150 (U) Memorandum for the Record, April 1, 2014.; Memorandum for the Record, September 18, 2014.
151 (U) Hunting in the Shadows, 316-317. Upon inquiring into the Zazi matter, the Review Commission learned of
the tension within the information sharing relationship between NYPD’s Intelligence Division and the JTTF,
particularly with regard to leaks of sensitive case-related information during pursuit of Zazi. (U) Memorandum for
the Record September 17, 2014.; Enemies Within, 18-19; 123-125; 149-150.
152 (U) Memorandum for the Record, September 2, 2014.
153 (U) Sebastian Rotella, “The American Behind India’s 9/11—And How U.S. Botched Changes to Stop Him,”
ProPublica, January 24, 2014, http://www.propublica.org/article/david-headley-homegrown-terrorist (accessed 11
December 2014); Memorandum for the Record, September 2, 2014.
154 (U) Ibid.
155 (U) The IP address Hasan used resolved to Northern Virginia, although his home and place of work were in
Maryland. For the IP Address information see: Webster Commission Report, 44. For information on Hasan’s work
and residence see: Bob Drogin and Faye Fiore, “Retracing Steps of Suspected Fort Hood Shooter, Nidal Malik
Hasan,” The Los Angeles Times, November 7, 2009; Mary Pat Flaherty, William Wan, Derek Kravitz, and Christian
Davenport, “Suspect, devout Muslim from Va. Wanted Army Discharge, Aunt Said, “The Washington Post,
November 6, 2009; Asha Beh and Jackie Bensen, “Fort Hood Shooting Suspect Was ‘A Calm Person.’”
NBCWashington.com, November 8, 2009.
Hasan’s connection to al-Aulaqi was not improper and the assessment was closed. The San
Diego JTTF requested follow-on interviews shortly thereafter, but the Washington Field Office
declined. San Diego made two more requests for interviews, but Washington considered the
matter resolved. San Diego did not pursue it either with the National JTTF or with FBI
Headquarters.156 In response to the Webster Commission report, the FBI eliminated
discretionary leads, made a concerted effort to improve collaboration within and among JTTFs,
established a formal process for sharing information relevant to military force protection with the
National Joint Terrorism Task Force (NJTTF), and standardized database training for all JTTF
TFOs.157
(U) In contrast to the Hasan case, the Times Square bombing case was a good example of
positive JTTF collaboration with organizations external to the FBI. Shahzad displayed skill in
evading detection by the JTTF in New York. He was technologically savvy, which enabled him
to avoid detection on anyone’s radar screen. 158 However, JTTF coordination after his botched
bombing attempt demonstrated precisely just how well cooperation can work. The case against
Shahzad did not begin pursuant to any tip, lead, or JTTF informant; rather street vendors spotted
smoke coming from the faulty explosive device inside his vehicle and contacted authorities.
This time, armed with the knowledge and best practices learned from the Zazi experience, the
JTTF with NYPD were able to identify Shahzad within 48 hours.159
(U) The Review Commission emphasizes here that a further clarification of the mutual
responsibilities of the Task Force members and the FBI on JTTFs is essential. While the FBI
institutionalized information sharing procedures on counterterrorism investigations that may
pose a risk to the Department of Defense, similar formal procedures governing JTTF information
sharing could benefit other important US Government, state, and local relationships.
Additionally, the composition of JTTFs across the country––though currently up to the discretion
of the respective Special Agent in Charge (SAC)––could adhere to a more standardized structure
to ensure key partners are included. Moreover, if particular departments cannot afford to have
full-time personnel assigned to the JTTF, a structure creating designated touch points in the
department whom the JTTF can contact may improve collaboration. JTTF information sharing
relationships is addressed more comprehensively in Chapter IV.
(U) Counterterrorism Legal Authorities
(U) The legal authorities afforded by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA),
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and USA PATRIOT Act, as well as
Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) mandate for specific
communication companies, were crucial to the FBI in investigating all five cases. The results in
these cases highlight the importance of maintaining sufficient legal authorities to conduct
counterterrorism investigations. FISAs, including 702 authorizations, and National Security
156 (U)
157 (U)
158 (U)
159 (U)
Webster Commission Report, 58-60.
Electronic Communication, August 2, 2011.
Memorandum for the Record, September 18, 2014.
Memorandum for the Record, September 17, 2014.; Memorandum for the Record, September 19, 2014.
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