The long-awaited CIA Inspector General’s report on the failues that led to 9/11 has been released, or at least its redacted executive summary was published this afternoon. The report puts the blame for the agency’s lack of preparation squarely on George Tenet, arguing that although he defined the danger facing the US from al-Qaeda, he failed to organize the CIA to effectively fight it:
Former CIA Director George Tenet did not marshal his agency’s resources to respond to the recognized threat posed by al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency’s inspector general concluded in a long-classified report released today.
The report, which Congress ordered released under a law signed by President Bush this month, also faulted the intelligence community for failing to have “a documented, comprehensive approach” to battling al-Qaeda.
Tenet, now a professor at Georgetown University, heavily criticized the report as “flat wrong” in a lengthy statement, saying the judgments are contradicted by a report issued by the agency watchdog just a month before the 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. CIA Director Michael Hayden also said he did not want to release the report, saying it “would distract officers serving their country on the front lines of a global conflict. It will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed.”
A 19-page executive summary of the report, completed in June 2005, said it could not find a “single point of failure nor a silver bullet” that would have prevented the attacks, but went on to fault the senior management of the CIA for failing to deal with the al-Qaeda threat. “The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner,” a team led by CIA inspector general John Helgerson found.
The executive summary itself is a bit of a muddle. It argues that failures occurred in strategic planning, partly because the CIA got too immersed in tactics and operations. The Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) had the mission of providing leadership on all levels to the fight against al-Qaeda, but focused almost exclusively on what corporations call “firefighting” — being in a reactive mode rather than developing a long-term strategy. This led to a string of operational successes but no coordinated strategy to end the threat altogether.
This might explain why the incoming Bush administration wanted to take a time out to think strategically. Some may recall that George Bush and Condoleezza Rice have come under enormous criticism for pulling back operationally and quit engaging in “tit for tat” responses to AQ and Osama bin Laden. On page 202 of the 9/11 Commission report, it details that decision to forego limited operations and put more effort into an overall strategy — “Hadley said that in the end, the administration’s real response to the Cole would be a new, more aggressive strategy against al Qaeda.”
Rather than criticize the administration for that decision, the IG criticizes Tenet for failing to do this earlier. It was only at the point when Bush took office that Tenet finally moved to create an strategy group in the Assessments and Information Group (AIG). It didn’t get created until July 2001, by which time it had missed most of the warning signs of the attack.
Tenet has often complained that counterterrorism funding didn’t give the CIA enough resources to do the job. The IG doesn’t necessarily deny that, but it points out that Tenet transferred significant funds away from CT operations and planning for non-CT purposes. Even after Tenet told the CIA in 1998 that he wanted no resources spared for CT, funds never got transferred from other priorities to CT. The CTC also left money on the table unspent, which indicates that funding wasn’t a big problem at the time.
However, the workload was a big problem. The IG reports that CTC personnel were overworked and underresourced, but also inexperienced and untrained. They missed connections between the 9/11 plotters that they should have caught. Worse, the CTC management team interfered with communications between the task forces working on the various areas of terrorist intel. The lack of communication applies not just to interagency efforts but also inside the CIA itself. In one paragraph, the IG concludes that “there was no coherent, functioning watchlisting program” in the CTC.
One more point seems very damning. Despite Tenet’s claims that he had sounded the alarm on Osama bin Laden, the CIA hadn’t produced a comprehensive report focusing on bin Laden since 1993. Osama and AQ conducted a number of attacks on American assets around the world over the next eight years prior to 9/11, and yet they never revisited their analysis of bin Laden after the first World Trade Center attack.
Tenet has to take responsibility for these failures, although he’s doing his best to duck them today. He claims that the IG’s information contradicts earlier findings, and that the CIA did the best they could with the available resources. The IG emphasizes that the failures it found were not intentional, but were serious enough to create the gap that allowed the attack to succeed. That much seems rather obvious — and Tenet ran the agency for four years prior to the attacks.
