Table of Contents
To Dick and Hana:
Thank you for loving me even
during all the times I was not there
to give a good-night kiss or to mend a skinned knee,
or to do the normal daily things a wife and mother does.
As this book was going to press, the CIA insisted on a number of changes to the typeset pages. We have chosen to indicate the parts of the book so censored by blacking out the relevant passages. Previous CIA redactions resulted in rewritten passages or a note in the book that the Agency had requested the change.
The Publisher
Preface
THIS BOOK OFFERS an insiders view of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1990s, the strengths and the weaknesses, and how we contributed to the intelligence failure of September 11. This book was written in part to answer the question of why the CIA failed to anticipate the attacks. An analysis of the performance of other agencies in the intelligence community in regard to September 11, 2001, is outside the scope of this book. As the findings of the congressional inquiries indicate, there were significant lapses on the part of the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the Department of Defense. It is not my intention to downgrade the importance of these failings in the overall context of the examination of what went wrong. They deserve equal scrutiny, but elsewhere. I chose to focus on the CIA, the organization that I know best.
I began thinking about writing this book in mid-2001, before the terror attacks. At the time, I was assigned as a recruiter for new staff employees for the CIA Directorate of Operations. In the Recruitment Center, I spent my days talking with young people interested in joining the CIA. They were enthusiastic, inquisitive, and demanding when it came to knowing just what is the real CIA. The most frequent complaint I heard was about the dearth of publications that described the CIA in the 1990s and 2000s. There were lots of books about the Office of Strategic Services and the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s. There are scholarly books that examine the role of intelligence and the uneasy relationship of intelligence in democratic society. There were exposs of questionable authority and the occasional memoir of a senior CIA officer. The most recent general book, which the CIA recommends to applicants, Inside the CIA by Ronald Kessler, was almost two decades old. The applicants wanted to know more about the current culture of the CIA and the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This book was written in part to answer these questions, especially in the context of the CIAs capabilities immediately preceding September 11.
My biases are simple: I believe in the mission of the CIA and support the courageous men and women who dedicate their lives to achieve this mission. I am not blind to the warts of the Agency and of the intelligence community, and I am not afraid to be labeled a critic with an ax to grind. I believe that sunshinenot secrecyis the way to address and fix the problems. There are those within the Agency who consider insiders writing about the CIA as apostasy. I agree, if the purpose is for self-aggrandizement or to sling mud out of pure spite. My purpose is neither. Instead, I hope that the book adds to an understanding of what happened in the CIA in the run-up to September 11 and that it adds to constructive debate about the important issues of adapting our intelligence community to meet the new security challenges of a new global reality where electronic and physical borders are growing increasingly porous.
Several notes on the text may be helpful. The CIA and the intelligence community love acronyms. I know that most people find them annoying and confusing. Therefore, I minimized the use of acronyms. The intelligence business has its own jargon, which I elected to keep. I provided a glossary of terms used in the book for the aid of readers not familiar with the jargon. In the text, I put jargon in quotations to indicate specialized meaning. I have limited references to keep things simple. It should be understood that statements related to events inside the CIA are based upon my personal knowledge of events, unless otherwise footnoted. Finally, this book is a product of myself and offers my interpretation of events, errors included.
I want to thank those individuals who aided me in writing this book. There are many Agency officers, who for cover reasons must remain unnamed but not unappreciated, who helped in different sections of the book. They know who they are. Some triggered memories by providing their own. Others challenged my assumptions and pushed me into deeper analysis. Many provided me with moral support to finish when the prospects seemed so impossible. I thank the CIA Publications Review Board for its professional comportment. They have a difficult job of determining what is truly classified and what is not, balancing the need to protect sources and methods and the need to be a part of our open and democratic society. I would also like to thank John Lehman, family friend and willing editor, who took what I thought was a final draft and remade it into acceptable prose.
I want to thank my family for their support and understanding. My husband, Dick, patiently listened to me ramble on about the book, always saying something clarifying and motivating me to finish. My daughter, Hana, would lose her mother days on end when I was in a writing mode. At her tender age, she did not understand what I was doing, but knew that it was important. To help me, she would write quietly in her own book, at her small desk next to mine. Thank you, Hana, for being you, making me laugh, and making me keep my perspective during trying times.
PART 1
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
The deliberate and deadly attacks, which were carried out yesterday against our country, were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war. This will require our country to unite in steadfast determination and resolve. Freedom and democracy are under attack. The American people need to know were facing a different enemy than we have ever faced.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
September 12, 2001
Intelligence Failure
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 2001: On September 11, 2001, terror came to the United States. At 8:45 A.M. American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. At 9:03 A.M. a second hijacked plane, American Airlines flight 175, flew into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Forty minutes later, American Airlines flight 77 took a chunk out of the Pentagon. A fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines flight 93, plummeted into the ground, southeast of Pittsburgh at 10:10 A.M. It was 1:04 P.M. when U.S. president George W. Bush announced that the U.S. military had been placed on high alert and declared, Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts. Meanwhile, air traffic was shut down; international flights diverted to Canada; border crossing security placed on high alert; and federal and state government offices closed around the nation. On that terrible day, 3,016 fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters died as a result of the attacks. Within twenty-four hours of the first strike, Americans were asking why the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) failed to anticipate a terrorist operation of this scale.
