NCJ Number
226624
Journal
Security Journal Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Dated: April 2009 Pages: 101-118
Date Published
April 2009
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This study examined U.S. domestic security policy in the period immediately after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, with attention to how bureaucracies responsible for security can apply “imagination” to potential terrorist tactics and threats and develop security measures for preventing their realization.
Abstract
The central thesis of this paper is that the bureaucratization of imagination is essential for a security paradigm. Independently, both bureaucracy and imagination have their own assumed merits. Bureaucracy is associated with formal responsibility, expertise in a specific body of knowledge, prescribed procedure for operations, and supervision designed to achieve efficiency and effectiveness. These bureaucratic characteristics favor as security paradigm premised on routine protocol. “Imagination,” on the other hand, refers to a process of experimentation and invention, important ingredients the 9/11 Commission concluded were missing from the U.S. security paradigm at the time of the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 Commission was “struck with the unimaginative menu of options for action offered to both President Clinton and President Bush.” The 9/11 Commission noted numerous “telltale indicators” that had drawn little attention. Imaginative scenarios of terrorist attacks had also been ignored. In 2002, the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program (subsequently renamed Terrorism Information Awareness) established a legislative linkage between administrative authority, imagination, and knowledge. Congress located the program within the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA), a research arm of the Pentagon. The TIA mission statement was to “imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate, and transition information technologies…useful for pre-emption, national security warning, and national security decisionmaking.” In imagining scenarios of possible misfortune, bureaucratized imagination should provide data and demonstrate technologies that show imaginative scenarios to be neither fantasy nor whim, so they will be taken seriously by those in the bureaucracy who design, modify, and implement security policy, priorities, and procedures. 37 references