Digging around in the basement to find and dust off…ahhh, here it is:
Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack planes to try and free US-held terrorists.
—Dr. Rice, March 22, 2004, Op-ed in the Washington Post
Either “speculated” is just Intel-talk for “were told to our faces by an al Qaida-trained agent who turned himself in” or Dr. Rice is a master of understatement.
More than a year before 9/11, [Niaz Khan] a Pakistani-British man told the FBI an incredible tale: that he had been trained by bin Laden’s followers to hijack airplanes and was now in America to carry out an attack. The FBI questioned him for weeks, but then let him go home, and never followed up. Now, the former al-Qaida insider is talking.
In his resignation remarks to CIA employees yesterday, George Tenet said: “We are not perfect but one of our best kept secrets is that we are very, very, very good.”
Personally, I’d have edited out one of those “very”s for this inexcusable blunder alone:
Khan remains surprised that, to this day, the FBI, CIA and Scotland Yard have never asked for his help in identifying the street address of the Lahore safe house where he and dozens of other men were trained. He says he saw some identifying signs and might be able to locate it today. “I just surprised because [they] never come back to ask some more things,” he said. “[The FBI] believed me, but maybe not seriously.”
We’ve heard a great deal about the “wall” between the FBI and CIA lately, so perhaps the blame here falls squarely on the FBI’s shoulders for not even asking Khan where the safe house he was trained in was before releasing him, but as an average American who feels my tax dollars are supposed to be buying me some degree of interagency communication and competence on matters this important, I’d say a few other folks ought to be joining Tenet, and soon.
in a few books I’ve read about the failures leading up to 9/11, the authors have singled out the FBI as making the least excusable mistakes.
The FBI was a mess, and still has a very long way to go. However, keep in mind that the current Director (who had overwhelming bipartisan support at his confirmation) was only on the job for a matter of days prior to 9-11.
keep in mind that the current Director (who had overwhelming bipartisan support at his confirmation) was only on the job for a matter of days prior to 9-11.
Noted, which is why I think it’s fair to give Mueller a bit of breathing room, but it gives me no comfort to have to wonder who interviewed and then released Khan and what’s been done to make sure they’re not making the same type of mistakes.
“Just How Bad Is US Intelligence?”
Were you referring to the average American or just the CIA?
Were you referring to the average American or just the CIA?
Leave no spook behind.
…making the least excusable mistakes.
Katherine, I ask not out of pedantry but because I’m honestly not sure what you’re saying: do you mean “least-excusable mistakes” or “fewest excusable mistakes”, or some third option I haven’t thought of yet?
(In all honesty, I’m not sure there’s a practical difference in the implications of the two statements, but I thought I’d check nonetheless.)
Mistakes that were the least excusable, or most unexcusable.
Edward, go to your post on D-Day and ask yourself one question. How could the planners of D-Day not take into consideration the “hedge rows” which resulted in so many American deaths.
Timmy, Are you saying that intelligence about the layout of defenses behind enemy lines should be as transparent and therefore accessible as information being willinging offered up by a terrorist trainee who turned himself in?
Well yes, actually there was no question about the “hedge rows” they were there and it had nothing to do with the layout of the defences, the Germans used the terrain for their advantage.
Oh, maybe you should also remind all that when this happened Clinton was the President and his antiterror czar was Dick Clarke. Who despite all of his probbing in principle meetings, missed this little gem. A much fairer representation than the Rice roll out, don’t you think.
Timmy, here’s a short deconstruction of the post
1. Terrorist trainee turns himself in and reports plans to hijack planes in US (timing: final months of Clinton presidency; Clarke is anti-terror Czar, Tenet is CIA chief).
2. Terrorists hijack planes and use them for mass destruction (timing: more than a year later; Clarke and Tenet still working for federal gov’t in more of less same roles [Clarke’s role re=defined])
3. Nation examines intelligence to see where it failed us (timing: since the attacks; Clarke and Tenet still working for federal gov’t in more of less same roles [Clarke’s role re=defined])
4. National Security advisor (the one actually in power at the time) notes that “some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack planes” (timing: year and a half past the attacks [during which time, if you’ll recall, the nation has been examining its intelligence operations], AND two years and a half past the trainee’s interview).
