Counterterrorism Blog

As my colleagues have noted, the case of Nadia Nadim Prouty and her ability to illegally acquire citizenship, security clearances and sensitive employment in the FBI and CIA, raises many disturbing issues.

But underlying this failure and numerous other penetration efforts by Islamist groups is the large-scale failure of U.S. counter-intelligence efforts for many years. There are numerous cases of Chinese infiltration agents, Islamist penetration and Russian penetrations that underscore the shrinking ability to monitor or detect the spies working in this country.

The capacity has been rapidly shrinking for several decades, and, despite the threat of Islamist terrorists and the growing activities of the Chinese in both traditional and industrial espionage, the entire concept of a counter-intelligence has withered on the vine, from before the Clinton administration through the current administration. Currently, that capacity barely exists, according to my friends in the intelligence community.

This does not mean spying on everyone or running roughshod over our constitutional rights. But it does imply a realistic view of how the world works, and basic measures to protect ourselves. There are historic examples of counter-intelligence efforts run amok, too, and safeguards must be put in place to guard against that.

One of the fundamental problems goes back to the basic conceptualization of the problem. When the Cold War ended it was assumed that counter-intelligence capacity was no longer needed. The Soviet Union was gone, the world was becoming flat and the capacity was redundant. My full blog is here.