An Expansive Intelligence Community Regime as a Threat to U.S. National Security

Abstract

It is often said that we live in a dangerous world. The rise of Al-Qaeda has underlined the threat of religiously-inspired terrorism to the maintenance international peace and security. The U.S. government has responded to this threat by embracing a new security agenda that entails creating new government agencies, revising existing laws or adopting new ones. Key to the process however has also been the adoption of a new security rhetoric where policymakers emphasis a pervasive, yet often imprecise threat that fuels the new security environment that has facilitated the rise of the National Surveillance State. Evidence for this threat comes from the intelligence community, which is beholden to the executive branch. The contribution made in this paper is twofold. First, that to have an effective counterterrorism agenda one needs multiple lines of discourse to test claims and hypotheses. Such a system does not seem to exist, as those responsible for security in the U.S. are insular as they constitute a regime, and yet it is they and the executive branch to which they answer to, who shape the security discourse. Second, to highlight that information — words and images — largely disseminated by intelligence community, which operates under the executive branch, have the ability to create the notion that the terrorist threat is greater than it actually is, enabling the executive branch to demand more power as a way to ensure protection. The paper concludes that the post-9/11 security apparatus instead of providing greater security is counter-intuitive, fueling anti-Americanism and undermining fundamental rights, which is why there is a need for greater oversight of the executive branch and by extension the intelligence community.