OIG Report on CIA Accountability

Although written 2 years ago (June 2005), the CIA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) assessment of accountability issues with respect to 9/11 was just de-classified (and by de-classified I mean only the 19-page summary).

Oh, great...love this part:



NPR covered the release, providing a little more background info:

The summary also said that former CIA Director George Tenet signed a memorandum in which he declared, "We are at war" as far back as 1998, promising to formulate a plan to counter the work of terrorist Osama Bin Laden. However, the report states that Tenet and his deputies did not follow up by creating a plan to guide the counterterrorism effort by the intelligence community.

In a statement, CIA Director Michael Hayden said the decision to release the report was not his preference, but that he was making it available as required by Congress in a law signed by President Bush earlier this month.

"I thought the release of this report would distract officers serving their country on the front lines of a global conflict," Hayden said. "It will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed."

Despite the negative findings, the review team led by Inspector General John Helgerson found no missteps that rose to the level of misconduct.

"The team found no instance in which an employee violated the law, and none of the errors discussed herein involves misconduct," the report states.

In a statement, Tenet said the inspector general is "flatwrong" about the lack of plan.

"There was in fact a robust plan, marked by extraordinary effort and dedication to fighting terrorism, dating back to long before 9/11," he said. "Without such an effort, we would not have been able to give the president a plan on Sept. 15, 2001, that led to the routing of the Taliban, chasing al-Qaida from its Afghan sanctuary and combating terrorists across 92 countries."

The inspector general did take exception to findings of Congress' joint inquiry into 9/11. For instance, the congressional inquiry found that the CIA was reluctant to seek authority to assassinate bin Laden. Instead, the inspector general believed the problem was the agency's limited covert-action capabilities.

The CIA's reliance on a group of sources with questionable reliablity "proved insufficient to mount a credible operation against bin Laden," the report said. "Efforts to develop other options had limited potential prior to 9/11."

But don't worry too much:



You can check out CIA Director Michael Hayden's Statement on the 9/11 Report, which is summed up by one of his closing sentences, "There are limits to what intelligence can accomplish, and there can be no guarantee of perfect security. But the talented, motivated officers who work against this threat day and night give our nation a strong advantage."