Intelligence role in countering new terrorism threats

Résumé ou Introduction

The threat of violence practiced by extremists or other terrorists is not a new one. However, the events of 9/11, Bali, Madrid or London disclosed a new, unprecedented dimension of terrorism. Today’s political and religious violence movements “evolved from a national physical threat into a transnational ideological threat” (Wenger, Zimmermann 2007, S. 1). In order to combat this changed threat situation, intelligence inherits a key role. Yet, in 2002, a report of the US Council for Foreign Relations assessed that “a year after 9/11, America remains dangerously unprepared to prevent and respond to a catastrophic terrorist attack on US soil” (Rudman et al. 2002, S. 1). Often, the intelligence community (IC) is blamed for this condition however there had been changes within the IC in order to adapt to a new, asymmetric threat environment created not only through the use of “strategic terrorism in a large-scale military strike” (Berkowitz 2002, S. 289) but also through the emergence of new, international acting criminal networks that pose another threat for a country’s national security. In the following, this paper will explain the role of intelligence in combating these new threats. In a second section, it will analyze some processes of adaptation within the IC to the new challenges.