Ineffective information sharing may have contributed to attacks

WASHINGTON -- Aviation and immigration officials did not receive crucial intelligence information about terrorist threats and that failure "may have facilitated" the attacks of Sept. 11, congressional investigators concluded in a report released Tuesday.

The FBI did not tell the Federal Aviation Administration until months after the attacks, for example, about a July 2001 memo from an agent in Phoenix warning that al-Qaida may be training terrorists at American flight schools, according to the report, which was presented at a joint session of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

The FAA, unaware of that alert and other intelligence reports about the possible use of aircraft as weapons, never warned airlines that hijackers might crash planes into buildings.

"I can't think of a more graphic example of how dysfunctional this system is," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said during the sixth day of intelligence hearings. "You can't explain this to the public."

No urgency

In addition, while the CIA provided the State Department with the names of two suspected terrorists in August 2001, the agency did not convey any urgency about them. The two Saudi men, first identified by the CIA in January 2000, subsequently were hijackers on the flight that hit the Pentagon.

Joseph Greene, the Immigration and Naturalization Service's assistant commissioner for investigations, testified that, had they been asked, the capability of locating and going after those men was there.

Because the two hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, never were placed on the FAA's watch list, they were able to buy airline tickets in their own names without detection.

"Had we had information that those two individuals presented a threat to aviation or posed a great danger, we would have put them on the list and they could have been picked up in the reservation process," said Claudio Manno, an intelligence official with the Transportation Security Administration.

Officials from agencies that use intelligence -- State, Defense, INS, Transportation and a police chief -- told the two intelligence committees that ineffective information-sharing still hampers terrorist investigations.

Only after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the report, did the CIA turn over to the State Department 1,500 reports providing the names of 208 terrorism suspects.

And while the State Department's consular officers try to check the backgrounds of foreigners who request visas, they still are having trouble obtaining information from the national criminal database that U.S. law enforcement agencies use.

"Not all threat information in possession of the intelligence community or law enforcement agencies is necessarily shared with agencies that need it the most to counter the threats," said Eleanor Hill, the director of the staff that the intelligence committees hired to investigate counterterrorist preparedness.

Although no finding "indicates with certainty" that the Sept. 11 attacks could have been prevented, Hill's investigators concluded that "certain terrorist acts may have been facilitated by continuing poor information exchanges between intelligence and law enforcement agencies."

Culture of secrecy

The obstacles to information-sharing included the culture of secrecy in intelligence agencies, bureaucratic feuding and friction, and a shortage of employees in nonintelligence agencies such as the FAA who held the necessary security clearances to handle classified materials.

Several lawmakers said the barriers must come down for the government to create a homeland security system capable of countering sophisticated terrorist threats.

"It's an easy out to overclassify, just stamp something 'top secret,'" Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del., told the officials from several agencies. "As a result, you're not getting the information you need to do your job."