The world remains vulnerable to major terror attacks because intelligence agencies continue to withhold information from legitimate users. Why is this is so and what can be done to promote informational exchanges?

Is the world safer from terrorism on the 15th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington DC? If the intelligence lapses that led to 9/11 remain in place, then the world at present cannot be safer from major terror attacks than it was 15 years ago. Today, it is a matter of public record that clues pointing to 9/11 were in the possession of select US intelligence agencies. However, they were withheld from other relevant agencies.

In late December 1999, while monitoring an al-Qaeda phone number in Sana’a, Yemen, the National Security Agency (NSA) – America’s leading signals intelligence agency – intercepted a phone conversation instructing two 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, to travel to Kuala Lumpur for a meeting with other known terror suspects. That meeting, we now know, set in motion plans for the 9/11 attacks.

… Tan Teck Boon PhD is a Research Fellow with the National Security Studies Programme (NSSP) and Kumar Ramakrishna is an Associate Professor, Head of Policy Studies and Coordinator of NSSP in the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.