Report blames top CIA men for failure to prevent 9/11 attacks
By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, Aug 22: The CIA never developed an overall strategy for confronting Al Qaeda nor made an effective use of US intelligence resources to combat the terrorist threat from Al Qaeda before Sept 11, 2001, a report by the agency’s inspector-general found.
An executive summary of the June 2005 accountability review blames leading CIA officials, and in particular Director of Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet, for the failure.
The review was published under protest by the CIA on Tuesday, after Congress passed a law mandating its declassification.
The report reveals that long before the attacks, as many as 60 officers in the CIA had seen cables indicating that two Al Qaeda operatives -- who went on to reside in San Diego -- had entered the United States or possessed travel documents that would let them do so.
Both current and former CIA leaders say they have differences with the review, and Mr Tenet called its conclusions “flat wrong.”
The summary says that US intelligence “did not have a documented comprehensive approach to Al Qaeda and that (Tenet) did not use all of his authorities in leading (US intelligence’s) strategic effort against Osama bin Laden.”
The inspector-general’s team also found that, despite successful appeals to Congress to get extra funding for the counter-terrorism mission, the agency’s Counter-Terrorism Centre did not spend all the money it was allocated and CIA officials did not use contingency funds for counter-terrorism work and actually diverted CTC funds for other agency projects.
Although Tenet had some limited power to move funds and personnel around the various US agencies -- and used that authority six times in the five years before Sept 11 -- he never did so to get extra resources for the agency to use against Al Qaeda.
In 1998 Tenet issued his now-famous memo to all the US agencies he oversaw in his dual-hated role as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, declaring the US to be “at war” with al-Qaeda and directing that “no resources or people be spared in this effort.”
But the accountability review found there was little follow-up. Meetings led by Tenet’s deputy, John McLaughlin, “soon devolved into … tactical and operational, rather than strategic, discussions,” and there were “few, if any” officers from other agencies attending them.
Even internally, the CIA failed to manage its resources adequately. For instance, the way the CTC handled the case of Sept 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the review found, meant that it “missed important indicators of terrorist planning” like the fact that he was sending terrorist operatives to the US.
