By DAVID JOHNSTON, The New York Times
WASHINGTON, -- A Congressional report released today provided a scathing critique of the performance of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. before the September 2001 terrorist attacks and recommended several changes, including the creation of cabinet level national intelligence chief, that go beyond what the administration has proposed.
The report, by a joint panel of the House and Senate intelligence committees, found that the F.B.I. and C.I.A. had failed to heed repeated warnings that al Qaeda intended to strike in the United States. It referred to one newly disclosed intelligence document from December 1998 that said: “Plans to hijack U.S. aircraft proceeding well. Two individuals had successfully evaded checkpoints in dry run at NY airport.”
The report concluded that in the months before the hijackings, the F.B.I. and C.I.A. did not comprehend the gravity and imminent nature of the threat inside the United States and failed to assess all of the available information about the risk of an attack. As a result, the report said, the agencies missed opportunities that would have “greatly enhanced” the chances of disrupting the terrorist plot.
At one point, the nearly 900-page report took issue with an assertion to the committee by the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, that the bureau had known of no terrorist sympathizers who had contact with any of the 19 hijackers before the hijackings. The report identified 14 people it said was known to the F.B.I. who had dealings with four of the would-be hijackers. In a later appearance before committee members, Mr. Mueller said he had not intended to mislead them.
Over all, the report provides new insights into the hijackings and fresh details about the activities of the F.B.I. and C.I.A. before the attacks. The panel’s inquiry, which included nine public hearings and 13 closed sessions, is the most comprehensive and bleak assessment of lapses and missteps by the country’s two main intelligence agencies.
Some members of the panel said the committee’s findings showed that the hijackings might have been thwarted. “The attacks of Sept. 11 could have been prevented if the right combination of skill, cooperation, creativity and some good luck had been brought to task,” said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a former chairman of the Senate intelligence panel and co-chairman of the inquiry. Mr. Graham is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
But other leaders of the investigation said the inquiry left unanswered questions. “I can tell you right now I don’t know exactly how the plot was hatched on 9/11,” said Representative Porter J. Goss, the Florida Republican who is chairman of the House intelligence committee. “We still cannot fill in a lot of the blanks.”
Representatives of the country’s intelligence agencies have said the report offers little new information. Since the attacks, they say, they have taken many steps to expand and improve their counterterrorism efforts — including moves to share information and investigate terrorist threats more aggressively.
Mr. Mueller said in a statement today, “While the report provides a snapshot of the F.B.I. at September 11, 2001, the picture of the F.B.I. today shows a changed organization.”
President Bush, in another statement, said his administration had “transformed” how the government pursues terrorists, noting the creation of the Department of Homeland Security to reorganize counterterrorism efforts.
“The best way to prevent future attacks is to hunt down the terrorists before they strike again,” Mr. Bush said. “America and our allies have continued the relentless pursuit of the global terror network. Many of those directly involved in organizing the Sept. 11 attacks are confirmed dead or now in custody. We will not relent until al Qaeda is completely dismantled.”
Several counterterrorism officials described the report today as misleading and said it drew together disparate facts whose relevance in advance of the attacks had been extremely hard to understand.
“What you have here is a narrative composed of all the information that the government now possesses about the Sept. 11 attacks,” one senior law enforcement official said. “As the information was gathered over time — like a collection of puzzle pieces — by a number of agencies over a period of time, no one person or agency had the the complete picture of Sept. 11 we have now.”
The report said that the F.B.I., C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies had amassed a huge amount of information about al Qaeda before the attacks, but it found that none of the intelligence offered a “smoking gun” that indicated exactly how, when or where the attacks would take place.
Even so, by the time of the attacks, the report said, the F.B.I. and C.I.A. had collected “significant and relevant” information about some of the men who turned out to be hijackers. Intelligence agencies circulated warnings inside the government in June and July 2001 saying that imminent attacks causing “major casualties” could occur without warning.
The report concluded, “The intelligence community failed to capitalize on both the individual and collective significance of available information that appears relevant to the events of Sept. 11.”
“As a result,” the report said, “the community missed opportunities to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot by denying entry to or detaining would-be hijackers, to at least try to unravel the plot through surveillance and other investigative work within the United States and finally to generate a heightened state of alert and thus harden the homeland against attack.”
The report found that for nearly two years before the attacks, the C.I.A. had known of the terrorist connections of two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, who in 2000 moved to San Diego and had numerous contacts with an F.B.I. informant.
An unidentified F.B.I. agent who was responsible for the informant told the committee, in previously undisclosed testimony, that if the C.I.A. had told the F.B.I. what it knew about Mr. al-Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi, “it would have made a huge difference.”
“We would immediately go out and canvas the source and try to find out where these people were,” the agent testified. “If we locate them, which we probably would have, since they were very close, they were nearby, we would have initiated investigations immediately.”
The report said the informant had told the F.B.I. that he never knew that Mr. al-Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi were part of a terrorist plot. It concluded that the agent’s beliefs about the possibility of finding the men were speculative.
“What is clear, however,” the report said, “is that the informant’s contacts with the hijackers, had they been capitalized on, would have given the San Diego field office perhaps the intelligence community’s best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot.”
The report also renews a focus on Saudi Arabia and whether anyone in the kingdom may have known about the hijackings in advance. Saudi officials have denied any advance knowledge. But the report says that Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi student who befriended two of the hijackers and helped pay their expenses, “had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia.”
Some of the committee’s findings were disclosed last December when it completed its seven-month investigation. The panel’s final report was classified and disputes between the panel and intelligence agencies about what should remain secret continued until today’s release of a declassified version of the report.
The report revives the political issue about how well the F.B.I. and C.I.A. performed and whether the Bush administration has moved aggressively enough to address the agencies’ failings. The findings suggest that lawmakers in both parties believe that more far-reaching changes may be necessary to protect Americans from terrorism.
Some lawmakers said they were angered by deletions demanded by the Bush administration and the intelligence agencies. They said the administration should disclose more details, particularly from a heavily edited 28-page chapter about the role played by Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments.
“I just don’t understand the administration here,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “There seems to be a systematic strategy of coddling and cover-up when it comes to the Saudis.”
C.I.A. officials would not discuss the report today, referring to testimony to the joint committee last October by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. At the time, Mr. Tenet defended the C.I.A. and said it had an aggressive operation in place to deter al Qaeda.
In his statement, Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, said the agency had already acted on many of the committee’s recommendations.
But so far, the Bush administration has shown little interest in the panel’s most hotly debated proposal, to create an intelligence chief to oversee a large number of intelligence agencies that now report to different cabinet officials.