The CIA might have been able to stop 9/11. In other breaking news, the sky is blue.

[WorthyStevens]

CIA missed chances to thwart al-Qaida

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago


WASHINGTON - The CIA's top leaders failed to use their available powers, never developed a comprehensive plan to stop al-Qaida and missed crucial opportunities to thwart two hijackers in the run-up to Sept. 11, the agency's own watchdog concluded in a bruising report released Tuesday.

Completed in June 2005 and kept classified until now, the 19-page executive summary finds extensive fault with the actions of senior CIA leaders and others beneath them. "The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner," the CIA inspector general found.

"They did not always work effectively and cooperatively," the report stated.

Yet the review team led by Inspector General John Helgerson found neither a "single point of failure nor a silver bullet" that would have stopped the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

In a statement, CIA Director Michael Hayden said the decision to release the report was not his choice or preference, but that he was making the report available as required by Congress in a law President Bush signed earlier this month.

"I thought the release of this report would distract officers serving their country on the front lines of a global conflict," Hayden said. "It will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed."

The report does cover terrain heavily examined by a congressional inquiry and the Sept. 11 Commission. However, the CIA watchdog's report goes further than previous reviews to examine the personal failings of individuals within the agency who led the pre-9/11 efforts against al-Qaida.

Helgerson's team found that no CIA employees violated the law or were part of any misconduct. But it still called on then-CIA Director Porter Goss to form accountability boards to look at the performance of specific individuals to determine whether reprimands were called for.

The inquiry boards were recommended for officials including former CIA Director George Tenet, who resigned in July 2004; his Deputy Director for Operations Jim Pavitt; Counterterrorism Center Chief Cofer Black and the agency's executive director, who was not further identified. Other less senior officials were also tagged for accountability reviews, but identifying information was removed from the report's public version.

In a statement, Tenet said the inspector general is "flat wrong" about the lack of plan.

"There was in fact a robust plan, marked by extraordinary effort and dedication to fighting terrorism, dating back to long before 9/11," he said. "Without such an effort, we would not have been able to give the president a plan on Sept. 15, 2001, that led to the routing of the Taliban, chasing al-Qaida from its Afghan sanctuary and combating terrorists across 92 countries."

In October 2005, Goss rejected the recommendation for the inquiry boards. He said he had spoken personally with the current employees named in the report, and he trusted their abilities and dedication. "This report unveiled no mysteries," Goss said.

Hayden stuck by Goss's decision.

Providing a glimpse of a series of shortfalls laid out in the longer, still-classified report, the executive summary says:

• U.S. spy agencies, which were overseen by Tenet, lacked a comprehensive strategic plan to counter Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11. The inspector general concluded that Tenet "by virtue of his position, bears ultimate responsibility for the fact that no such strategic plan was ever created."

• The CIA's analysis of al-Qaida before Sept. 2001 was lacking. No comprehensive report focusing on bin Laden was written after 1993, and no comprehensive report laying out the threats of 2001 was assembled. "A number of important issues were covered insufficiently or not at all," the report found.

• The CIA and the National Security Agency tussled over their responsibilities in dealing with al-Qaida well into 2001. Only Tenet's personal involvement could have led to a timely resolution, the report concluded.

• The CIA station charged with monitoring bin Laden — code-named Alec Station — was overworked, lacked operational experience, expertise and training. The report recommended forming accountability boards for the CIA Counterterror Center chiefs from 1998 to 2001, including Black.

• Although 50 to 60 people read at least one CIA cable about two of the hijackers, the information wasn't shared with the proper offices and agencies. "That so many individuals failed to act in this case reflects a systemic breakdown.... Basically, there was no coherent, functioning watch-listing program," the report said. The report again called for further review of Black and his predecessor.

While blame is heaped on Tenet and his deputies, the report also says that Tenet was forcefully engaged in counterterrorism efforts and personally sounded the alarm before Congress, the military and policymakers. In a now well-known 1998 memo, he declared, "We are at war."

The trouble, the report said, was follow-up.

The inspector general did take exception to findings of Congress' joint inquiry into 9/11. For instance, the congressional inquiry found that the CIA was reluctant to seek authority to assassinate bin Laden. Instead, the inspector general believed the problem was the agency's limited covert-action capabilities.

The CIA's reliance on a group of sources with questionable reliability "proved insufficient to mount a credible operation against bin Laden," the report said. "Efforts to develop other options had limited potential prior to 9/11."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070821/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_sept11

 

[GoldenAgeHero]

Our tax dollars at work!!! FTW!

 

[EdRyder]

Shame on the CIA and Michael Hayden for for throwing Tenet under the bus like this.
I would urge everyone to read Tenets book Center of the Storm before buying all this nonsense.

 

[Badger]

The sky is not blue it's clear.

 

[Addendum]

From the article:

"In a statement, CIA Director Michael Hayden said the decision to release the report was not his choice or preference, but that he was making the report available as required by Congress in a law President Bush signed earlier this month."

