On Feb. 2, six top intelligence officials told a Congressional committee that they believed that the United States would be attacked by terrorists "for certain" within the next three to six months. The intelligence leaders were unanimous. They all agreed on the certainty of that attack.
If we know it is going to happen how prepared are we to deal with the consequences of that attack?
Our governmental response to the August 2005 Hurricane Katrina should be studied and lessons obtained. So, too, can we look at the earthquake destruction and Haiti's government feeble response.
I suspect the terrorists may not use airplanes as in the failed Christmas Day attack. Our cities have many targets such as water supply, electricity grids, bridges, tunnels and rapid transit subway systems. Anthrax or other toxic chemicals might be used in the attack.
It is possible that the Super Bowl might someday be a target that would grab the attention of the entire world. Of course security will be tight, but remember that the Christmas Day would be suicide bomber passed through two checkpoints without detection.
I hope Homeland Security is planning a variety of responses after studying Katrina and Haiti.
Obviously we need a central command center to assess the extent of any damage caused by the attack. That center should also be able to call up relief workers. It should have well-planned communications facilities so that we can help each other in the initial and long term rescue efforts.
If the attack catches us by surprise with countless citizens killed we must guard against panic or hysteria, which is what the terrorists desire.
We tend to fear terrorists slipping into our country undetected. However it is likely that al-Qaida is trying to recruit from within and then use U.S. citizens to attack us so they do not have to be examined at checkpoints required of foreigners applying for visas to visit the US.
Targets might well be citizens who are unemployed, swamped with debts and housing foreclosures and the large criminal population of our many jails.
We need a smoothly-efficient intelligence network to help us avoid the most serious consequences of this certain attack.
Intelligence comes from many sources, in many different forms. Open intelligence comes from public sources such as newspapers, journals TV and press releases.
HUMINT is intelligence produced by spies on the ground. The Middle East is difficult because we have so few Arabic speakers and we often lack cultural knowledge that is necessary for one of our James Bond types to try to penetrate an al-Qaida cell, for example.
PHOTINT is photographic information obtained from spy planes like the U-2 and satellites that fly over a target and take pictures. The Cuban Missile crisis began with analysis of the pictures taken by Lt. Anderson in his U-2 that clearly showed the beginning of Soviet missiles being installed in Cuba.
Misinformation is incorrect and the result of human error. The Bay of Pigs invasion planned to have two groups landing on the southern side of Cuba. The first group landed as planned. However, when the second group tried to land on its assigned beach, the soldiers could not get ashore because many reefs in the water prevented the second group from landing because of our mistake thinking the water was clear of any obstructions.
Disinformation is phony information based on a lie. It is deliberate misleading an enemy. Sometimes disinformation has a little truth in it to make a target country or group accept all the disinformation as true.
A good example of disinformation was Operation Mincemeat run by the British during World War II. When Allied forces defeated the Germans in North Africa, we planned to invade Italy. But we chose Sicily as stepping stone.
The British took a dead body from a morgue and dressed it in clothing appropriate for a top secret agent. The body carried a briefcase with coded messages that the Allies were planning to invade Dodecanese and Sardinia islands. The codes were some that we knew the Germans had broken. The British dumped the body in waters off of Spain, and fooled Hitler into believing that Sicily was not going to be invaded.
The story was described in a book entitled "The Man Who Never Was" by Ewan Montague. A movie with Clifton Webb was made based on that book.
I hope we have a smooth flow of intelligence reports, and that our leaders do what is necessary to make any attack on us here in America have as small impact as possible, so that cool heads prevail over hot heads.
Tom Nichols is a retired college professor who lives in Gainesville. His column appears regularly on Mondays and on gainesvilletimes.com.