Vapor Trails

Many authors and critics have suggested that the War on Terrorism is conducted by law enforcement's ability to connect the dots. They observe that the 9/11 attacks were a failure of imagination and an inability of intelligence agencies to connect the dots between various disparate events and individuals.

Maybe the reason is that we're not looking for dots, but rather vapor trails. Indeed, the idea that we're looking for vapor trails came from watching the sky in and around the New York metropolitian area. Often, high flying planes will create contrails that last for an indeterminate period of time. Some last for minutes or hours, while others will quickly disappear.

All share one common trait, if you're not watching carefully, they disappear right before your eyes or are lost in the mix of clouds and sun. In fact, for the few days after 9/11 when all commercial and private planes were grounded, no vapor trails were created at all. There was a certain stillness in the air as planes weren't rumbling overhead as they made their approaches to aiports.

Now, why are vapor trails relevant to the war on terror? Simple. We can see where the vapor trails are coming from when you know where to look and the conditions are right. Vapor trails don't exist behind every plane that flies through the sky. There has to be the right mix of conditions for that to happen.

As a law enforcement or intelligence officer, you've got to be able to read a lot of intel out of particular pieces of data. They are a vapor trail. You have to discern whether the trail came from a hot lead, a dead lead, where the source of the data is, where it was heading, and what message the data contains.

In the course of the 9/11 Commission hearings and the Commission's report that the CIA, FBI, and other intel agencies had various bits and pieces of data, but couldn't figure out key bits of information that could have put the picture into focus. It was as though those agencies had only a piece of the vapor trail from a transcontinential flight, but not the origin, waypoints, and destination. They didn't have the passenger list, and only an inkling of the plane's identity.

Future intel operations have to be able to pick up the trail from the inception, which is how and why the capture of Khan in Pakistan is a big deal (regardless of whether the arrest and public disclosure of that fact), because the US was able to obtain the origin point for the vapor trails. In fact, Khan appeared to be a hub (in the airline and computer sense) for al Qaeda operations, which in turn led to additional arrests around the world.

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