The struggle against international terrorism places new and difficult demands on the U.S. IntelligenceCommunity. Acquiring information about the composition,location, capabilities, plans, and ambitions of terrorist groups is an enormous challenge for intelligence agencies;meeting this challenge requires different skillsthan were needed to keep informed about the capabilities and intentions of Communist governments. At the sametime, requirements continue for coverage ofgeopolitical developments around the world and other transnational issues such as narcotics smuggling. Observers point to several major challenges that the Intelligence Community will likely encounter in supporting the counter terrorist effort. First is a renewed emphasis on human agents . Signals intelligence and imagery satellites have their uses in the counterterrorism mission,but intelligence to counter terrorism depends more on human intelligence (humint) such as spies and informers. Any renewed emphasis on human intelligencenecessarily will involve a willingness to accept risks of complicated and dangerous missions, and likely ties todisreputable individuals who may be in positions toprovide valuable information. Time and patience will be needed to train analysts in difficult skills and languages. Second, terrorist activities pose significant analytical challenges . In addition toacquiring analysts with esoteric language skills,intelligence agencies must develop expertise in many third world areas that had been of peripheral concern in yearspast. Much of the data available will be inopen, unclassified sources that intelligence agencies have often neglected. Third is the closer relationship between intelligence and law enforcement agencies . In counterterrorism efforts, intelligence agencieswork alongside law enforcement agencies that have far different approaches to gathering evidence, developing leads,and maintaining retrievable databases. Policies and statutes are being modified to facilitate a closer relationship between the two sets of agencies, but closercooperation has raised difficult questionsabout using intelligence agencies in the U.S. and about collecting information regarding U.S. persons. Finally, military operations against terrorists will reenforce requirements for collecting and transmitting precise intelligence to militarycommanders or operators through secure communications systems in real time. The growing reliance ofmilitary operations on the availability of preciseintelligence is well understood, but the availability of collection platforms such as reconnaissance aircraft,unmanned aerial vehicles, and reconnaissance satelliteshas been limited throughout much of the past decade. Such platforms are especially important for counterterroristoperations. In large measure, meeting these challenges will be the responsibility of executive branch officials. The primary role for Congress will be to decide appropriatelevels of budgetary resources and to oversee Intelligence Community efforts to ensure that resources are wellmanaged and that the nation's intelligence needs aremet. Some observers believe that Congress has special responsibilities to provide a clear statutory framework toguide the unprecedented and uncertain evolutionof intelligence-law enforcement relationships. Such a framework is necessary, they suggest, to minimize chancesfor a failure of the campaign against terrorists or,alternatively, serious erosion of the protections of individual liberties that have evolved over many centuries. In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Congress moved rapidly to provide intelligence agencies with expanded authorities and increased funding to supportcounterterrorism. In the year 2002, congressional intelligence committees investigated the background of theSeptember attacks and recommended legislation toreorganize the U.S. Intelligence Community. Vast intelligence assets were deployed in support of militaryoperations in Iraq, and there are continuingrequirements in Afghanistan. Programs likely will be established to support the long-term struggle against terrorismand necessary budgetary resources identified. Intelligence support to the Department of Homeland Security is a key concern and one that remains under review. In November 2001, one media account suggested that a major reorganization of the Intelligence Community might be under consideration by the executivebranch. (1) Members of the two intelligencecommittees released a number of recommendations in December 2002 to strengthen management of intelligenceactivities. (2) The legislative future of such proposalsis uncertain, however. Whatever the organizational relationships, intelligence for counterterrorism will beaffected by the need for good humint, analysis, close ties to law enforcement agencies, and for capabilities to supportmilitary operations with precise locatingdata. During the Cold War, terrorism was not a major intelligence priority and, in many cases, terrorist groups wereperceived as acting on behalf of, or at least withimportant support by, Communist parties. The focus was on the other superpower and not terrorism perse . Nevertheless, the Intelligence Community has longdevoted significant resources towards the terrorist threat. As early as 1986, a Counterterrorism Center (CTC),comprised of officials from various intelligence andlaw enforcement agencies, was established within the Operations Directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) to pull together information oninternational terrorism from all sources and devise counterterrorism