Playing Defense
Seldom has the world been more dangerous. Besides the increasingly real potential for calamity in Iraq and the continued threat from committed terrorists, Iran and North Korea push grimly ahead with their nuclear work, perhaps leading the way toward a global race for weapons of mass death.
America is overhauling its intelligence operations to better counter the range of new threats. In this two-part report, based on access to the nation's most senior intelligence officials, a host of other experts, and a review of hundreds of pages of documents, U.S. News offers an exclusive look into the secret world where America's war on terrorism is being waged around the clock. The intelligence-reform effort is without precedent, and still very much a work in progress. But everyone involved knows failure is not an option.
This story appears in the November 6, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.