Much like other agencies of the United States Government, the Intelligence Community was very big, stretching across several departments and agencies with similar or conflicting responsibilities. And some of the agencies operated entirely independent of others with no intelligence collaboration and sharing. After being dealt a huge blow on September 11, 2001, those in the government felt that is was necessary to reorganize the various agencies tasted with intelligence gathering. According to the 9-11 Commission Report: the sorrow, loss, anger, and resolve so evident immediately following the September 11, 2001, attacks have been combined in an effort to help assure that our country will never again be caught unprepared. As the 9/11 Commission notes, we are safer today but we are not safe, and much work remains. Although in today's world we can never be 100 percent secure, and we can never do everything everywhere, we concur with the Commission's conclusion that the American people should expect their government to do its very best. GAO's mission is to help the Congress improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. GAO has been actively involved in improving government's performance in the critically important homeland security area both before and after the September 11 attacks. In its request, the House Committee on Government Reform has asked the GAO to address two issues: the lack of effective information sharing and analysis and the need for executive branch reorganization in response to the 9/11 Commission recommendations. Further, the Committee has asked GAO to address how to remedy problems in information sharing and analysis by transforming the intelligence community from a system of "need to know" to one of a "need to share (GAO, 2004)." These findings led to the creation of the NCTC. The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) was established by Presidential Executive Order 13354 in August 2004, and codified by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA). NCTC implements a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission: “Breaking the older mold of national government organizations, this NCTC should be a center for joint operational planning and joint intelligence, staffed by personnel from the various agencies” (Rights Watch, 2004). The NCTC filters information from various sources about potential terrorist attacks and puts it in the hands of analysts so that they can plan the appropriate response. Investigations of the 9/11 attacks had demonstrated that information possessed by different agencies had not been shared and thus that disparate indications of the looming threat had not been connected and warning had not been provided. As a component of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the NCTC is composed of analysts with backgrounds in many government agencies and has access to various agency databases. It prepares studies ranging from strategic assessment of the future terrorist threats to daily briefings and situation reports (Best, 2010). The NCTC is in charge of planning the US counterterrorism posture though authority granted by the President. It is the duty of the NCTC to put together all terrorism related information and pass along to the appropriate channels. The NCTC’s focus shifted to prevent domestic terrorism after the Fort Hood attacks on November 5, 2009 in which a US soldier murdered 13 junior soldiers. The shootings at Fort Hood in Texas and the attempted downing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009 gave new impetus to efforts to aggregate and analyze terrorism-related data more effectively. In the case of Fort Hood, Maj. Nidal Hasan had had contact with radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, but that information had not been shared across the government. The name of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate a bomb on a transatlantic flight, had been placed in a master list housed at the NCTC but not on a terrorist watch list that would have prevented him from boarding the plane (Horwitz & Nakashima, 2012). The NCTC was blamed for failing to recognize the signs that Major Nidal Hasan was becoming radicalized and was planning an attack. Senate investigators released an 89-page report about the missed opportunity to prevent the rampage at Fort Hood that killed 13 and wounded 32 others. The FBI conducted only a cursory investigation into evidence that the radicalized American-born Muslim made wire transfers to Pakistani militants and was frequently in communication with an al-Qaida affiliated terrorist overseas, the year-long investigation concluded. NCTC, as it originated in the US after 9/11, is only a "shared knowledge bank on terrorism" and clearing house for integrating and analyzing all such intelligence. This is because the experience of 9/11 revealed that all 16 US intelligence agencies operated on parallel tracks without adequately sharing information with each other. Some like FBI acted without horizontal or vertical dialogue on what they noticed. It is not that such counter-terrorist centers had not existed earlier. The CIA had its Counter-Terrorist Center since 1986, which created a "Bin Laden" cell in 1996. The FBI too had a "Counter Terrorism Division" from 1999. Yet, the integration of intelligence was faulty. The 9/11 Commission observed that the machinery could not connect the dots. Clues on 9/11 attack "slipped through the cracks". It is to connect these "dots" that the NCTC was created by law in 2004. To quote the 9/11 Committee recommendations: "The NCTC should perform joint planning. The plans would assign operational responsibilities to lead agencies, such as State, the CIA, the FBI, Defense and its combatant commands, Homeland Security, and other agencies. The NCTC should not direct the actual execution of these operations, leaving that job to the agencies. The NCTC would then track implementation; it would look across the foreign-domestic divide and across agency boundaries, updating plans to follow through on cases." Also: "A 'smart' government would integrate all sources of information to see the enemy as a whole. Integrated all-source analysis should also inform and shape strategies to collect more intelligence (Balachandran)."

WORKS CITED
Best, R. (2010, January 15). The national counterterrorism center (nctc)—responsibilities and potential congressional concerns. Retrieved from http://publicintelligence.net/the-national-counterterrorism-center-nctc—responsibilities-and-potential-congressional-concerns/
Balachandran, V. (n.d.). Pc’s nctc is not an anti-terror magic wand. Retrieved from http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/pcs-nctc-is-not-an-anti-terror-magic-wand
Horwitz, S., & Nakashima, E. (2012, March 23). Feds likely to let counterterrorism center keep intelligence on u.s. citizens for years. Retrieved from http://www.dailynews.com/ci_20235514/feds-likely-let-counterterrorism-center-keep-intelligence-u
RIGHTS WATCH. (2004, January). National counterterrorism center. Retrieved from http://www.nctc.gov/about_us/about_nctc.html
U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2004, August 3). Reorganization, Transformation, and Information Sharing. (Publication No. GAO-04-1033T). Retrieved from GAO Reports Main Page via GPO Access database: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-04-1033T