Consider the following:
On August 6, 2001, the Presidential Daily Briefing is titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US”. In late August, 2001, according to the Commiision report as reported by the Chicago Sun Times Tenet and other Top CIA officials were given a brief entitled “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly”, related to the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui just a few day before.
So what do I have to say about the day to day operations of the CIA?
Pretty damn good. Someone recognized the threat implicit in Moussaoui, and it shot to the top of the CIA ladder. The timing of the two briefings is unfortunate; the Moussaoui item may well have been included in a later presidential briefing, but Tenet apparently decided that it alone wasn’t worth bringing to the president.
What we have here, and have had through repeated space shuttle disasters at NASA, is the same. Alarm bells go right up the line, exactly as intended. At a certain level, in these cases very high up, the bells ring until someone or some group simply “switches off” the alarm by letting it die without taking any particular actions or making any particular precautions.
It goes beyond what you’ve said. There were problems getting court permission to check Moussaoui’s laptop. The FBI and the CIA were also constrained by law not to communicate basic information. Dr. Rice addressed this in an interview she did prior to her appointment.
I don’t know when this legal snafu came into effect and I’m not interested in a blame-game fest. What I want to point out is that terrorists used US law and the high standards of individual privacy as a weapon against the people who have it. The Patriot Act corrects a lot of the problems of law enforcement. The CIA and FBI can now cooperate with each other and there is a system in place to expedite search warrants.
Given 9/11, it is safe to say they are willing to do anything to achieve their religious goals. Afghanistan should have been a wake-up call for a lot of the nonsense that we see today. When I saw them (Taliban) destroying those wonderful temples carved into mountains (because they were false idols) I knew then these people were wacked. I didn’t put 2 and 2 together. I thought our alliance with them against the Soviet Union would have kept them out of our hair. In all honesty, I thought the crap was going to hit the fan from Iran.