William Sloneker, Contributor Opinion -

In the past month, the American intelligence and security community has seen its competence tested considerably in a number of different incidents: Northwest Flight 253 (the failed in-flight bombing on Christmas Day), the assassination of seven CIA operatives by the double agent Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, and the evacuation of the American embassy in Yemen. These episodes differ significantly from one another in terms of what transpired, but the common thread lies in a similar potential to disrupt American security and weaken public confidence in the institutions responsible for such debacles.

The earliest of these incidents, the attempted bombing on Christmas Day, sparked a sustained uproar in the media. Politicians and pundits first griped about the system’s failure and then about Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s assertion that “the system worked.” Her words have since been beaten to death, but the general consensus still seems to be against Napolitano. When the system “works,” the story generally doesn’t unfold and get reported in the national media.

Luckily not everybody in Washington was as thick-skulled as Napolitano appeared to be. President Barack Obama himself sounded more critical. He called the incident a “systemic failure” that was “totally unacceptable” and called for reviews of the terrorist watch-list and screening systems.

It remains unclear in which direction political bodies will take the “system.” Many critics, however, have harmonized their arguments in favor of a more mechanized means of processing the data found on watch lists such as the one on which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the culprit on Flight 253) appeared.

The argument for such a transition makes plenty of sense, for we increasingly enjoy the reliability of how new technology processes our old data. Some medical records have been digitized to avoid clerical errors and medical malpractices. DNA evidence has been used to exonerate inmates on death row. We utilize and depend on many machines because they yield desired results 99 percent of the time.

With respect to Flight 253, intelligence supplied by Abdulmutallab’s father was not expediently shared, thus allowing him to board the plane in Amsterdam. Punch the man’s name into a “No-Fly” database, sync that with the system that sells tickets, and all of a sudden Abdulmutallab has a snowball’s chance in hell at boarding that flight. Moving away from a system affected by human error and towards one that is regimented and technologically inclined will allegedly reduce the possibility of these scares.

The case for technology compels us, so much so that it’s easy to overlook the inherently human aspects of acquiring, processing, and sharing intelligence. The incident involving the double agent and his betrayal led to the murder of seven CIA operatives. A move toward a finer-tuned, technologically sound, systematic approach to sharing and processing intelligence can prevent incidents like that on Flight 253, but it does not save the seven CIA operatives killed at the hand of Al-Balawai.

The comparison between the instances is apples-to-oranges in some ways, but both events held an objective in common: they both sought to contain imminent threats of terrorism. Flight 253 was a close-call and Al-Balawai’s betrayal was purely tragic. Neither situation can put the United States at ease and both call for an assessment on the inner-workings of our intelligence system. Considering these similarities, an issue arises. The scare on Flight 253 stemmed from something rather rudimentary, on par with a simple yet severe clerical error. The death of the CIA operative stemmed from a misplacement of trust—a deeply human and horrifically costly mistake.

Obama and the various agencies under scrutiny must question what balance they should strike between mechanization and humanization in wake of these crises. It has been demonstrated that we can place our trust in technology but not necessarily in people, but the government cannot depend entirely on machines to assure our security. Intelligence is gathered by people for people. There is necessarily a human aspect to it all. In some ways we can revamp the technological mainframe that facilitates the sharing of intelligence and continue our relentless crusade against terrorism. In other cases where both man and machine fall short, however, perhaps the only solution in this volatile day and age is conservatism, scaling back our ambitions, and practicing prudence.

(Photo Courtesy of majoreventsinternational.com)