Commentary: The Logistics of Actionable Intelligence Leading to 9/11

The pre-11 September intelligence era challenged the security community to acquire actionable intelligence about the impending terrorist attack. But what is actionable intelligence? This article argues that it is an awareness of the target, timing, and type of attack being planned, and presents evidence that at least one of these elements was missing from the threat signals provided by the National Security Agency, Rick Rescorla, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Kenneth Williams. Thus, the 2001 attack could not have been prevented.