Administrative Note: This paper was written in 2020.
Executive Summary
This report examines the effectiveness of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) based on the findings of evaluations conducted by other government agencies and academic professionals. The process begins with a quick outline of the systems of laws, policies, and regulations. Then, a closer look at the internal subsystems provides an analysis of how NCTC has translated its internal operations to match expectations. The findings from previous evaluations are then extracted, analyzed, and compared with the NCTC’s operational directive. On the final section, a discussion of misalignments from policy or industry practices precedes suggestions for improving NCTC processes.
I. Program Background and History
A. History.
The Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), formed in May 2003 and aligned under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) grew out of President George W. Bush’s declaration in January 2003 “to merge and analyze all threat information in a single location” (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, n.d.). Before the TTIC was created, the CIA and the FBI reported directly to the President and “the White House was being forced to synthesize Community reporting and draw its own conclusion” (National Counterterrorism Center, n.d.).
To bridge the divide between domestic and foreign intelligence, by 2004 the TTIC was integrated “into the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) by Executive Order (EO) 13354” (Office of the Director of National Intelligence n.d.). Through a series of evolutions, the NCTC later expanded its role from mere “information sharing and situational awareness” and into “strategic operational planning in direct support to the President” (National Counterterrorism Center, n.d.). As of 2005, the NCTC became the National Intelligence Manager for Counterterrorism (NIM-CT)” that is now able to conduct autonomous assessments and directly manage missions for the Executive Branch.
II. Mission Statement, Vision, Motto and Core Values.
A) Mission Statement.
“We lead and integrate the national counterterrorism (CT) effort by fusing foreign and domestic CT information, providing terrorism analysis, sharing information with partners across the CT enterprise, and driving whole-of-government action to secure our national CT objectives” (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, n.d.).
B) Vision.
“NCTC is a center of gravity and leading voice that unifies counterterrorism intelligence for the homeland and abroad, with a record of sustained excellence across all mission areas” (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, n.d.)
C) Motto.
“We lead the way in analyzing, understanding, and responding to the terrorist threat.”
D) Core Values.
The NCTC does not list a set of values on the website; however, as an organization the ODNI declares excellence, courage, respect, and integrity as the overarching value system that guide collective actions.
E) Management Principles.
In order to maintain a dependable directory of known and suspected terrorists, the NCTC is staffed by “more than 1,000 personnel from across the IC, the Federal government, and Federal contractors [,] …40% of the NCTC represents approximately 20 different departments and agencies” (Office of the Director of National Intelligence.gov, n.d.). When the diverse workforce returns to their home agencies, they continue NCTC’s “culture of information sharing, further unifying previously disparate efforts” (Office of the Director of National Intelligence.gov, n.d.). The NCTC considers its workforce as the “single most important component of the Center [,] whose insights and actions [,] …contribute to effective disruption of terrorists who aim to attack us”(DNI.gov, n.d.). In addition to career development, NCTC ensures that they provide with the “tools they need to do their jobs” (DNI.gov, n.d.).
F) Key Mission Areas.
The NCTC performs five key missions in support of US counterterrorism efforts, namely: 1) Threat Analysis; 2) Information Sharing; 3) Identity Management; 4) Strategic Operational Planning, and 5) National Intelligence Management.
G) Organizational Structure.
NCTC is divided into four primary directorates and nine support offices that provide critical and complementary functions.
Courtesy: DNI.gov
H) Training Program.
Due to the classified nature of NCTC work, its training programs are not publicized. However, this author was able to gather strategic training priorities listed on “NCTC Today” as stated by Nicholas Rasmussen, NCTC Director from 2014–2017, that “the NCTC leadership team is focused on the training, wellbeing, and professional development” of the organization in order to conduct better counterterrorism analysis, collaboration, and to deliver better products for policy makers.
III. Social Needs, Motivators, and Economic Conditions.
There are many theories that attempt to define the causes of terrorism. Some experts view it as an “economic phenomenon” (Intriligator, M., 2010) where terrorists are economic agents that define victory based on “cost per casualty.” Others view it as rooted in poverty where “social and economic development” (Taspinar, O., 2009) should take priority in order to prevent radicalism.
In 2006, Louis Richardson points out that “terrorists want ‘the three R’s: revenge (for perceived injustices and humiliation), renown (the attention of the world), and reaction (disproportionate enough to perpetuate a sense of moral outrage)”(Intriligator, M., 2010). Robert Agnew takes the position that terrorism can be defined under the “general strain theory or ‘grievances’ [,]..from relative material deprivation, threats to religious dominance, resentment over the cultural, economic, and military domination of the West, and territorial, ethnic, and religious disputes” (Agnew, R., 2010).
