Harvard International Review: How would you describe the way US agencies have interacted with foreign agencies before and after September 11? How do you think they should interact with foreign agencies in the future?

One of the fundamental realities of the United States intelligence community is its relative youth. Most European powers have intelligence services that go back at least to the Napoleonic wars. The United States has had an historic attitude of antipathy toward the craft of spying. We do not like spying on people, listening to their telephone conversations, opening their mail. It was not until World War II that the United States developed an organized agency, and that was a military one. As soon as the war was over, that military organization was abandoned. Two years later, US President Harry Truman recognized that the Soviet Union had changed from a wartime ally to a Cold War adversary and that the United States did not know enough about this adversary. So in 1947 the first civilian intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was established. In the Cold War, the United States had a series of relationships with foreign intelligence agencies, known as liaison relationships.

During that later phase of the Cold War, those relationships became less important as we were able to use our own technology—especially satellite technology—to gather information and became less dependent on human-derived intelligence. Since the end of the Cold War, as our target of concern broadened from the Soviet Union and its allies to 30 or 40 countries around the world, the relative importance of human intelligence, especially when conducted in cooperation with other countries, has increased. And that has been accelerated as a result of the events of September 11. As an example, the United States had limited experience in Afghanistan, and so worked to establish effective liaison relationships with Britain, Russia, and Pakistan. Our own agencies were limited in both cultural and linguistic understanding.

So the short answer is that since September 11, there has been an increase in our interest in cooperating with other governments’ services. And I anticipate that our experience in Afghanistan will be a harbinger of an accelerated set of liaison relationships in other countries where we will be more actively engaged as we go into the next phases of the war against terrorism.

How might a mature interagency cooperation scheme play itself out in coming months and years?

I think the Afghanistan example of liaisons is likely to be modified but basically replicated as we go forward. For instance, it is clear that one of the areas we are going to be investigating to find Al Qaeda cells will be in the Middle East and North Africa. Particularly in Africa, our experience is limited and we actually have been liquidating capabilities in Africa for much of the last 10 to 20 years. So I think there we would be working with other nations, such as Britain, France, Egypt, and Israel, with more developed infrastructure in the region.

Would the United States be relying on its own human capabilities or those of its allies? Will the United States try to develop its own spy systems?

There are three categories of human intelligence. The first is called “unilateral,” which is your own full-time employees. The second is “assets,” typically non-US citizens hired by the United States to carry out specific, and in some cases ongoing, intelligence-collection efforts. And third, liaison relationships are when you have an official contact and set of protocols with the intelligence services of another country. We need to strengthen all three of these areas. I have discussed the liaison relationships and their importance. In terms of unilateral intelligence, the intelligence community is increasing both the number of intelligence gatherers, or “spies,” and diversifying in order to get US-trained spies with the language skills and cultural affinity necessary to work in the many places around the world where we have interests. And we will be employing assets. That has been a controversial issue because in the past the United States has employed assets who had questionable personal backgrounds—either a human rights or legal violation, like drug trafficking— although there were provisions that made it very unlikely that those kinds of people would be hired.

A problem that has emerged, particularly with the focus on terrorism, is that human intelligence has become more important as our technological means of gathering information have become less useful in assessing the capabilities and intentions of terrorist leaders. In order to get human intelligence, you have to get someone who can get close enough to the source of information, gain the confidence of that individual, and then report back to us on a timely basis so that we can use the information to prevent and not just respond to a terrorist assault. The people who have those abilities of obtaining information by getting close are unlikely to be found in a monastery. They are more likely to have a background very similar to the terrorists they are trying to gain information about. As part of the USA Patriot Act passed in October 2001, the Bush administration and US Congress agreed to soften those restrictions on asset hiring.

How does the fact that the United States is a leader in world technology change the way it cooperates with and shares information with nations on the other side of the "digital divide"?

Most of the nations with which we have the closest liaison relationships are the more developed nations of the world, starting with our NATO allies. While it is true that we have a very demanding technological ability, it is also true that other countries have significant capabilities, and it is not a one-way street. We have close relations with several liaison partners in technological utilization. But we are also careful not to disclose the methods of our information gathering or provide information that might abrogate our current advantages in technology.

Even before September 11, there were signs US agencies were failing to predict important events, like the first Indian nuclear test. Do you think intelligence is still being conducted on a Cold War model? If so, what can be done to adjust US intelligence to the multipolar world order?