0°: The 9/11 Commission found that federal agencies didn’t share intelligence information with each other in general and that intelligence sharing could have lead to the discovery of at least one of the 9/11 hijackers. 9/11 Commission Report 416-17 (2004). These findings led the commission to make the following recommendations to facilitate intelligence sharing:
“Recommendation: Information procedures should provide incentives for sharing, to restore a better balance between security and shared knowledge.” Id. at 417.
“Recommendation: The president should…coordinate the resolution of the legal, policy, and technical issues across agencies to create a ‘trusted information network.’” Id. at 418.
180°: In response to this crisis, Congress enacted these recommendations in § 1016 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. See Pub. L. 108-458, 118 Stat. 3638, 3665-70 (2004); and 6 U.S.C. §§ 481-86.
~200°: In 2010, a young, Army intelligence analyst was arrested for, among other things, leaking classified hundreds of thousands of State Department diplomatic cables. Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter, U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe, Wired, Jun. 6, 2010. News analysts quickly noted that this lowly Army private’s access to the State Department’s secret files was only possible because of the information-sharing network recommended by the 9/11 Commission and enacted by Congress. Is Pvt. Bradley Manning Behind Leak?, ABC News, Nov. 29, 2010 (video link).
In response to this crisis, the information-sharing network is in what could be the early, informal stages of disintegration:
“In Washington, the State Department severed its computer files from the government’s classified network, officials said, as U.S. and world leaders tried to clean up from the leak that sent America’s sensitive documents onto computer screens around the globe.
By temporarily pulling the plug, the U.S. significantly reduced the number of government employees who can read important diplomatic messages. It was an extraordinary hunkering down, prompted by the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of those messages this week by WikiLeaks, the self-styled whistleblower organization.” Matthew Lee, US Cuts Access to Files as Interpol Seeks Assange, Associated Press, Nov. 30, 2010.
