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The 9/11 commission has provided a detailed indictment of our intelligence agencies, and its critics are just trying to change the subject.
Thomas Kean, chairman of the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks, is a courtly, cautious man not given to rash judgments or hyperbole. But even Kean has concluded that the commission staff's investigative reports constitute "an indictment" of the FBI and CIA.
Kean is correct. The commission has not completed its work, but it already has compiled a devastating history of ineptitude and bureaucratic sclerosis at the heart of our government's intelligence failures prior to the 9/11 attacks. The commission's final report is certain to contain recommendations for reorganizing our scattered intelligence operations. Some streamlining of the 15 federal intelligence agencies, whose activities often overlap or work at cross-purposes, probably is needed. But a restructured bureaucracy will do little good unless it is accompanied by a thorough transformation of the flawed culture that often has sabotaged our intelligence-gathering operations.
Reorganization might help the flow of information and ideas among intelligence agencies, but the commission has documented larger bureaucratic problems within those agencies. Consider the FBI leadership's failure to connect the leads developed by field agents in the months prior to the 9/11 attacks:
An FBI agent in Phoenix sent a memo to his superiors calling for a nationwide investigation of Islamic extremists training at American flight schools. FBI agents in Minneapolis alerted their superiors to the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested on immigration charges after behaving suspiciously at a flight school where he demanded to learn to fly large commercial planes without learning to take off or land. The infamous Aug. 6 presidential daily brief noted that agents in New York had observed suspected terrorists casing federal buildings in possible preparation for hijackings or other types of attacks. The same briefing noted that our embassy in the United Arab Emirates had received a tip that a group of supporters of Osama bin Laden was in the United States and "planning attacks with explosives."
Yet these and other warnings failed to prompt the kinds of emergency measures that might have thwarted the 9/11 attacks. The directors of the FBI and CIA profess to have been unaware of much of the alarming intelligence gathered by their agents. And if national security adviser Condoleezza Rice is to be believed, she was startlingly detached from the spike in terrorist warnings in the summer of 2001. Rice says no one could have conceived of planes being used as weapons - even though our security agencies had contemplated such an attack since the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. And she dismissed the Aug. 6, 2001 brief as being of only "historical" interest, even though it contained a chilling summary of current terrorist activity.
That lack of accountability at the top may spur the commission to recommend the creation of a new position to oversee all 15 intelligence agencies. Support for a broader reorganization of domestic intelligence agencies seems to have waned. CIA director George Tenet says it will take five years to rebuild his agency under its current structure. Rebuilding the CIA and FBI from scratch would take longer than the nation can afford.
For the most part, the 9/11 commission has handled its responsibilities well. Members have worked cooperatively, and they expect to issue a unanimous final report. Kean and his colleagues also were wise to insist on public hearings and to take other steps to educate the public about their findings.
The commission's work inevitably represents a threat to much of Washington's power structure, so it is not surprising that some powerful forces would attempt to discredit the commission's work. The Bush administration, which fought the creation of a commission for more than a year, has since tried to limit its funds, block its access to documents, force an early deadline on its work and limit testimony from White House officials. (President Bush's insistence on having Vice President Dick Cheney accompany him during his only private interview with the commission is perhaps the most bizarre of the administration's restrictions.)
Now some commission members are under partisan attack for being too partisan.
Forget the distractions. The commission's work deserves to be judged on its merits, and the investigative reports issued so far build an objective, detailed account of bureaucratic ineptitude in our national security operations. Those who truly care about protecting the country will respond to those reports in good faith. Those who care more about protecting their own backsides will respond differently.