plans. After the fall of the Soviet Union andthe Warsaw Pact, terrorism was perceived witheven greater concern, especially as U.S. military forces and installations repeatedly were attacked by terrorist groupsas in the 1996 Khobar towers barracks inSaudi Arabia, the August 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the attack on the USS Colein October 2000. Public statements by senior intelligence officials affirm that the threat to the United States posed by international terrorism was understood well before September11, 2001. In February 2001, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet, in prepared testimony beforethe Senate Intelligence Committee, stated: "thethreat from terrorism is real, it is immediate, and it is evolving. State sponsored terrorism appears to have declinedover the past five years, but transnationalgroups -- with decentralized leadership that makes them harder to identify and disrupt -- are emerging." Furthermore, "[Osama] bin Ladin and his globalnetwork of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat." (3) In this testimony, Tenet stated that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groupswill continue to plan to attack this country and its interest and have sought to acquire dangerous chemical agentsand toxins as well as nuclear devices. (4) The creation of CIA's Counterterrorism Center (CTC) was an early effort to bring together disparate data on terrorist activities. The CTC has not been considereda complete success; (5) collection on terrorist groupsdid not become an overriding priority and, although the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) hadrepresentatives in the CTC, the relationship with the law enforcement community did not evolve as fully as had beenhoped. Media accounts indicate that theCTC doubled in size in the month following the attacks. (6) It is difficult to judge how successful the overall counterterrorism effort has been. The September 11, 2001 attacks were successful, but other terrorist plans havebeen thwarted although few details have been revealed. A multi-faceted attack on the Los Angeles airport and otherU.S.-related targets to coincide withmillennium celebrations in January 2000 was foiled as a result of a chance apprehension of an individual with a carloaded with explosives by an alert CustomsService official. (7) Attacks on U.S. embassies andfacilities in Paris, Singapore, and other parts of the world have reportedly been thwarted because of intelligenceleads. Inevitably there has been public discussion of the question of whether September 11 was an "intelligence failure." (8) A joint investigation by the House andSenate intelligence committees was undertaken in 2002 by a Joint Inquiry Staff. The final report will not be publiclyavailable until mid-2003, but a number offindings and recommendations were made public in December 2002 that described inadequacies in the organizationof the Intelligence Community. (9) In theFY2003 Intelligence Authorization Act ( P.L. 107-306 ) Congress also established an independent commission toreview the review the evidence developed bygovernment agencies surrounding the 9/11 attacks. The commission has 18 months to submit its report. Some observers have suggested comparisons to the investigations that were undertaken during and after World War II concerning the Japanese attack on PearlHarbor. (10) Those investigations were viewed bymany observers as politicized -- either seeking or deflecting mistakes by the Roosevelt Administration. By thetime of the conclusion of the congressional investigation in July 1946, almost a year after the end of the war, thepublic was concentrating on other issues and, as aresult, there was little political fall-out. (11) Theinvestigations did, however, indicate the need for better coordination among intelligence agencies and betweenintelligence agencies, policymakers, and military commanders. It is argued that "lessons" of Pearl Harbor, as viewed by senior congressional and executive branch officials, laid the groundwork for the establishment of anational intelligence effort by the National Security Act of 1947. Similarly, the investigation of the events leadingup to the September 11 attacks might lay thegroundwork for a new relationship between intelligence and law enforcement. In the immediate wake of 9/11, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, a principal purpose of which was to remove perceived restrictions on closer lawenforcement-intelligence cooperation in order to support counterterrorist efforts. (12) Modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for thesame purpose were enacted shortly thereafter as part of the FY2002 Intelligence Authorization Act ( P.L. 107-108 ),and further changes are being considered in2003. The need to integrate intelligence and law enforcement information greatly influenced the deliberations that resulted in the establishment of the Department ofHomeland Security (DHS) in early 2003. This legislation envisioned an analytical directorate in DHS that wouldbe the center of an integrative effort based oninformation from intelligence and law enforcement sources. The executive branch, however, has created a separateTerrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC),under the direction of the DCI, that began operations in May 2003. At the same time, a number of observers have expressed serious concerns about closer ties between intelligence and law enforcement agencies and, especially,about the use of intelligence gathering techniques against U.S. citizens and resident aliens.