9/11 Panel Finds CIA Slow to See Looming Threat From Al Qaeda

WASHINGTON —  Despite years of escalating attacks, the CIA was slow to understand the scale and structure of Al Qaeda, and never produced a comprehensive report on the threat posed by the terrorist network before the Sept. 11 strikes, according to new findings released Wednesday by the commission investigating the attacks.

The agency came under scathing criticism in the last of a series of landmark hearings the commission has held in Washington over the last month. The panel cited the CIA for overlooking critical pieces of intelligence, for lacking an effective strategy to wage a war against terrorism, and for failing to fulfill the mission for which it was created in the years following Pearl Harbor: to guard the United States against surprise attack.

At a time when President Bush has signaled his willingness to consider a major overhaul of the intelligence community, the commission gave a strong indication that it may recommend the creation of a new Cabinet-level position to oversee the 15 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community. The panel concluded one of its staff statements by saying the CIA director has such limited authority that “a question remains: Who is in charge of intelligence?”

CIA Director George J. Tenet vigorously disputed some of the commission’s conclusions, and argued that the agency worked valiantly to overcome post-Cold War cuts that crippled its clandestine service’s capabilities. But Tenet, who has led the agency for seven years, admitted to some failings, and said that “it will take another five years of work to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs.”

Several commissioners expressed dismay at the remark. “I wonder whether we have five years,” said Thomas H. Kean, the chairman of the commission, and the former Republican governor of New Jersey.

The hearing also produced new information on how senior officials failed to pursue significant leads. Tenet acknowledged that he was told in late August 2001 that the FBI had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui, an Islamic militant in Minnesota who had enrolled in a flight school in that state. Tenet received a briefing titled “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly,” but did not call it to the attention of Bush or senior advisors in the White House before the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui had links to some of the hijackers and officials cite his case as one of several among missed opportunities to unravel the plot.

Tenet testified that he had not spoken to Bush in August, but a CIA official later said, after checking records, that Tenet had traveled to Texas to brief Bush on Aug. 17 and again briefed him on Aug. 31 after the president had returned from his ranch to Washington.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller also testified Wednesday, telling the commission he believes the bureau is “on the right path” and that it should not be stripped of its role as the nation’s domestic intelligence service. Other witnesses included the CIA’s director of operations, as well as senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security and a new intelligence office set up last year to serve as a clearinghouse for terrorist threat information.

Wednesday’s testimony was at times difficult to reconcile, because even as commissioners excoriated the CIA’s performance, they also singled out Tenet for generous praise.

“You were one of the few officials who grasped the threat very early on,” said John H. Lehman, a Republican commissioner and former secretary of the Navy. “You are a very entrepreneurial, gutsy guy who has worked very, very hard on this problem.”

As a partial explanation for the irony, commissioners acknowledged that Tenet has been hamstrung by budget cuts and the very structure of the job he holds. The CIA director is nominally responsible for coordinating the efforts of all 15 spy agencies, but in reality has little leverage over other agencies because they get their funding and much of their direction from the Department of Defense.

Much of the hearing was a debate over whether that arrangement should be overhauled by creating a new Cabinet-level director of national intelligence, with power to move money from one department to another, and to hire and fire agency heads.

In a town where officials seem always to be seeking to expand their influence, however, Tenet was often in the odd position of arguing against giving future intelligence directors such sweeping power.

“Rather than focus on a zero-sum game of authorities, the focus should be on ensuring that the [director of central intelligence] and the secretary of Defense work together,” Tenet said. He added that he was open to some structural reforms, but urged against creating a new intelligence position that would come between the president and the operational chief of the CIA.

Such a move would inhibit the CIA director’s ability to advise the president, Tenet said, and add an unnecessary layer in the chain of command between the president and CIA officers who carry out some of the nation’s most sensitive overseas missions. “Don’t separate that span of control because something will break,” Tenet said.

In a staff report issued Wednesday, the commission offered a harsh critique of the agency’s analytic work before Sept. 11, saying that even though Al Qaeda was founded in 1988, it wasn’t until more than a decade later that the CIA produced a significant report analyzing its structure.

And “there were no complete authoritative portraits of [Osama bin Laden’s] strategy and the extent of his organization’s involvement in past terrorist attacks” before Sept. 11, the report said.

A specialized report called a National Intelligence Estimate on the broader terrorist threat produced in 1997 excluded critical information from an Al Qaeda informant who had come forward the previous year warning that Bin Laden was building an Islamic army, had sent operatives to help shoot down U.S. helicopters in Somalia in 1993, and that his network regarded the United States as its principal enemy, the commission said.

As late as 1997, the report said, the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center “characterized Osama Bin Laden as a financier of terrorism,” the report said. And the top analyst in the CIA unit was “discounting alarms about a catastrophic threat” through the late 1990s, referring to dire warnings as “overheated rhetoric.”

The commission’s report said part of the problem was that CIA analysts were so overworked that they didn’t have time to produce more thorough analytic pieces. But the report went on to criticize Tenet for failing to marshal resources, saying a 1998 memo he wrote in which he declared “war” on Al Qaeda was largely ignored by the intelligence community.

Finally, the panel faulted the agency for failing to set up systems that would seek out information on domestic terrorist threats -- such as the Moussaoui arrest or warnings from an FBI agent in Phoenix that Islamic extremists were enrolling in U.S. flight schools -- despite repeated signs that Al Qaeda was interested in using aircraft as weapons.

Tenet bristled at the criticism.

“I have serious issues with the staff statement as it was written today,” Tenet said. “When the staff statement says the DCI [director of central intelligence] had no strategic plan to manage the war on terrorism, that’s flat wrong.”

He also stressed that despite the lack of comprehensive intelligence reports, the CIA was calling attention to the threat in daily reports to Bush and others. However, commissioners stressed that an authoritative report such as a National Intelligence Estimate would have commanded greater attention from policymakers.

The commission also offered fresh criticism of the FBI, saying that many of the post-Sept. 11 reforms are “impressive,” but “a work in progress.” It cited instances in which newly hired intelligence analysts have been assigned such menial tasks as answering phones and emptying trash bins.

“Thousands of hours” of interviews from intelligence sources were not being translated in a timely manner because of shortages of linguists, the report said. And new computer systems are “user-unfriendly.”

“With so little confidence right now in the FBI, and the stakes being so large for the security of the country, why should we give the FBI another chance?” Timothy J. Roemer, a commissioner and former Democratic congressman from Indiana, asked Mueller.

Mueller said the FBI was “putting our house in order,” and that creating a separate new agency to collect domestic intelligence would be a “grave mistake.” With old legal barriers lowered, he said, there is a “distinct advantage” to having intelligence and law enforcement agents working cases and sharing information within the same organization. Mueller, who became FBI director one week before the Sept. 11 attacks, also said the number of agents working counterterrorism had doubled since then.

Wednesday’s hearing also produced sobering statistics from a panel of witnesses discussing intelligence reforms in the wake of Sept. 11. An FBI official said the bureau has investigated more than 4,000 threats to the United States since the attacks. And a CIA official in charge of a new center that serves as a clearinghouse of threat information said that the center has cataloged and placed on watch lists “approximately 100,000 known or suspected international terrorist identities.”

The bipartisan panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is scheduled to hold hearings in New York next month on the response of the New York police and fire departments and other emergency agencies after of the attacks. The commission is charged with producing a final report by the end of July.