I was reading this NYT summary of the internal investigation of the CIA’s processes leading up to 9/11 with a fair degree of agnosticism. After all, the Agency’s many dedicated public servants do critically important work for the Republic, hard work involving long hours, superior technical expertise and civil servant pay, not to mention the additional discomforts and hazards attaching to those in the clandestine service. It’s easy to be a critic in retrospect, when the dots can all be lined up through forensic science, and no special claim to virtue rests with those who merely trumpet other peoples’ shortcomings in the clarity of 20/20 hindsight.
But I have to admit I found this paragraph a bit disturbing:
The recommendation that the agency establish an “accountability board” to determine possible disciplinary action was rejected in October 2005 by Mr. Goss, who was the C.I.A. director and who argued that that punishing top officials “would send the wrong message to our junior officers about taking risks.”
The calculus of writing risk cheques greatly depends upon who it is that will end up having to cash them should they be called, not to mention the proposed benefits that offset the risk. In the event, most of the failures the accountability board noted – at least in the unclassified version of the report – had less to do with junior officers than executives who failed to match agency resources to national strategy and process fault lines in interagency communication. The bill-payer – so far, at least – has been the American people:
The 19-page report, prepared by the agency’s inspector general, also says 50 to 60 C.I.A. officers knew of intelligence reports in 2000 that two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, may have been in the United States. But none of those officers thought to notify the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the potential domestic threat, the report says, evidence of what it calls a systemic failure.
Those aren’t “risks,” at least not in the classic risk/benefit analysis case. They were mistakes and vulnerabilities.
Costly ones too, as it turned out.
This is the “paper bullet” that James F. Dunnigan writes about. A bureaucrat in any agency can only absorb so many “paper bullets” or adverse reports before their career is ruined. A bureaucrat who sticks his neck out on a principle is publicly pilloried as an example to the rest. His counterparts silently note the price of honor, and too many realize they can’t afford it.
Physical courage and moral courage are not mutually exclusive, but one usually serves to bolster the other. Culture is everything. A culture of taking personal responsibility for the success of the mission provides both physical and moral courage. A culture that doesn’t –not so much.
If your culture expects you to continue the mission in spite of losses, taking off through the smoke of a friend’s crash at the end of the runway, then that’s what you do. If your culture expects you to mutely cower in your cubicle while the so-called ‘grownups’ scream at each other in the conference room, then that’s what you’ll likely do — unless you are made of sterner stuff.
Before 9-11, there was no real “or else” consequence worse than a paper bullet. After 9-11 we saw there was.
Perhaps we have forgotten. The reminder is out there, waiting.
Lex, you have a keen insight into a very delicate issue. I like your writing, you write, “The calculus of writing risk cheques…”. Who is writing those cheques? If we look at history we might even find some interesting clues. Let’s take a look at look at Harry Truman and his famous motto, “The buck stops here!”, the interesting thing is The U.S. Constitution agrees with him. You talk about accountability, this is an extremely important concept. As we look at this, POTUS is held accountable. “Plausable deniability” is not an acceptable defense. We know this from Watergate. Richard Nixon did not know everything that happened, but he was held accountable for abuses of the power of the Office of the President. As we all know, he was impeached.
I have read the “9/11 Report” cover to cover and many other documents on 9/11. To be honest, I don’t believe anybody fully understands that horrific day. I do believe pre-9/11 history will reveal that day’s truth in context. We must be willing to look at history to understand the future.
Respectfully,
Grumpy
Perhaps this whole thing is way too complex for my feeble, age-addled mind to grasp but wasn’t the pre-9/11 situation such that communication of intelligence between the CIA and the FBI expressly forbidden by the infamous Gorelick “wall” between foreign (CIA/NSA) and domestic (FBI, et al) intelligence gathering activities?
The “Gorelick Wall” doesn’t explain or mitigate the turf wars between CIA and NSA (as noted in the referenced NYT article and other, more extensive writings/investigations in the past), but one would think laws mandating the separation between “foreign and domestic” intelligence would be a powerful inhibitor that could, in part, explain some of the failures. And I believe this whole line of thought has been well- (if not over-) worked and addressed in post-9/11 legislation.
Ultimately, I agree with General Hayden: releasing this report now serves no useful purpose and only serves to dilute resources and attention to the job at hand.
I’m no fan of the lapses between the CIA, the NSA and the FBI. Certainly if they had stopped their territory fights between themselves, perhaps 9/11 would just be another date on a calendar. Having said that, it’s all monday-morning-quarterbacking at this point, isn’t it. General Hayden is right – better to keep the focus where it belongs than to waste time and resources that can be better spent ensuring that 9/11 remains the ONLY “significant” date on a U.S. calendar in the future.
Kris, there is an old saying, “He who does not learn from history is condemned to repeat it!” Best Lessons Learned from HISTORY showed us that this concept does NOT WORK. Let me go back to Buck, he makes a good point of highlighting Gen. Hayden remarks. Actually, the Intelligence Community is a gated community. Please excuse the language. But this means, policymakers should stay the HELL OUT! You have this neat little ritual, we have this product for the customers. The DNI walks out on this type of bridge, POTUS walks out to meet him. The DNI hands a package to POTUS, we call this package the “N.I.E.” With this exchange come the powers and responsibilities of ownership. There is one important thing, this is two VERY SPECIFIC individuals, ONLY. These two individuals, after the exchange of the N.I.E., go back to their respective communities. ONE THING, YOU CAN MIX WITHIN THE POLICYMAKING COMMUNITY OR WITHIN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY. BUT ONE THING, YOU ABSOLUTELY DO NOT MIX POLICYMAKING PEOPLE WITH INTELLIGENCE PEOPLE! YOU WOULD BE CREATING “UNDUE INFLUENCE ISSUES”. The complete by-product would be contaminated.
Buck,
the Gorelick Wall comes into play when prosecution in a court of US law is your preferred or only choice of action against terrorists. Use of info derived from law enforcement authorities, converted into intelligence for use by military or other agencies, is perfectly legit. Use of intelligence gathered under “other” legal authorities in a US court of law, however, is very problematic. If you remember that the CIA is dependent on the NSA for any intel of value, and that the NSA can’t conduct surveillance on any US persons or entities, except without FBI authority, then you can see how tangled it can all get.
Is this still the case? I can tell you that where the rubber meets the road, different folks from all these agencies have legal avenues available to get the job done, and they will use them. But as soon as these people are “off the road,” and back in the bureaucratically supervised environment, cooperation becomes subject to the whims of what GS-15 owns what rice bowl.
I have said often that President Bush made his first and greatest mistake by not demanding to have by September 12, 2001, on his desk the resignations of CIA, FBI, NSA, possibly DIA, and of all of their SES personnel as well.