CIA internal inquiry finds agency failed to prevent 9/11

[Prrkitty]

Article of discussion: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/21/cia.terrorattacks.ap/index.html

A couple of specific comments from the article:

Quote #1: "Completed in June 2005, the report lays out in greater detail what has long been known: The CIA's top leaders failed to use their available powers, never developed a comprehensive plan to stop al Qaeda and missed crucial opportunities to thwart two hijackers in the run-up to September 11."

Quote #2: "They did not always work effectively and cooperatively," the report stated.

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As for quote #2... DUH! EVERYONE knows that the CIA, FBI and most ALL government agencies do NOT play "nice nice" with each other ... or hell even it's own people.

And honestly ... even if we had been prepared could we (our country) have been able to stop ALL the highjackers?

The summary/s at the bottom of the article are a bit confusing. Supposedly some agencies DID know all along about the terrorist attacks but didn't do anything about it? And yet again "the left hand not talking to the right hand"... only made sure that the attacks succeeded. <blah>

[phattonez]

Great, this adds more fuel to the conspiracy theory fire.

[AtmaWeapon]

Personally I don't see the smoking gun here.

The article claims they "failed to prevent 9/11", which seems to suggest that the CIA is in possession of technology that can halt the Earth's rotation around the Sun. No matter how hard we try, September 11th is always going to come after September 10th, and I think it is foolish to suggest that the CIA is dropping the ball here.

If the article instead meant the CIA knew about the attack on the World Trade Center that happened to occur on September 11th, 2001, then it still doesn't really make a strong case. I see no real mention of the discovery of a person who uncovered the plot to hijack planes whose attempts to prevent the attacks were hindered by red tape. Instead I see accusations that the CIA wasn't monitoring Al Qaeda as closely as they are today, which personally doesn't surprise me. They were a terrorist organization but how often had they proven dangerous to the U.S. prior? Do we really expect the CIA to actively monitor every entity in the world that seems to harbor ill will towards America?

The article fails to suggest why the CIA should have been monitoring Al Qaeda closely. There's a couple of hits that a few people were very concerned, but the article doesn't support this well. For example, let's look at one quote that would seem to condemn the CIA:
Although 50 to 60 people read at least one CIA cable about two of the hijackers, the information wasn't shared with the proper offices and agencies.What did this CIA cable contain? This would be really important to the article but the author hopes you've already drawn your conclusion. If the cable contained information to the effect of "Known Al Qaeda agents entered country illegally and have applied for pilot's licensing" then that could be suggestive that the ball was dropped. But then again, perhaps Al Qaeda agents had been entering the country quite routinely for a while and this wasn't particularly odd? On the other hand, what if the wire simply contained "Two male individuals illegally entered the country from the Middle East" then one can understand why it wasn't treated as high priority.

Naturally, after the attacks we decided they were a fairly large threat. Sometimes you make wrong guesses. The main reason I'm siding with the CIA here is that headline is really sensational and the leap from "wasn't monitoring Al Qaeda" to "failed to act on the knowledge of the attack on the World Trade Center" is worthy of investigation by whoever decides world records.

A big problem here is in 2007, we are predisposed to believe that any information about Al Qaeda is important. However, you have to remember that before the World Trade Center was attacked, most of us didn't really even know what Al Qaeda was. I imagine the attitude at the CIA wasn't much different; I haven't done much research but I believe before that day there wasn't really much evidence that they were worth a lot of effort.