WASHINGTON - U.S. efforts to combat terrorism will continue to be plagued with weaknesses until policymakers reshape an intelligence bureaucracy based on an outdated Cold War model, a congressional inquiry concluded in a report issued yesterday.
Capping a six-month joint investigation, the House and Senate intelligence committees said the CIA, FBI and other agencies missed a number of opportunities that could have disrupted the Sept. 11 terrorist plot. The lawmakers blamed poor communication, human failings, and unwillingness to share intelligence across agency lines or grasp the significance of clues.
"We will never definitively know to what extent the [intelligence) community would have been able and willing to exploit fully all the opportunities that may have emerged." the 37 House and Senate members said in conclusions they endorsed a day earlier. "The important point is that the intelligence community, for a variety of reasons, did not bring together and fully appreciate a range of information that could have greatly enhanced its chances of uncovering and preventing Osama bin Laden's plan to attack these United States on September 11th, 2001."
The congressional panel issued 19 recommendations, among them a call to discipline officials who committed lapses. While they were silent on names, saying it should be left to the inspectors general of the various agencies to assign blame, the vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee was less circumspect.
Alabama Republican Sen. Richard C. Shelby was critical of CIA Director George J. Tenet, former CIA chief John M. Deutch, ex FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and the current and former heads of the National Security Agency. Shelby, a longtime Tenet critic, singled out the CIA director for much of his criticism.
"There have been more massive failures of intelligence on his watch as director of CIA than any director in the history of the agency." he said at a Capitol news conference with the three other leaders of the congressional inquiry.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield declined to respond to the criticism. "We will certainly review the findings and recommendations." he said.
The committees released 25 pages of findings and recommendations yesterday, the public facet of a 450-page report that remains classified though inquiry members are pressing the FBI and CIA to permit them to declassify large chunks.
The report faulted U.S. intelligence agencies for leaning too heavily on foreign intelligence services instead of recruiting their own operatives; placing too little emphasis on human intelligence and penetration of al- Qaida cells; lacking translators and training for analysts; and being reluctant to share intelligence.
Topping the list of recommendations is a call for creation of a Cabinet-level director of national intelligence to oversee the hodgepodge of spy agencies that now report to different masters.
While the CIA director is the titular head of the intelligence community now, that person controls only one-fifth of the intelligence community's $35 billion annual budget. The remainder comes under control of the Defense Department, which is home to the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.
"What our intelligence community needs is the equivalent of an admiral of the fleet." said Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chairs the Senate intelligence committee. "Each agency, or ship, has a captain, but someone needs to command the entire fleet."