LAT op-ed: Five years after 9/11, American intelligence still stupid

[DeepModem Mom]

American Intelligence -- Still Stupid
We haven't been attacked since 2001, but don't thank the country's cumbersome, redundant intelligence bureaucracy.
By Amy Zegart, AMY ZEGART is associate professor of public policy at UCLA and the author of a forthcoming book about intelligence failures and 9/11.
September 17, 2006

FIVE YEARS AFTER the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history, all our worst intelligence deficiencies remain. Intelligence is spread across 16 agencies that operate as warring tribes more than a team. The CIA is in disarray. And the FBI's information technology is stuck in the dark ages.

There are more intelligence agencies to coordinate than ever but still no one in firm charge of them all. In 2004, Congress established the post of director of national intelligence. Rather than integrating intelligence, however, the job's creation has triggered huge turf wars. For the last two years, while the office of the intelligence director has been fighting over who briefs the president and who staffs assignments, the Pentagon has quietly expanded its intelligence activities at home and abroad.

This is bad. Pentagon units now duplicate such intelligence activities as conducting secret counter-terrorism operations, collecting information abroad and monitoring Americans inside the U.S. without warrants, presidential authorizations or meaningful supervision by the director of national intelligence and Congress....

***

...(the CIA) still struggles to produce big-picture analyses about America's enemies.... Last year, the Justice Department's inspector general found that FBI analysts — the people who are supposed to connect the dots — spent only half their time actually doing analysis. What were they busy doing instead? Taking out the trash and answering telephones, the same menial tasks they were assigned before 9/11.

It is often said that change takes time. But history is filled with examples in which more was accomplished in less. In 1865, less than five years after the Civil War began, the nation had reunited and abolished slavery. Four years after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, U.S. forces had crossed two oceans and won the war. The founders managed to draft the Constitution in 100 working days....Five years after 9/11, we have not been attacked. But we should not confuse luck with effectiveness.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-zegart17sep17,0,219960.story?track=mostemailedlink

[knowbody0]

1. here's one for you:

They cannot find BinLaden and 98% of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan.

If this were a chess game, the opponent could not have crafted a more perfect strategy.

[rman]

2. Does it mention investigations of terror financing being blocked

from up high in the agencies, does it mention the 9/11 Commission report concluded that the money trail was irrelevant?

The article is no more than the same old "blame the agencies" ('Clinton's agencies') - anything not to blame the Bush admin. Same as ABC/Disney's "Path to 9/11".

For a different perspective watch "9/11 Press for Truth" www.911pressfortruth.com