Pre 9-11 Recommendations - Essay Example

The pre-9/11 Commissions on terrorists could have prevented the attacks if they could have seen to it that some of their recommendations were enforced and implemented (“Federal Communications Commission,” 2013).

Prior to 9/11, the National Security Council voiced its concern that terrorist financing was essential for disrupting Al Qaeda activities. This was not implemented since, at that time, President’s Bush administration did not consider terrorist funding a primacy for the collection of domestic or foreign intelligence (“Federal Communications Commission,” 2013). Lack of funding made intelligence reporting insufficient, episodic, and in most cases inaccurate.

The National Security Council hoped for inter-agency coordination and strategic planning. However, this did not take place since the other security agencies did not live up to the task to fulfill their duties to the NSC’s satisfaction. There was no efficient interagency responsibility; thus the meager resources and funds that were meant for domestic and international intelligence were disbursed to several agencies, all of which were working on their own (“Federal Communications Commission,” 2013). The FBI was not able to convert their investigations into solid criminal cases since there was no international cooperation.

This was attributed to a perceived inability to mix intelligence and criminal investigations as a result of the wall between law enforcement and intelligence matters, difficulty in prosecuting most of the terrorist financing cases, as well as sensitivities to blatant investigations of Islamic organizations and charities. Irrespective of this, FBI street agents had successfully gathered crucial intelligence on certain groups (“Federal Communications Commission,” 2013). Read More