The events of September 11, 2001 brought to light several communication areas of opportunity that unfortunately resulted in a multitude of catastrophic events. On September 11, 2001 the attacks from terrorists started in New York City when terrorists flew American Airlines flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center (FBI, 2015). The FBI immediately sent staff from their Joint Terrorism Task Force to the World Trade Center North Tower to assist and assess the damage (FBI, 2015). A short time later, additional terrorist crashed United Airlines flight 175 into the World Trade Center South Tower (FBI, 2015). Survivors working in the north tower were attempting to evacuate as that second plane crashed (FBI, 2015). Hundreds of first …show more content…
Post- 9/11 events demonstrated the importance of sharing information from federal agencies to local law enforcement. Typically the FBI would only share sensitive information, or ongoing investigation information to those who had the clearances to receive that information (FBI, 2015). Some of the major communication errors included FBI known intelligence on terrorist individuals, failure to share such information, and technology issues (The 9/11 Commission Report, 2002). The 9/11 commission was created so that the report and recommendations would be sent to the President of the United States, the United States Congress, and the American people (The 9/11 Commission Report, 2002). According to the report, the nation was unprepared and they wanted to find ways to avoid this from occurring again (The 9/11 Commission Report, 2002). This committee was created with 10 commissioners that included five Republicans and five Democrats that were chosen by elected officials to be “independent, impartial, thorough, and nonpartisan” (The 9/11 Commission Report, 2002). Ultimately, their report involve 19 days of hearings and interviewing 160 witnesses (The 9/11 Commission Report, 2002). The 9/11 commission report noted multiple operational opportunities, and recommendations (The 9/11 Commission Report, …show more content…
Clearly, had the CIA and FBI shared information with each other, connected the dots on known terrorist members, and subsequently gave that information to local law enforcement the attacks of September 11, 2001 may have been preventable. I am most certain that the families of the 2,752 people that died on that day would love nothing more than to see increase communication between federal agencies and local law enforcement. Fortunately, the results and recommendations of the 9/11 commission report may tremendous improvements in the communication for these law enforcement professionals (The 9/11 Commission Report, 2002). Some of those improvements included adding additional analysts to sort through the enormous amounts of intelligence, and reducing communication barriers between local and federal law enforcement agencies (The 9/11 Commission Report, 2002). Another area of opportunity included revamping the technology of communication via police radios. Post 9/11 resulted in an 800 MHz talk group system so that federal, state, fire, emergency management, and the military could communicate very quickly by just a turn of a dial or change of a