Intelligence

DATE=09/30/02

TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP

TITLE=INTELLIGENCE LAPSE

NUMBER=6-12650

BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: The nation heard testimony before a joint House-Senate intelligence committee last week on how the U-S was unable to detect last September's terrorist attacks. Both the F-B-I and the Central Intelligence Agency received criticism for failing to correctly piece together information before the attack. Now the nation's press is weighing in on the issue. We get a sampling now from _____________ in today's U-S Opinion Digest.

TEXT: The staff director of the congressional investigation studying the intelligence failure had several examples of how the United State's various intelligence agencies failed to share information. For their part, officials of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation d the Central Intelligence Agency said they had too much information to analyze and not enough staff.

Many of the congressmen were upset that more information was not pieced together. The hearings have prompted Congress to vote in favor of establishing a commission to study the failure in more depth. The daily newspapers are also critical. The Washington Post calls the revelations "A Sobering Picture."

VOICE: The initial crop of hearings . has offered a sobering portrait of key opportunities missed in the months before the hijackings. The . staff director, Eleanor Hill, has given three interim reports to the committee. The first illustrated intelligence agencies' failure to devote adequate resources and energy to the problem of Osama bin Laden as it emerged throughout the 1990s. The second and third detailed specific operational failures that hampered the chances of thwarting attacks. In combination, these reports go a long way toward explaining how the attacks could have taken intelligence agencies by surprise.

.The question now is how to make sure that these sorts of opportunities are not missed in the future. The temptation is to do so by relaxing standards; for example, there is a renewed push in the Senate, with the support of the Justice Department, to amend the law to make it easier to conduct surveillance against people such as . Zacarias .Moussaoui.[widely believed to have been a potential hijacker]. But this approach is too easy. The problem in this case was less the standards themselves than the face that the F-B-I appears not to have understood them or adequately marshaled the facts at its disposal. Dumbing down the rules is no substitute for crafting an intelligence apparatus capable of following the rules Congress sets.

TEXT: Far to the West, Montana's Billings Gazette is equally upset.

VOICE: We know hindsight is always 20-20 and the clarity it provides should be kept in perspective. But intelligence lapses revealed during last week's special session . were beyond chilling. Questionable restrictions and poor communications between federal agencies kept authorities from pursuing clues and taking action that might have changed the course of history.

. Since September eleventh, the F-B-I, C-I-A and other agencies have taken initial steps to improve their communication and share more critical information. But more must be done. Procedures must be changed and resources must be made available to ensure that the homeland is protected from its enemies.

TEXT: Returning East, Maryland's largest daily The Sun in Baltimore continues the drumbeat of criticism.

VOICE: More than a year after a devastating sneak attack was orchestrated on American soil, Congress is finally on the verge of launching an independent outside investigation of why the nearly three-thousand killed were left so utterly unprotected. The national bipartisan commission being created to conduct the inquiry is long overdue, but more welcome than ever.

From what a much narrower probe by the congressional intelligence committees had learned so far, it's clear there were plenty of warning signals that went unheeded by the leaders of the intelligence community. One exasperated F-B-I agent predicted fatefully to headquarters officials just days before the attacks that "someday someone will die [and] the public will not understand why we were not more effective."

. Only a truly independent board made up of respected citizens committed to ding an exhaustively thorough job can produce a report that satisfactorily explains these failures and makes practical recommendations for avoiding them in the future. President Bush resisted such an inquiry until just last week, when his opposition threatened to become . politically embarrassing. . Mr. Bush should help make sure .[the] proposal becomes law quickly so the commission can get on with its important work.

TEXT: Turning to one of Florida's smaller dallies, the Press Journal in Vero Beach, we find much of the same sentiment.

VOICE: The first public hearings of the congressional committees probing September eleventh have established this much: Intelligence agencies knew far more and in greater detail about the probability of a terrorist attack on the United States than the Bush and Clinton administrations have publicly acknowledged. They knew whom: Arab terrorists, acting on Osama bin Laden's orders. They knew how: a suicide attack by airliner. They had a good idea of the target: the World Trade Center. And in August two-thousand-one, they knew roughly when: the 'coming weeks."

However, "knew" in this context is a word of art. U-S intelligence was inundated with information, some of it very vague. Just how much information can be ascertained by the amount the committee had to go through to come up with those conclusions: 400 interviews and four-hundred-thousand documents. . Finding out what happened before September eleventh is important, but some things are more critical: Ensuring that relevant agencies are physically capable of handling the sheer volume of information. Establishing procedures for sorting and analyzing the hard intelligence that is winnowed from all that information. Assigning someone or some agency like the National Security Council to make sure that intelligence is acted on.

TEXT: The last word for today goes to the Los Angeles Times, whose headline that sums up its feeling: "Accountability, Not Excuses."

VOICE: The 19 hijackers of September eleventh operated with impunity in Europe and the United States. They came and went as they pleased, even in one case calling the Fairfax, Virginia cops indignantly after an attempted robbery. In 1998, the C-I-A declared war against terrorism, but the few warnings from within the intelligence community that might have uncovered the airplane plot were dismissed by higher-ups.

Yet on Thursday, Cofer Black, the former C-I-A chief of counterterrorism, and Dale Watson, former director of F-B-I counterintelligence and counterterrorism, told Congress that their agencies were merely underfunded -- and as successful as they could be under the circumstances. Huh? . it defies belief that the intelligence community needed just a few more dollars to stop the hijackers.

. Maybe C-I-A counterterrorism efforts should receive a 100 percent increase in funding, as [Mr.] Black maintained before Congress. But not before the ills of the intelligence community are studied by an independent panel. It would be reassuring if intelligence officials were less concerned about safeguarding their reputations and more aggressive about improving efforts to protect the country.

TEXT: With that assessment from California's Los Angeles Times, we conclude this sampling of editorial comment on the recent intelligence hearings about last September's terrorist attacks.

NEB/ANG/MEM