Posted on 04/14/2004 8:23:27 AM PDT by Valin
CIA chief concedes it will take considerable time to improve intelligence defenses against terrorist threats
WASHINGTON – CIA director George Tenet predicted Wednesday it will take "another five years of work to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs" to combat al-Qaeda and other terrorist threats.
"The same can be said for the National Security Agency, our imagery agency and our analytic community," Tenet testified before the commission investigating the worst terror attacks in the nation's history.
Readily acknowledging that intelligence agencies "never penetrated the 9-11 plot," he added, "We all understood (Osama) bin Laden's intent to strike the homeland but were unable to translate this knowledge into an effective defense of the country."
Tenet testified that when he became the nation's top intelligence officer in 1997, agencies had lost "close to 25 percent of our people and billions of dollars in capital investment" in the preceding several years.
He made his appearance after the commission released a report that noted the same erosion in resources dating to the end of the Cold War.
The report was critical of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, depicting them as slow in recognizing the threat posed by bin Laden and the terror apparatus he sustained.
"While we now know that al-Qaeda was formed in 1988, at the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the intelligence community did not describe this organization, at least in the documents we have seen, until 1999," the report said.
The report also noted several "threat reports" produced by the intelligence apparatus had "mentioned the possibility of using an aircraft laden with explosives," such as the terrorists used on Sept. 11.
"Of these, the most prominent asserted a possible plot to fly an explosives-laden aircraft into a U.S. city," it said. Others included reports of a plan to fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower in 1994, and of flying a plane into CIA headquarters.
"A 1996 report asserted that Iranians were plotting to hijack a Japanese plane and crash it into Tel Aviv," it added.
John Lehman, a former Navy secretary and commission member, characterized the document as a "damning report of a system that's broken, that doesn't function."
Lehman made clear he wasn't faulting Tenet personally, whom he praised. But, noting that President Bush has recently signaled an interest in overhauling the nation's intelligence-gathering structure, Lehman said change was coming.
Tenet, who has held his job for seven years across parts of two administrations of different parties, said he would welcome it.
In its report, the commission said the CIA missed the big-picture significance of "tell-tale indicators" of impending terrorist attacks, partly because of its culture of a piecemeal approach to intelligence analysis.
A more strategic analysis could have identified that the plot might require suicide hijackers who would take flight courses, the commission said. Establishing such "tell-tale indicators" could have raised red flags following a July 2001 FBI report of terrorist interest in aircraft training in Arizona, and the August 2001 arrest of terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui because of suspicious behavior in a Minnesota flight school, it added.
Crediting Tenet, it said he recognized the need for strategic analysis against al-Qaeda in late 2000 and appointed a manager in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center to create a new branch.
Tenet was the leadoff witness before the commission, to be followed by FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Other CIA shortcomings cited by the panel:
–An inadequate counterterror management strategy before Sept. 11. The panel said Tenet sought greater funding across the entire CIA, rather than just counterterrorism, making a build up of long-term capabilities difficult.
–A lack of an institutionalized process to learn from successes and failures, such as surprise terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa in August 1998 and against the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000.
"Reviews were perceived as faultfinding, without enough constructive emphasis on learning lessons and discovering best practices," the report said.
One suggestion that has been posed to improve intelligence gathering involves possibly expanding the powers of the director of central intelligence or creating a domestic intelligence agency, such as MI5 in Britain.
Asked about such a potential overhaul, Bush said Tuesday night that he was open to suggestions.
"I look forward to seeing what the 9-11 commission comes up with," the president told reporters at a White House news conference.
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