Yeah, it's such a shame to follow the law when it's not "politically convenient"

 

[Ghostvirus]

NO f-ing way! This is news to me.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

Hey I was saying this before it was cool.

But really, I was saying this the day it happened and everyone was like "SHUT UP YOU JACKASS! INNOCENT PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE OF MUSLIMS!" You know what? ****! I was right, Government's full of crooks. Especially the ones running it damnit!

 

[SuperMonkey]

That Proves It!

 

[EdRyder]

UGH !!!dont anger me further people!!

So basicaly your all going to swallow whatever they feed you?

How many times do we have to go over this????!!

Anyone remember that PDB thats title read :
"BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO ATTACK THE US" ??!!!??


If you bother to actually READ this article once again (just humor me)You will see its an exercise in bull$%!t.
At one point you read "They did not always work effectively and cooperatively," the report stated.
Then it Reads:

"While blame is heaped on Tenet and his deputies, the report also says that Tenet was forcefully engaged in counterterrorism efforts and personally sounded the alarm before Congress, the military and policymakers. In a now well-known 1998 memo, he declared, "We are at war.""

So is that talking out of both sides of your neck or just good old schizophrenia???

 

[Addendum]

And the sentence after the last section you quoted reads:

"The trouble, the report said, was follow-up."

So why should we "swallow what you're trying to feed us"

 

[Fred_Fury]

If you guys think you can do a better job, why dont you go apply to work for the CIA? I doubt you guys are doing a better job by posting on superherohype.com all day.

 

[Addendum]

Just like you're doing such a great job in Iraq by posting on the internet

 

[Fred_Fury]

Just like you're doing such a great job in Iraq by posting on the internet

HEY! I dont need that kinda crap FROM YOU!!!

 

[VICTORVONDOOMX]

... but then how would we have gotten involved in this completely unnecessary war?

 

[EdRyder]

Alec Station-
The Justice Department directs an existing unit called Squad I-49 to begin building a legal case against bin Laden. This unit is unusual because it combines prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, who have been working on bin Laden related cases, with the FBI’s New York office, which was the FBI branch office that dealt the most with bin Laden -related intelligence. Patrick Fitzgerald effectively directs I-49 as the lead prosecutor. FBI agent Dan Coleman becomes a key member while simultaneously representing the FBI at Alec Station, the CIA’s new bin Laden unit (February 1996) where he has access to the CIA’s vast informational database. [Lance, 2006, pp. 218-219] The other initial members of I-49 are: Louis Napoli, John Anticev, Mike Anticev, Richard Karniewicz, Jack Cloonan, Carl Summerlin, Kevin Cruise, Mary Deborah Doran, and supervisor Tom Lang. All are FBI agents except for Napoli and Summerlin, a New York police detective and a New York state trooper, respectively. The unit will end up working closely with FBI agent John O’Neill, who heads the New York FBI office. Unlike the CIA’s Alec Station, which is focused solely on bin Laden, I-49 has to work on other Middle East -related issues. For much of the next year or so, most members will work on the July 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, because it crashed near New York and is suspected to have been carried out by Middle Eastern militants (July 17, 1996-September 1996). However, in years to come, I-49 will grow considerably and focus more on bin Laden. [Wright, 2006, pp. 240-241] After 9/11, the “wall” between intelligence collection and criminal prosecution will often be cited for the failure to stop the 9/11 attacks. But as author Peter Lance will later note, “Little more than ten months after the issuance of Jamie Gorelick’s ‘wall memo,’ Fitzgerald and company were apparently disregarding her mandate that criminal investigation should be segregated from intelligence threat prevention. Squad I-49… was actively working both jobs.” Thanks to Coleman’s involvement in both I-49 and the CIA’s Alec Station, I-49 effectively avoids the so-called “wall” problem.

The CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center creates a special unit focusing specifically on bin Laden. It is informally called Alec Station. About 10 to 15 individuals are assigned to the unit initially. This grows to about 35 to 40 by 9/11. [US Congress, 9/18/2002] The unit is set up “largely because of evidence linking [bin Laden] to the 1993 bombing of the WTC.” [Washington Post, 10/3/2001] Newsweek will comment after 9/11, “With the Cold War over, the Mafia in retreat, and the drug war unwinnable, the CIA and FBI were eager to have a new foe to fight.… Historical rivals, the spies and G-men were finally learning to work together. But they didn’t necessarily share secrets with the alphabet soup of other enforcement and intelligence agencies, like Customs and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and they remained aloof from the Pentagon. And no amount of good will or money could bridge a fundamental divide between intelligence and law enforcement. Spies prefer to watch and wait; cops want to get their man” [Newsweek, 10/1/2001] Michael Scheuer will lead the unit until 1999. He will later become a vocal critic of the US government’s efforts to combat terrorism. He later recalls that while bin Laden is mostly thought of merely as a terrorist financier at this time, “we had run across bin Laden in a lot of different places, not personally but in terms of his influence, either through rhetoric, through audiotapes, through passports, through money-he seemed to turn up everywhere. So when we [created the unit], the first responsibility was to find out if he was a threat.” [Vanity Fair, 11/2004] By the start of 1997, the unit will conclude bin Laden is a serious threat (see Early 1997).


