Deciphering intel failures: The gaps that hurt

Lapses can occur when arbiters who collate and process raw intelligence fail to piece together the full picture.

In the wake of the massacre in Baisaran (Pahalgam), some reports claimed that it was an “intelligence” or “security” failure. As of now, it is not clear why the Baisaran meadows, a popular tourist spot, was left unguarded by any security group in the state working under the Unified Command. An unconfirmed report said the site was not “officially opened” and hence no security was detailed.

It is important to explain how “security threats” are processed by the governments in general, and how these “gaps” occur. Since Jammu and Kashmir is a sensitive area, intelligence agencies that are attached to national civil, military, and paramilitary departments have a large presence there, in addition to the state police intelligence department.

Although national intelligence agencies report to their headquarters, they do keep the Lt. Governor and the Unified Command under him apprised of any changes in the security scenario so that preventive mechanisms can be suitably altered depending on the local threat perception. However, such intelligence when reported to higher echelons like the Lt. Governor (in J&K, law and order is still under the Lt. Governor) must be carefully verified as the action following such alerts has national and international ramifications.

Raw intelligence becomes policy for action only after an alchemic process of collection, collation, analysis, dissemination, arbitration, policy adjudication, and decision-making. Any inter-space in this process would lead to a situation in which intelligence, including technical pointers already available in some form with any wing of a government, does not result in policy or action. This leads to an impression of “intelligence or security failure”.

Intelligence and security agencies often receive information in bits and pieces, not revealing the full picture especially when the trends are short-term. On several occasions, agencies produce varied, incomplete, or even conflicting intelligence on security-related subjects needing an able arbiter to sort out the differences to obtain a fuller picture for the decision-makers. This is the process of “Intelligence Arbitration”. If this fails, gaps occur as has happened many times. An intelligence arbitrator also brings in an individual perspective to plug the missing gaps in intelligence, even using media information, which is called “Open-Source Intelligence” (OSI).

There is a big difference between the processing of intelligence produced by law-and-order authorities and by national intelligence agencies. While national agencies produce what is called “strategic” intelligence, the State units churn out “tactical” information. ‘Strategic’ intelligence is usually the long-term indication affecting the whole country or over a longer timeframe while ‘tactical’ is short-term trends, affecting smaller areas such as police action. However, counter-terrorist action, especially with foreign interference, could assume strategic and tactical dimensions, which necessitates the ability to study and anticipate how inimical foreign governments or foreign-based groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba would be working against us, which only national agencies are capable of handling.

Yet, there are cases when this process has failed, even in Western countries. The 9/11 Commission which discussed these trends in detail in Chapter 11 of its report (Foresight and Hindsight) said that despite Osama bin Laden’s anti-American activities assuming serious proportions all over the world, no agency foresaw a scenario like 9/11 when US passenger planes were weaponised against the mainland.

The Commission also hinted that the large presence of intelligence and security agencies in America had resulted in confusion and dilution of responsibility. The post of National Intelligence Officer for Warning in the CIA created in 1992 after the Gulf War who had the responsibility of issuing such warnings was abolished and the Counter-Terrorism Centre (CTC) was given this responsibility. However, CTC did not issue a single warning on the possibility of weaponising passenger aircraft. In other words, a top-heavy intelligence structure did not result in better alerts.

When alerts aren’t enough

Similarly, this writer, as a member of the 26/11 Committee which was set up to enquire into the police response, noticed the failure of the Maharashtra government in observing certain happenings outside their jurisdiction which, if studied, could have prevented the ghastly Mumbai attack.

On July 30, 2006, CNN-IBN TV channel aired a survey of our Western coastal protection measures in the wake of the then National Security Advisor’s warning that our atomic energy installations might be targeted by sea-borne Pakistani terrorists. Following this, it was expected that the Maharashtra Police would have strengthened their coastal patrolling. The channel’s team found that coastal patrolling was nowhere to be seen.

The same channel aired another news item on June 16, 2007, which should have worried Mumbai and New Delhi. But it did not. The report said that eight suspected Lashkar militants had infiltrated through the sea route near Mumbai and two of them, Abdul Majeed and Mohammad Jameel, were arrested in Rajouri in March by the J&K police. This was the first such known incident of terrorists taking the sea route.

The story indicated that eight militants had left Pakistan on February 23 and transferred themselves into an Indian boat that was operated by alleged LeT operatives Asif and Abbas. On the Indian shore, they were received by another operative, Sameer. The channel also interviewed the J&K Director General of Police Gopal Sharma who had said, “Two LeT men were arrested in Rajouri and they have informed that eight men came in and yes, sea route was used.”

Less than eighteen months later, ten terrorists used the same modus operandi with fake Indian documents to indulge in mayhem in Mumbai. The 2007 report said: “Jameel initially had a student ID as Dheeraj from Chembur in Mumbai. The men even had fake documents from Delhi and Chandigarh and in Jammu, they even had voter I-cards.”

(The writer is a former special secretary, Cabinet Secretariat; Syndicate: The Billion Press)