:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 4.14.2004 ::

:: 911 Probe update ::

Sept. 11 Panel Cites C.I.A. for Failures in Terror Case
By PHILIP SHENON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
From The NY Times

WASHINGTON, April 14 — George J. Tenet and his deputies at the Central Intelligence Agency were presented in August 2001 with a briefing paper labeled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly" about the arrest days earlier of Zacarias Moussaoui, but did not act on the information, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said on Wednesday.

An interim report by the panel's staff offered a stinging assessment of the C.I.A. under Mr. Tenet's leadership and was made public during a hearing at which Mr. Tenet disclosed that he had little contact with President Bush during much of the summer of 2001, a period when intelligence agencies were warning of a dire terrorist threat.

Mr. Tenet, the director of central intelligence since 1997, testified that he had no contact at all with Mr. Bush in August, the month in which the president received a C.I.A. report suggesting that terrorists of Al Qaeda were already in the United States and might be planning a domestic airplane hijacking.

The agency later telephoned reporters on Wednesday to correct Mr. Tenet's testimony, saying he met once with the president during Mr. Bush's nearly monthlong vacation that August at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., and once again when Mr. Bush returned to Washington later that month. In defending Mr. Bush from recent contentions that he was not sufficiently attentive to domestic terrorist threats before Sept. 11, the White House has cited his face-to-face meetings with Mr. Tenet as proof of his interest.

Mr. Tenet offered an aggressive defense, insisting that the agency had provided "clear and direct" intelligence about the larger danger posed by Al Qaeda before Sept. 11. "Warning was well understood, even if the timing and method of attacks was not," he said.

ALSO
From Newsday.com
Excerpts from commission testimony

AND
From The Dallas Morning News
Sweeping change may lie ahead for FBI, CIA
9-11 panel expected to advise overhaul after Bush indicates interest
By MICHELLE MITTELSTADT

WASHINGTON – President Bush's willingness to consider a major overhaul of the nation's intelligence agencies could jump-start a wave of overdue reforms, members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said Wednesday.

The bipartisan panel, tasked with recommending fixes for the systemic failures that permitted the 9-11 attacks, is expected to propose changes well beyond those already accomplished by the FBI and CIA in the last 2 ½ years.

"There is a train coming down the track," Commissioner John Lehman told CIA Director George Tenet. "There are going to be very real changes made."

The commission has yet to decide whether to embrace major change advocated by some experts, such as creation of a director of intelligence post to oversee all spy agencies or the removal of counterterrorism functions from the FBI in favor of a domestic intelligence agency. But individual commissioners have made it clear that the panel will offer sweeping recommendations when it issues its final report in July.

Speaking a day after Mr. Bush said he would be open to intelligence community restructuring, the commission's chairman, Tom Kean, pronounced the comments "extraordinarily helpful."

"There have been attempts to reform the intelligence community in the past," Mr. Kean said during a break in Wednesday's daylong hearing. "And presidents of both parties have stopped them."

posted by me

:: 10:51:00 PM [+] ::
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