Federal Times : Report blasts Tenet’s pre-9/11 CIA

Report blasts Tenet’s pre-9/11 CIA

By RICHARD WILLING | USA Today | August 22, 2007

CIA director George Tenet declared “war” on al-Qaida in 1998 but failed to follow up with a thorough counterterrorism plan until after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA inspector general charged in an internal report partially declassified on Tuesday.

The report, completed in June 2005, said the pre-Sept. 11 CIA failed to develop “assets” needed to disrupt al-Qaida before it launched its devastating attacks.

Echoing the public “9/11 Commission Report” in 2004, the CIA watchdog also criticized the agency for not sharing intelligence that could have led authorities to two Sept. 11 hijackers who traveled to the U.S. in 2000 and 2001.

Neither the CIA nor its officers discharged “their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner,” Inspector General John Helgerson concluded in the report’s 19-page summary.

However, the summary also found “no silver bullet” or “single point of failure” that “would have enabled the intelligence community to predict or prevent the 9/11 attacks.”

Tenet, who resigned in 2004, said in a statement Tuesday that the report is “flat wrong” in its assertion that the CIA lacked a clear plan. Instead, he said, the agency had a “robust” plan that helped it attack al-Qaida after Sept. 11 and chase it from its “Afghan sanctuary.”

Tenet and at least six other top agency officials should face review boards to further evaluate their actions, the report said. Then-CIA Director Porter Goss rejected that proposal in June 2005, a decision the agency’s current director, Michael Hayden, said he supported.

Hayden told CIA employees in a statement Tuesday that he opposed declassifying and releasing the report because that would “distract officers serving ... on the front lines of a global conflict.”

The inspector general’s summary was required to be released under a law passed this month that implemented some recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

While Hayden said the report is mostly old news, it included several points that were either new or offered internal CIA views that had not been made public. For example:

• The CIA targeted Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for capture and rendition but did not “recognize the significance” of his role in al-Qaida.

• No comprehensive study of Osama bin Laden was written after 1993. “Strategic analysis” of al-Qaida was lacking.

• The CIA and National Security Agency were sometimes unclear about their pre-Sept. 11 roles in pursuit of al-Qaida.

• As many as 60 CIA officials read at least one cable in 2000 or 2001 dealing with the American travel plans of two Sept. 11 hijackers. But the information wasn’t quickly shared with domestic law enforcement.

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