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American Morning

America's New War: Shelby on Intelligence

Aired September 19, 2001 - 10:45   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAUN, CNN ANCHOR: For the very latest on the very broad investigation underway we have Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, joining us now. He happens to be vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He has lots of information for us this morning.

Good of you to join us, sir.

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY, (R) ALABAMA: Thank you, Paula. Good morning to you.

ZAUN: Good morning to you as well.

How badly did U.S. intelligence fail America?

SHELBY: I think it was a debacle. It was a real massive failure. I don't know what happened. I don't know how it happened. But it ended the day we know we were not warned of such a devastating attack, well planned, well executed.

Information is intelligence. Intelligence is at the cutting edge of a war against terrorism. Without it we're not going to win it, we're not going to make a lot of headway. But we can win it because we have a lot of great people working in our intelligence agencies.

But, Paula, we can do better. We have to do better.

ZAUN: Can you explain something to all of us this morning. The FBI said it had no knowledge of any of the attacks that occurred, and yet it now has been confirmed that, in fact, the FBI was tracking down at least several potential suspects who might have been involved in a broader hijacking effort. Did they simply miss those clues?

SHELBY: I know what you are talking about. You are talking about the suspects that the CIA mentioned to the FBI and the FBI mentioned it to the INS. It's, again, in my judgment, too many bureaucratic failures, not enough coordination between the agencies. But when you have a debacle of this nature, I think you have to look back into the agencies, not just one, not just the CIA, not just the FBI, but all of the intelligence agencies, and say: How can you coordinate them better? How can you deal better with information? Because if we don't, we're not going to not only not win this war against terrorism, we're not going to get very far, because it is the cutting edge. We have got to have better agents. We have got to solicit and train some of the best and brightest as far as human intelligence. We have to modernize the NSA, which is about to go deaf.

There has been a cry for a long time, a lot of us on the intelligence committee saying, look, we not only need more money, we need to change some things. And they have to be changed at the top.

ZAUN: Well, what you are saying are some pretty obvious things. Why haven't those things been done before, particularly when you called for them to happen?

SHELBY: Well, a lot of reasons. Paula, just several years ago here in Congress and in Washington and probably across the country there were people, when we were saying we need to modernize NSA, they were saying, we don't even need NSA in today's world. And after the demise of Soviet Union, the cry was, we don't really need CIA. We're not hearing those voices today. We need them, and we need them to operate at a much better pace. And we have to do it. And I believe we will. I believe they will all come together, but we're going to have to the leadership. I know the administration knows this. It will take time, but central to all of terrorism is information. Remember that.

ZAUN: You obviously think that the answer to all of this is better coordinating the efforts of all these agencies.

One of your colleagues, Senator Bill Nelson, is now saying what is really needed is a terrorist czar. Do you agree with them? Anti -- excuse me, Anti-terrorist czar. You know what I meant.

SHELBY: No, not -- not necessarily. I think we have to study that and look at this very closely. We have an intelligence community, the director of CIA, we have a lot of other intelligence agencies. The CIA director should be the, say, chairman of the board, the CEO of all these agencies reporting to the president. And I believe that the director of CIA should have cabinet-level status, should have stature, prestige to bring all this together. We don't have that today.

ZAUN: Senator Shelby, I need a real quick answer to this one. President Bush privately told some senators, quote: "What's the sense of sending $2 million missiles to hit a 10 tent that's empty?" How widely-held of view is that?

SHELBY: Well, I'm sure -- I think he's talking about maybe that Afghanistan and some other areas might not be rich target areas. Ultimately, I think we have got to let the secretary of defense and others make those decisions. I think we will respond to this terrorism, we will respond in many ways over many years. We must win this war.

ZAUN: Senator Shelby, as always, good to see you.

SHELBY: Thank you, Paula.

ZAUN: Appreciate you sharing some of your thoughts with us this morning.

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