Despite untold billions of dollars and the hiring of thousands of intelligence analysts and contractors the NSA and vaunted Western intelligence services failed to detect a major terrorist attack on one of our key allies in Africa prior to its execution. Having served our nation as a senior intelligence officer for over 23 years I am appalled but not surprised by this failure. Nor am I surprised that current unconfirmed reporting indicates that American's of Somali origin may have had a hand in this incident. The reason that I am unsurprised by this failure is that our intelligence services have lost the ability to think outside the box and become too dependent on technology.
This loss of ability is clearly illustrated by failure of the NSA, despite its' warrantless wiretaps, vacuuming up of all emails, text messages and social media posts to detect this operation prior to its execution. If despite all of this capability NSA can't detect something of this magnitude, it raises the question on what we have spent our money on, if we have gotten our money's worth and whether we have failed to train our intelligence analysts to think outside the box.
I note that I have kept apprised of threat developments in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region of Africa to include Somalia. As part of advanced academic studies in the area of predictive analytics at the Masters degree level I looked at this region during our announced surge of troops into Afghanistan and noted that Al Qaeda was likely to respond to this push by attempting to attack our vulnerable flank in the Red Sea Region to Include Egypt, Somalia as well as in North Africa.
What follows is my assessment of the threat to our flank that existed during the period immediately following our announced surge of forces into Afghanistan.
02/21/09
Al Qaeda: A Second Front in the Red Sea?
Edward A. Chesky JR, Major, USA, MI, (RET)
Recent activity in the Red Sea region indicates the possibility that Al Qaeda, in an effort to counter the United States military build-up in Afghanistan, is attempting to open a second front in the Red Sea region. Analysis of the movement of Al Qaeda operatives into Yemen, statements issued by Al Qaeda leaders, along with terrorist operations in Somalia and Egypt indicate we may be seeing the first stages of a terrorist offensive in the Red Sea, Horn of Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa regions.
Further analysis of the current political-economic-demographic situation in Egypt, coupled to Al Qaeda’s existing technical capabilities, indicates that Al Qaeda could inflict serious harm and possibly destabilize Egypt through a coordinated, strategically targeted, and low cost terrorist attacks. Should Al Qaeda succeed in destabilizing Egypt this would seriously undermine the United States position in the region. The benefit to Al Qaeda; and other states hostile to the United States and the West; in accomplishing this would be to significantly raise the price of oil by forcing the re-routing of oil shipments away from the Suez Canal. Such a rise in oil prices would have an immediate positive effect on the economies of such nations as Iran and others hostile to the United States while negatively affecting United States and Western efforts to deal with the current economic crisis.
This effort, also if tied to coordinated attacks in Somalia; along with other operations in Sub-Saharan Africa also has the ability to stretch United States and Western forces to a degree that puts our efforts in Southwest Asia at risk.
Given these conditions, and Al Qaeda’s current technological, logistics, intelligence and information dissemination capabilities, such a threat must be taken seriously. As the United States and Western forces press forward with efforts contain and neutralize Al Qaeda in Southwest Asia it is clear that we face a substantial threat to our flank in the Red Sea region.
Countering this threat will take a coordinated effort by the United States, the Western nations, and supportive governments in the Middle East. Al Qaeda has clearly shown that it is capable of reacting to circumstances with extreme agility and has likely already seen and begun to exploit this vulnerable flank in an effort to undermine our push against it.
Despite statements to the contrary, Al Qaeda remains a formidable foe. In this fight it is imperative that we commit the best and brightest of our intelligence, military and security services in order to hold the line as we move forward in Southwest Asia. I note that much of this assessment was performed as a result of an advanced strategic military simulation I have run. The results of this simulation have been reviewed and accepted by a number of senior academics and military professionals. Given this, I feel it is imperative that the United States and its allies review the current threat posture in the Red Sea region and initiate an appropriate response to counter this emerging threat.
I note that within 72 hours of this assessment Al Qaeda affiliates launched a series of terrorist attacks in the region I addressed in accordance with my projections. A graphic outlining the effect of these attacks and the timeline of events associated with them is as follows.
As illustrated by this slide the ability to think outside the box, most of the time, beats the best technology we can bring to bear on a problem. I note that only using simple tools, off the shelf software and standard commercial computer equipment I was able to predict a major terrorist offensive that the United States intelligence community missed despite having the full resources of the NSA, CIA and the NRO available to it. As can be seen from this graphic it was not until days afterwards that the United States intelligence community was able to put the pieces together and issue a threat message via the embassy warden system.
A summary of the damage inflicted by this threat offensive is as outlined in the following graphic.
As illustrated by my work with the Red Sea problem set the ability to think outside the box is an essential component of the analytical process, a component that separates a intelligence analyst hack and want to be from a master of the craft.
The recent tragic events in Kenya clearly show that our intelligence and security services have lost the ball with regards to predictive analytics and need, rather than throwing billions at the problem and violating our civil rights, to go back to the basics and learn how to think again rather than surfing the web and its classified variants for intelligence.
If one former senior intelligence officer can outperform the entire assembled capability of the Intelligence services of the United States, we truly have a problem.