IV. Political, Legal and Legislative History.
The term ‘terrorism’ means pre-meditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups.” (US Code, Title 22, § 2656f(d)). The National Security Act of 1947 established “integrated policies and procedures for the department, agencies, and functions of the Government relating to the national security” (Office of the Director of National Intelligence, n.d.).
V. Evaluator Findings, Discussions, and Recommendations for Evaluators.
Finding #1. Detailees remain loyal to their parent agencies (Best, R., 2011).
Discussion #1.
The Congressional Research Service found that personnel who are temporarily assigned from other agencies in NCTC “sustains an environment that fosters continued loyalty of NCTC employees to their parent agencies rather than the NCTC itself” (Best, R., 2011).
Recommendation for Evaluators.
Evaluators should consider methods in which the NCTC can institute flat hierarchy team building activities during the on-boarding process. This could include military (boot camp-type events) where potential members are assessed for their ability to work individually, to perform under pressure, and most importantly, to work as a team member. The intent of the team building exercises should be acknowledge respect for the member’s organizational background, and at the same time, inculcate them into a higher-level NCTC team vision. This will help achieve what Sylvia and Sylvia call “goal consensus” (Sylvia, R. D., & Sylvia, K. M., 2012).
Sylvia and Sylvia also recommend the “Task-Force Approach” of using personnel from multiple disciplines and occupational specialties. This could be adopted a training methodology during onboarding and quarterly training. By using this holistic approach personal biases and organization barriers will be diluted to ensure loyalty to NCTC goals. The task force approach has the potential to strengthen work groups and cross-sharing which will enhance employee development metrics, improve quality assurance standards, and facilitate project coordination methodologies.
From 2002–2017, the total counterterrorism-related spending came to $2.8 trillion (Stimson, 2018). An improved symbiosis amongst NCTC detailees and permanent NCTC employees will result in timely sharing of intelligence, coordination of mission, and improve tactical outcomes.
Finding #2. Hiring inefficiencies diminish US efforts to uncover financial activities of terrorists, to impose economic sanctions, or to freeze the assets of threat organizations. (Gianopolous, K., 2020).
Discussion #2.
An effective method to reduce the momentum of terrorist organizations is to place restrictions and remove access to resources and financial assets. “As emphasized by Sandler, it is much more effective to deny terrorist resources of financing, recruits, weapons, intelligence, support groups, propaganda, etc.” (Intriligator, M., 2010). These sanctions can apply to “entire countries, sectors of countries’ economies, or specific corporations and individuals” (Gianopolous, K., 2020). Despite budget increases at the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and at the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and additional hiring authority, “vacancies ranged from 6 to 26 percent of its authorized full-time equivalents” (Gianopolous, K., 2020).
The GAO has found that “different types of criminal and terrorist organizations use trade-based money laundering (TBML) to disguise the origins of their illicit proceeds to fund their operations” (US Government Accountability Office, 2020). To hide their activities, criminal and terrorist organizations use schemes that include the transfer and transport of “various goods, including precious metals and automobiles” (US Government Accountability Office, 2020).
Since TBML is particularly hard to detect, if left undeterred the resources of terror organizations could increase to a level that would make future detection and intervention more difficult for US agents.
Recommendation for Evaluators.
Future evaluations should consider streamlining the hiring procedures, prioritizing NCTC background investigations and providing incentives for Treasury and OFAC agents that are more attractive than the private sector.
A more robust force will expedite the interdiction of the estimated “physical movement of cash [,]… 28 percent [,]…while movement directly through banks constituted 22 percent [,]… movement through licensed MSBs ( licensed money services businesses) 17 percent, and movement by individuals or entities acting as unlicensed money transmitters constituted 18 percent” (“Trade-based money laundering: Overview and policy issues,” 2016).
Finding #3. Incomplete outcome measures by the Department of State and lack of oversight of donated weapons by the Department of Defense. (US Government Accountability Office, 2019).
Discussion #3.
In a report to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the GAO found that in Lebanon, the State Department data “were incomplete for 11 of the 15 indicators [,] …and performance data for three indicators did not identify the number or percentage of people who received security training, as called for by the indicator” (US Government Accountability Office, 2019). Lebanon is particularly important due to the role of Hizballah, an Iranian-backed terrorist organization that is represented by a political party and a militia force.
