The Trauma of 9/11: 2001–2002
John Helgerson’s tenure began just six weeks before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The terrorist threat had been the subject of major analyses produced during John Gannon’s tenure; it became the overwhelming priority after 9/11. Helgerson describes the early responses as well as the longer-term analyses of the evolving terrorist threat and the new landscape of counterterrorist cooperation with traditional allies and former adversaries alike. The US intervention in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime gave way to a new focus on Iraq. The ostensible rationale for the invasion of Iraq was a controversial national intelligence estimate on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Although the NIE was published in the interval between Helgerson’s tenure and his successor’s, the chapter assesses the estimate and the decision to go to war in Iraq through the analysis of National Intelligence Officer Paul Pillar, who straddled both tenures.