September 11th and the Adaptation Failure of American Intelligence Agencies

Event Details

Amy Zegart is Assistant Professor of Policy Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. The following summary excerpt from the paper provides an overview of the talk:

"No one will ever know whether the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks
could have been prevented. However, a great deal of evidence already suggests the
intelligence community (IC) could have done better at combating terrorism in the years
before 9/11. While no organization is failure-proof, American intelligence agencies
showed a stunning inability to adapt to the rise of terrorism after the Cold War ended.
The critical question is why."