Free «Counterterrorism and Intelligence Framework» Essay Sample

Introduction

Terrorism attacks have over time increased across the globe as the terrorists are targeting innocent souls for revenge over their personal benefits. With the increased rates of terrorism across the globe, Counterterrorism measures needs to be put in place to curb the increasing rates. Setting up of tactics, techniques and strategies by the government will ensure the adoption of frameworks that meets the policies and strategies that are useful in curbing the terrorism activities in America. Since the September 11^th 2001 by the Al-Qaeda terrorist group, the country has been forced to put in place drastic changes in all their security agencies to monitor and curb any further attacks by the terrorist (Dismore,2008).

Background

The call for democracy by the US America to other world nations is a factor that has led to the distrust from other countries especially from the Middle East who have over time been associated with terrorism activities. The call for democracy has made many ant-democracy groups to express different views on the Americans championing of Democracy that has eventually resulted on terrorist’s attacks on the American people across the globe. The American intelligence community (I. C) has been rewarded with the duty of coordinating the intelligence system that carries out the ant-terrorism program in America. The structure is relays much on the legitimacy, collaboration, intelligence service dexterity and issuance of command & control of the security agencies.

General objective

• To construct a counterterrorism and form an Intelligence frame work that will give raise to the robust intelligence system and strategically efficient counterterrorism operations in United States of America.
• To study the national strategy and the policies regarding the American Security in relation to counterterrorism strategies

Specific Objectives

The roles, responsibilities, specific functions, the agency and the tools used by the intelligence system to counterterrorism

Research questions

v  What frameworks are used by the United States of America to counter-terrorism activities?

v  What are the roles, functions and responsibilities of the frameworks in relation to counterterrorism?

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH

To construct a counterterrorism and intelligence Framework that will create a robust intelligence system with strategic efficient counterterrorism operations in relation to the U.S Department of Homeland Security policy.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The Frameworks used to curb counterterrorism in the U.S. America.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Roles and responsibilities for agencies participating in your framework

Terrorism has been one of the most dangerous organized crime activity combating different nations across the world. To be able to cub terrorism activities there is need to formulate counter terrorism policies to boost operations of the agencies dealing with terrorism activities. In U.S.A different agencies such as: CIA, FBI and State department deal with terrorism activities. The counter terrorism operations involve the use of different methods and strategies by either the military or the government selected individuals to do way with terrorism. For good and faster ways to cub this pandemic I suggest that no agency should be removed in dealing with terrorism because different responsibilities can be shared across all the agencies so as to ease burden on specific agency by reducing on its workload.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations, Central Intelligence Agency and State Department have their responsibilities towards cubing terrorism which include:

• They should be able fight and defeat all terrorist organizations and individual terrorists
• They should be able to prevent the different terrorists and their organizations from getting support or sponsorship and secret hiding lands.
• They should be able to notice the places that terrorist want to exploit and thus create strict measures to cater for the weaknesses that can be notice from the targeted areas.

• The key responsibility for these agencies is to protect interests of the US citizens who are both at home or outside the country.

Each agency with its specific functions

FBI

The FBI is law enforcement federal agency responsible for protecting the interests of the United States together with its citizens across the world from terrorist’s attacks. Its specific functions are:

• To investigate different international and domestic terrorism attacks making it possible to prevent more future raids towards its citizens.
• To investigate different attacks where mass destruction weapons have been used whether biological, radiological, and chemical or also those involving nuclear weapons.
• To investigate crimes involved to terrorism such as violence in the railways, airport, ports towards the US officials and other citizens.
• To put together evidence, record and interview witnesses, create useful leads and if possible arrest the incriminated individuals.
• To give a helping hand to the US attorney in gathering exhibits or evidence for trial against those accused to be involved in terrorism activities.
• To coordinate the collection of foreign intelligence or counter intelligence in the United States area.

CIA

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is one of the leading independent agencies owned by the US government in charge of the task of providing national security intelligence to the selected US policymakers (Pickering, McCulloch & Wright-Neville, 2008). Its specific functions include:

• Advising the National Security council of the US on subjects involving matters about intelligence activities of specific departments in the government about national security.
• Evaluating and coordinating operations to guard national security and provide needed data about intelligence to different government branches.
• Gathers, develops and shares intelligence about foreign conditions involved in narcotics trafficking and production.
• Organize and perform counterintelligence tasks beyond borders of the United States and it never will perform or assume any internal security functions.
• Coordinate the collection of counterintelligence information not accessible by the state agencies if counter terrorism operations are conducted beyond the United States borders.
• Performs special operations requested by the President unless the president chooses another agency over it according to what the state needs to achieve.
• Maintains technical devices and systems and develops them after enough research through contracts for them to perform their special and authorized functions.
• Gathers, create and distribute military intelligence to the United States military stations in order to improve battle field tactics through awareness.
• Gives both technical and administrative assistance inside and outside the United States needed so as help it perform its functions, such as essential cover and prior arrangements.

State department

This is one of the top agencies dealing with policies development and implementation. The department’s different functions include:

• Controlling and maintaining the foreign affairs resources together with their yearly budgets.
• They lead the U.S.A representatives abroad; coordinate the spread of US foreign policies to foreign countries governments or organizations using their individual embassies and other diplomatic missions.
• It conducts or makes negotiations and also finalizes treaties and agreements on matters starting from trade to acquisition of nuclear weapons.
• It helps in changing the political will and abilities of foreign governments to cub terrorism activities.
• Discover different individuals or organizations participating terrorism thus freeze their assets crippling them through isolation caused by lack of funds.
• Helps improve watch listings around the globe thus build on security around the borders by integrating the security measures with foreign policies (Government Printing Office, 2008).

