United States homeland is safer from terrorism than you think

Having recently marked the somber, 20-year anniversary of the most devastating terrorist attacks in history, preceded by a chaotic and humbling withdrawal from Afghanistan — now once again in the hands of al-Qaeda’s closest ally, the Taliban — it may seem as if the “war on terror” has been a colossal failure. Indeed, aside from a few exceptions, much of the recent commentary has tended to emphasize the resilience of global terror networks and the renewed transnational threat seen to be emanating from Afghanistan. What has been largely missing from this conversation is a reminder of the immense progress that has been made in 20 years of counterterrorism.

Preventing the next big attack won’t be easy, and is far from guaranteed, but the United States homeland is a far harder target than it used to be.

Poorly resourced and woefully underdeveloped

In order to appreciate how far we have come, it is important to remind ourselves of where we were on Sept. 11, 2001. Despite the increasingly aggressive actions of al-Qaeda during the 1990s, counterterrorism was not the United States’ highest priority. As a result, it was poorly resourced and woefully underdeveloped, notwithstanding the skill and dedication of a comparatively small number of counterterrorism professionals working at the time.

When the two towers fell, the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center had about 390 employees, of which 40-50 were assigned to the Osama Bin Laden unit, tasked with tracking down the al-Qaeda leader. Nationwide, the FBI had just 35 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), many of which were understaffed and, by today’s standards, poorly organized and equipped. A small number of CIA agents were detailed to the FBI, and vice versa, but there was no systematic exchange of information between the two agencies, or more broadly within the intelligence community. Even within the FBI, officials spoke of a “wall” between criminal versus intelligence investigations, making it impossible to “connect the dots.”

These problems were compounded by gaping holes in national security across multiple different systems that collectively enabled the hijackers to fraudulently obtain visas (the terms of which they violated without consequence), freely travel in and out of the United States, further acquire numerous forms of state-issued identification, evade airline security and ultimately hijack four commercial airliners. 

At the root of it all, according to the 9/11 Commission, was a “failure of imagination” — an inability to fully comprehend the gravity of the threat posed by al-Qaeda and to conceive of just how far the terrorists would be willing to go in pursuit of their murderous goals. Investigators prevented a number of mass-casualty attacks before 2001 and would come agonizingly close to some of the 9/11 plotters, but in the end, the flaws in the system were too extensive.

Infinitely more effective

On the morning of Sept. 11, everything changed.

Terrorism was now viewed as an existential threat to national security. It would no longer be sufficient to investigate and prosecute terrorists after the bombs had gone off. The stakes were simply too high. The priority now would be detecting, deterring and preventing terrorist acts — a paradigm shift in the way counterterrorism was done.

This change was codified with the passage of the USA PATRIOT ACT on Oct. 26, 2001. Fittingly, the acronym stands for “Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” Enacted a mere 45 days after the 9/11 attacks, it gave the counterterrorism community enhanced surveillance capabilities, strengthened efforts to counter terrorism financing, improved intelligence collection and sharing, and strengthened criminal laws regarding terrorist acts.

Complementing the enhanced powers, funding and resources directed toward counterterrorism have increased exponentially. By way of illustration, the number of FBI-led JTTFs has expanded to around 200. They now include more than 50 federal, and more than 500 state, local, tribal and territorial agencies, and employ approximately 4,400 investigators plus additional analysts and other personnel. Compare that to the 35 JTTFs and about 1,300 FBI agents assigned to work terrorism matters prior to 2001. Not only did the JTTFs grow in size and scope, but — as the first author can attest as a former JTTF supervisor from 2005-2013 — they have also matured with time, becoming infinitely more effective. During the last 20 years, the FBI and partner agencies have thus thwarted the vast majority of terrorist plots before they could come to fruition, resulting in hundreds of successful prosecutions. 

Besides the evolution of the JTTFs, many other structural, legal and administrative changes have been made to break down the old silos and enhance interagency cooperation and coordination, among them the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) and state-run fusion centers. Though not without their fair share of criticisms, these various developments transformed the counterterrorism landscape, vastly increasing the interconnections between agencies and their ability to collect, analyze and — above all — share intelligence. Underpinning these structural changes has been a fundamental change in mindset and organizational culture. As former CIA officer Douglas London has noted, “The imperative to avoid even the perception of withholding actionable intelligence or acting without coordination is drilled into the collective consciousness.”

Of equal importance, the tools available to counter terrorism have been expanded and refined, including enormously expanded terrorism watchlists, widespread use of biometric data, more stringent vetting procedures for visa applicants, greatly enhanced aviation security and the added ability to detect suspicious travelers using advance passenger information and passenger-name-record data. In combination these measures cast a much wider and finer net, making it far more difficult for terrorists to slip through.

Danger of complacency

While the threat of terrorism has not, and cannot be eliminated, much has been done since 9/11 to improve the ability to detect, deter, and prevent terrorist attacks.

Many potentially devastating attacks have been identified and disrupted through shared intelligence, the expertise of multi-agency JTTFs, and aggressive prosecution.

Expansion to a whole-of-government, and increasingly whole-of-society, effort has added additional layers of security that did not exist 20 years ago. Moreover, the United States is not alone in these endeavors. International cooperation has also come a long way, including a multitude of partners whose own capabilities have similarly advanced in leaps and bounds. As a result, it would be orders of magnitude more difficult for terrorists to pull off anything remotely comparable to 9/11 today, whether or not they enjoy a degree of safe haven overseas.

Indeed, while the system is far from infallible, the terrorism threat today primarily consists of ‘homegrown’ lone actors and small, autonomous cells (more often inspired by extreme right-wing, rather than jihadist ideologies), which may be difficult to detect, but ultimately possess limited capabilities.

In today’s world, this is what successful counterterrorism looks like.

This is not to suggest that the threat is not real, or that devastating attacks are a thing of the past. The progress that has been made since 9/11 is impressive, but there is always the danger of complacency, and we cannot afford to let down our guard.

Joe Airey is a retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent who specialized in counterterrorism. He is currently an associate professor at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Germany.

Sam Mullins is a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. He is the author of Jihadist Infiltration of Migrant Flows to Europe. Follow him @Sam_J_Mullins.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and do not represent the official position of the United States government.