Al Qaeda Unchecked for Years, Panel Says

Tenet Concedes CIA Made Mistakes

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III testified that it will "take time" to transform the bureau to meet threat of terrorists, and he urged the Sept. 11 commission not to recommend that the U.S. establish a domestic intelligence agency. (Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)

U.S. intelligence services failed to recognize the emergence of the al Qaeda terrorist network until more than a decade after it was founded in 1988, playing down a tide of reports that documented the danger posed by the group, according to findings released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The CIA's Counterterrorist Center never developed a plan to deal with the possibility that terrorists might use airplanes as weapons despite growing evidence during the 1990s that terrorist groups had attempted or were planning such plots, the commission's staff also found.

CIA Director George J. Tenet acknowledged yesterday that he did not brief President Bush, FBI leaders or Cabinet members after he was informed in late August 2001 of the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, who would later be charged as a conspirator in the terror attacks. The briefing for Tenet was titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly."

"We made mistakes," Tenet told the panel yesterday, referring to the general failure to detect the terror plot that left 3,000 people dead. "We all understood bin Laden's intent to strike the homeland but were unable to translate this knowledge into an effective defense of the country."

Tenet also said it would take five more years to "have the kind of clandestine service our country needs."

The findings by the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, were the second time in as many days that the commission's investigators have unveiled a sweeping condemnation of the U.S. intelligence community, this time focused on the CIA. The same investigators released a report Tuesday that the panel's chairman had described as "an indictment of the FBI."

The staff found that major collection and analysis activities targeting al Qaeda were delayed even after a defector from the terrorist organization began providing details about the network in 1996.

The CIA had learned that Osama bin Laden was linked to the 1992 attacks on U.S. military personnel in Yemen and the 1993 downing of a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter in Somalia, the report said. The agency also received reports in 1997 that al Qaeda operatives were surveilling institutions in the United States as a precursor to a likely attack.

But still, the U.S. intelligence community "did not describe this organization, at least in documents we have seen, until 1999," according to the report.

During his testimony yesterday, however, Tenet disputed the claim that the CIA wasn't aware of al Qaeda and bin Laden until that late date. Tenet said the report's finding wrongly assumed that "people weren't getting this kind of data. That's just not true."

In one of its more stinging case studies, the staff report noted that Tenet learned on Aug. 23 or 24, 2001, about the arrest in Minnesota a week earlier of Moussaoui, a suspected jihadist who was attempting to learn how to fly jetliners.

Tenet said he did not tell President Bush, who was vacationing in Texas, or FBI management about the development. Nor did he mention the case at a Sept. 4 White House Cabinet meeting, where approval was given for a new presidential directive on terrorism.

Tenet said he assumed "that this was something that would be laid down in front of" the White House Counterterrorism Security Group. In fact, the Moussaoui information remained in the FBI's international terrorism division. Thomas J. Pickard, acting FBI director until a week before the attacks, has testified that he did not learn of it until the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001.

Tenet testified that the case first came to his attention because the FBI agent was looking for any intelligence the CIA had about Moussaoui to get a court order to open his computer.

In a separate report released yesterday, the panel's investigators were critical of the FBI's attempts at reform since the Sept. 11 attacks. Although the bureau "is a stronger counterterrorism agency than it was before 9/11," the report said, it remains plagued by chronic computer problems, erratic training, shortages of linguists and intelligence analysts, and widespread confusion among agents over its counterterrorism mission.

In one example, "we heard from many analysts who complain that they are able to do little actual analysis because they continue to be assigned menial tasks, including covering the phones at the reception desk and emptying the office trash bins," the report said.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said in testimony that "we've got to put our house in order, and I think we are putting our house in order."

"Change cannot be done overnight," he added. "Transitions take time. . . . I think we're on the right path."

Mueller urged the commission not to endorse the creation of a domestic intelligence service that would take over counterterrorism responsibilities from the FBI. The panel is seriously debating the idea of an agency akin to Britain's MI5; the prospect of an overhaul of the nation's intelligence apparatus gained further prominence this week when President Bush said he was considering it.

"I do believe that creating a separate agency to collect intelligence in the United States would be a grave mistake," Mueller said. "Splitting the law enforcement and the intelligence functions would leave both agencies fighting the war on terrorism with one hand tied behind their backs."

The idea has prompted widespread criticism from law enforcement officials. Former FBI director Louis J. Freeh on Tuesday likened the idea to the creation of a "secret police," and the 9,000-member FBI Agents Association said such an agency would "put blinders on agents in the field and tie their hands behind their backs in the fight against terrorism."

Although members of the 10-member bipartisan commission showered praise on Mueller and Tenet for their efforts at reform, the remarks were overshadowed by the sweeping criticisms found in yesterday's staff reports.

"I came to this job with less knowledge of the intelligence community than anybody else at this table," said Chairman Thomas H. Kean, who served as a Republican governor of New Jersey. "What I've learned has not reassured me. It's frightened me a bit, frankly."

The commission staff also confirmed an early clue to a Sept. 11 hijacker, reporting that in 1999, the German government provided the U.S. government with a telephone number and first name: "Marwan." The CIA pursued the lead but little was discovered. The individual would eventually be identified as Marwan Al-Shehhi, who piloted United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center and used the same telephone number given to the CIA before the hijackings.

Commissioner Bob Kerrey (D), who served on the intelligence committee as a senator from Nebraska, said he did not know in 1996 that bin Laden's operatives might have been involved in downing the Black Hawk in Somalia.

"Did you ever have a conversation with President Clinton" about the incident in order to "ramp this guy up to the top of the list?" Kerrey asked Tenet, adding that the evidence "would have galvanized the U.S. against bin Laden."

Tenet said he would have to check on what he told Clinton.

Tenet said the CIA's inability to penetrate the al Qaeda network has led to a long-term rebuilding of its human intelligence program, which was in "disarray" after the loss of 20 percent of its personnel in the 1990s. By 2001, he said, there were 25 sources inside Afghanistan who were nonproductive on the Sept. 11 plot but useful for the U.S.-led invasion.

Kean questioned why it would take five years to rebuild the CIA's clandestine service. Tenet said it takes time to create "access and cover" so that U.S. agents can take root in the rough societies where terrorist sources can be developed.