Cheers All,
Having stumbled upon this site a little while back I've been reading the threads with great interest, but this one in particular stood out as I reflect upon my own experience and observations.

A little background on yours truly. I currently work in ICE, within DHS, as part of a multi-agency "Task Force", for want of a better term, primarily in the counternarcotics/human trafficking/CT fields, doing case coordination/deconfliction between agencies and analysis of TIII information. I've only been working in the LE field since 1998 (back when ICE was US Customs), previous to that I was in the Army since the mid-80s (with all the appropriate campaign ribbons and deployments etc). Although it's going on nearly a decade, I find my mindset still revolves around military terms and methodology (for better or worse).

This is the context that I place the title of my post in. For all that the LE community has a large number (not absolute and no numbers on specific ratios) of current/prior service personnel, I find that at least one thing has not been carried over from our collective time in uniform. Purple. In military terms, purple is more than a color, it's a mindset, backed by doctrine and continuous review of practices. Surely Joint Operations has come along way since the Goldwaters-Nochols Act of '86. It's execution is not perfect by any means, and there remains, even at this date two decades later, plenty of inter-service rivalries/redundencies which need to be addressed. But the US Military of the 21st Century is far and above a more cohesive fighting machine than the one I was a part of when my unit moved out to the GDP in West Germany (when there was a West Germany). Or even when, a few years later, we hit the big sandbox in Saudi Arabia and crossed into Iraq the first time. By the time I made it to Sarajevo with IFOR, Joint Operations had probably gone from a grudging exception to something a little more approaching the norm. And it continues to this day.

Faced with a glaring inability to operate together and several operational failures/almost failures (Desert One, Grenada, etc), some members of Congress, at least (one of the few times that political body has done anything worthwhile some would say), recognized the fact that confronted with an enemy that numerically outmatches us, and in some cases technologically as well, our only recourse in order to win when fighting against such a foe would be to fight harder, faster, and smarter than what the enemy was capable of responding to. We could no longer afford to allow the interservice rivalries and self hindering practices we indulged ourselves with to get in the way of the most fundamental aspect of military operations: finding and destroying the enemy.

Sure, as I've said, there always remains room for improvement. But noone even questions the existance of Joint Operations nor the basic principles involved in it's Doctrine, even if debate occurs regarding it's execution.

In a few short monthes it will be 6 years since 9/11. That one day provided the impetus for the LE community to undergo the same shift in focus and practice that the Military underwent after Desert One and Grenada. Yes, the Department of Homeland Security was created to bring all the disparate LE agencies which should have been working together beforehand under one roof and central direction. But creating a new department and org charts alone does not create "jointness". In the military context at least, which is the lens through which I still judge effectiveness.

We still wrangle over enforcement jurisdiction and keep investigative information from each other. There is constant in-fighting over case information disclosure and operational details that should be shared between impacted departments, determining who is going to "lead" the investigation, and so on. And this is in a unit that, I have to admit, is actually one that's better than most at "sharing" information. If anything it's exactly what the unit was created to address.

So the question is why, after all this time, is the concept of Joint Operations still foreign to LE? I have my own ideas about that and what to do about it but I'd ask the readers of the forum what they think about the idea/issue.

For all that Intelligence needed a reform after the events of 9/11, I would forward that Intelligence Reform will be ineffective without basic LE Reform. That LE Intelligence Operations will never reach their full potential for effectiveness until LE itself has undergone a sea change.

Sorry for the long and drawn out rant but any thoughts?