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The terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11 brought home the real and serious threats of terrorism to “the homeland,” which until then was not taken seriously by the top-level decision makers in the US government. In response to the terrorist attacks, a critical mass of experts and officials within the defense and security sectors came to the conclusion that America’s national security and intelligence systems had to change, and dramatically, to deal with international terrorism. The first major effort to reorganize the US national security and defense structures after 9/11 emerged from the findings of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, the

9/11 Commission, which was created by Congress and the White House to find out what went wrong, and who, if anyone, was to blame for the failure to prevent the attacks. 1 The Commission and its report conclude in chapter 13 “How to Do It? A Different Way of Organizing the Government,” which includes both the Intelligence Community (IC) and Sharing Information. 2 In view of the layers of politics involved, including both political party and bureaucratic politics, which exacerbated the lack of cooperation among the agencies and promoted general inertia, the fact that the recommendations were passed into law, and to a relatively large degree implemented, is an important political story in itself. 3 The political momentum carried the recommendations into law in the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. Several government reports assess the degree to which recommendations have been implemented. 4