rtly due to the intelligence agencies which are geared towards supporting our armed forces in combat (9/11 Commission2, 3).
During the 1970s and 1980s, the IC began to focus on the potential threat that terrorism posed to the United States. This led the CIA to create a Counter-terrorism Center (CTC). The CTC was conceived as an "all source intelligence fusion center for international terrorism" and included detailees from across the IC. However, the CTC's "focus tended to be traditional, on collection of intelligence in and against particular states" (9/11 Commission2, 2). Because of this, the CIA and the CTC were slow to react to the emerging reality of non-state sponsored terrorism. This, in turn, created a sort of blind spot that was so infamously exploited by Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida.
During the 1990s, the CIA and the CTC began to focus on the threat posed by trans-national terrorist organizations. This focus was sharpened by the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. In 1995, the National Intelligence Estimate presciently noted that
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