Declassified report says CIA didn't do enough to prevent 9-11

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Internal CIA investigation finds no 'silver bullet' would have prevented 9/11

A just-released report from the CIA's inspector general excoriates the agency and its former director, George Tenet, for not doing enough to prepare for the threat of terrorism prior to Sept. 11, 2001, when the US suffered its worst domestic terror attack.

The inspector general's review, which current and former CIA officials tried to keep classified, said intelligence analysts "did not always work effectively and cooperatively." The Democratic controlled Congress ordered the declassification of the report's executive summary in legislation implementing some 9/11 Commission's recommendations that President Bush signed this month.

In one example of a failure to communicate, the IG's report says "50 to 60 individuals" saw Agency alerts about travel information on two 9/11 hijackers between January and March of 2000. The CIA did not have Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar added to a State Department watch list "on a timely basis," although it knew in early 2000 that one of the two had a US visa and the other had flown to Los Angeles.

The report did not identify a "single point of failure" or "silver bullet" that would have allowed the nation's intelligence agencies to prevent 9/11, but did say the lack of communication within and among agencies hampered efforts against al Qaeda.

"If (intelligence) officers had been able to view and analyze the full range of information available before 11 September 2001, they could have developed a more informed context in which to assess the threat reporting of the spring and summer that year," the report says.

The CIA "did not have a documented, comprehensive approach to al-Qa'ida" and then-Director of Central Intelligence Tenet "did not use all of his authorities in leading the IC's strategic effort" against bin Laden, the report found.

Tenet hit back against the report, saying the Inspector General ignored its own pre-9/11 assessment of the CIA's terror-fighting capabilities that called the agency's Counterterrorist Center (CTC) "a well managed component" of the effort to "undermine the capabilities of terrorist groups." In a lengthy statement, Tenet defended his performance, although he conceded the CIA's pre-9/11 performance was not beyond reproach.

"But just as we owed it to the country to do better -- the CIA IG owed it to the nation and the men and women of the intelligence community to do a better job in reviewing the circumstances that led to the tragedy of September 11th," Tenet wrote.

Current CIA Director Michael Hayden begrudgingly released the report Tuesday, saying the fight against terrorism depends on not becoming "captive" to the past and that the release "will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed."

The report was not all bleak for Tenet and the CIA. It acknowledged Tenet "was actively and forcefully engaged" in the agency's counterterrorism effort and said he received near-daily updated on bin Laden for two years before the terror attacks.

Although Tenet authorized the creation of an anti-bin Laden task force in 1998, the IG's report found that neither Tenet nor his deputy followed up those initial warnings to create a "documented, comprehensive plan." It found that Tenet and the CTC focused more on operations and tactics than long-term strategy in combating terrorism.

Tenet began as the Director of Central Intelligence in 1997, during former-President Bill Clinton's second term. He resigned as the second-longest-serving DCI in July 2004. Later that year Bush awarded Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in a move Democrats questioned because of Tenet's oversight of the CIA when it produced faulty intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

The New York Times notes that an internal examination of the FBI's pre-9/11 readiness also faulted some actions, but "while some officials in both the F.B.I. and C.I.A. have come under heavy criticism, none has been disciplined."

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