Submitted by:

Bipin Bahuguna (G23013)

Jaideep Kumar (G23020)
Nitish Yadav (G23033)
Poonam Shree (G23035)
Priyanka Kumari (G23037)
Suraj Mishra (G23055)

CSTG23-2 Assignment-2: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2001 (Abridged) 1-Aug-2023

1. What are the main (prima facie/manifested) performance problems faced by the incumbent
company? Justify (maximum 50 words).

i.Structural- Bureaucracy: Criminal investigators could not apply for surveillance warrant of
Mihdhar from FISA. No clarity given to employees on division of work (e.g. William’s
dilemma). Information barrier across departments.
ii. Cultural- No performance metric linked to proactiveness and prevention.
iii. Whether new specialized agency required for domestic intelligence.

2. Critically analyze the events and facts leading to the problems (so that the root causes and
the holistic picture emerges).

FBI was incorporated in 1908. FBI's long history and established practices might have
hindered its ability to rapid adaptation to emerging challenges. Further during Freeh,
resource constraints, including limited funding and competing priorities added to it. After
the tragedy of World Trade Center (1993), Freeh set-up the Counterterrorism Division and
started job rotation among senior FBI and CIA counterterrorism officials, yet it did not lead
to synergy between them as CIA withheld information on US visa of suspects from FBI.

Despite possessing superb resources and capabilities, FBl has been plagued by a
dysfunctional culture that fails to acknowledge and rectify its mistakes. This deficiency might
have significantly hindered the learning process from past errors.

The intelligence community, led by CIA, had 14 distinct agencies, and they suffered from a
lack of synergy. Though DCI was the nominal leader of the intelligence community, it had no
real power to enforce a proper coordination system among these agencies. The failure of
coordination between FBI and CIA about the Mihdhar’s US visa was one of the reasons for
the 9/11 attack in USA.

Senior officials' perception of the counterterrorism unit was negative because they were not
involved in arrests and indictments and thus they got no recognition for their efforts. The
criminal unit offered more autonomy and a clear sense of closure with arrests. As a
consequence, the counterterrorism unit might have experienced a loss of skilled and
motivated individuals.
The FBI's headquarter focused on measuring field office performance based on traditional
law enforcement metrics, such as arrests. Field offices might have deprioritized
counterterrorism in their priority (bypassing the priority set by headquarter) as it involves
mainly intelligence gathering and preventive measures and prioritized cases with higher
arrest potential. This might have led to a potential misallocation of resources, where crucial
task of gathering intelligence to counter-terrorism is de-prioritized.
IOSs were perceived as lower-status employees. Under this working culture, the IOS agent
might have felt that their insights were overlooked by senior personnel, which could have
discouraged them from sharing William’s memo information with senior FBI personnel.
IT infra at FBI was poor. Congress declined IT upgrade budget request by FBI. Moreover,
complex reporting format discouraged use of IT infra among agents who preferred diaries.
This meant that information got lost in some diaries with no immediate access.
The clearance process for hiring was time-consuming and attrition was a problem because of
low salaries which might be leading to low-quality personnel retention.
Investigative Services Division was established to conduct strategic analysis. However, before
the events of 9/11, the number of IRSS had dwindled. Funding and resistance from seniors
were main reasons for their non-performance.
William wrote a memo suspecting a threat from a few radical fundamentalists, including Z M
Soubra. However, he was unsure about the appropriate recipient for the memo, indicating
that agents were unaware of the division of work within FBI headquarters. Furthermore,
despite receiving the memo, two departments failed to take action or inform higher
authorities, as they felt the information was not relevant and did require any discussion.
Additionally, the failure to issue warrants for searching Zacarius' laptop, despite him being a
suspect with intentions to hijack a plane, illustrates the presence of bureaucracy within the
FBI.
The episode related to the actual hijacker Mihdhar started in 1999, which gave 20 months to
understand the links to the main event. But there was lack of synergy and information
sharing between CIA and FBI. CIA did not convey to FBI that Mihdhar had a valid visa. In the
case of a matter of domestic intelligence importance happening abroad, the responsibilities
of CIA and FBI were unclear. Even though Mihdhar was on a terrorist suspect list still of CIA
but they both did not take any action to prevent their visa at an early stage. CIA did not
inform FBI when the suspects were back in US in Mar’2000.

Since, there was no central department analyzing the information in FBI, thus when the FBI
informant intimated the FBI handler on suspects, he ignored it.

After US Cole attack in Oct2000, the direct link of Mihdhar was established with the
mastermind of attack. Because of bureaucracy, the criminal investigators of Cole case could
not get any surveillance warrant against the suspects from FISA. Thus, the system failed to
provide necessary support. Because of pure negligence, the task of tracking the suspects
was assigned to a New York agent who had no experience in counterterrorism. So he put the
task of tracking them in routine task of 30 days period not understanding the time sensitivity
of information in intelligence. FBI and CIA did not put suspects on no-fly list of FAA. Thus, the
suspects were freely able to board flight on 9/11 which led to the tragedy.
3. What is/are the recommended action plan? (Maximum 150 words).
Recommendations:
1. Congress can consider splitting the FBI’s domestic intelligence responsibility into a
different agency or merging it with CIA for better coordination between them to fight
terrorism effectively. Also, there are many overlapping responsibilities between foreign
and domestic intelligence and integrating them might be more beneficial.
2. The FBI should consider revising its performance metrics to include a broader range of
indicators, such as the effectiveness of intelligence gathering, the successful
prevention of potential terrorist threats, and the proactive dismantling of terrorist
networks. By incorporating these measures into their evaluation criteria, the
headquarter can better align the field offices’ focus on counterterrorism and can also
motivate the counterterrorism unit to work enthusiastically which they lack currently.
3. The FBI can adopt new technology such as an integrated information sharing platform
for smooth and efficient flow of information. The reporting format should be easy to
encourage employees to share information.