Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act - Essay Example

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 can be broken apart into interrelated yet separate focus areas. These include the establishment of a Director of National Intelligence, creation of a National Counterterrorism Center, National Counter Proliferation Center, and a National Intelligence Centers, creation of Joint Intelligence Community Councils, improvement in education for the intel community, improvements in intel activities, protecting the privacy and civil liberties, amendments to prior standards, dealing with a litany of personal issues, and an entire section entitled “other matters” – which sought to provide a compendium of unrelated issues that must be discussed within the framework of IRTPA.

Ultimately, each of these subsections and areas of discussion has accounted for a new workflow, process-based intel gathering and research, and a new framework of organizational collaboration and corroboration that ultimately seek to shore up a great many of the risks and vulnerabilities that allowed something such as September 11th, 2001 to occur in the first place. By means of targeting these key areas of inter-agency workflow, updating the means by which employees can transfer between the intel community, updating and improving upon the process of security clearances, and a litany of other factors, the Act helped to streamline the United State’s somewhat antiquated approach.