Free Find, Fix, Finish by Aki Peritz, Eric Rosenbach Page B

the finishing is relatively easy. In this world it’s the finding that’s the hardest-to-do function, it’s the intelligence thing. And we now have to treat those sources and methods with the same almost sacred respect we treated the secrecy of troops movements and operational plans in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s,’70s, and ’80s, because it’s those things at the front-end, the fine point, that have become the critical piece of that ‘find, fix, finish’ equation.” 9
    The current director of national intelligence, Lt. General James Clapper, elaborated on this point in mid-2009. “Many aspects of the intelligence community today, including some investments and practices, are legacies of the Cold War era and anachronistic,” mused Clapper. “Nowadays, with the kind of targets being pursued, the antithesis is true. Today’s targets are very elusive and therefore quite hard to find, yet once they are found, they are very easy to finish. This reality has a very profound effect on the way intelligence is done today.” 10

Find
     
    Finding potential threats—figuring out who they are and where they are—is a core requirement of the new doctrine and has proven to be the most difficult aspect of counterterrorism. The intelligence and law enforcement communities have struggled to find regular criminals within American borders. Internationally, locating threats is an even greater task.
    In order to accomplish these goals, the intelligence, military, and law enforcement communities have evolved significantly in both mind-set and allocation of resources since 2001. Within American borders, the new nature of the threat led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and a radical restructuring of the intelligence community, including the establishment of the National Counterterrorism Center and the position of the director of national intelligence (DNI). Controversially, law enforcement officials have additionally been given new powers in regard to electronic and physical surveillance.
    Intelligence officials have strengthened working relationships with other nations’ intelligence and security services, arguing that the US cannot eliminate the global terrorist threat by itself. In 2005, CIA deputy director for operations Jose Rodriguez told Congress that nearly every capture or killing of a suspected terrorist outside Iraq since 9/11—more than 3,000 in all—was the result of CIA cooperation with foreign intelligence services. 11 One CIA official who worked with Pakistan claimed in late 2009 that the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) had captured or killed over six hundred US targets. 12
    Navigating the new challenges to finding terrorists has not been without incident. Revelations that the Bush administration launched controversial counterterrorism programs such as a warrantless electronic surveillance program riled an already tumultuous political environment. The operational necessity for extensive electronic surveillance of individuals within the US who have connections to terrorists abroad is clear; however, the murky legality of the Bush-era Terrorist Surveillance Program resulted in political controversy that distracted national security professionals from their core mission. Finding the enemy is essential, but at what political, moral, or legal price?

Fix
     
    In a global war against small groups of extremists, the US now more than ever places a premium on “actionable intelligence” and has developed new mechanisms to collect fresh tips and refine its dissemination. Whether this perishable information comes from signals intelligence or imagery analysis, from drone-based cameras or from human assets’ lips, US forces require precise input to be proactive. Since the targets are not lumbering armies but highly mobile individuals, the instantaneous and momentary nature of the threat requires much greater speed to generate and synthesize this information than in the