TENET MUST GO . . .

February 10, 2002 --

"..Sept. 11 may look to everyone else like the greatest national security failure in American history. But to CIA Director George Tenet, his agency's cluelessness about the al Qaeda attacks wasn't a failure at all - just, you know, one of those inevitable things.
No changes have to be made, no questions remain to be asked.

Everything's just fine, thank you.

Thousands of Americans are dead at the hands of international terrorists and somehow there's no question in Tenet's mind that the nation's principal intelligence organization did a faultless job.

"Intelligence will never give you 100 percent predictive capability on terrorist events," he told the Senate Intelligence Committee, taking a casual "win some, lose some" approach more appropriate to a baseball manager than a CIA director.

It is true, as former British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher is said to have remarked, that when it comes to terrorism the security forces must be perfect - while the terrorists just have to be lucky.

But that doesn't mean that when terrorists do get lucky, the fellow in charge of the security forces gets a pass.

Isn't anybody going to be held responsible for 9/11?

Tenet, who was appointed by President Clinton in 1997, seems unaware even that there is a buck to pass. He's never even apologized to the American people - or to the families of the 9/11 victims - for the mere possibility that the institution he heads might have let them down.

Sure, the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service share in the blame.

But it is widely known that in recent years the CIA bureaucracy has cut back on clandestine operations and overseas human intelligence.

Al Qaeda documents that might have provided a clue to the terrorists' plan weren't translated in time because - even after Khobar Towers and the USS Cole bombing - the CIA didn't employ enough Arabic translators.

Former CIA agents have charged that the agency under Tenet's "leadership" did not even try to penetrate al Qaeda.

Tenet boasted to the Senate that Osama bin Laden "underestimated our capabilities, our readiness and our resolve" in Afghanistan.

Hmmm. Just as Tenet underestimated Osama before 9/11 - for which America paid a terrible price in blood and treasure.

Now Osama is on the run.

But Tenet is still on the job.

He should have resigned.

And then - just as after Pearl Harbor - there should have been a inquiry into what went wrong and why.

Yes, the Bush administration is loath to proceed on the latter. And there is something to be said for avoiding the disruption and finger-pointing that such a proceeding would generate.

But not much.

Anyway, there's no good reason why the truly sensitive issues couldn't be handled behind closed doors.

The organization George Tenet heads is surely full of fine, capable, devoted public servants. But it failed - disastrously - on his watch, and thousands of Americans perished as a result.

America needs to know why..."

The CIA struggles to make up for lost time

02/13

"..The CIA for most of its early years was a para-military intelligence organization with a highly developed special operations division which carried armed covert actions, supported coups or organized reasonably sized wars from Central America, Africa to South East Asia. The Carter-Stansfield Turner era saw the wholesale abandonment of much of this capability and over 800 seasoned officers were sacked.

The carnage amongst 'agents' and short-term contract staff was even worse and the CIA struggled to maintain its combat ability until the arrival of the Reagan-Casey period when serious attempts were made to rebuild the Agency.

However, though some progress was undoubtedly made, Afghanistan was to highlight the paucity of suitably trained and experienced field officers either in the Near East Division or the Special Activities Division. The Agency has been quite unable to deal with the threat of international terrorism before or after 9-11, the appalling standard of information supplied to US forces in the Afghan campaign has already drawn a veiled, though public rebuke from the Pentagon. Privately US military staff have been glowing in rage at the inept, bungling intelligence service.

The litany of feeble excuses made by the DCI, George Tenet have drawn blistering rebukes from knowledgeable insiders and some of the CIA's recent pronouncements have done little to improve relations with China, Russia or a number of Middle Eastern regimes. Yet again the CIA has clearly highlighted an agency truism, they have the ability to collect vast amounts of raw intelligence, but have little sophisticated analytical ability and a virtual absence of intelligent, cosmopolitan and confident leadership.