UPDATE: Is it fair to paint this report as evidence that the fault for our unpreparedness belongs to the Clinton administration? I’d say that it’s not healthy to think along these lines. It’s better to leave the partisan sniping aside and have everyone learn the lessons than it is to turn this to partisan advantage. Tenet ran the CIA, and he’s responsible for its performance. Bill Clinton appointed him, and George Bush kept him on the job.
I would say that it’s fair to point out that passages such as “No comprehensive report focusing on bin Laden was written after 1993,” and “no comprehensive report laying out the threats of 2001 was assembled” put lie to the assertions by Clinton-era national-security officials that they handed the Bush administration a turn-key strategy to deal with al-Qaeda. The IG’s report clearly shows that no such strategy existed — which is why Bush insisted on developing one.
Oh, great. Tenet will now have to write and publish yet another book to refute all of this.
I suppose like most agencies, the CIA likes to do the things they’re good at, and doesn’t like to do what they’re rotten at. They were good at analyzing satellite photos and other raw data, but were rotten at finding small roving al-Qaeda cells. To find al-Qaeda (the most important ones) you almost have to join the group, or turn someone who joined the group. It probably takes years to do.
Clinton-Appointed CIA Chief Failed To Protect US
Remember — at the time 9/11 happened, George Bush had been President of the United States for less than 8 months — George Tenet had been CIA director for over 4 years, having been appointed by Bill Clinton. The former…
There is nothing easier than Monday morning quarterbacking. Every call is the right one, and no pass is ever intercepted.
Pointing fingers is easy. Let’s forgive it of those who actually were warning of al Qaeda and its ability to hit the homeland. These were few, and often they were doing so (at least those in CIA) to cover themselves in case of an attack. The rest should really just button it.
Remember that al Qaeda had tried once, with the WTC attack in 1993, and again with the Millennium Bomber, both of which were not successful in their goals. Many other attacks had succeeded, always on overseas targets. Who can really blame the CIA for taking the approach they did – except, of course, with perfect hindsight?
Among Israeli officials, Tenet was referred to as a “grease ball.”
And, ya know what? IF he had been “efficient,” Bush would not have run into the problems of kicking Irak into the Saudi’s camp.
It’s what they wanted.
True, their goals are “elastic.” Since they refuse to do anythning else with their wealth.
But, let’s say, you’re talking about the USA. A tolerant country, if ever there was one. You think if you were an arab businessman, doing business in an American city, where your customers didn’t depend on other muslims … you think you’d still have a healthy bottom line?
I think customers who are not muslims, have snapped their purses shut.
And, in spite of all the money the Saud’s pour into advertising; I see fewer women toodling about all “bagged up” in veils. Check it out. Look around you.
Because that’s how changes occur. Of course, many years later, when you “go back to the old neighborhood,” nothing looks the same.
And, Tenet being an incompetent, he was also running an agency high on understanding the political winds, and very short on talent.
Lucky for us, it’s only the CIA that’s “busted.” They couldn’t do what could’a been done in despotic countries. Where popularity doesn’t count at all.
Tenet was a hack, pure and simple. Bush’s mistake was keeping him on.
As for Clinton, one high ranking CIA official during the Clinton years said that Clinton had only met with him something like twice in over 2 years. That must be the “hands-off” managerial approach…
Captain,
I answered the question you raised about my view about the information in the OIG report (you linked to it under UPDATE).
“Welcome readers from Captain’s Quarters – to answer the Captain’s question, I believe that it is entirely appropriate to use this information for partisan advantage. It is not to BLAME the Clinton Administration or any specific person for 9/11 other than the terrorists and al Qaeda. However, the Democrats used the 9/11 Commission to hoist blame for 9/11 upon the Bush administration and will do so when we are attacked again. We cannot allow the Democrats to fool the American people into thinking they had a “better way” under the Clinton Administration.”
