How The Nation Got Tricked....

February 12, 2005
EDITORIAL
A Vital Job Goes Begging

Add to the painful postmortems of 9/11 this week's disclosure that federal aviation officials were more lulled than alarmed by a steady stream of intelligence warnings about Osama bin Laden in the months before the terrorist attacks. As with numerous other intelligence failures uncovered by the Sept. 11 commission, the warnings - dozens of them - were not deemed specific enough to provide adequate defenses at the nation's airports, according to Federal Aviation Administration officials. In 105 intelligence reports received during the five months preceding the attacks, Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda were mentioned 52 times, according to the commission, which faulted the F.A.A. for not doing enough to heighten security.

These latest details were contained in a chapter of the commission's final report that was withheld by the Bush administration for months, heavily censored and then released to the public only after Eric Lichtblau printed details in The Times. They point to the cornucopia of intelligence that was flowing through federal bureaucracies without benefit of an authoritative analysis to pinpoint the looming threat. The F.A.A. got the reports through a 24-hour liaison it maintained with the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Department. It's not clear from this latest report, or at least the portion the White House thought fit for public consumption, whether those agencies passed on the warnings to the White House.

It is clear that none of those agencies connected the dots in time. That's a familiar, grim lesson, but, sadly, Americans should not conclude that it has been taken to heart. The problem of "stovepiping" - rival intelligence gathering conducted without effective coordination by the 15 national spy agencies - still awaits a firm hand to bring order from bureaucratic chaos. If anything, fresh mischief is afoot as the Pentagon is lately reported to have created specialized overseas espionage teams, thereby angering the C.I.A., while the F.B.I. is reported to be recruiting foreigners as overseas spies, further raising C.I.A. hackles.

Still, no one's in charge. The newly created post of national intelligence director is supposed to rein in these agency rivalries. But the job remains vacant eight weeks after President Bush signed the intelligence overhaul law that he reluctantly accepted after the 9/11 commission pressed Congress for reform. One prime candidate, Robert Gates, a former director of central intelligence, has already declined consideration for the job - which has been so whittled down by back-room deals in Congress that it strikes many Washington insiders as thankless. As now configured, it involves refereeing disputes between the Pentagon and civilian spy agencies, minus the full powers the director needs to hire and fire and to control the disparate agencies.

For all his earlier reluctance, it will take President Bush to step up and embrace the intelligence reform law with enough conviction to attract a top-flight director willing to serve the nation and take on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. His choice will then need the backing of the president's moral and political authority. Otherwise, the nation's intelligence shield threatens to slip even further.



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