So the CIA was taking Bin Laden seriously since 1996
Tenet himself warned Congress of the danger in 1998

As for the "follow up" comment-\

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a1NZMrcMMlo0&refer=us

In a July 10, 2001, meeting with then national security adviser Rice and J. Cofer Black, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, Tenet warned that intercepted messages among al-Qaeda operatives and a mass of other intelligence pointed to an imminent threat, according to the book. Tenet and Black hoped Rice would convey the urgency of the situation to President George W. Bush.

``Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the threat, Tenet thought, but she just didn't get it in time,'' says the book, titled ``State of Denial,'' which went on sale yesterday. ``He felt she was not organized and did not push people, as he tried to do at the CIA.''

Former President Bill Clinton last week accused the Bush administration of largely ignoring the threat from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden until it was too late and defended his record on counterterrorism.

``No, I didn't get him but at least I tried,'' Clinton said in an interview broadcast Sept. 24 on the ``Fox News Sunday'' program. ``That's the difference between me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now.''


Bush spokesman Tony Snow's office issued a statement entitled ``Myth/Fact'' disputing the assertion that Tenet made any such warning and also denied other allegations in Woodward's book.

The White House statement cited State Department spokesman Sean McCormack as saying that Tenet's own testimony before the commission investigating the events leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks didn't mention a meeting with Rice on July 10.

 

[EdRyder]

In 2004, Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999 (see February 1996), will write about the NSA’s surveillance of bin Laden’s satellite phone. Bin Laden began using the phone about a month earlier (see November 1996-Late August 1998). According to Scheuer, a CIA officer working overseas with the NSA tells the CIA bin Laden unit that the NSA is monitoring bin Laden’s phone. The NSA refuses to share information gained from the phone and threatens legal action against the officer who revealed its existence to the CIA. This leads to a “desultory interagency discussion without resolution.” The CIA is then “forced to devise its own ability to exploit the [monitoring of bin Laden’s phone] and secure about half of the available material.” [Atlantic Monthly, 12/2004] Apparently Scheuer says “half” because the CIA is only able to listen to one side of the conversations. [Wright, 2006, pp. 283] While the NSA knows the rest of the material, it apparently continues to refuse to share it with the CIA, FBI, or Richard Clarke in the White House. Scheuer will not explain why the NSA is unwilling to share this very valuable material

December 1996-June 1999: US Military Fails to Help CIA Plan Operations Against Bin Laden/ The CIA’s bin Laden unit repeatedly and formally requests assistance from the US military to help plan operations against bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Michael Scheuer, the head of the unit, later will recall, “We needed and asked for special operations officers.” But even after the US embassy bombings in August 1998, cooperation is not forthcoming. Finally, in June 1999, the unit is sent individuals who are not special operations officers and only have experience on Iran. Scheuer later will complain, “The bin Laden unit received no support from senior [CIA] officials vis-a-vis the US military.” Scheuer is fired from the unit in June 1999, so presumably his first-hand knowledge of relations between the CIA and Pentagon ends at this time. [Atlantic Monthly, 12/2004]
Entity Tags: Michael Scheuer, US Department of Defense, Alec Station,

 

[Red Mask]

They'll never get him this way, dammit. I don't care if he's hiding in Pakistan or Camp David. At this rate they'll never catch him and the U.S. government just sends more troops to Iraq, where Osama isn't!

 

[VICTORVONDOOMX]

He's been dead for 3 years.

 

[jaguarr]

The sky is not blue it's clear.

No, no, no. It's partly cloudy with a 90% chance of blame.

jag

 

[Addendum]

HEY! I dont need that kinda crap FROM YOU!!!

Riley: So y'all was in Iraq together?
Gin Rummy: Yeah we was in Iraq.
Riley: What did you do?
Gin Rummy: We was looking for weapons of mass destruction.
Riley: ....Did you ever find them?
Gin Rummy: You know goddamn well we ain't find 'em. What are you some kinda POLITICAL HUMORIST?! You GARRY TRUDEAU up in dis *****?!?!

t:

 

[Red Mask]

He's been dead for 3 years.

If so, America didn't do it.

'Attack on bin Laden.
Attack on bin Laden.
Of course, they'll never catch him cause he's deep underground'.

 

[VICTORVONDOOMX]

Well, kinda yes. There's been no new video with sound since Tora Bora.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

He's been dead for 3 years.

HIGH FIVE!

 

[Red Mask]

If so, America didn't do it.

 

[VICTORVONDOOMX]

Only by accident. He was CIA's #1 field controller.