I haven’t forgotten what life was like on 9/10/01 and before that and while I don’t know if the CIA could or should have done more or done it better, I do know that no one in this country really took the AQ threat all that seriously. Yes, there were attacks and many people died in some of them but they were always overseas or against military targets (the Cole and I think Khobar Towers housed military personnel, could be wrong about that) and while that didn’t make them any less horrific, it did make the threat seem somewhat remote or manageable, because it was “over there somewhere”.
So I have never faulted anyone in our government, in either the Clinton or Bush administration, for lacking the will or the vision or the commitment to take AQ as seriously as we all should have. We aren’t even in agreement now in this country about how seriously the AQ threat is on our own shores. And that’s after 3000 people have been killed right here at the hands of Islamic terrorists.
Cap’n,
And yet, there has to be an asterix here, as we will never truly know how much the previous administration knew, or when, or how they reacted to it, thanks to Sandy Berger.
That man removed documents from the archives and destroyed them. He deliberatly removed a part of the historical record that, for good or bad, we the people deserved to know about.
As a historian, I am appalled that so little press is given to what that man did. He deliberatley altered, through omission, a part of our nations hisotry that we can never recover. Even if he came out and said what those documents pertained to, what information they contained, we could never really be certain without having the originals to refer to.
For all the reports written about who knew what and when, and what was done by whom to who, etc, there will always be an asterix appened to them because of the actions of that one man.
Respects,
Words of wisdom from Bennett:
So I have never faulted anyone in our government, in either the Clinton or Bush administration, for lacking the will or the vision or the commitment to take AQ as seriously as we all should have.
I loathe Bill Clinton. I think he was perhaps the most selfish, self-absorbed bastard to ever occupy the White House. That being said, I think he would have moved heaven and earth to get bin Laden had he known what that SOB was planning. I think Bush would have done the same. I don’t blame either one of them for 9-11. The fact of the matter is that the entire country, from the White House on down, got caught with its pants down on 9-11. We all foolishly assumed that the only serious threat posed by terrorists to our country was overseas, that our intelligence was good enough to catch any group crazy enough to try to attack us here, and that (somehow) Jack Bauer would save the day.
We were ALL wrong.
I fear that this report, like all the others that have been published since 9-11, will become part of more political gotcha games. That’s not what we need. Mistakes were made prior to 9-11: we need to identify them, learn from them, and try not to repeat them. If Tenent made mistakes… well, he’s only human. If he was the wrong man for the job, then the president (ANY president) and the Senate need to start thinking about how to identify the RIGHT man for the job so we’ve always got a smart, savvy, steady hand at the wheel at CIA.
The IG report ought to be merciless. But, it would be hugely unfair to condemn the agency on that basis. The report is supposed to be written after exhaustive study, with plenty of time to analyze the agency’s action in light of everything else we know now.
Two words:
Sandy Berger
And, to add to your comment, Ann, how about those who gave Sandy Berg(l)er “that slap on the wrist?”
Seems DC isn’t a very serious town.
And, Obama, by the way, isn’t a very serious candidate, either. But it IS Bonkey-Town!
In regard to the Clinton Administration, it paints a slightly different picture than was put forth to the 9/11 Commission.
The Joint Inquiry charged that US policymakers had wanted Usama Bin Ladin killed as early as August 1998 and believed CIA personnel understood that. However, the government had not removed the ban on assassination and did not provide clear direction or authorization for CIA to kill Bin Ladin or make covert attacks against al-Qa’ida The JI said that the CIA was reluctant to seek authority to assassinate Bin Ladin and averse to taking advantage of ambiguities in the authorities it did receive that might have allowed it more flexibility. page xxi
CIA Report Slams Tenet
Ed Morrissey writes:Is it fair to paint this report as evidence that the fault for our unpreparedness belongs to the Clinton administration? I’d say that it’s not healthy to think along these lines. It’s better to leave the partisan sniping…
Funny how most of the report seems to back up the contentions laid out in the TV movie “Road to 9/11”.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482585/
I’m sure Berger’s slap on the wrist has to do with someone from one side reminding the people on the other side that they have the contents of some 900 or so FBI files that are in the files of of a certain political candidate that shall remain unmentioned.