Summary: It’s one thing to miss signs before an event. It’s another entirely different to suggest that the signs that were there were mere speculation for political purposes.
Clarke’s role re=defined, was it?
Now back to the question the previous Admin, Director of the FBI and Clarke (all those principle meetings) missed (let go) some material intelligence and you blame Rice for not knowing about before 9-11, that is rich even for you Eddie. But it is an election year, so please spin on.
Hang on there hoss, you and that steed of indignation you’re riding are racing toward a cliff.
I’m not blaming Rice for not knowing anything before 9/11. There’s ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in this post hinting at that. I’m saying that she should have known about this FBI interview (2 1/2 years later) and chosen her words less politically. She knew that some analysts had not “speculated” about hijackings. She knew they had been told, to their faces, by an Al Qaida trainee, that bin Laden was planning to hijack planes in the US.
And if she didn’t (and here’s the point of the post), our intelligence is even worse than I had suspected.
She should have known or she knew, which is it?
She should have known or she knew, which is it?
I realized that was probably unclear after I posted it.
By the time Dr. Rice wrote the op-ed piece (2 and 1/2 years after the interview and 1 1/2 years into what I assumed was an ongoing intensive second look at all the intelligence we had about this event), she should have known that some analysts were not “speculating” terrorists might hijack planes in the US. She should have known that some analysts had been told they were planning on it. I’ll sleep better at night thinking she knew.
So, assuming that bit of information didn’t surface before 9/11 (and that’s a weakness in the system I’ll be more than happy to blame on the “wall” and its creators in the Clinton administration), but did during this intensive period of combing back through the intel (she had 2.5 years remember) Rice chose her words politically in that op-ed piece.
There’s, of course, a chance she didn’t know. Again, hence, the title of this piece.
Edward,
Do you really think the NSA from one administration would know all the relevant FBI inteviews from the prior administration? How?
Mac,
I’m saying that by the time she wrote the op-ed she should have known about it. It was particularly relevant to her administration’s defining moment.
I’m not following you. That’ll teach me to come in the middle.
Another Edward moment, separate speculation from planning for me Eddie. Simply put, the FBI let this guy go, which if I read the report dictates that the information was speculative or they would have held the individual or rearrested the guy.
Now if the FBI had held the individual, well that would have been a different story but they didn’t.
So it is your judgement as compared to Rice’s and the FBI’s all revolving around the definition of a word.
The way Rice wrote it, it sounds as if the analysts (and she doesn’t clarify if they’re FBI or CIA or whatever) pieced together bits of chatter and then deduced that terrorists might hatch a plan at some point to hijack planes in the US. That’s misleading. And politically understated. I don’t believe you can excuse her statement as a judgement call in the context in which she wrote it.
Given that the FBI people who conducted the interview obviously didn’t believe Khan enough to continue to hold him or to pursue the matter further, perhaps Rice’s reference to intelligence speculation refers to something other than the interview in question? It’s a long shot, but who knows.
It’s possible — not necessarily probable, but possible — that she knew of the interview but –charitably — resisted the impulse to say, “This administration’s predecessors had direct first-person knowledge of a plot to hijack planes but chose not to act on it.” Can you imagine if she had written that?
No Edward, they picked up some guy in the Phillipines who planned to pack an airliner with explosives and crash it into the CIA. I believe the same individual, was planning to blowup twelve planes on the same day in oversea flights.
But Phil makes a better observation, right after Dick Clarke’s testimony, Rice commnets, “Clinton Admin let a bomber go”. I wonder how Eddie would have taken the information.
“Final months”, indeed. Hell, they only had May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December and most of January to do anything about it. Might as well do nothing, I guess.
There’s two ways to go on this: it should have, from information available at the time, have been taken seriously; in which case Rice failed nearly exactly as badly as Clinton’s staff. Alternatively, there wasn’t nearly enough confidence in the source, in which case everyone merely did the wrong thing with the benefit of hindsight.
Or did I miss something?