As we mark the anniversary of 9/11, it's worth reviewing how quickly the U.S. has closed intelligence gaps in the past and how far we have to go today. In a similar period after the Nazis started World War II, the U.S. broke the German communications code, invented radar, and developed and dropped the nuclear bomb. The war to gain the information upper hand over terrorists is taking longer -- perhaps too long.

Ironically, the government's last great innovation in information technology was the network that became the Internet. The Web has revolutionized civilian life, but not so for the intelligence agencies. Still plagued by old-fashioned giant IT projects, government intelligence agencies stockpile silos of unshared data in a large bureaucratic structure more suited to a predigital era.

National security should benefit more than it does from the country's technological genius, but Silicon Valley and Washington are opposite cultures. In one, the creative destruction of competition is the norm. In 2001, for example, digital leaders included Netscape, Excite and AltaVista where now Google and others dominate. In Washington, permanent bureaucracies are the rule, with new layers added in the name of reform. Venture capitalists back innovations through small technology teams. Washington has built a massive, unwieldy intelligence structure.

This is dangerous because successful intelligence requires great craft in gathering accurate information, then smartly connecting the dots. Recall that law-enforcement authorities had information that would have stopped most of the 9/11 hijackers if only known information about them -- their flight schools, travel documents and dubious wire payments from the Mideast -- had been shared and analyzed. Imagination needed to be applied to these facts, including that civilian airplanes could be turned into weapons.

We do know that many plots have been uncovered and stopped. What we don't know remains a huge risk. London and Madrid have had their versions of 9/11, and other plots have come close. Britain stopped a plot to blow up passenger airplanes flying to the U.S.; the FBI arrested al Qaeda supporters planning to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J.; and German authorities arrested suspected Islamic Jihad Union members planning to attack U.S. military facilities in Germany.

The New York City Police Department alone cites a dozen serious plots against the city since 9/11. Publicized ones include a planned cyanide attack on the subway by al Qaeda operatives; a separate al Qaeda plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge; a plan to blow up the midtown subway station at Herald Square; and a plot to bomb underwater train tunnels to flood lower Manhattan.

The good news is that dots are being identified better than before 9/11. Attorney General Michael Mukasey plans to issue new guidelines next month so FBI agents can use the same investigative tools to stop terror plots that they use for criminal probes. A $90 million project is under way for massive surveillance of New York City's financial district, with closed-circuit cameras throughout the area and license-plate monitors to tag suspicious vehicles.

How well these dots are being connected is less clear. Post-9/11 legal reforms now permit FBI agents to search Google and other commercial sites. Yet less than one-third of the FBI's national security branch agents and analysts have Internet access at their desks. A $500 million technology project to update the software to access the terrorist watch list of some one million names doesn't reliably track Arabic names when translated into English. It also doesn't allow basic search terms such as "and" and "or."

Government intelligence has been reorganized into the massive bureaucracy at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In contrast, countries such as Britain and Israel have structures that encourage information sharing while also ensuring competitive analysis of what the gathered intelligence really means.

Given how commercial innovation is outpacing government, it's likelier that you'll see a targeted, online advertisement for a flight to Orlando just when you're ready to go, long before smart algorithms mining classified data will alert intelligence authorities to connections among suspicious characters. The intelligence community should be challenged at least to become a fast follower of innovation.

Remembering 9/11 means remembering the losses of that day, but it also means remembering what went wrong to allow it to happen. No intelligence system can work all the time, but the government still has a lot to learn from Silicon Valley about how information flows best and how technology can help turn facts into knowledge. A war based on information should be a war fought on our terms, if we can become more intelligent about intelligence.

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