Otherwise, Sandy would have the legal book thrown at him.
Tenet is an “insider’s story” kind’a guy. Someone who figured out how to stay on top of a cesspool. Within the dirty pond of DC politics.
He was, for about 8 years, just “acting” as the head of the CIA. As others got shredded within the political system.
You know. Like happens to judges. They’re nominated. And, then the likes of Leaky Leahy “lose the paperwork in committee.”
Now, by comparison, I’d like to mention: KARL ROVE.
Back in 1968, in all that “tummult,” LBJ exits the White House, actually a defeated man. He goes back to Texas, where he, and the democrapic party, were INSTALLED.
Meanwhile, young, and without a college degree, Karl Rove (who is, in fact, a detail genius when it comes to “helping” individuals win competitive races) MOVES TO TEXAS! And, “somehow,” he’s able to change the state.
Of course, the “elder Bush” (whose dad was a senator from Maine, so it’s a strong political family, over there. Should I mention that the elder Bush is married to Barbara, whose family connections go back to President Franklin Pierce?) Most Americans don’t know all that much about our own “aristocratic families.” But we have them.
Anyway, The “senior” George had very strong political ambitions. (He also brought in James Baker. Another dude with the skills of “climbing to the top.” And, building a fortune, in the process.)
“Learning to work the street.” Not just code for prostitution, anymore. Not when you see how far some people actually got!
I guess we’ll have to wait for the Rove biography, to get all of the details.
But somehow, for Texas, the time ripened opportunities for the republicans, because they traded places with LBJ’s democrats. (Except for Austin. “Moscow on the Pedernales” or however they say it “down there.”)
What Rove did for republican politics got people elected. So he came to DC with this reputaton.
I happen to notice that changes aren’t overnight.
Though its hard to imagine DC ever becoming a republican town!
What happens next, in 2008, will become very, very interesting. The Bonkeys are the clowns who want their circus back.
Seems, if you’ve been to Lucianne today, you’ve seen that Putin ALSO wants his circus back!
Well, it takes chutzpah to spread that kind of larceny.
Up ahead? YOu’re more than welcome to guess. We all do. Because no one gets to spot the future, before it actually happens.
But if I had to guess? The Bonkeys are headed out on the same road that took out vaudeville.
How did vaudeville fail? It wasn’t because the talent wasn’t there, willing to travel anywhere, with their suitcase containing clean underwear. It was the AUDIENCES. They stopped.
Just like that! People STOPPED going.
And, you don’t think change happens? The 20th Century is littered with changes.
And, then? 9/11 happened because the Saud’s paid for it! They got us all by surprise! Even George Tenet didn’t know what hit him.
And, the Bonkeys still seem to prefer to remain in the dark. If you went back to 1860? You’d notice the trend line.
How on earth did Tenet keep his job?
You can argue about hindsight all you want, but it was Tenet (and Clarke)’s job to see the future dangers facing this country and they failed completely.
Clinton era polices made that job much more difficult but were no excuse in the end.
Of course one can’t but wonder what was in the documents Sandy Berger destroyed. Such activity could have drawn a life sentence in prison and must have been done to hide something damning. Something worse even then Clinton’s known refusal to take Osama bin Laden from the Sudanese in the 90s…
Glad to see somebody already has mentioned Sandy Burglar.
It’s too easy to blame only Tenet. The Clintoons had plenty of cronies to irritate or facilitate our nation’s enemies. Whether Mad Halfbright wearing pants suits to Arab conferences to Hazel O’Leary easing security clearances to Tenet’s predecessor John “Porno surfing on my black-level national security files laptop” Deutsch, to SECDEF Richard “high living” Cohen the Clinton administrative clown car enabled the 9/11 perps to prepare their deeds in a casual, relaxed, diverse fashion.
