Then, to top it off, Bush ignored the Al Qaeda warning

The CIA's Inspector General's 2005 report on intelligence failures at the agency puts the blame on George Tenet.  The report has been made public today by Congress.

In some ways it is reminiscent of the findings of the 9/11 commission. That body concluded that “a failure of imagination” had made intelligence agencies unable to fully discern the growing peril of Al Qaeda, and that communication lapses within the C.I.A. and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and between those agencies had hobbled efforts to “connect the dots” of intelligence data and effectively pursue Al Qaeda terrorists, even after some of them had entered the United States.

The nitty-grittyof the report faults Tenet for being "sometimes too occupied with tactics instead of strategy, and ...was lax in promoting an information-sharing environment within the C.I.A."

The information was there.  It wasn't used. 

An inspector general’s team that reviewed the agency’s performance found that C.I.A. officers “from the top down” worked hard against Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, before the 9/11 attacks.

“They did not always work effectively and cooperatively, however,” the team concluded, in what amounted in part to sharp criticism of Mr. Tenet’s management skills and style.

Absence of strategy is a hallmark of the Bush administration -- from terrorist threats, to invasion of Afghanistan, to invasion of Iraq, to Katrina to... you name it.  (Except in one respect:  partisan political strategy, conceived well before Bush ever reached the presidency, was firmly in place.)

Given the White House's lack of response to a real warning a month before 9/11, it's hard to conclude anything other than that the leadership deliberately set aside warnings.  So far, accountability for failures have also been set aside.

An internal investigation at the F.B.I. also found fault with some of its actions before the 9/11 attacks. But, while some officials in both the F.B.I. and C.I.A. have come under heavy criticism, none has been disciplined.

The question remains whether information about the Bush administration's deliberate avoidance of warnings will lead, years from now, to revelations that the White House was more directly responsible for the attacks. It's a question which always provokes charges of "conspiracy theory."  But I don't know how one can look at the details of the administration's response to 9/11 warnings, and a variety of its agencies' responses to the actual attacks, without asking questions which go well beyond "failure of imagination" and get into intentions and complicity.  Those questions are fair and -- unlike the warnings in the White House -- will not be sidelined forever.

Comments

[Pez]

HA - nice try on finagling in the predictable Bush is to fault angle even, to bad it can be read and is basically and indictment of the Clinton Administration. I give you a A for effort though.

[PW]

Bush chose to leave Tenet in that job. And he chose to disregard warnings. Not Clinton.

[Pez]

OK, George Bush should have canned Clinton's July 1997 appointed DCI in order to prevent 9-11- your right, and he should known Clinton's gutting of the CIA was a calamity.

[JB]

This report is an indictment of Clinton's so-called "obsession" with capturing Osama. Sorry. The lid is off that line of BS. Clinton and the CIA did nothing. In 1998, the memo said "We are at war." Yet, even after the Cole was bombed in 2000 (that would be while Bill Clinton was still president, just so we're clear with those who are chronologically challenged), Clinton had no warlike response. Myth shattered. Let's move on to the next one, shall we?

[JB]

This report is an indictment of Clinton's so-called "obsession" with capturing Osama. Sorry. The lid is off that line of BS. Clinton and the CIA did nothing. In 1998, the memo said "We are at war." Yet, even after the Cole was bombed in 2000 (that would be while Bill Clinton was still president, just so we're clear with those who are chronologically challenged), Clinton had no warlike response. Myth shattered. Let's move on to the next one, shall we?

[PW]

Then, to top it off, Bush ignored the Al Qaeda warning.

[Pez]

uh huh

--The CIA’s analysis of al-Qaida before Sept. 2001 was lacking. No comprehensive report focusing on bin Laden was written after 1993, and no comprehensive report laying out the threats of 2001 was assembled. “A number of important issues were covered insufficiently or not at all,” the report found.--