Who knew, CIA failed to stop 9-11 attacks?

Washington Post:

Former CIA Director George Tenet did not marshal his agency's resources to respond to the recognized threat posed by al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency's inspector general concluded in a long-classified report released today.

The report, which Congress ordered released under a law signed by President Bush this month, also faulted the intelligence community for failing to have "a documented, comprehensive approach" to battling al-Qaeda.

Tenet, now a professor at Georgetown University, heavily criticized the report as "flat wrong" in a lengthy statement, saying the judgments are contradicted by a report issued by the agency watchdog just a month before the 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. CIA Director Michael Hayden also said he did not want to release the report, saying it "would distract officers serving their country on the front lines of a global conflict. It will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed."

A 19-page executive summary of the report, completed in June 2005, said it could not find a "single point of failure nor a silver bullet" that would have prevented the attacks, but went on to fault the senior management of the CIA for failing to deal with the al-Qaeda threat. "The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner," a team led by CIA inspector general John Helgerson found.

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This is one of those things that governments in the West do, but they seem to be flawed by obvious hindsight bias. As long as we are engaging in that, it is clear that the Clinton administrations cuts of funding to the CIA were a mistake as well has their deep cuts in the military which has forced troops to have extended tours in the war zone. It makes you wonder why Democrats think Hillary's experience with that administration qualifies her for office. Perhaps the Republicans are waiting until the general election to get her explanation for all those cuts which put us at risk and made fighting the war more difficult.