The Stories We Tell: Intelligence, Terrorism, and the Distortion of Threat Priorities Post-9/11

Abstract

Why does the U.S. intelligence community (USIC) continue to fail to prioritize domestic terrorism, given that the data suggests a significant risk of domestic terror attacks? At the heart of this policy puzzle is the question: what are the factors that cause some threats to be prioritized by the USIC and not others? I create a new dataset of terrorist attacks in the United States post-9/11 to show that domestic terrorism comprises a significant proportion of the terrorist attacks on US soil and has the capacity to cause significant casualties. Then, I use text analysis to illustrate that threat documents produced by the intelligence community continue to focus on Islamic terrorism and shy away from discussing the risks of domestic terrorism, even as the number of domestic incidents continues to grow. Expert interviews reveal that this disconnect between the threat landscape and the intelligence community’s threat priorities is driven by political priorities. Policymakers simultaneously set the priorities and drive the response to priorities, giving the White House and National Security Council full control of threat narratives. The degree to which the threat priorities actually align with risk or danger posed from the threats depends on the narrative the administration wishes to tell.