I have a hard time with “we were all wrong” or that there wasn’t a “a silver bullet.” I’m not sure where you go with such sentiment. Should we just continue to fund extremely expensive, dysfunctional bureaucracies and hope for the best? The 9/11 report spends a bit of time relating the attempt to rig a predator with hellfire missiles to go after UBL. Senior management were clearly aware of the threat posed by al Qaeda. They simply lacked the managerial and organizational wherewithal to do anything. The debate about arming of the predator was likely a distraction. There were any number of actions the CIA could have taken to head off 9/11. The people who attacked us on 9/11 were far from invincible, sophisticated secret agents — they were hateful men with box cutters! We didn’t need a silver bullet. Communication of the threat and small increases in security might have headed off the attack. The IG report shows that 50-60 people within the CIA knew that two of the hijackers had entered the country. So the CIA was serious enough about fighting al-Qaeda that it was dreaming up ways to use drone aircraft as missile platforms, but not so serious that it worried about having the FBI roundup the al-Qaeda associates it knew were in the country. This is simply mis-management. Goss’ and Hayden’s refusal to impose any accountability tells me were in for more of the same. We’ll spend twice as much ($60-$80 billion on intelligence?) and still get broadsided by a new attack.
Correction on you stream of consciousness, Carol:
Of course, the “elder Bush” (whose dad was a senator from Maine, so it’s a strong political family, over there.
Prescott Bush, the father of George the elder and grandfather of George the younger, was Senator from Connecticut. The vacation house was and is in Maine, however.
One thing to remember is that in addition to cutting back the military as part of the “peace dividend” the Clinton Administration cut the CIA by 30% and ruined the HUMIT by requiring that only the ethically pure could be recruited as sources.
The CIA knew that two of the 9-11 terrorist had traveled to the U.S. and didn’t tell anyone, ‘according to the report’. Politics is still at play. The CIA could not tell the FBI without breaking the laws laid down by the (Clinton’s) Gorlick Wall, a Shrillary pet put in the job for that purpose only. We still only get the part of the story that doesn’t show that the Clinton’s were knee deep in covering up the fact the knew more about the planned attack than we can ever find out. I agree, Socks Berger should face treason charges for destroying documents that would show which Clinton was responsible.
Ed — Your report certainly subtracts substantially from the likelihood that the TIME Magazine article, a SPECIAL REPORT no less, of August 4, 2002, is accurate.
Just from reading the article, They Had a Plan, it’s apparent that the sourcing was Clarke and Berger, describing their blameless handoff to the Bush folks. The question that springs from the CIA report is “Whose plan were they bragging about to the TIME reporter?” More importantly, on what was it built, given that the CIA hadn’t done a serious update in years?
The Clinton administration didn’t do anything, and they lied in 1992 when they leaked about it.
Note that Secretary Rice denied any meeting with Berger.
Good job.
Ah, Gringo Tex, THANK YOU! Great catch!
Anyway, I have enough troubles referring to #41 & #43, without the gibble of “senior and junior.” Because Prescott Bush, as you said, was the senator from Connecticut. Politics runs in the blood now in some American famlies.
For others? It’s finding a toe-hold on the rope, trying to get elected.
#41 also kept building his dynasty. Got in there with Nixon. And, didn’t leave. Also got to the CIA! Where he learned a lot about the “internal mechanisms” used by our “operatives.” It’s amazing that he kept his nose clean. But we should give the guy credit! Because he did!
As to George Tenet “being Clinton’s fella,” this is true. But #41 gave his son the “blessing” that Tenet “could be trusted.”
The shadings we don’t know about? Deal with the Saud’s.
And, I only hope we can keep Irak out of their hands. And, then syria, out of their hands!
What with Maliki up to some strange new game, too. Per DEBKA. (A routing of Iraqi oil thru pipelines, to exit in Tripoli.) This was KNOCKED OUT in 1967.
And, Maliki has entrenched friendships in both Damascus and Tehran.
But nothing is ever as it seems to be, when you’re playing with the arabs.
CIA report “Slam Dunks” George Tenant
The long awaited CIA report is out and wastes no time in pinning George Tenant and his lack of leadership.
