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Guest Commentary July 29, 2002
9/11 Intelligence Failures Identified by Congress
The Honorable Terry Everett
As Congress ponders the creation of a new Homeland Security agency to help prevent further catastrophic acts of terrorism against the United States, it should also study the results of a report on the intelligence failures leading up to the tragic events of September 11, 2001. I participated in the creation of this special report and I believe its recommendations will be useful in making America safer.
[Earlier this month], the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security released its official review of the pre 9/11 intelligence break down. This is the first report of its kind delving into the nation's intelligence and counter terrorism structure. The eleven-member subcommittee, on which I also serve, has been working since January to get to the root of what went wrong.
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In short, our exhaustive hearings - all of which have been closed to the public -- have revealed no one cause. Rather, America's weakness to detect and prevent the September 11th attack is a failure that spans our bureaucracy. In our report, we determined that blame can be laid at Congress's failure to properly fund intelligence efforts or watch over their progress. But that's for starters.
The recurrent theme that seemed clear to me, and was noted in the report, is the lack of coordination between the key intelligence gathering agencies. Indeed, we found that practically every agency of the US Government with a counter terrorism mission uses a different definition of terrorism. How can you establish a goal without a common standard?
Probing deeper, we learned that the National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were hamstrung in their intelligence gathering duties by everything from agency bureaucrats who favored building their bureaucracies over concentrating on field work, to leaks from within these agencies, to laws keeping them from dealing with potential foreign informants who might also be human rights abusers. In general, there seemed to be less attention given to the threat of terrorism than what we now know was warranted.
What is the most frustrating about these revelations is that they really are not new. They were on the minds of our intelligence community three years before the 9/11 attacks. Prophetically, during a September 11, 1998 meeting, top intelligence officials noted:
"Failure to improve operations management, resource allocation, and other key issues within the [intelligence community], including making substantial and sweeping changes in the way the nation collects, analyzes, and produces intelligence, will likely result in a catastrophic, systemic intelligence failure."
While the idea of creating a new Homeland Security agency to help coordinate the defense of America is worth pursuing, it will only be effective if key deficiencies in the CIA, FBI, and NSA are also corrected. Chief among them are better intelligence gathering and sharing between these agencies. It is terribly unfortunate that the warning of that September 11, 1998 meeting went unheeded. Perhaps, if it had been, we would not have to pause to honor this now tragic anniversary.
Better funding by Congress and better rules allowing the agencies to gather intelligence are much needed, but will be of little use without corresponding culture changes within the agencies.
Terry Everett, a Republican, represents the 2nd Congressional District of Alabama in the U.S. House of Representatives. The above commentary has been adapted from a weekly column Rep. Everett issued, July 22, 2002. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
