Foreign Intelligence Liaison: Devils, Deals, and Details

Since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (9=11), the role of foreign intelligence liaison has taken center stage in the global war on terror. Intelligence acquired through foreign liaison is widely credited with having helped to thwart attacks in Bahrain, arrest al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, and chase complicit Taliban from hideouts in Afghanistan. It is also blamed for deception and failure. The United States Congress’s Joint Intelligence Committee Report on 9=11 noted that, prior to the attacks, the U.S. government had come to rely excessively on poorly sourced foreign liaison information for its threat assessments. Preliminary reports of the 9=11 Commission also criticized intelligence relationships with liaison partners, such as Saudi Arabia, as insufficiently productive prior to the attacks. And, according to reports cited in Seymour Hersh’s articles in The New Yorker, the same may have been true prior to the war in Iraq. Is there reason for alarm, then, that experts continue to suggest that the principal means for augmenting U.S. intelligence collection on al-Qaeda should be enhanced reliance on liaison with foreign intelligence services? Exploring this question paves new scholarly ground. Most of the literature on intelligence sharing and liaison takes a historical rather than analytical