A February 2010 report by the Project on National Security Reform to Congress showed that the National Counterterrorism Center’s (“NCTC”) planning arm did not have enough authority to do its job. The NCTC is an organization whose mission is to gather information from the government, assess terrorist threats and develop plans to combat them. The problem stems from a lack of cooperation between intelligence gathering agencies, such as the C.I.A. and the State Department’s counterterrorism office. Other issues include an overlapping statutory scheme and decentralization of counterterrorism within the National Security Council. The report is also critical of both houses of Congress for failing to create committees that address a broad range of national security issues.
The NCTC was established in 2004 in response to the massive national security breakdown in 2001. The center was envisioned as the tip of the spear in the war on terrorism. The report comes weeks after the center was criticized after missing clear warning signs of the botched attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound commercial airliner by a 23-year-old Nigerian man.
Read more at N.Y. Times
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