In Closed-Door Session, U.S. Intelligence Officials Describe Al Qaeda Strategies by Juliet Eilperin and Dana Priest, Washington Post
CIA Director George J. Tenet told a congressional intelligence panel yesterday that the Sept. 11 plot was probably hatched shortly after al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, according to lawmakers who attended the closed-door session.
Al Qaeda takes about “three years between the time they identify a target and when the target is hit,” Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, told reporters during a break in the daylong session. The panel also heard from FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, head of the National Security Agency, which performs electronic eavesdropping.
“It started more or less, I would say, shortly after the African embassy bombings,” said Graham of the plan to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “They do operations at a rate of about once every 12 to 18 months, which means they’ve got terrorist goals which are overlapping in planning and execution.”
The Senate-House panel is investigating the performance of the nation’s intelligence agencies leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Hayden was asked to respond to allegations that the agency had intercepted al Qaeda communications about the attacks before Sept. 11 but failed to translate and disseminate them until afterward, lawmakers said.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence panel, said Hayden answered the questions. Shelby would say only that the NSA collects a huge volume of data, is able to translate only a fraction of it and is able to distribute only a fraction of that.
NSA officials have denied the agency translated any significant al Qaeda conversations that would have alerted officials to an impending attack.
Lawmakers asked Tenet to explain why the CIA had failed to communicate effectively with the FBI about potential terrorists. “Tenet underwent a pretty thorough examination and held up pretty well,” said Rep. C. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.). He described the session as “more details about particular facts surrounding September 11th, but nothing particularly shocking and startling.”
The witnesses discussed “the original concept of this attack through the recruitment, the training, the financing, the coordination of those who were involved in its execution,” Graham said.
Members of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are still operating inside the United States, Graham said. “Whether they had anything to do with September 11th or not is another issue,” he added.
While the panel is looking at broad problems confronting the intelligence agencies, members also want to eliminate the possibility of more revelations about information that could have prevented the attacks had it been analyzed and shared.
Some committee members questioned the push to reorganize the nation’s intelligence-gathering agencies when their investigation was still in its initial stages. The White House sent Congress draft legislation yesterday outlining President Bush’s proposal to create a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security.
“Rather than choosing a symbolic date, especially on the intelligence front, we should move very slowly,” said Rep. Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.).