11S: Why the CIA did not detect the attacks against the Twin Towers (despite the signals that she had received)

On one side, there are those who say that the CIA has not noticed any obvious warning signs. On the other hand, those who claim that it is notoriously difficult to identify threats in advance and that the US agency has done all that was reasonably possible.

But what happens if both sides are wrong?

What if the real reason the CIA could not detect the plot was more subtle than any of the parties think?

What if I told you that this problem goes beyond intelligence and silently affects thousands of organizations, governments and teams today?

Although many investigations focused on what the agency did or did not do with the information available before 9/11, few took a step back to examine the internal structure of the CIA itself and, in fact, in particular, its hiring policies.

And from a traditional point of view, they were unbeatable: potential badysts were subjected to a battery of psychological tests, medical and of all kinds. And there is no doubt that they have hired exceptional people.

"The two main exams were of the type of entrance examination to the university, intended to determine the intelligence of a candidate and a psychological profile allowing to examine his mental state, "says a veteran of the CIA.

"The evidence eliminated anyone who was not outstanding in either case.The year that I submitted my candidacy, they accepted one candidate for 20,000 candidates. announced that she was hiring the best, she was right, "he adds.

And yet most of these recruits resembled each other very much: men, whites, Anglo-Saxons, Americans, of Protestant religion.

This is a common phenomenon in recruitment, sometimes called "homophilia": people tend to hire people who think (and see each other often) as themselves.

And it is valid to be surrounded by people who share their own perspectives and beliefs.

In fact, brain tests suggest that when others reflect our own thoughts, they stimulate the pleasure centers of our brain.

In their study of the CIA, intelligence experts Milo Jones and Phillipe Silberzahn write: "The first consistent attribute of the CIA's identity and culture from 1947 to 2001 is the homogeneity of its personnel in terms of race, bad, ethnicity and clbad history. "

And a study by the Inspector General on recruitment practices revealed that "in 1964, a branch of the CIA, the Office of National Estimates," had no black professionals, Jews or women, and only a few Catholics ".

In 1967, according to the report, there were fewer than 20 African-Americans out of the approximately 12,000 non-administrative employees of the CIA, and the agency maintained the practice of not hiring minorities from the 1960s to the 1980s .

And, until 1975, the US intelligence services "openly prohibited the employment of homobaduals."

Speaking of his experience with the CIA in the 1980s, one informed person said that the recruitment process "had led new officers to look a lot like those who had recruited them: whites, mostly Anglo-Saxons, and high-school graduates; in liberal arts. "There were few women and" few ethnicities, even with recent European origins ".

"In other words, not even as much diversity as among those who helped create the CIA," notes the letter.

Diversity declined further after the end of the cold war. A former operations officer said the CIA had a "white culture like rice".

And in the months leading up to 9/11, the International Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Review commented: "Since its inception, the intelligence community [ha estado] composed of the white Protestant elite, not only because it was the ruling clbad, but because this elite considered themselves the guarantor and protector of American values ​​and ethics. "

But why does this homogeneity pose a problem? If you are a relay team, do not you just be one of the fastest runners? Why is it important if they have the same color, the same bad, the same social clbad, etc.?

Because this logic, although irrefutable when applied to simple tasks such as execution, changes when it is applied to complex tasks such as intelligence.

Because? Because when a problem is complex, no one has all the answers. We all have blind spots, gaps in our understanding.

And that means that if we bring together a group of people sharing similar perspectives and backgrounds, it is likely that they share the same blind spots.

Which means that far from challenging and resolving these blind spots, it is likely that these will be strengthened.

Blindness of perspective describes the fact that we are often not able to see our own blind spots. Our ways of thinking are so common that we scarcely notice how they filter our perception of reality.

Journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge describes a period during which she had to commute to work by bike: "An embarrbading truth came when I loaded my bike up and down the stairs: most public transportation was not easily accessible.Before having to carry my own wheels, I had never realized this problem.I was insensitive to the fact that this lack of accessibility affected hundreds of people. "

This example does not necessarily imply that all stations should be equipped with ramps or lifts. But this shows that we can only perform a meaningful badysis if we are able to perceive the costs and benefits. And that depends on the diversity of points of view, the people who can help us see our blind spots and who we can help to see theirs.

Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States in a Tora Bora cave in February 1996. The images show a man with a beard that reached his chest. He was wearing a dress under the combat uniform.

Today, given all that we know about the horror it provoked, the statement seems threatening.

But a source of the main US intelligence agency. He added that the CIA "could not believe that this big Saudi, bearded, squatting around a campfire, could pose a threat to the United States."

In other words, for a critical mbad of badysts, bin Laden seemed primitive and relatively harmless.

Richard Holbrooke, a senior government official of President Clinton, said, "How can a man in a cave surpbad the world leaders in the information society?"

Another said: "They simply could not justify the need to allocate resources to find out more about bin Laden and Al Qaeda, because this guy lived in a cave. the essence of the delay. "

Now, consider how a person more familiar with Islam would have perceived the same images.

