Congress: Our Spy Guys Blew It

Organizational problems and human failings prevented intelligence agencies from unraveling the Sept. 11 terrorist plot, lawmakers said Wednesday in announcing the conclusions of a congressional investigation into the attack.

If key clues had been linked, would-be hijackers could have been arrested or denied entry to the United States, the plot might have been unraveled or at least the homeland might have gone on a heightened state of alert, the House and Senate intelligence committees said in a joint report.

"No one will ever know what might have happened had more connections been drawn between these disparate pieces of information," it said.

Lawmakers issued 19 recommendations, many proposing structural changes to intelligence agencies. The most significant is creating a Cabinet-level director of national intelligence, overseeing all U.S. intelligence operations.

"The United States lacked a comprehensive strategy for combating al Qaeda and did not properly marshal its resources," Sen. Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said at a news conference. "The lack of resources hindered the community's efforts against terrorism."

The final report of the committee is pretty tough, reports CBS News Capitol Hill Correspondent Bob Fuss, calling performance of some at the nation's spy agencies "unacceptable" and pointing to failures that led to them missing the clues before the Sept. 11 attack.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency will review the inquiry's findings. He noted that Tenet told the panel that the CIA was always looking for ways to do its job better.

But he added: "As the director also told the committee, there are no easy fixes and the fight against international terrorism will be long and difficult."

But lawmakers were unable to resolve differences about whether individuals should be punished for their actions and omissions before the attack. It recommended that agencies' inspectors general, their internal watchdogs, review the inquiry's findings and determine whether some employees should be disciplined.

That approach dissatisfied the Senate committee's top Republican, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who said leaders must be held accountable. He cited in particular Tenet, whom he has frequently criticized.

"There have been more massive failures in intelligence on his watch as director of the CIA than any director in the history of the agency," he said.

He also criticized other intelligence leaders, including former CIA director John Deutch, former FBI director Louis Freeh, and Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of the National Security Agency.

Graham said lawmakers tried to balance a need to for holding intelligence personnel accountable with a concern that being too punitive could make staff make reluctant to take risks for fear of getting into trouble. Many lawmakers have cited "risk aversion" as one of the main problems they have seen at intelligence agencies.

In addition to the 19 recommendations, the committees released a nine-page summary of its findings, a small fraction of its classified overall report. The report was approved in a closed-door meeting Tuesday.

Among the chief recommendations were strengthening domestic intelligence, including an examination of whether this should continue to be the responsibility of the FBI or whether a new agency is needed. The recommendations referred to the "FBI's history of repeated shortcomings within its current responsibility for domestic intelligence."

The FBI issued a statement noting the advances it has made in fighting terrorism.

"After September 11, we redefined the primary mission of the Department and the FBI to prevent future terrorist acts on the American people and immediately began to build the new FBI to meet this extraordinary challenge," it said.

In recommending the creation of a national intelligence director, lawmakers are likely to face opposition from the Pentagon and its supporters in Congress.

Tenet oversees the overall intelligence apparatus as director of central intelligence, but he doesn't control military intelligence, whose budget is controlled by the Pentagon.

The lawmakers recommendations followed months of public and private hearings in which congressional staff faulted the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies for failing to share information that, if pieced together, might have led to the Sept. 11 plot.

In one example cited by inquiry staff, the CIA had identified two of the future hijackers as having attended an al-Qaida meeting in Malaysia in January 2000. But the two were not placed on a State Department watch list until weeks before the attacks and some agencies were never told to be on the lookout for them.

Also, memos in the summer of 2001 from FBI agents in Phoenix and Minnesota suggesting possible terrorist plots using airplanes weren't shared with other agencies.

Graham said more major findings have not been disclosed. Congressional staff are trying to get some of that material declassified.

The joint inquiry's work will be followed up by an independent commission headed by Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state. It will go beyond a review of intelligence failures to examine other issues related to the attacks, such as immigration and aviation security.