A View from the CT Foxhole: Randall Blake, Former National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats, National Intelligence Council.

• Author: Cruickshank, Paul

CTC: At the end of last year, you retired after more than three decades of service to the U.S. government, and over the course of your career, you served in a variety of key analytical and leadership roles, with primary emphasis placed on terrorism and counterterrorism for more than two of those decades. You played an important strategic behind-the-scenes role in helping the government to understand the terrorism threat and other related threats. Could you provide a brief overview of the trajectory of your career?

Blake: It's actually 35 years serving in a variety of leadership, analytic, and policy positions almost totally focused on CT support in some manner. I served under seven presidents, from Reagan to Biden; each brought a different perspective to dealing with the issue of terrorism. My career divides almost equally into two halves. The first half was spent in the Department of Defense: the service, command, and national level. I started out with Naval Criminal Investigative Service, spent three and a half years over at EUCOM at the Joint Analysis Center in Molesworth, England, and then back here at the Defense Intelligence Agency, including six years at the Pentagon.

The second half of my career [was] in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). And that involved work in a couple of different roles: one at the National Counterterrorism Center, as a senior manager focused on al-Qa'ida, and most recently, at the National Intelligence Council as the National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats. During that period at ODNI, I had two details that were formative assignments in shaping the latter part of my career. One, I went on assignment to the Brookings Institution as a Federal Executive Fellow in 2011, and then during 2012 and 2013, I served at the National Security Council as President Obama's Special Assistant and Senior Director for Counterterrorism. In a couple of these positions, at the National Intelligence Council and at the NSC, I also had an expanded focus on the threat from transnational organized crime and foreign illicit drugs.

CTC: On the morning of 9/11, you were serving as the DIA's intelligence terrorism chief, and prior to that, in the mid-1990s, you served as chief of the terrorism analysis shop at U.S. European Command's Joint Analysis Center in Molesworth, England. What are the key things that surprised you about how the counterterrorism fight has evolved over the past couple of decades?

Blake: I think I'd prefer to talk about observations rather than surprises. Surprises were not welcome things in my career. I was already 15 years into my career on 9/11. So, for me, the attack was part of an escalating al-Qa'ida threat continuum rather than a singular event. That said, I recognized immediately that the magnitude of al-Qa'ida's tactical success on 9/11 meant everything was about to change. We went through organizational upheavals, a multi-fold increase in resources and scrutiny. One observation is that CT became an exemplar for other national security issues. By that I mean, if you look at the importance of the whole of government approach, it's an often overused term but not in the CT context. It involves military, intelligence, law enforcement, homeland security, diplomacy, education, international aid, public-private partnerships, and so on. Allies and partners involved in large coalitions, local and regional configurations, and bilateral arrangements have been critical to maintaining the counterterrorism fight over long periods and also in multiple conflicts zones.

Another observation is the remarkable evolution of military and intelligence integration. It changed those organizations, transformed the CT battlefield, and led to many of our greatest successes. But it is important to point out that large-scale military interventions and targeted killings have been necessary, but not sufficient. Counterterrorism has bought us time and space, reduced terrorist capabilities, but hasn't eliminated terrorism.

We've had to simultaneously deal with three types of terrorist threat trajectory--emerging, resurgence, and sustained.

Emerging: In 2003, we were quickly forced to deal with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his lead role in furthering the insurgency in Iraq. In 2009, Nasir al-Wuhayshi combined the Saudi and Yemeni branches of al-Qa'ida into al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate that would pose the greatest threat to the U.S. homeland over the next few years.

Resurgence: [The] predecessor to ISIS in Iraq and Syria resurgence post the U.S. military withdrawal in 2011 was followed by [the] caliphate declaration three years later amidst the arrival of tens of thousands of foreign terrorist fighters, [and fast forward to 2022,] we're now in a period [where] we have to look at another potential resurgence there. And in the West, racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists [REMVEs] have increased attacks, particularly since 2018.

Sustained: [The] threat that we have been dealing with, in some cases over four decades, includes a variety of groups, but I'll just focus on some of the key ones: Haqqani network, Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism, Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi militants, and ISIS' global enterprise and the al-Qa'ida affiliates.

A third observation is that this concept of shifting from a U.S.-led, partner-enabled CT approach--in some areas, but not others--to a partner-led, U.S.-enabled approach is an important risk calculus change. It's one that will put more emphasis on our indications and warning capabilities of emerging threats to U.S. interests, both overseas and here in the United States. Strategic analysis has been at a premium over the last two decades, and it'll take on an even more important role in this type of CT construct in assessing when a local or regional fight [by terrorist actors] has taken on a greater emphasis focused on U.S. targets and transnational plotting.

CTC: You have seen and experienced much, as you've outlined, over the course of your career, with many positions across several administrations. When it comes to terrorism, what would you say has been the most difficult moment, and conversely, what is the moment perhaps that you are proudest of during the course of your career?

Blake: 9/11 was the most difficult moment. I was serving in the Pentagon as DIA's Terrorism Warning Division Current Intelligence Chief. I [and my colleagues] carry the heavy burden of having terrorists fly a plane into our building and kill 184 unsuspecting souls, not to mention the horror in lower Manhattan and the heroism by the passengers on the flight that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. That's the ultimate mission failure and one that still haunts and motivates me to this day.

The proudest moments--and for me, they're not just moments-was the work of our global CT enterprise to decimate al-Qa'ida's leadership after 9/11 and then degrade ISIS core after it declared the caliphate in 2014. And any small contribution that I made to those CT successes were career highlights.

CTC: You played a key role at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). How would you characterize the evolution of NCTC?

Blake: I was there at the start up in 2004, so I've been able to see the Center mature from the inside and as a customer when I was down at the NSC in 2012 and 2013, and then as a collaborator while I was at the National Intelligence Council. As a startup, NCTC was challenged by the high-threat environment in which it immediately found itself in, but the fact that we were able to bring together people from multiple...