BBC : Has CIA the learned its lessons?

Has CIA the learned its lessons?

Rob Watson | BBC Defence Correspondent | August 22, 2007

The debate about whether more could have been done by America's intelligence agencies to tackle al-Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks has never really gone away.

But it has certainly been given renewed impetus by publication of the CIA's own internal inquiry into the agency's failings.

Although actually completed two years ago, the summary of the report has only just been published thanks to the insistence of the US Congress.

Put simply it says while the CIA did at least recognise the threat posed by al-Qaeda, its leaders failed to come up with a winning strategy to tackle the threat.

Singled out for particular criticism is the former head of the CIA, George Tenet, who the report says failed to push for adequate resources and information sharing despite having declared the US "at war" with al-Qaeda in 1998.

Raising the alarm

Not surprisingly the report has provoked mixed reactions.

Some former agents have wholeheartedly agreed with the criticisms and have even chipped in with more of their own.

George Tenet in a long statement described the report as "flat wrong".

Mr Tenet says there was a robust plan and that he had made repeated attempts to sound warnings about al-Qaeda to both the US Congress and the Bush and Clinton administrations.

But as the debate about blame continues, the publication of the report has also raised questions about whether the CIA is doing a better job now.

At one level things clearly have changed since 9/11 to make the work of the CIA and the other intelligence agencies easier.

If before 9/11 their concerns about the threat posed by al-Qaeda sometimes fell on deaf ears or were at least greeted by scepticism in government that is surely no longer the case.

When the intelligence community raises the alarm, government tends to listen these days.

Since the "war on terrorism" began the agencies have also learned more about al-Qaeda from the interrogations of those captured - though that in itself has been a controversial issue.

And the intelligence agencies have far more resources.

Nearly six years on from the attacks on New York and Washington the CIA claims to have tripled the number of trained case officers and to have opened or re-opened more than 20 stations or bases overseas.

'Problems remain'

Certainly other Western intelligence agencies look on with awe and occasionally some envy at the amounts of money, manpower and technology available to their American counterparts.

But critics say problems remain.

Some question whether reforms intended to improve the co-ordination and information sharing among America's 16 intelligence agencies and with the FBI have truly broken down old traditions of secrecy and turf protection or whether they have just added more layers of bureaucracy.

As to capability, other analysts say it will take years for the CIA to rebuild its capacity for clandestine operations, much of which was lost in the immediate aftermath of the cold war and that above all the CIA needs more spies capable of fulfilling its two core missions of fighting terrorism and stealing other countries secrets.

UPI : Analysis: CIA bungled pre-9/11 resources

Analysis: CIA bungled pre-9/11 resources

By SHAUN WATERMAN | UPI Homeland and National Security Editor | August 22, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- Leading CIA officials, and in particular Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, did not develop a strategy or make effective use of U.S. intelligence resources to combat the terrorist threat from al-Qaida before Sept. 11, 2001, a report by the agency’s inspector general found.

An executive summary of the June 2005 accountability review was published under protest by the CIA Tuesday, after Congress passed a law mandating its declassification.

Both current and former CIA leaders say they have differences with the review, and Tenet Tuesday called its conclusions “flat wrong.”

The summary says that U.S. intelligence “did not have a documented comprehensive approach to al-Qaida and that (Tenet) did not use all of his authorities in leading (U.S. 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 Center 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 U.S. 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-Qaida.

In 1998 Tenet issued his now-famous memo to all the U.S. agencies he oversaw in his dual-hatted role as director of central intelligence, declaring the United States to be “at war” with al-Qaida 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 United States.

Mohammed’s case was handled by the renditions unit in the center, and there was a lack of coordination with other elements.

Moreover, “The management approach employed in CTC had the effect of actively reinforcing the separation of responsibilities among key CTC units working on” the Mohammed case.

The absence of an overall strategy for the whole collection of spy agencies known as the U.S. intelligence community was important, according to one observer, because it meant that longstanding issues of interagency information-sharing and cooperation were not addressed.

