Pearl Harbor Intelligence Failure Essay

Introduction While the United States (U.S.) Intelligence Community can claim a plethora of accomplishments, it has also endured a number of challenges. As the two examples below highlight, these challenges have been at the heart of critical events that restructured the current U.S. National Security Strategy.

WWI - WWII Era
Background: Pearl Harbor All-out conflict between the U.S. and Japan had been looming for so long that each nation had developed plans for large-scale combat since the 1920s. however, tensions did not begin to seriously escalate until Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. Over the next ten years, Japan maintained its momentum in expanding into China, leading to major conflict between those nation states in 1937. Japan spent
Intelligence Community's history, one could attribute this to counterintelligence challenges specifically from a National Security standpoint. The U.S. military failed to reinforce force protection measures associated with the U.S. Pacific Fleet although it had managed to intercept and break Japanese Diplomatic Code in order to obtain an intelligence picture so unbearably complete that it was deemed unprecedented by military leadership of this time period, and with a week's worth of lead time. Also, a lead player in this catastrophic counterintelligence failure, were the intelligence sharing practices of this era, a time where information was divided, hoarded, blocked, and or scattered (Friedman
This military campaign began on January 30, 1968, and it included highly coordinated attacks by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic Of Vietnam, the U.S. Armed Forces, and their allies. This campaign was a coordinated series of North Vietnamese attacks on more than 100 cities and military bases in South Vietnam in an attempt to promote rebellion among the South Vietnamese population and encourage the United States Government to reel in its commitment in the Vietnam War. Although U.S. and South Vietnamese forces managed to fend off the attacks, news coverage of the massive offensive shocked the American public and eroded support for the war effort. Despite heavy casualties, a figure estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, North Vietnam secured a strategic victory with the Tet Offensive, as these attacks marked a significant turn of events in the Vietnam War and the beginning of the lengthy, painful American withdrawal from the area (History.com