Tenet: CIA five years away from terror readiness

WASHINGTON - CIA Director George Tenet on Wednesday told the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that it would will take “another five years of work to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs” to combat al-Qaida and other terrorist threats.

“The same can be said for the National Security Agency, our imagery agency and our analytic community,” Tenet testified.

The estimate astonished the leaders of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

“Five years to rebuild? I wonder whether we have five years,” said Republican Chairman Thomas Kean, the former governor of New Jersey.

9/11 statements Robert Mueller George Tenet John Pistole Patrick Hughes John Brennan James Pavitt John Ashcroft Thomas Pickard J. Cofer Black Janet Reno Louis Freeh Condoleezza Rice George Tenet Sandy Berger Richard Clarke Richard Armitage Colin Powell

Democratic Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton, a former representative from Indiana, told Tenet: “When I hear a statement like ‘it’s going to take another five years,’ I ask myself, ‘Well, where were we for the last 10 or 15?’”

Tenet’s testimony followed the release of a report by the panel’s staff that concluded that while U.S. intelligence agencies issued “hundreds” of reports warning senior officials about the al-Qaida terror network, which was blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks, a lack of  strategic analysis left the policy-makers with a “fundamental uncertainty” about the scope of the threat.

In response to questions by members of the commission, Tenet said he had “serious issues” with some of the report’s conclusions, insisting that the CIA and other intelligence agencies had a strategic plan to deal with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

‘A system that’s broken’
But John Lehman, a former Navy secretary and Republican member of the commission, characterized the document as a “damning report of a system that’s broken, that doesn’t function.”

Lehman made it clear that he was not faulting Tenet personally, whom he praised. But, noting that President Bush recently signaled an interest in overhauling the nation’s intelligence-gathering structure, Lehman said change was coming.

Free video Kean and Hamilton on hearings April 14: Chairman Thomas Kean, pictured, and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton summarize the day’s testimony. NBC News

Tenet, who has held his job for seven years across parts of two administrations of different parties, said he would welcome a reorganization, although he asked the commission to recognize and incorporate changes instituted since the Sept. 11 attacks in the restructuring recommendations it was expected to issue.

In his testimony, Tenet acknowledged that intelligence officials could be faulted for not assembling clues that could have alerted authorities to the plot.

“We made mistakes,” he said. “...We all understood bin Laden’s intent to strike the homeland but were unable to translate this knowledge into an effective defense of the country.”

Although Tenet, like other current Bush administration officials, did not formally apologize for the failure to stop the attacks, he came closest to echoing former counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke’s full apology.

“No matter how hard we worked, or how desperately we tried, it was not enough,” Tenet said. “The victims and the families of 9/11 deserved better.”

Budget cuts seen as contributing to ‘systemic weakness’
But he also charged that budget cuts imposed since the end of the Cold War contributed to the “systemic weakness” that allowed the Sept. 11 plot to go undetected. When he became the nation’s top intelligence officer in 1997, he said, agencies had lost “close to 25 percent of our people and billions of dollars in capital investment” in the preceding several years.

Tenet also faulted the web of agencies and offices that were working on various aspects of the al-Qaida issue, saying there was neither regular communication nor a clear chain of command.

He maintained that senior government officials well understood the threat posed by al-Qaida but that the federal bureaucracy was not able to respond to a threat that did not fit into previous experience.

“Most profoundly, we lacked a government-wide capability to integrate foreign and domestic knowledge, data, operations and analysis,” he said. “Warning is not good enough without the structure to put it into action.”

Readily acknowledging that intelligence agencies “never penetrated the 9-11 plot,” Tenet said, “We all understood bin Laden’s intent to strike the homeland but were unable to translate this knowledge into an effective defense of the country.”

Commissioner Timothy Roemer, a Democratic former representative from Indiana, zeroed in on the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui in mid-August 2001 after he had been detected behaving suspiciously in a flight school in Minnesota. Moussaoui, who was originally detained for immigration violations, was later charged with conspiracy in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks and faces a possible death penalty if convicted.

When Roemer asked him whether he had ever told Bush about the arrest, Tenet said he had not spoken to the president at all that month, when Bush was staying at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

“He’s in Texas and I’m either here or on leave for some of that time,” he said. “In this time period, I’m not talking to him, no.”

A spokesman for the CIA later clarified that Tenet had flown to Texas to brief Bush on Aug. 17 and resumed regular briefings on Aug. 31 after the president returned to the White House.

