In the wake of a damning report published this week by the New York Times , Propublica and PBS News on the alleged collective failures of U.S., U.K. and Indian intelligence agencies to piece together clues about an imminent attack on Mumbai in November 2008, the U.S. State Department said that it was “committed to doing better.”
Reiterating a key point in the report, the sheer complexity of sorting through and building a larger picture out of the massive data intercepted by the intelligence agencies of these countries, State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf said that “Often… there are bits and pieces that different people have, different agencies have, different countries have.” A trove of the data analysed by British intelligence agencies in the fall of 2008 was said to have comprised the Internet searches and messages of Zarrar Shah, technology chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based terror outfit behind the attacks.
Although the investigative report described the inability of the intelligence agencies of the three nations to pull together all the strands gathered by their high-tech surveillance as “among the most devastating near-misses in the history of spycraft,” Ms. Harf noted that often intelligence work was similar to trying to put together a puzzle without knowing what it is supposed to look like at the end, not having all the pieces and having some that go to a different puzzle.
This analogy was “particularly apt when it comes to Mumbai,” she said, adding that in the six years that have passed since one of the worst terror attacks on Indian soil in recent times, U.S. intelligence agencies have worked with their partners to make sure “we’re best positioned to stop attacks like Mumbai before they ever happen again.”
Responding to a question on specific improvements in inter-agency coordination, an issue highlighted by the fact that U.S. agencies failed to detect and halt the activities of Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley as he scouted targets in Mumbai and exchanged incriminating emails, Ms. Harf only noted that “additional steps to increase information sharing” had been taken.
“It is a tough challenge though, certainly, but we’re very committed to doing better here,” she added.
