RESPONDING TO SURPRISE

This essay explores governmental and scholarly responses to the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Both events caught intelligence analysts, military officers, and elected officials by surprise. This essay describes the differences between the two events, especially in the ways official inquiries have helped shape our understanding of why the surprise occurred. Before both events, data suggesting that attacks were possible or even probable were available within the “intelligence pipeline.” The essay focuses on how scholars and official investigations reported and explained that finding. It also identifies continuities between the investigations that followed the Japanese and al Qaeda attacks on the United States.