“Former central intelligence director George J. Tenet and his top lieutenants failed to marshal sufficient resources and provide the strate…
Is it still Clinton’s fault?
BDS and CDS. Same coin, two sides.
Rowan Scarborough’s new book..SABOTAGE is a great read and tells you all you want to know about Tenet and the CIA. He basically explains how dysfunctional the whole agency was before and after 9/11 !!
If it wasn’t for Rumsfeld and the DIA …that circumvented the CIA by creating their own intelligence ….we would be still sitting on our hands ….in fear of the next attack !!
How could this country ever consider putting another Clinton back in the WH ….is beyond me !!
I am a firm believer that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld will be appreciated and thought of as HEROES …..when the whole TRUTH becomes known …how they kept us safe after 9/11 !!
WGirl, thanks for posting that. I went to Amazon and just ordered the book. Among the “comments” at Amazon, for Rowan Scarborough’s book, is one registered with me. The person wrote that the CIA is a leftist organization, just like academia.
If Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld had not worked around this problem, we’d still be sitting on our hands waiting for solutions.
The most interesting point that I noted related to a clash between NSC and CIA. The report states that there were clashes over authority between the National Security Council and CIA that were not resolced unitl well into 2001. Gee, who was in charge of Terrorism at NSC, Richard Clark, and these problems weren’t solved until Bush demoted him.
Carol, the reason Israeli officials called Tenet “grease ball” was because he threatened to resign if Clinton released Jonathon Pollard at Netanyahu’ behest at Wye.
Tenet was a family friend and gave me his CV back in the mid-90s while he was Senate Intell Cte Chief. He wanted to work for Amoco in Chicago and get out of DC because it was full of a**holes, in his trenchant phrase. Instead, shortly afterward he was vaulted into the NSC job, then DDCI, then DCI.
Tenet detested Sandy Berger, calling him a “trade lawyer” and a shill for the Israelis, among other choice observations. Sandy is hiding the Clinton smoking gun on BJ’s feckless efforts to get AQ. Tenet is also responsible, as is CTC under its various chiefs, including Cannistraro, who is now Larry Johnson’s pal signing letters of condemnation of Tenet.
Tenet was right. DC is full of a**holes.
Nobody blamed the Clintons for 9/11…until that is, the lefty moonbats blamed Bush for it…just ask the Shyster. He’s still babbling about Bush wearing Bergler’s mask and planting the explosives himself…
Speaking of the Bergler, I know at least two AD military folks who did time for doing less than the Bergler did…they “mishandled” classified information by accident or on purpose (laziness NOT espionage). They did time.
What did the Bergler get?
Another case of the Clintonistas RAISING the bar for what a President / politician / minion can get away with…
Of the many mistakes or “criminal” behavior conducted by the Bush team only the dwellers of the fever swamps claim that he did them SOLELY for personal gain…how gullible do you need to be to same the same thing of the Clintonistas?
Still haven’t figured out what I’ll do if the Hildabeast is elected my C in C…
Sandy Berger is guilty of a serious political crime that would have got him prison time had someone in the DOJ had half a brain. AGAG has no brain at all, and Ashcroft felt betrayed, so Sandy skated and will be Hillary’s Senior Shill somewhere when she gets made POTUS by a befuddled electorate.
CIA Blames Old Boss for Not Stopping al Qaeda in 2001?
The Washington Post reported:Former CIA Director George Tenet did not marshal his agency’s resources to respond to the recognized threat posed by al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency’s inspector general concluded in a long-classified report…
I thought Daniel Patrick Moynihan was insane when he advocated abolishing the CIA. I was wrong.
bill clinton getting a bj while on the phone discussing troop deployments in Bosnia/Kosovo is all you need to know…….
Cap’n, not sure that the admonition to not politicize the issue is going to fly. The Democrats have already politicized the issue by accusing Bush of being unprepared for 9/11. Which he was, due to 8 years of inattention to terrorism and a hack in charge of the CIA.
