his own initiative, in the legal issues that would be involved in shooting down
a U.S. aircraft in such a situation.
threat--from planes coming to the United States from overseas, perhaps car-
rying a weapon of mass destruction. None of this speculation was based on
actual intelligence of such a threat. One idea, intended to test command and
control plans and NORAD's readiness, postulated a hijacked airliner coming
from overseas and crashing into the Pentagon. The idea was put aside in the
early planning of the exercise as too much of a distraction from the main focus
(war in Korea), and as too unrealistic.As we pointed out in chapter 1, the mil-
itary planners assumed that since such aircraft would be coming from overseas;
they would have time to identify the target and scramble interceptors.
ios.The challenge was to flesh out and test those scenarios, then figure out a
way to turn a scenario into constructive action.
prise attack. Rigorous analytic methods were developed, focused in particular
on the Soviet Union, and several leading practitioners within the intelligence
community discussed them with us. These methods have been articulated in
many ways, but almost all seem to have at least four elements in common: (1)
think about how surprise attacks might be launched; (2) identify telltale indi-
cators connected to the most dangerous possibilities; (3) where feasible, collect
intelligence on these indicators; and (4) adopt defenses to deflect the most dan-
gerous possibilities or at least trigger an earlier warning.
mendations, among them strengthening the national intelligence officer for
warning.We were told that these measures languished under Gates's successors.
Responsibility for warning related to a terrorist attack passed from the national
intelligence officer for warning to the CTC. An Intelligence Community
Counterterrorism Board had the responsibility to issue threat advisories.
methods to avoid surprise attack that had been so laboriously developed over
the years were regularly applied.