"Counterterrorism Evolves" highlights the many faults with the US law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies prior to 9/11. One includes the structure of institutions such as the FBI:
- "[P]erformance in the Bureau was generally measured against statistics such as numbers of arrests, indictments, prosecutions, and convictions. Counterterrorism and counterintelligence work, often involving lengthy intelligence investigations that might never have positive or quantifiable results, was not career-enhancing." (page 74)
Still, the FBI had plenty of power to thwart foreign terrorists:
- "In 1986, Congress authorized the FBI to investigate terrorist attacks against Americans that occur outside the United States. Three years later, it added authority for the FBI to make arrests abroad without consent from the host country." (page 75)
Unfortunately, there was a definite lack of focus only a year before 9/11:
- "Although the FBI’s counterterrorism budget tripled during the mid-1990s, FBI counterterrorism spending remained fairly constant between fiscal years 1998 and 2001. In 2000, there were still twice as many agents devoted to drug enforcement as to counterterrorism." (page 77)
Overall, one gets a sense that the commission still believed that the FBI and others still didn’t have enough power.
The main issue, especially related to the 19 hijackers on 9/11 was the lack of information sharing. Example:
- ". . . information on the FBI’s effort in 1998 to assess the potential use of flight training by terrorists and the Phoenix electronic communication of 2001 warning of radical Middle Easterners attending flight school were not passed to FAA headquarters." (page 83)
Each agency had its own watch list, and if all had cooperated the one terrorist watch list would have stopped some if not all of those hijackers from boarding the planes. The best explanation for the lack of sharing, according to the commission, was a simple turf-war: government bureaucrats have a tendency to want to hold onto their power and presumably their jobs, despite any consequence to national security:
- "An almost obsessive protection of sources and methods by the NSA, and its focus on foreign intelligence, and its avoidance of anything domestic would, as will be seen, be important elements in the story of 9/11." (page 88)
The commission concludes simply:
- "Before 9/11, with the exception of one portion of the FBI, very little of the sprawling U.S. law enforcement community was engaged in countering terrorism. Moreover, law enforcement could be effective only after specific individuals were identified, a plot had formed, or an attack had already occurred. Responsible individuals had to be located, apprehended, and transported back to a U.S. court for prosecution. As FBI agents emphasized to us, the FBI and the Justice Department do not have cruise missiles." (page 82)
And if they did have cruise missiles? God knows….
The FAA
It is rarely mentioned that the 19 hijackers brought nothing illegal on the planes. Thus, the private airport screeners contracted out by the airlines (and eventually nationalized), didn’t fail at their job:
- "While FAA rules did not expressly prohibit knives with blades under 4 inches long, the airlines’ checkpoint operations guide (which was developed in cooperation with the FAA), explicitly permitted them." (page 84)
The use of handguns by airline pilots – a possible deterrent to hijacking – is not mentioned, instead the report focuses on other supposed prevention methods such as locked and hardened cockpit doors.
Not Enough Money
The common retort from failing bureaucracies is "We don’t have enough money!" They told this to the commission:
- "Subsequent chapters will raise the issue of whether, despite tremendous talent, energy, and dedication, the intelligence community failed to do enough in coping with the challenge from Bin Ladin and al Qaeda. Confronted with such questions, managers in the intelligence community often responded that they had meager resources with which to work." (page 92)
Conflict of Interest?
Now why did the CIA produce faulty intelligence?
- "The sole element of the intelligence community independent from a cabinet agency is the CIA. As an independent agency, it collects, analyzes, and disseminates intelligence from all sources.The CIA’s number one customer is the president of the United States, who also has the authority to direct it to conduct covert operations." [emphasis mine] (page 86)
There’s more:
- "In fact, the DCI’s [Director of Central Intelligence] real authority has been directly proportional to his personal closeness to the president, which has waxed and waned over the years, and to others in government, especially the secretary of defense." (page 86)
Onto Chapter 4 . . . .