After Moussaoui was arrested, Tenet and other top CIA officials received a briefing headed “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly.” Tenet said that was Aug. 23 or 24.

Asked about the CIA’s performance after the hearing, Kean, the commission’s chairman, said, “I think there’s a question in my mind and in many members’ minds whether the president’s getting decent information.”

Mueller echoes Ashcroft
FBI Director Robert Mueller, whose agency also has come under strong criticism from the commission, testified last and echoed much of the testimony Tuesday of Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Mueller agreed with Ashcroft, his boss, that before Sept. 11, 2001, “various walls existed” that prevented the “integration of intelligence and criminal tools in terrorism investigations.” He, too, criticized weak coordination among the FBI, the CIA and other agencies, but he declared that “since the Sept. 11 attacks, we and our partners have been breaking down each of these walls.” 

Mueller said that “because we [now] coordinate much more closely and regularly” with the CIA and the National Security Agency, the investigation “would proceed differently if it were to occur today.”

Free video Mueller outlines reforms April 14: FBI Director Robert Mueller said creating another domestic agency to handle terrorism would be a mistake. NBC News

In a plea that had been included in the printed version of his opening statement, Mueller urged the panel not to recommend the creation of a single agency to oversee the FBI’s and the CIA’s intelligence operations. Such a proposal would be a “grave mistake” that would create “more layers and greater stovepiping of information.”

“The FBI’s strength has always been, is and always will be the collection of information,” he said. “Our weakness is in the assimilation, integration and analysis of that information, and we are addressing it.”

A second staff report released Tuesday said that despite improvements the FBI had made, “institutional change takes time” and the agency had much to do.

“We heard from many analysts who complain that they are able to do little actual analysis because they continue to be assigned menial tasks, including covering the phones at the reception desk and emptying the office trash bins,” the report said.

Tenet praised as CIA faulted
Mueller escaped blame for the attacks because he did not take office until later, and he received an unusually warm welcome from Kean, who praised him as the most cooperative and helpful official the panel had dealt with.

More surprising was the gentle treatment extended to Tenet, whose appearance underscored his reputation as a Capitol Hill survivor who has, for the most part, been unscathed by criticism of the failures of the agency he headed for four years before Sept. 11, 2001.

Several commissioners praised him for his foresight and efforts to restructure intelligence-gathering. Yet the panel’s staff issued a report as the hearing opened that was sharply critical of the agency and apparatus he oversees, saying it had taken a fragmented approach to al-Qaida.

Foreshadowing some of Tenet’s comments, the report found that budget cuts in the national foreign intelligence program through the 1990s “caused significant staffing reductions,” contributing to a piecemeal approach to assessing the threat posed by al-Qaida.

“Before the attack, we found uncertainty among senior officials about whether this was just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary terrorist threat that America had lived with for decades, or was radically new, posing a threat beyond any yet experienced,” it said.

A more comprehensive look at clues before Sept. 11 could have unveiled the plot, the report added.

“While many dedicated officers worked day and night for years to piece together the growing body of evidence on al-Qaida and to understand the threats, in the end it was not enough to gain the advantage before the 9/11 attacks,” the commission said.

Ashcroft: ‘Wall’ blocked communication
Intelligence failures were also the focus of the panel in its first day of this round of hearings Tuesday, when top intelligence officials blamed their failed efforts to locate key al-Qaida  operatives before Sept. 11 on poor communication, limited staffing and legal restraints.

Ashcroft testified Tuesday that the refusal of the FBI and the CIA to work together during the Clinton administration was a primary reason the Sept. 11 plot was never uncovered.

Free video Communication breakdown? April 14: 9/11 commissioners Slade Gordon and Jamie Gorelick talk about Pres. Bush and CIA director George Tenet not speaking during the whole month of August 2001. MSNBC

Ashcroft’s picture of an FBI estranged from its counterparts in the CIA built on criticisms of the FBI under Freeh during the Clinton administration and the first months of the Bush administration.

Freeh said financial constraints and legal restrictions on surveillance hamstrung his agents. The biggest problem, he said, was a Justice Department policy that restricted FBI counterterrorism investigators from sharing information even within the bureau in some cases.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called Wednesday for the author of the disputed policy, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, to resign from the Sept. 11 commission, saying the panel’s independence could be “fatally damaged.”

Kean, a fellow Republican, dismissed the objections of Sensenbrenner and other Republicans, defending Gorelick as one of the most informed, tough and nonpartisan members of the commission.

“People ought to stay out of our business,” he said bluntly.

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