Agency collaboration

Collaboration among these agencies is seriously required for the United States to achieve its goals of fully protecting its citizens based in the foreign countries or locally from terrorism attacks. All agencies should be able to come up with two reliable tactics both formal and informal that can be used to share information with other agencies charged with the responsibility of protecting the American citizens. The formalized tactic should ensure that data and information is shared effectively as required among the local, state department or the federal colleagues. All the agencies should have specific departments to deal with specific data categories to be shared such as: one department to deal with the whole US ability to share information and exhibitions from incident s and ongoing investigation reports thus forms a large database of criminals and criminal’s activities information (Mc Donagh, & Yee-Kuang,  2009) . This database will be able to relate information from the different agencies thus form leads and links from data that appears not to be related at fast glance thus help detect terrorism activities, the second department coordinates with other agencies in the full sharing of regional text systems as stated in policy guidelines and normal technical process, the last department should be responsible with providing web communications, participate in dialogue about specific topics, participate in online educative programs, creates law enforcement articles and join special groups that deal with justice issues. The other way for the agencies to work towards achieving their goal for protecting the American citizens is by them working together with both the public and private sectors such as the transport industry, food industry, tourism industry, public health etc.

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Policies regarding Intelligence and counterterrorism policies

Reducing our Vulnerabilities- the US set the policy regarding its vulnerability to terrorism both abroad and within (home). All the Departments and Agencies have been given the mandate to ensure the personnel and facilities owned under the jurisdiction against terrorism.

Deterring Terrorism- the US state agencies will put in place measures that deter any terrorism activity through setting up of favorable policies that act against the terrorism activities in America. The policy will aid in dealing with the terrorism groups and their sponsors enthusiastically across the globe. The laws will identify new ways of curbing the rate of terrorism activities that are operating in America. 

Enhancing Counterterrorism Capabilities- This is achieved bytheenhancement of    the FBI in all the relevant agencies across the security organization to minimize the chances of any attack on its territories.

Responding to Terrorism

The State response to any threats of terrorism will be dealt with immediately for the protection of any American citizen. Every Lead Agency will per-take on its responsibility for the protection of the rights of life and property of the citizens (Government Printing Office, 2008).

Weapons of Mass Destruction

The Agencies will give their priority to all cases of weapons as they will work had in detecting any weapons of mass destruction at any given point within and outside of America. They will also fight the establishment of nuclear weapons by other countries, any biological/chemicals weapons by any nation (Meggle, 2005).

Summary Findings and Recommendations across Agencies

Summary findings of CIA are that there is a need to make it an institution of going on the offensive when it comes to terrorism. The key findings that we came across are:

To keep HUMINT mission central.

CIA plays a crucial role in the national government; this is because it has a branch called HUMINT organization that keeps the mission of CIA at the center. They tried as much as they could to reach the al-Qaeda organization before September 11^th but they did not succeed. This is due to the fact that there was a perceived reduction of the threat in the environment in the early 1990’s. Additionally, there is also the aspect of reduced connection in the number of resources for basic human intelligence collection.

The operational officers on the ground were few, there were little stations, fewer agents and little intelligence reports that were produced. With these few setbacks at their disposal, CIA had little chances of accessing agents who would have been useful in the fight against counterterrorism campaigns. Management decisions are some of the other contributing factors that ruined CIA’s capabilities. For instance, funds that were allocated for the collection of information and its analysis are channeled elsewhere. Little attention was paid to CIA’s unilateral CT. They relied heavily on CT for the purpose of liaison. They neglected the sector of investment on foreign language training and exploitation. Over the years, there has been an increase on the number of resources for intelligence since 9-11 which has improved the overall outlook for CIA hence increasing its capabilities (Dismore, 2008). Therefore, the management of CIA must acknowledge and deal with systemic problems that have been highlighted in the above report.

Recommendations

The leadership and top management of CIA has to ensure that HUMINT collection must remain a key experience of the agency. It should also ensure that it comes up with additional operational tools that are appropriately related to the other agencies like FBI. It should also ensure it penetrates terrorist cells, interfere with their daily operations, arrest the terrorists and hand them over to the enforcers of the law. CIA should build more and new platforms that will collect information about al-Qaeda. It will also be necessary to use liaison and unilateral resources. CIA should also recognize that the liaison partners might be having different interests and as such it will be important for them to maintain a unilateral capability. It will also be necessary to put more attention to individual al-Qaeda networks worldwide  (Haberfeld,  King, & Lieberman, 2009).

 A management structure should be put in place to steer the multiyear investment in CIA that is needed to build a platform to collect information on targets of terrorists. There must be sufficient and adequate numbers of unilateral CT slots in the field bases and field stations. CIA should be on the forefront to improve on watch listing so as to ensure that all the necessary agencies like FBI, can easily access this information from a central point that is up to date. New officers coming into CIA should have a level 3 language skill before they are deployed to their various stations and bases.  The capability of CIA to watch list terrorist has proved a daunting task to both CIA and other agencies. It therefore goes without say fixing some of the above issues will be a step forward towards fighting terrorism.