Comments
http://www.debka.com/article/23307/Kenya-blames-US-Israeli-intelligence-for-no-heads-up-on-Nairobi-attack
Kenya and its leaders are furious about what they see as an US and Israeli intelligence failure. Despite allowing the US and Israel to flood the country with intelligence operatives the US and Israel failed to detect the preparations for the Mall Attack.
It is clear that our intelligence services have fallen far
Thanks for the comment CM,
What you say rings true in many respects. It is important for websites such as this to serve as conduits of the truth. As you can see from my initial postings our intelligence services dropped the ball with regards to the issue of Al Qaeda and the Red Sea region during the period of time I noted and it was not until well after the events that they recognized what they were facing and took appropriate action to counter this development.
Often times in situations like this it is more convenient for the government to sweep things under the rug than to admit failure. With regards to my work with the Red Sea Region, I did this work as part of my Masters degree program in homeland security. I shared this work with literally thousands of students and academics as it was done and they in turn passed it along.
When the government fails to recognize a danger sometimes you have to use alternative methods of transmission and communication to get the word out. Which is why sites such as this are important.
Thank you for your service, Edward. I appreciate your eye and voice on this issue and the appalling lack of honesty and "intelligence" from the government which is supposed to protect us from our enemies, "foreign and domestic".
As the mean I. Q. of the American public floats lower, by dumbing down in education, by mass importation of uneducated and in many cases minimally educable people, by building a ruling elite class feeding off a creative hard working private sector, by guaranteeing careers in government to those who cannot succeed in free enterprise , we may soon see a whole population who are not capable of self-governance.
So if the general population cannot measure up, then how can our intelligence agencies measure up?
One of the reasons I was not surprised to hear of the possible involvement of American Somalians in the Kenya Mall Massacre, albeit these reports have yet to be confirmed, is based upon my military training and academic education. In my pursuit of a Masters degree in Homeland Security, I studied psychology, sociology, anthropology, statistics, and a host of other subjects above and beyond the core subjects in my Masters degree program in Homeland Security.
Given 23 years as a senior intelligence officer, with advanced training in intelligence analytics, cryptography, signals intelligence, human intelligence, counter terrorism, technical intelligence, conventional and guerilla warfare, I have some understanding of the terrorist threat posed by transnational organizations such as Al Qeada. In looking at Al Qaeda's operations I noted that it was developing a significant capability to attract, indoctrinate and induce certain members of Western Society into committing acts of terrorism.
What follows is a summery of my research in that area of terrorism. I note that this work preceded the Ft. Hood Shooting incident by eight months and that much of what is contained in this summary turned out to be true with regards to that act of terrorism.
02/24/09
Decentralized Terrorism and the Home Grown Threat
Edward A. Chesky JR., Major, MI, USAR (RET)
Recent events indicate a new and troubling development has occurred in the current terrorism environment. As spoken to by the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the former head of the Egyptian Security Services, the threat posed by, “Home Grown”, terrorists have increased significantly. What both of these gentlemen have identified, as the result of current terrorist activity, is that individuals not previously associated with any known terrorist movements, and residing in their home or host country, are now engaging in terrorist behavior.
This development is particularly troubling for the intelligence and security services because traditional counter terrorism and intelligence techniques are relatively ineffective in dealing with this threat. In looking at this problem, I argue that this increase in Home Grown terrorist activity can be attributed to a number of quantifiable factors. These factors include social, economic, and political conditions as well as the effectiveness of an active decentralized recruitment and inducement effort by trans-national terrorist movements such as Al Qaeda.
These decentralized recruitment and inducement efforts seek to take advantage of perceived, or real, social, economic or political injustices to sway individuals into accepting the movement’s worldview. This effort makes adroit use of tailored multi-media propaganda, information releases and the Internet to play to the base emotions of the Home Grown Terrorist. This effort when coupled to a religious component and strong cultural tradition is very effective in inducing a receptive frame of mind in the Home Grown Terrorist. With the advent of the Internet, this process has become even more effective than in the past when such efforts were largely limited to print and broadcast media.
With the advent of the Internet, trans-national terrorist movements now have the ability to provide near real-time guidance and advice to a host of decentralized sites/nodes on the Internet that share their worldview. Linked via the Internet, and working in a decentralized fashion, these sites/nodes tailor their activities to take advantage of local conditions. While seeming on the outside to be working independently, these sites are actually working in concert towards a common goal. Information on tactics, techniques and procedures are shared between sites, and as a result the sophistication and effectiveness of actions and efforts are increased over time.
As economic conditions continue to deteriorate, I expect that the threat posed by Home Grown Terrorist will increase. This in, my opinion, will be due largely to economic de-franchisement and the resulting frustration that comes with it. This, coupled to the ongoing military efforts to combat trans-national terrorist movements, will in all probability continue to provide fodder for the propagandists in these movements to use in order to attract converts much like honey attracts bears to a beehive.
What I wrote back in February 2009 still applies today and is one of the reasons that I am not surprised to hear that American's of Somali origin may have been involved in the Kenya Mall Massacre.