“Those two issues (lack of a strategy and turf tensions) fed each other,” said a former staffer on the Sept. 11 Commission.

One example of a longstanding issue was the question of access to raw signals intelligence, or sigint, such as telephone intercepts.

The National Security Agency exhibited an “unwillingness to share raw sigint transcripts with CIA,” says the review.

A U.S. intelligence official told United Press International Tuesday that the NSA was prohibited by law from disseminating raw transcripts that might contain information about U.S. persons.

To get around this, the NSA offered to host a CTC official as a detailee in their office.

“The most efficient way to ensure compliance with the law when it came to raw transcripts was to have the sigint reviewed inside NSA spaces,” the official told UPI.

But the review found that the CTC only sent one officer to NSA “for a brief period of time in 2000” and thereafter failed to send any others, “citing resource constraints.”

The review also found that 50 to 60 people at the agency reviewed reports about two of the hijackers, whom the CIA had identified in January 2000 as heading for America, but not one of them saw fit to ensure that the men were watch-listed, so that any attempt to get a visa or enter the country would send up red flags.

“I always told them that would be the turd in the punchbowl,” said the former Sept. 11 Commission staffer.

The June 2005 review, conducted at the behest of Congress, recommended setting up a special board to look into disciplinary action against Tenet and 10 or so other top officials -- a recommendation rejected a few months later by Porter Goss, who was then the agency’s director.

Tuesday, current Director Gen. Michael Hayden said he saw no reason to second-guess that decision.

Recalling Goss’ description of the officials singled out by the review as “some of our finest,” Hayden said, “I have re-read the report, carefully evaluated what it says, and have found no reason to revisit (Goss’) decision.”

“They have prevented other acts of terrorism, and they have saved innocent lives, in our country and overseas," Hayden continued in a statement to the CIA workforce that was released to the media.

Tenet, in a statement, said the review is “flat wrong” to accuse him of not having a strategy to fight al-Qaida and that its comments about resource allocation fail to understand the context of an agency emerging from a decade of under-funding.

“Although resources available for everything else at CIA went down or stayed flat, counter-terrorism resources were going up,” he said.

The review “fails to understand how intensely I pushed the counter-terrorism issue,” Tenet continued, “because (its authors) failed to interview either me or policymakers from either the Clinton or Bush administrations.”

--

(e-mail: swaterman@upi.com)

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.

E-mail: fedlet@federaltimes.com

WaPo : Report: Tenet Failed to Prepare for al-Qaeda Threat

Report: Tenet Failed to Prepare for al-Qaeda Threat

By Glenn Kessler | Washington Post Staff Writer | August 21, 2007

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 report, which in part sought to determine whether any intelligence officials should be held accountable for pre-Sept. 11 failures, said that as early as December 1998, Tenet signed a counterterrorism memorandum declaring, "We are at war." But neither Tenet nor his deputy "followed up these warnings and admonitions by creating a documented, comprehensive plan to guide the counterterrorism effort," the report said. Tenet's deputy chaired at least one related meeting, "but the forum soon devolved into one of tactical and operational, rather than strategic discussions."

Moreover, the Counterterrorist Center (CTC) "was not used effectively as a strategic coordinator of the [intelligence community's] counterterrorism efforts," the report added.

The executive summary noted that the spy community's understanding of al-Qaeda "was hampered by insufficient analytic focus," which resulted in important issues being "covered insufficiently or not at all." For instance, the report said, the CIA had made no comprehensive report on Osama bin Laden since 1993, had not examined the potential for terrorists to use aircraft as weapons, and had done only limited analysis on the potential of the United States as a target.

Tenet, in his statement, said "there was in fact a robust plan, marked by extraordinary effort and dedication to fighting terrorism, dating back to long before 9/11" and the report "vastly under appreciates the challenges faced and heroic performance of the hard working men and women of the CIA in general and CTC in specific."