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| (United States Congress, Photo by Susan Sterner. Wikimedia Commons) |
Prominent leaders in the US Congress have demanded explanations from President
George W. Bush why the federal government failed to detect, monitor, and negate
the terrorist attacks. The most vocal critic on this issue was New York Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) when she told the reporters on May 16, 2002, that
“the public demands answers immediately . . . And the people of New York
deserve those answers more than anyone.”
The Director of the CIA and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) were not spared from the blame-game either. In the midst of this
political turmoil, the people demanded accountability. There was a public
outcry for the resignations of DCI George Tenet and Director Robert Mueller.
The actions and inactions of their organizations were reflective of the way
they led and managed the CIA and the FBI before the 9/11 attacks. The public
clamor for an explanation of what caused the massive intelligence and security
failure has not only reverberated in the streets of America but also rang in
the halls of US Congress.
Rep. Peter Goss (R), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, himself a former CIA Intelligence Officer, said that “over the
years, success in the FBI meant ‘to go out and apprehend criminals’ prosecute
them and ‘get them off the streets’ . . . that approach is still needed but
with terrorism, there is a new element of integrating overseas intelligence to
prevent acts inside the United States.”
Likewise, Rep. Jane Harman (D), a ranking member of the intelligence committee,
said that “the CIA, which by law operates overseas, and FBI, which operates
within the United States, have to rethink their separate roles when it comes to
dealing with terrorism. . . I still see a separate law enforcement and
intelligence function, but if we stop at the border's edge, we may not be
preventing terrorism.”
The political activists and the Democratic Party leaders demanded that the Bush
Administration be held accountable for the 9/11 tragedies as they happened
under his watch. The Republicans countered that the terrorist plan was hatched
during the time of the Clinton Administration, which had failed to detect and
negate the attack including those that had happened before 9/11.
On the span of just nine years—from February 26, 1993, in the first bombing of
the World Trade Center, to its second attack on September 11, 2001—the United
States had encountered ten major terrorist hits on US mainland and on US
interests overseas. These attacks have resulted in the total death of 6101
people and injuries to 19,735. The blame game and political mudslinging from
both parties have not produced any positive results to address the problems of
terrorism. On the other hand, the crisis had spotlighted the years of
dysfunctional relationship in the IC, which were then revisited by the members
of the US Congress through the fact-finding commission.
The US Congress noted the professional jealousies in the IC and this harmful
rivalry among the members had hampered the coordination and sharing of
information about the terrorists. Reports gathered by the media, the
revelations of FBI whistleblowers, and the results of the congressional
investigation have concluded that there were operational leads in the hands of
the IC members, and had that information been shared with one another, it could
have been used to negate the AQ network from carrying the attacks.
Moreover, the congressional leaders had also seen the weakness of the FBI in analyzing
and assessing the raw information coming from the field offices. For instance,
Special Agent Kenneth Williams of Phoenix FBI Field Office wrote a five-page
memorandum on July 10, 2001 about a
possible attack on the United States. His report did not reach the key Bureau
officials. Senator Richard J. Durbin (D), who attended the closed-door
congressional hearing when Williams testified before the Judiciary Committee, learned
that the memorandum did not go up to the chain of command. Durbin commented
that the report was “never treated seriously within the FBI, never circulated,
never analyzed, nor referred to the CIA."
The responsibility of securing the mainland from terrorist attack is the
primary assignment of the FBI. However, the FBI had no strategic plan to
address the rising danger posed by the Islamist terrorists that time. The
Bureau came up with a draft assessment entitled “FBI Report on the Terrorist
Threat to the United States and a Strategy for Prevention and Response” in
September 2001. The lack of strategic planning on terrorism has clearly
reflected in the Bureau’s organizational behavior towards terrorism.
The FBI serves as the federal government’s lead agency in charge to respond,
investigate, and prosecute terrorists. However, it will only pursue the
terrorists after they struck, not while they are still in the planning stage.
As an example, a request to conduct manhunt on AQ operative Khalid al-Mihdar in
the United States was denied by the Bureau heads because the FBI Special Agents
are criminal investigators and not intelligence operators. Al-Mihdar was one of
the terrorists that crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon
building.
The 9/11 tragedies created a groundswell in the US Congress to review the FBI’s
role as the lead agency that oversee the efforts in counter-terrorism because
its organizational culture and operational thrusts are not suitable for
counter-terrorism. It took the lives of thousands of people for the federal
government to finally admit that there is a need to create an organization that
will focus mainly on countering the threats of terrorism in US mainland. Thus,
after so much discussions and hesitations, the proposal to create a super
organization that is distinct from the FBI and CIA has been proposed to the
members of the US Congress by the Bush Administration. The US Congress, on the
other hand, had its own version of a domestic agency, which was incorporated
later on in the White House’s proposal.
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