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CNN Saturday Morning News

Did a Lapse in U.S. Intelligence Gathering Contribute to September 11 Attacks?

Aired October 06, 2001 - 11:20   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, some critics say a lapse in the U.S. intelligence gathering contributed to the September 11 attacks. Two guests join me now in Washington to talk about this -- Melvin Goodman is a former CIA analyst and author of several books, including "The Phantom Defense" and Ron Kessler, an investigative journalist, who is also author of "Inside The CIA."

Gentlemen, good morning.

RON KESSLER, AUTHOR, "INSIDE THE CIA": Good morning.

MELVIN GOODMAN, FORMER CIA ANALYST: Good to be with you.

PHILLIPS: Ron, let's begin with you. I'm curious to know. Why is no one turning in Osama Bin Laden? I mean we're talking about a multimillion-dollar reward on this man's head.

KESSLER: That's a very good question and that highlights the difficult of course in getting intelligence on this person. It's not like just turning on the TV and you see the answer. You have to penetrate this organization.

If you think of what it would be like to have tried to penetrate Hitler's inner circle during World War II, you have some idea of how difficult this is except that it's more difficult because as you say, they are not susceptible to money. They not only expect to die but will die. And of course, the CIA would also have to Middle Eastern people, officers, in order to penetrate those organizations.

PHILLIPS: So, Ron, do you...

KESSLER: Go ahead.

PHILLIPS: Do you think there should be more Arab-American Muslim agents in intelligence agencies like the CIA?

KESSLER: Sure, that's certainly, you know, a perquisite. But a lot -- now, our consciousness has been raised. Obviously, a lot more has to be done and will be done.

But you know, when people talk about intelligence failure, I think of something like the CIA's failure to notice that India was about to detonate a nuclear weapon in 1998. That's something that the CIA definitely should have seen through satellite coverage, through other indications in India. As opposed to this situation where, obviously, we would have liked the CIA to pinpoint this, but it's not something that the CIA automatically can be expected to find out.

PHILLIPS: Melvin, Ron mentions the CIA not having enough intelligence resources. What do you think? Is it that or was the CIA complacent here?

GOODMAN: I think, clearly, you're dealing with an issue of complacency. It's not a question of whether the CIA could have provided information or intelligence regarding this attack per se. It's whether or not the CIA was complacent about what this organization, Bin Laden's organization had been doing for the past eight years.

So the strategic intelligence was there. The modus operandi of this terrorist was there. We knew we were dealing with (UNINTELLIGIBLE), but we never really examine the assumption that Bin Laden would strike the United States, despite the evidence that he had done so in the past and that his modus operandi was to return to projects that had gone wrong and had failed for one reason or another and to make sure they were carried out successfully the next time around.

So to me this points to the inability of the CIA to do strategic intelligence, to do long-term research, the inability to put people on the street undercover who represent the CIA, who can deal with some of the unsavory aspects of terrorism and proliferation and drugs that a real intelligence agency should be able to do.

So you're talking about the need for starting over at the CIA. And now, this is not the right time to be talking about this because of the current emergency and the crisis we're in, but at some point, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are going to have to get serious about oversight and begin to help to manage the Central Intelligence Agency, which has failed us miserably.

This is the worst intelligence failure in the history of the CIA and we shouldn't forget that.

PHILLIPS: Ron, what needs to happen?

KESSLER: You know we were all at fault. We all were aware that we had the target of terrorist attacks and we were aware of the World Trade Center. We were aware of the fact that Bin Laden had said he's going to kill more Americans. And George Tenet, in fact, had been quoted in the papers as saying that they are waging a war on us. And so we all failed really. And now, the whole government, of course, has to totally change its level of awareness and focus much more on this problem.

Over at the FBI, you had the same problem. You had threats coming in. They didn't have enough people to investigate them all. You had restrictions that hampered the FBI. And so it was an across the board problem within our government and among ourselves as well. PHILLIPS: Melvin, before we go, I want you to get one more word in here. I was reading that you feel that it comes down to the military as truly running the CIA, not George Tenet. Tell me your theory here and how you think this makes an impact.

GOODMAN: Well, my position here is very clear and very basic. The intelligence community has a budget of $30 billion and more. It's about to be increased. The Pentagon runs about $27 billion of that budget and the agencies that spend that money and all of the personnel who work on intelligence problems.

So when you look at the CIA, you're looking at an institution that should be the central intelligence agency but it's lost its centrality. It is now trying to serve the Pentagon just the way all of the other agencies of the intelligence community.

And the problem there is that the Pentagon has not taken the problem of terrorism seriously enough. They don't have the weapons to fight it. They don't have the mindset to fight it. It requires thinking out of the box, which is very difficult for the Pentagon to do. And I think the CIA was lulled into complacency because of the lack of priorities that stem from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We shouldn't forget that since 1991, the CIA has been looking for but has never found its sense of mission. So it lost its moral compass when it failed to understand the collapse of the Soviet Union and refused to do a postmortem on that intelligence failure. And now, we have the worst intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor.

And here, I disagree with Condi Rice when she said, "Know this isn't Pearl Harbor." Well, it's worse than Pearl Harbor. This is a community that spends $30 billion.

And I disagree with Ron when he says that we're all to blame. If we're all to blame than no one is to blame. And we'll never get this right. So it's time to take a very hard look at the Central Intelligence Agency to see where the breakdowns occurred. This is essential.

PHILLIPS: Ron, you want to come back at that? He mentioned you specifically. I just want to give you a couple of seconds here to wrap this up.

KESSLER: Well, I agree with Mel that much more needs to be done. But I just think that it should all be put in perspective. And the fact that -- you know, of course, looking back, we should have recognized these signs. We -- it was in the papers. It wasn't some secret information and we all should have -- should have become much more aggressive.

At the same time, we have to totally step up our efforts within the government and I think that's being done.

PHILLIPS: And that is being done. The Bush administration has put millions of dollars to beef up intelligence and we will follow that and be in touch with both of you. Melvin Goodman, Ron Kessler. Gentlemen, thank you for your insight this morning. We appreciate it.

GOODMAN: Thank you.

KESSLER: Thank you.

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