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That Al-Midhar could elude three federal agencies, all of which knew his identity and the danger he posed, highlights the lack of coordination among U.S. intelligence agencies, whose biggest problem may be the intelligence system's splintered structure. The array of semiautonomous agencies--13 in all--share a secure computer network, but collaboration is not in their nature. Interaction between outsiders and CIA analysts or officials is difficult. Says a frustrated Administration official: "We don't have a place where it all comes together."
The broad ground rules that gave each intelligence bureaucracy its own role and swath of territory don't make much sense in the new war. The CIA has largely stayed out of domestic intelligence gathering, in part because of limits set by Congress in the '70s to protect citizens from the agency's excesses, such as dosing unwitting subjects with LSD. During the cold war and afterward, the Pentagon, FBI and CIA split the responsibility for tracking foreign threats, but each agency kept the others in the dark about what it was doing. That division of labor failed completely in spotting clues to Sept. 11, so it's good news that in the race to stop the next attack, the lines between fiefs have finally started to blur. The Sept. 11 terrorists crossed national boundaries at will. In response, more FBI agents are working overseas than ever before. The Patriot Act passed in October gives the CIA greater access to law-enforcement information and allows the nsa to obtain warrants more easily for domestic wiretaps. In Afghanistan, the CIA has unleashed its 150-man covert paramilitary force to conduct sabotage, collect intelligence and train Northern Alliance guerrillas.
The paragon of interagency cooperation is the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, which was created in 1986 as a way to get FBI and CIA agents working side by side. In the past three years, the CTC has broken up three planned attacks by the Hizbollah terror group outside the Middle East, all of them targeting locations where Americans could have been killed. The CTC is everything the rest of the intelligence community is not: coordinated, dynamic and designed for the post-cold war threat. As a result, its staff has doubled to 1,000 since Sept. 11, and the Administration has deluged the center with new funding.
But the CTC's staffers make up just 1% of the U.S. intelligence community. Some critics say the only sensible reform is for the CTC to become a model for the larger community--merging multiple intelligence agencies under the authority of the director of Central Intelligence. Congressional sources tell TIME that an advisory panel headed by former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft will recommend just such a reorganization later this year. But the idea probably won't go anywhere. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to oppose any proposal to take away the Pentagon's control over the Defense Department's intelligence agencies, where most intelligence dollars go. Tenet, who spent 10 years as a staffer on Capitol Hill, doesn't want to challenge Rumsfeld, who is at the height of his power. Those who know Tenet say he has little taste for taking on superiors. "[Tenet's] focus is always just going to be on getting the job done," says a source close to the Scowcroft panel.
A BETTER SHIELD