CIA, risk-avoidance and buck-passing predominate

The atmosphere inside Langley is one of civil service carefulness, risk avoidance and buck passing. An agency that once found room for the odd, the eccentric, but often brilliant officers such as Wisner, Bissell, Angleton or Roosevelt has become a home for the second rate beaurocrat, afraid to make a decision and vastly reminiscent of the latter days of that moribund Soviet monolith, the KGB. Strong action needs to be taken to kick start the CIA, the recent recruiting campaigns are merely bringing in extra dross and further diluting the effect of the few remaining excellent CIA officers. Smooth skinned college kids don't make good field officers and the CIA will have to recruit more heavily from within the ranks of the special forces and the international underworld, being picky about keeping your distance from the 'nasty folks' won't win the United States any battles against an international terrorist threat now scattered across the globe by the Afghan war.

''We are doing things I never believed we would do and I mean killing people'' said one US intelligence official speaking off the record. However as recent reports have hinted, not always the enemy. Indeed, the gullible and inexperienced CIA field officers, and at times there have been upto 200 in Afghanistan, tried to rely on favours and endless cash to obtain information they were unable to find by clandestine methods. In consequence there have been many botched operations and considerable casualties amongst US allies often caused by the settling of old score amongst the anti-Taliban forces.

Poor leadership & restrictive management hamper operational efficiency

Robert Baer, who spent 21 years from 1976 onwards as a CIA officer operating against terrorists in the Middle East and South Asia, claims that the CIA's espionage service or Operations Directorate lacks good leadership and personnel with language skills who can recruit agents in foreign countries. "A lot of people did some very good work and I'm sure they still do, but you've really got to revamp the system" Baer said "You have to have a strong director of operations who understands operations, who can separate good intelligence from bad intelligence, knows what a source is, knows how to vet a source and knows when someone is taking unnecessary risk and what's a necessary risk,"

He added that the CIA's foreign-agent recruitment system discourages field officers from hiring or running agents and the entire collection system relies too much on electronic intelligence and information provided by foreign intelligence services. Baer further highlighted the management practices that discourage risk-taking and focus on non-intelligence issues "You have too much of the CIA going after touchy-feely things" There have been far too many instances where risk-averse CIA managers have refused to take action that could have stopped terrorist attacks. With a typical civil service bloody-mindedness case officers are often sent to staff colleges instead of foreign posts and those who have the vital agent recruiting skills of speaking a foreign language fluently and have developed a fundamental understanding of their target country have been sent to other areas simply because the desk-bound CIA management felt they had become too involved with a particular region.

The CIA is out of touch, hind-bound with red tape, led by career beaurocrats who are scared stiff of taking positive action and simply counting the days till they draw their agency pensions. The CIA does not need to 'modernize' or become politically correct or media friendly, it needs to return to being a genuinely clandestine intelligence organization backed up with a headquarters staff capable of quickly producing reasoned analysis and forecasting for the Government and Defence community. The CIA as it stands today is someway short of achieving that particular target.

Constructive criticism of the CIA is lacking, as so many of the 'think tanks' and private consulting and information research companies that have sprung up around the intelligence community are stuffed full of failed desk-bound talking heads who are trotted out to provide comment in Newspapers or on the TV News and of course, do not deviate from the agency line. This is not a healthy situation for an Intelligence Agency and a number of the more perceptive insiders are well aware that a more critical and less sycophantic atmosphere is urgently needed..."

Richard M. Bennett

Julie Sirrs, a former Defense
Intelligence Agency analyst of Afghanistan who has made several trips there, mentioned in an interview on February 18th "ABC-Good Morning America" (8:37 AM), the CIA made a big failure.

While she was investigating in Afghanistan, she was harrassed by government officials for her results.

Julie Sirrs is able to speak Pashtuna, an afghan dialect and has a lot of insider sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
She said, that she still don't trust the ISI, Pakistan Secret Service, who has still many ties to Al-Quaeda.

"It hasn't changed, it's worse"

While she was lately in Afghanistan, she followed all national security procedures but didn't receive any support by the US-government yet. She mentioned "harsh measures" against her.