As part of the $1.5B aid package and end-use monitoring standards, both the State and DOD conducted “required inventory checks of equipment provided to Lebanese security forces, but DOD did not meet its timeliness standards for nearly 1/3 of its observations” (US Government Accountability Office, 2020).
GAO-17–300 Report dated April 2017 found that in countering violent extremism, agencies “had implemented 19 of 44 domestically-focused tasks [,] …23 were in progress and no action had yet been taken on 2 tasks” (US Government Accountability Office, 2017). One of the tasks that had not been addressed was “implementing CVE activities in prisons and learning from former violent extremists” (US Government Accountability Office, 2017).
The NCTC cannot meet its program goals if interviews are not conducted with captured extremists and terrorists. Captured personnel provide key aspects of the underground support mechanism, the level of resources in the terrorist organization, and potential shift in targeting due to the lack of access to hardened targets.
NCTC cannot effectively use the Four Phases of Process Intervention/Evaluation if Phase 1 (Problem Identification) is not complete or is sporadic. An incomplete or shallow analysis of problems will lead to a disjointed Phase 2 (Solution Development) where co-production becomes a burden due to misaligned priorities. Phase 3 (Implementation) then becomes a source of conflict as management controls within various agencies will ultimately overlap causing inefficient redundancies. Without an effective process evaluation, feedback mechanisms cannot quickly address outdated methods and will result in delays during implementation.
Recommendation for Evaluators.
The next NCTC evaluation should find ways to empower the NCTC to demand to be immediate reporting when the inventories of donated weapons have not been conducted according to schedule by DOD. This will prevent the repetition of events when out of the “1.45M firearms to various security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq [,] … the Pentagon said it has records for fewer than half the number of firearms in the researchers’ count” (Chivers, 2016). Early reporting of infractions will prevent weapons loss and will ensure the integrity of the inventory and tracking process.
If Department of State regional outcome measures are not implemented to standard, the NCTC should be the priority reporting agency. NCTC oversight will posture the entire system to reallocate resources that help ensure the proper and timely evaluation of programs. Otherwise, an unfulfilled outcome measure in one area could negatively impact concurrent missions in neighboring countries.
Additionally, captured enemy should be interviewed immediately and regularly thereafter. Learning from former violent extremists should become a priority so that the NCTC can stay abreast of fluid operational factors that lead to terrorist radicalization, insurgent resource maximization, and changes in training methodologies. The critical information gathered during personal interviews can uncover new enemy capabilities, changes in leadership, and will help reshape the NCTC force structure to stay ahead of tactical developments.
Finding #4. Not all federal agencies and departments are ready to address long-range emerging threats.
Discussion #4.
A US GAO survey that was sent to 45 government organizations on how their respective organizations addressed long term threats (political and military advancements, dual-use technology, weapons, and events and demographic changes) only had a “78% response rate” (Kirschbaum, 2018).
The political and military expansions now include Russian and Chinese global expansion, non-state adversaries, and an increase in information operation campaigns using social media and artificial intelligence.
Dual-use technologies such as artificial intelligence, secure communications, and autonomous/unmanned platforms could add increase the capability of terrorist organizations. Autonomous vehicles could “compromise US operations [,] …unmanned ground, underwater, air, and space vehicles may be used for combat and surveillance” (Kirschbaum, 2018).
The enemy’s development of hypersonic weapons could make it difficult to intercept using current deterrents. Counterspace weapons could cripple the US fleet of satellites. Demographic movements and migration could threaten the national security of partner nations and overburden their infrastructure. (Kirschbaum, 2018).
Recommendation for Evaluators.
The Director, NCTC should lead a national level think tank to address long-term emerging issues. To do this, government should enact policy that make it obligatory for each department in the counterterrorism and intelligence community to participate in developing forward-leaning solutions.
Courtesy: DNI.gov
A Long-Term Emerging Office should be structured under the Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning with direct input from personnel in the Office of Data Strategy and Innovation who are already poise for prediction and forward-looking analysis.
The Pre-planning evaluation of emerging missions should include a thorough evaluation of Start-Up Programs (Sylvia, R. D., & Sylvia, K. M., 2012). Experimental programs have to be negotiated and evaluated differently from inception; otherwise, unbending standards based on outdated concepts could induce experimental program failure. Start-ups should be nurtured, and the initial impact analyses taken in context until the program matures, and until new NCTC capabilities and methodologies intersect with tangible tactical success.
Finding #5. Analyst failures (Best, R., 2011).
Discussion #5.
