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Cabinet-Level Intelligence Czar Proposed
Wed Dec 11 17:28:23 2002
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Cabinet-Level Intelligence Czar Proposed
Wed Dec 11,11:46 AM ET

By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Members of the House and Senate who've been probing pre-9/11 intelligence lapses are recommending a Cabinet-level position to co-ordinate information.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham says the investigation showed that intelligence officials had considerable information about al-Qaida before the 9/11 attacks but nothing that provided detailed warnings of an impending attack.

He says some of the information gathered before Sept. 11 didn't get much scrutiny even though there were general threats that terrorists wanted to attack the U.S. and might be considering using commercial airlines as weapons.

Graham likens the czar to an admiral that commands the entire fleet -- even though each ship has its own captain.

Lawmakers called for the creation of a Cabinet-level director of national intelligence, one of about 20 recommendations included in the final report of the House and Senate Intelligence committees investigating the attacks. The report was approved in a closed-door meeting Tuesday.

The report's findings on the circumstances surrounding the attacks are classified and it is unclear how much of it will be disclosed to the public or when. The recommendations are unclassified and were released Wednesday.

Among the chief recommendations were strengthening domestic intelligence, including an examination of whether this should continue to be the responsibility of the FBI (news - web sites) or whether a new agency is needed.

Lawmakers said recommendations generally addressed areas where improvement was needed, such as in the sharing of information among agencies or the need for more linguists. But they were sometimes short on specifics of how problems should be resolved.

Sen. Jon Kyl (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., said intelligence staff sometimes didn't probe deeply into the causes of intelligence shortcomings. "They were not able to get into the depth of questioning that they should have," he said.

Sen. Richard Durbin (news, bio, voting record), D-Ill, said the report "is going to add to the national debate about how to improve the safety and security of America."

"But nothing is going to happen until these agencies decide to modernize and cooperate with each other," he said.

The joint inquiry's work will be followed up by an independent commission headed by Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state. It will go beyond a review of intelligence failures to examine other issues related to the attacks, such as immigration and aviation security.

Former Sen. George Mitchell will serve as the panel's co-chair and, on Tuesday, former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., was named to the panel.

The joint inquiry's recommendations followed months of public and private hearings in which congressional staff faulted the CIA (news - web sites), FBI and other intelligence agencies for failing to share information that, if pieced together, might have uncovered the Sept. 11 plot.

Sen. Richard Shelby (news, bio, voting record), R-Ala., the Senate Intelligence Committee's top Republican, has said he will file a separate report calling for greater accountability. Shelby has been calling for the resignation of CIA director George Tenet for more than a year.

In one example cited by inquiry staff, the CIA had identified two of the future hijackers as having attended an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia in January 2000. But the two were not placed on a State Department watch list until weeks before the attacks and some agencies were never told to be on the lookout for them.

Also, memos in the summer of 2001 from FBI agents in Phoenix and Minnesota suggesting possible terrorist plots using airplanes weren't shared with other agencies.

Durbin said the full classified report includes criticism of other failures that are not yet public knowledge.

"A lot of these are very tough and I don't think they will be declassified," he said.

Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., said while the investigation didn't uncover a "smoking gun," it suggested the attacks might have been stopped "if we had different structures in place and a much more effective use of technology in terms of data mining, and so forth."

The creation of the national intelligence director is intended to improve that structure.

Tenet oversees the overall intelligence apparatus as director of central intelligence, but he doesn't control military intelligence, whose budget is controlled by the Pentagon (news - web sites).

"There needs to be one person who has more authority, or the ultimate authority, over intelligence in this country," said Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio.

But creating an intelligence director's position probably would be opposed by the Pentagon and its supporters in Congress.

Any calls for a domestic intelligence agency would also likely be resisted by the FBI, which says it has made fighting terrorism its top priority. Some lawmakers are also concerned a domestic intelligence agency could threaten Americans' privacy.

Critics have said the FBI is too focused on solving crimes at the expense of gathering intelligence on possible terrorist attacks.
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