Reporting from Washington — The latest disclosures by the WikiLeaks website have struck a blow against what many experts say was one of the key reforms to emerge from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the push to widely share sensitive information among the massive intelligence bureaucracy.
Repercussions are already being felt. The State Department last week disconnected its cable traffic from the secure network used by the military, depriving military analysts of the best reporting on the political situations in their areas of operations. And the White House ordered a governmentwide review of information security "to ensure that users do not have broader access than is necessary to do their jobs effectively."
"It has certainly driven individuals in the intelligence community and beyond the intelligence community to at least reexamine information sharing," said Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, warning last week of a chilling effect. "You, of course, run the risk … that information wouldn't be shared, [and] that would undermine our ability to disrupt attacks."
It's more than a risk — it's a certainty, according to Michael Hayden, who was CIA Director under President George W. Bush. "We are now going to begin to trade off potential physical safety for information security," he said in an interview. "We'll say we're not — we'll say we are keeping the lines open, and the right people will have access. But when you rejigger this, you never get it perfect."
Leiter's agency was created after Sept. 11 to help solve what was found to be one of the biggest impediments to stopping those attacks: the stovepipes and legal barriers that prevented the CIA, the FBI and many of the other 14 intelligence agencies from sharing what they knew. A revolution has occurred on that front, with agencies moving from granting access to information on the basis of "need to know" to a model of "need to share."
But many experts say the near success of last year's alleged Christmas Day bombing attempt by a Nigerian whose father had warned U.S. authorities about his extremism — a warning not properly acted on — pointed to shortcomings that still need to be addressed. And now there is momentum in the other direction.
