CIA Missed Chances to Take On al-Qaida

A CIA internal report released Tuesday found the agency's top leaders faltered in using their available powers, never developed a comprehensive plan to stop al-Qaida and missed prime opportunities to stop hijackers before the September 11th terrorists attacks.

Then director George J. Tenet and his top lieutenants allowed bureaucratic red tape and budget shortages to stifle the agency's effort to hunt down and capture al-Qaida operatives, said the CIA inspector general in the report.

The 19-page executive summary was completed in June 2005 and kept classified until now. Although "the agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner," Inspector General John Helgerson found neither a "single point of failure nor a silver bullet" that would have stopped the attacks on 9/11.

Steven Aftergood from Security News blogs about the nature of report's release:

From a secrecy policy point of view, the most interesting thing about the disclosure is that it was the result of a congressional initiative undertaken against the wishes of the executive branch.

"While meeting the dictates of the law," said CIA Director Mike Hayden in an official statement, "I want to make it clear that this declassification was neither my choice nor my preference."

In theory, the CIA's "choice" or "preference" should be irrelevant to the declassification process. The President has directed categorically that "Information shall be declassified as soon as it no longer meets the standards for classification under this order." (Executive Order 13292, section 3.1). It is clear from the release of the Inspector General report, which was partially redacted, that it could be declassified. And therefore it should have been.

At least two bloggers want to shift the blame away from Tenet and the CIA, letting it fall on Bush instead. The Semidi blog:

Oh, so George W. Bush — y’know, the guy who’s been pretending to be President the last seven years — had nothing to do with the attacks occurring? Bush ignoring the Presidential Daily Brief of August 6th, 2001 — the one that said Bin Ladin was determined to strike in the U.S. — played no part? It’s all the fault of former DCI George Tenet — the guy who recently wrote a scathing (albeit occasionally self-serving) tell-all about the Bushites?

How convenient.

And WISCO at Griper Blade:

. . . Tenet shouldn't take the blame here. Yes, he was incompetent. Yes, he was "too busy schmoozing" to be effective. Yes, he was one of the asses leading the lions. But nothing he could've done would've gotten the Bush administration to take al Qaeda seriously.

-Dippold

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