Two incidents in 2009 led to a review by the Senate Intelligence Committee in May 201. MAJ Hasan, a US Army Psychiatrist assassinated 13 soldiers in Fort Hood in November 2009. Reid the “Shoe Bomber” was caught attempting to detonate a bomb while on board an airline in December 2009. The report found that “analysts had failed to ‘connect the dots’ [,] …to achieve an understanding of the ongoing plot” (Best, R., 2011).
The committee found that “in particular, that the NCTC was inadequately organized and resourced for its missions [,]…that the intelligence analysts (not only those in NCTC) tended to focus more on threats to U.S. interests in Yemen than on domestic threats” (Best, R., 2011).
To remedy the problem, the NCTC should hire “Expert Generalists” (Simmons, 2020). Orit Gadiesh, chairman of Bain & Co, coined the term as “someone who has the ability and curiosity to master and collect expertise in many different disciplines, industries, skills, capabilities, countries, and topics, etc.” (Simmons, 2020).
By adopting this approach, NCTC analysts will have “diverse knowledge, can recognize patters, and connect the dots across multiple areas [,] …drill deep to focus and perfect the thinking” (Simmons, 2020). The more an analyst knows, the better they can predict because they are no longer weighed down “by biases and assumptions prevailing in any given field or community” (Simmons, 2020). More importantly, they can “build deeper connections with people who are different than them because of understanding of their perspectives” (Simmons, 2020).
In Pressman and Wildavsky’s book “Implementation”, “overspecialization, an individual-level advantage, turns out to be an overall disadvantage for the species” (Pressman, J. L., & Wildavsky, A., 1984), or in this case, the NCTC organization. The authors added that “habit meshing” can occur which “explains how individuals and units in an organization can believe they are doing well, for others as well as for themselves, when other people outside their purview see it quite differently” (Pressman, J. L., & Wildavsky, A., 1984).
Additionally, Pressman and Wildavsky found that hierarchical organizations (such as the NCTC), “search for new information to do a better job of holding together the existing social order [,]…are by aspiration hypotheses-generating and knowledge-testing organizations, but they are slow to discard old truths” (Pressman, J. L., & Wildavsky, A., 1984). The author claims that “collegiums” who search for more egalitarian solutions rate “high on search and on change [,] …for new evidence [,] …new knowledge” (Pressman, J. L., & Wildavsky, A., 1984). It would be beneficial for NCTC to explore hiring personnel of this caliber and simply modify their innate drive for new knowledge towards staying ahead of terrorist actions.
Recommendation for Evaluators.
Ensure that the correct proportion of analysts assigned within the Long-Term Emerging Threat Department meet or will meet the Expert Generalist, Collegium mindset.
VI. Conclusion.
The fluid and clandestine methods of terrorists present a great problem for this country. The NCTC should evaluate its program subsystems periodically to restructure and refocus based on the perpetually fluid political, economic, social, and cultural landscape. Due to today’s improvement in communications and speed of innovation, the NCTC executive leadership must continue to forecast the future, become quicker at conducting an internal needs assessment, and reshape its mission statement to posture the organization to intercept, rather than pursue.
The benefits of executive-level agility will result in expeditious changes in the design and implementation of Standards-Based Organizational Assessments. Quicker, more frequent, and comprehensive assessments will directly affect implementation, adaptation, and clarify performance outcomes. The clarity of NCTC intent will ensure that governance stays in cadence with the perpetually changing, multi-dimensional operational mission requirements.
A forward-leaning NCTC policy fueled by transparent evaluation measures, non-attribution feedback mechanism, and forward-looking staff will strengthen NCTC political credibility. Without much persuasion, the NCTC will be able to garner unwavering support from its external authorizing environment and increase its undeniable public value.
Copyright Leonard Casiple 2023. All rights reserved.
About the author: Leo Casiple is a first-generation American who grew up in Southern Philippines under martial law. He spent much of his 21-year career in the US Army as a Green Beret.
Leo is currently a doctoral student at Northeastern University’s Doctor of Law and Policy program (2022–2025 Cohort). He earned his education from California Lutheran University (MPPA), ASU Thunderbird School of Global Management (MBA in Global Management), Excelsior University (BS in Liberal Arts, Ethnic and Area Studies), Academy of Competitive Intelligence (Master of Competitive Intelligence™), Defense Language Institute and Foreign Language Center (18-month Arabic Language Course), and the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (Special Forces Qualification Course and Psychological Operations Specialist Course).
For more information about the author, click here: Leo’s LinkedIn Profile
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