More importantly, the politicization of the CIA is a much larger problem than what Congresscritters or Presidential candidates may say. Tennant was a political creature, and he succeeded in the political atmosphere of the CIA. When the job of collecting intelligence was diminished by the Church committee, the Goerlick Wall, and other political roadblocks, the CIA did what was left to them, to become political.
So all those politics are now behind us, right? If only it were so. The issue has been expanded beyond the CIA, to the NSA, and to the various military intelligence offices.
I have absolutely no proof, but I think Able Danger was “closed down”, i.e., renamed, hidden and denied, because the military knew that Congress would begin to legislate against the military’s ability to gather intelligence from somewhere, since the CIA cannot be trusted. There was a lot of smoke there to be no fire.
Let’s be fair here. You can blame Clinton for the 30%, but the HUMIT problem dates back to Carter.
NTEL:
There is nothing new in this. We fund dysfunctional bureacracies all the time knowing they are dysfunctional. The alphabet agencies (CIA, NSA, etc.) are still susceptable to the same political forces that buffet Social Security Administration, FDA or any other federal office. Look at our “effort” to bulk up our cadre of native Middle Eastern language speakers. Its a failure. The bottom line is that we as a nation do not take the war on terrorism seriously. That would entail making changes regardless of the polical consequences. Its not that will there be another attack, its will it be the kind of attack that unites the country. Is that possible?
IMO, history will end up noting that our country failed to act to prevent 9/11, not only because of inaction during the Clinton presidency, but because that inaction and incompetence was extended into Bush 43 due to the initial results from the 2000 election. The whole Florida recount mess, the Florida Supreme Court clown-act versus the grown-ups at the US Supreme Court — all of that significantly delayed the transition from the Clinton Administration to the Bush Administration. Due to those delays, a lot of Clinton folks were simply permitted to stay on, and the new appointees had their opportunity to acclimate, read and analyze the threat severely impaired due to a simple, obvious problem: they had fewer days from the election until 9/11 to learn how to do their jobs.
The result was 3,000 American lives lost, quite frankly due to Al Gore recanting on his initially noble gesture of conceding. This is where the historians ought to spend their time: the emergence of Democrat hyperpartisanship as the kingmaker began then. The Daily Kos would be nothing more than a small-time nutjob site if Gore had simply said (as Nixon did in 1960) that he respected the institutions of the American electoral process and would gracuiously concede and congratulate the next President of the United States.
It is entirely possible that, with three or four more months and a lot more fresh faces in the serve-at-the-pleasure-of-the-President jobs in the Administration, the good guys (that’s * us *, remember?) might have stopped 9/11.
No guarantees, but I would bet (if I lived to be 200 or so) that a significant revisionist history book will discuss this at length, probably written in about 30 to 50 years from now.
Assuming that the U.S.A. is still around, and the First Admendment hasn’t been repealed by the political-correctness crowd or dhimmis by then … :-/
IMO, history will end up noting that our country failed to act to prevent 9/11, not only because of inaction during the Clinton presidency, but because that inaction and incompetence was extended into Bush 43 due to the initial results from the 2000 election. The whole Florida recount mess, the Florida Supreme Court clown-act versus the grown-ups at the US Supreme Court — all of that significantly delayed the transition from the Clinton Administration to the Bush Administration. Due to those delays, a lot of Clinton folks were simply permitted to stay on, and the new appointees had their opportunity to acclimate, read and analyze the threat severely impaired due to a simple, obvious problem: they had fewer days from the election until 9/11 to learn how to do their jobs.
The result was 3,000 American lives lost, quite frankly due to Al Gore recanting on his initially noble gesture of conceding. This is where the historians ought to spend their time: the emergence of Democrat hyperpartisanship as the kingmaker began then. The Daily Kos would be nothing more than a small-time nutjob site if Gore had simply said (as Nixon did in 1960) that he respected the institutions of the American electoral process and would gracuiously concede and congratulate the next President of the United States.
