Washington ? In the waning days of its legislative session and with much arm-twisting, Congress has finally adopted an intelligence reform bill, and President Bush signed it Friday. But even though the bill may seem to address a variety of concerns raised by the 9-11 commission, it still ignores a central failure of intelligence highlighted by the commission report: the failure of imagination.

Failure of imagination? What did the intelligence community fail to imagine? Simply put — the reality of the post-Cold War world.

Prior to the terrorist attacks on that September day, the intelligence community had not yet adopted a mindset appropriate to the new threat. Despite numerous terrorist attacks against U.S. targets in the 1990s — the first World Trade Center bombing, the embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, the bombing of the USS Cole, to name a few — neither analysts nor policy makers had fully grasped the nature of the terrorist network.

Their pre-9-11 mindset prevented them from distilling the real threat from the multitude of intelligence “noise” in the system. Even though, as George Tenet noted, the “system was blinking red” in the summer of 2001, analysts were unable to connect the “thundercloud to the ground” because the existing institutional mindset prevented them from placing the raw intelligence in the broader security context.

The problem with the newly adopted bill is that it seeks to replace the old mindset with another mindset instead of opening up the intelligence process to creative imagining. The new legislation will lead to a massive restructuring of the intelligence community to fight the global war on terror (GWOT). Yet even if this reorganization were to work, and the intelligence community were galvanized against the GWOT, the problem of analytic tunnel vision would still exist because the community would be oriented toward fighting “terrorism” rather than addressing a broader range of security threats. Preventing another 9-11 is critical, but so is keeping a pulse on emerging or rising threats. Will we miss the signs of a future catastrophe by shifting our institutional mindset toward a catastrophe of the past?

In grappling with this lack of imagination, the 9-11 commission conceded that “imagination is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies.” Thus, changes such as moving boxes on an organizational chart or reassigning budgetary authority will not in and of themselves instill the intelligence community with a new sense of imagination. But what will?

While institutionalizing imagination is difficult, the new national intelligence director and the heads of the respective agencies must set the tone for creative imagining by reconceptualizing the hiring, training and managing of the members of the intelligence community.

First, the intelligence agencies must hire different types of people. In the past they have tended to hire analysts who have a great deal of expertise is a specific region of the world or functional area, such as non-proliferation or transnational crime. While it is necessary to have people with high levels of specialized knowledge, it is also important to imbue the intelligence process with generalists who can see the big picture. These people can often provide a fresh set of eyes that can serve as an antidote to a parochial mindset.

Second, once these individuals have been hired, they need to be trained to question the conventional wisdom, to play devil’s advocate, and to explore even the remotest of threats. Analysts should be encouraged to engage in thought experiments that have them thinking like terrorists and other potential enemies. They should be trained like actors who prepare for their role by getting into the mind of their character.

Third, all this new talent will go to waste without proper leadership.

From the director on down the chain of command, all leaders in the intelligence community must welcome divergent viewpoints. They should intentionally task analysts to present competing assessments with a view toward engaging all possible scenarios. And they should encourage free and open debate on those scenarios.

Properly undertaken, these three steps will help bring a new level of imagination to the intelligence community. While changing formal structures might satisfy the perceived need to “do something” about intelligence, unless the mindset is changed, new structures will be nothing but hollow boxes.

Anthony Clark Arend is professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University. Sarah E. Kreps is a military officer assigned to the National Reconnaissance Office and a doctoral candidate in international relations at Georgetown University.