Failures of Intelligence

A joint House-Senate committee investigating intelligence failures before Sept.11 released a scathing staff report last week accusing the CIA of not devoting enough resources to uncovering Osama bin Laden’s plots against the U.S. One FBI agent testified that he warned headquarters just 13 days before the attacks that because he was denied permission to pursue Khalid Almihdhar, above, who later turned out to be one of the 19 hijackers, “someday, someone will die.” President Bush announced he would now support a blue-ribbon commission to investigate what went wrong. The CIA denies it was aslei*Aep, but since last Sept. 11, its Counter-Terrorism Center has doubled its manpower. Fearing he was not getting enough creativity from his spooks, CIA Director George Tenet set up a “red cell” after 9/11, with a dozen free thinkers who dream up outlandish ways bin Laden might strike. The red cell has written some unusual papers for Tenet. One, for example, was titled “View from the Cave” and has bin Laden speaking in the first person (or as the cell envisions him doing so) and musing about Sept. 11 and his next attack.