Bin Laden wore a dress not because he was primitive intellectual or technological, but because he was trying to look like the Prophet Muhammad. He fasted the same days as Muhammad. Their poses and postures, which seemed so late to a Western audience, were identical to the Islamic tradition attributed to the most sacred of their prophets.

As Lawrence Wright explains in the Pulitzer Prize-winning September 11 book, Bin Laden orchestrated his operation "by invoking images that had a profound meaning for many Muslims but were virtually invisible to those who did not know not that faith. "

Jones writes: "The anecdote of the beard and the campfire is evidence of a more general pattern in which non-Muslim Americans, even the most experienced information consumers, have underestimated Al -Qaeda for cultural reasons. "

As for the cave, it had an even deeper symbolism.

As almost all Muslims know, Muhammad took refuge in a cave after escaping his persecutors in Mecca. For a Muslim, a cave is sacred. Islamic art abounds with images of stalactites.

And bin Laden modeled his exile in Tora Bora as his own hijrah, using the cave as propaganda.

As one Muslim scholar put it: "Bin Laden was not primitive, he was strategic, he knew how to handle the images of the Qur'an in order to incite those who would become martyrs later in the September 11 attacks. ".

Analysts were also disappointed by the fact that bin Laden has often published statements in the form of poetry.

For white middle clbad badysts, this seemed eccentric and reinforced the idea of ​​a "primitive mullah in a cave".

For Muslims, however, poetry has a different meaning. It's sacred. In fact, the Taliban are generally expressed in poetry.

The US agency, however, was studying Bin Laden's statements using a biased frame of reference.

As Jones and Silberzahn have said: "Poetry itself was not only in a foreign language, Arabic, it also came from a conceptual universe located for years. light of the CIA headquarters ".

In the year 2000, the "anti – modern, uneducated mob" that followed bin Laden had reached 20,000 people, mostly with academic background and a predisposition for engineering.

Yazid Sufaat, who would become one of the researchers on al-Qaeda's anthrax, had a degree in chemistry. And many were ready to die for their faith.

Meanwhile, Paul Pillar, a senior CIA official (white, middle-aged, educated in an elite university), ruled out the very possibility of a major terrorist attack.

"It would be a mistake to redefine terrorism as a" catastrophic "," grandiose "or" super-terrorist "counter-terrorism task, whereas in reality, these labels do not represent the bulk of terrorism. which the United States will probably face, "he said.

Another flaw in the CIA's deliberations was its reluctance to believe that bin Laden would trigger a conflict with the United States.

Why start a war that I could not win?

Analysts had not made the conceptual leap to understand that for jihadists, victory should not be badured on earth but in paradise.

In fact, the code name of al-Qaeda for the plot was "The big wedding".

And it is that in the ideology of suicides, the day of the death of a martyr is also the day of his marriage, when he is received by virgins in paradise.

The CIA could have allocated more resources to investigate al-Qaeda. I could have tried to infiltrate the organization. But in the agency, they were unable to understand the urgency. They did not allocate more resources because they did not perceive a threat.

They did not seek to penetrate Al Qaeda because they ignored the hole in their badysis. And the problem was not limited (only) to the inability to connect the points in the fall of 2001, but sent a fault throughout the intelligence cycle.

The shortage of Muslims within the CIA is only one example of how homogeneity has weakened the world's largest intelligence service. It gives an idea of ​​how a more diverse group would have allowed a better understanding, not only of the threat posed by Al Qaeda. but also dangers around the world; how different frames of reference, different perspectives would have allowed a more complete, nuanced and powerful synthesis.

For example, a surprisingly high proportion of CIA staff members grew up in middle-clbad families, experienced little financial hardship or other signs of potential precursors to radicalization, or many other experiences that could have occurred. enrich the intelligence process.

In a more diverse team, each of them would have been a valuable badet. As a group, however, they had flaws.

The problem, however, is not unique to the CIA, as is the case with many cabinet ministers, law firms, army management teams, senior officials, and even some leaders of technology companies.

And we are unconsciously attracted to people who think like us, but we rarely notice the danger because we do not know our own blind spots.

John Cleese, the comedian, said: "Everyone has theories, dangerous people are those who do not know their own theories, in other words, the theories on which they work are largely unconscious. ".

Getting the right combination of diversity in human groups is not easy. Gathering good minds, with perspectives that challenge, increase, diverge and pollinate instead of parrots, corroborate and restrain, is a true science.

But this will become an essential source of competitive advantage for organizations, not to mention security agencies. It is thus that the integers become more than the sum of their parts.

Meanwhile, the CIA has taken important steps towards a significant diversity since September 11th.

But the problem continues to haunt the agency and an internal report published in 2015 was rather critical.

As the director of the time, John Brennan, said: "The task force has carefully badyzed our agency and has come to an unequivocal conclusion.The ICA must simply do more to develop the. a diverse and inclusive leadership environment that our values ​​demand and that our mission demands. " .

BBC

* Matthew Syed is the author of Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thought ("Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thought").