“ Policymakers turned principally to the CIA and covert action to implement policy. Before 9/11, no agency had more responsibility—or did more—to attack al Qaeda,working day and night, than the CIA. But there were limits to what the CIA was able to achieve in its energetic worldwide efforts to disrupt terrorist activities or use proxies to try to capture or kill Bin Ladin and his lieutenants. ”

“ The tragedy of the embassy bombings provided an opportunity for a full examination, across the government, of the national security threat that Bin Ladin posed. Such an examination could have made clear to all that issues were at stake that were much larger than the domestic politics of the moment. But the major policy agencies of the government did not meet the threat. The diplomatic efforts of the Department of State were largely ineffective. Al Qaeda and terrorism was just one more priority added to already-crowded agendas with countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. ”

“ But, another historian observes,“in the face of a clear warning, alert measures bowed to routine.”12 It is therefore crucial to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination. Doing so requires more than finding an expert who can imagine that aircraft could be used as weapons. Indeed, since al Qaeda and other groups had already used suicide vehicles,namely truck bombs,the leap to the use of other vehicles such as boats (the Cole attack) or planes is not far-fetched. ”

“ Institutional Management Beyond those day-to-day tasks of bridging the foreign-domestic divide and matching intelligence with plans, the challenges include broader management issues pertaining to how the top leaders of the government set priorities and allocate resources. Once again it is useful to illustrate the problem by examining the CIA, since before 9/11 this agency’s role was so central in the government’s counterterrorism efforts. On December 4, 1998, DCI Tenet issued a directive to several CIA officials and his deputy for community management, stating:“We are at war. ”

“ Before 9/11, al Qaeda and its affiliates had killed fewer than 50 Americans, including the East Africa embassy bombings and the Cole attack.The U.S. government took the threat seriously, but not in the sense of mustering anything like the kind of effort that would be gathered to confront an enemy of the first, second, or even third rank.The modest national effort exerted to contain Serbia and its depredations in the Balkans between 1995 and 1999, for example, was orders of magnitude larger than that devoted to al Qaeda. ”

“ Recent examples of such debates include calls to arms against such threats as Serbian ethnic cleansing, biological attacks, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, global climate change, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. While we now know that al Qaeda was formed in 1988, at the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the intelligence community did not describe this organization, at least in documents we have seen, until 1999. A National Intelligence Estimate distributed in July 1995 predicted future terrorist attacks against the United States—and in the United States. ”

“ It added that in the long term, the only way to deal with the threat was to end al Qaeda’s ability to use Afghanistan as a sanctuary for its operations.26 Perhaps the most incisive of the advisors on terrorism to the new administration was the holdover Richard Clarke.Yet he admits that his policy advice, even if it had been accepted immediately and turned into action, would not have prevented 9/11.27 We must then ask when the U.S. government had reasonable opportunities to mobilize the country for major action against al Qaeda and its Afghan sanctuary. ”

“ Responsibility for warning related to a terrorist attack passed from the national intelligence officer for warning to the CTC. An Intelligence Community Counterterrorism Board had the responsibility to issue threat advisories.23 With the important exception of analysis of al Qaeda efforts in chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons,we did not find evidence that the methods to avoid surprise attack that had been so laboriously developed over the years were regularly applied. ”

“ The challenge was to flesh out and test those scenarios, then figure out a way to turn a scenario into constructive action. Since the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941, the intelligence community has devoted generations of effort to understanding the problem of forestalling a surprise attack. ”

“ By restoring funding across the CIA, a rising tide would lift all boats.They also stressed the synergy between improvements of every part of the Agency and the capabilities that the CTC or stations overseas could draw on in the war on terror.41 As some officials pointed out to us, there is a tradeoff in this management approach. In an attempt to rebuild everything at once, the highest priority efforts might not get the maximum support that they need. ”

“ These policy challenges are linked to the problem of imagination we have already discussed. Since we believe that both President Clinton and President Bush were genuinely concerned about the danger posed by al Qaeda, approaches involving more direct intervention against the sanctuary in Afghanistan apparently must have seemed—if they were considered at all—to be disproportionate to the threat. FORESIGHT—AND HINDSIGHT 349 Insight for the future is thus not easy to apply in practice. It is hardest to mount a major effort while a problem still seems minor. ”

“ And the terrorist threat, in the United States even more than abroad, engaged the frequent attention of high officials in the executive branch and leaders in both houses of Congress. Why was this so? Most obviously, it was because everyone was already on edge with the millennium and possible computer programming glitches (“Y2K”) that might obliterate records, shut down power and communication lines, or otherwise disrupt daily life.Then, Jordanian authorities arrested 16 al Qaeda terrorists planning a number of bombings in that country.Those in custody included two U.S. citizens. ”

“ He may not have known that in fact Mihdhar and his companions had dispersed and the tracking was falling apart. U.S. officials in Bangkok regretfully reported the bad news on January 13. The names they had were put on a watchlist in Bangkok, so that Thai authorities might notice if the men left the country. On January 14, the head of the CIA’s al Qaeda unit again updated his bosses, telling them that officials were continuing to track the suspicious individuals who had now dispersed to various countries. ”

“ For their part, CIA officials thought the memorandum was intended for the rest of the intelligence community, given that they were already doing all they could and believed that the rest of the community needed to pull its weight.40 The episode indicates some of the limitations of the DCI’s authority over the direction and priorities of the intelligence community, especially its elements within the Department of Defense.The DCI has to direct agencies without controlling them. He does not receive an appropriation for their activities, and therefore does not control their purse strings. ”

“ The U.S. policy response to al Qaeda before 9/11 was essentially defined following the embassy bombings of August 1998.We described those decisions in chapter 4. It is worth noting that they were made by the Clinton administration under extremely difficult domestic political circumstances. Opponents were seeking the President’s impeachment. In addition, in 1998–99 President Clinton was preparing the government for possible war against Serbia, and he 348 THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT had authorized major air strikes against Iraq. ”

“ It specified as particular points of vulnerability the White House, the Capitol, symbols of capitalism such as Wall Street, critical infrastructure such as power grids, areas where people congregate such as sports arenas, and civil aviation generally. It warned that the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had been intended to kill a lot of people, not to achieve any more traditional political goal. ”

“ These are difficult what-ifs.The intelligence community might have judged that the risks of conducting such a prolonged intelligence operation were too high—potential terrorists might have been lost track of, for example.The pre- 9/11 FBI might not have been judged capable of conducting such an operation. But surely the intelligence community would have preferred to have the chance to make these choices. ”