It is entirely possible that, with three or four more months and a lot more fresh faces in the serve-at-the-pleasure-of-the-President jobs in the Administration, the good guys (that’s * us *, remember?) might have stopped 9/11.
No guarantees, but I would bet (if I lived to be 200 or so) that a significant revisionist history book will discuss this at length, probably written in about 30 to 50 years from now.
Assuming that the U.S.A. is still around, and the First Admendment hasn’t been repealed by the political-correctness crowd or dhimmis by then … :-/
“This led to a string of operational successes but no coordinated strategy to end the threat altogether.”
How can we possibly blame an unelected bureaucracy for that? The Pentagon has developed a coordinated strategy to end the threat altogether, the Democrats are ripping it to shreds for political advantage. Coordinated strategy has to come from the very top, with a committment to fight for it. A Director who makes coordinated strategy suggestions to an unreceptive President has a very limited tenure. Prior to 2001 there wasn’t the political support for ending the threat altogether. A string of operational successes is about what could be expected and demanded of the agency, absent that Presidential strategy.
I’m with NEXTEL and Cook. We already know, for instance, what will stop another airline hijacking; but the popular resistance to real airport security is constant and unrelenting.
The CIA’s HUMINT problem can be traced to the Church Commission, not Carter, although Jimmah failed to fight the recommendations. That was just the beginning, though.
Clinton’s EO essentially forbid using anyone as a source or mole unless they could be vetted of any potential human rights abuses. Since it is impossible to conduct such a thorough vetting in secret, the EO ended the use of foreign informants and surrogates, in effect.
The entire process of ‘civilizing’ the CIA is the reason our intel on al Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, & etc. has been so sketchy.
Regarding CTC’s approach: up until 9/11, their strategy was working pretty well, given the restraints on HUMINT mentioned above. They also had no experience or guidelines to develop an “overall strategy to fight Islamic terrorists,” just the assignment. It’s bureaucracy at its worst, but CTC was the victim of that, not the perp.
NTEL said: “I have a hard time with “we were all wrong” or that there wasn’t a “a silver bullet.” I’m not sure where you go with such sentiment. Should we just continue to fund extremely expensive, dysfunctional bureaucracies and hope for the best?”
I am late coming back to this thread and probably no one’s reading it anymore (well except me obviously) but I did want to add to that my original comment, that I blame no one in the government. This is based on the idea that we, the American people, didn’t consider AQ as a threat here at home before 9/11. There was no hue and cry from us to do anything about AQ. And we can’t say it’s because we didn’t know about them, we did. They had certainly hit enough targets.
Does this matter? I think it does. Because if the American people and its elected officials weren’t raising a stink over the AQ threat, why would we think the CIA should have somehow been more visionary, more forward looking, more capable of connecting the dots that no one else could or wanted to see?
I also think that criticizing the CIA for not doing enough about AQ is only meaningful if we could know what they were working on otherwise. Maybe they were pursuing other priorities and doing so reasonably based on other concerns that were on the table at the time. We just don’t know and probably can’t know that.
It’s this last point that concerns me. Now we’ve decided that our national security/intelligence assets must consider AQ and related threats as a priority. But are we, in effect, simply arming to fight the last war? Are we now failing to consider some new, different threat with sufficient urgency because we’re so consumed with the last one we missed? And who will take the blame for that?
If I were going to blame any agency for 9/11, it would be the INS. And let’s face it, that still isn’t anywhere close to being fixed.
The failures of the CIA and others to destroy Al Qaeda once we were attacked in 1993 certainly ARE fair political game. The buck stopped at Bill Clinton’s desk, but he was under it, not at it, and the buck got ignored. Bill Clinton could have turned around the CIA, could have begun a serious covert war on Al Qaeda and its ilk, could have hired the right Bill-Casey types to get it done, and he didn’t.
Slick Willie is damn well to blame, and so are the Democrats that support him. We are best advised to make darn tootin’ sure that the American people know this, and don’t elect another in 2008.
/Mr Lynn