CIA Terrorism Warnings
With Dr. Melvin Goodman
Professor of International Studies at the National War College
Thursday, June 6, 2002; 2 p.m. EDT

"The CIA told the FBI in January 2000 that one of the Sept. 11 hijackers was attending a meeting of suspected terrorists in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and had a type of visa that should have drawn suspicion, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday, citing e-mails held by the CIA." Read the full story CIA Gave FBI Warning On Hijacker (Post, June 4).

Dr. Melvin Goodman, professor of International Studies at the National War College and and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, was online Thursday, June 6 at 2 p.m. EDT, to talk about communication in the intelligence community and the CIA's early warnings to the FBI about the Sept. 11 hijackers.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: The White House has announced today that President Bush will go on nation TV tonite to announce a new federal agency that will serve as a clearinghouse for all intelligence on terrorism. In view of the failure at both CIA and FBI, I believe that this is a step in the right direction...and should lead to the next step regarding the right agency or agency component that deals with domestic intelligence broadly on terrorism. After the past two weeks of chaotic announcements and leaks, perhaps the administration has taken control of this important issue.

Washington, D.C. : Apparently the CIA failed to share information it had on several terrorists with State, and State thus unknowingly issued visas to several 9/11 terrorists. For decades statesmen like Marshall, Kennan, Shultz and Moynihan have suggested that a key to effective diplomatic/consular work is having diplomats running the show and having embassies that are platforms for diplomacy, not espionage. What's more, I don't think too many terrorists hanging out in diplomatic circles. Will the CIA ever get this, and focus on doing what it was created to do in the first place -- coordinate intelligence and share information, instead of playing largely counter-productive spy and foreign policy games?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: Clearly the CIA has become too powerful in areas where they are not proficient...and the State Department has been ignored by both policymakers and the congress. The Agency budget is bigger than State's budget...and Agency personnel outnumber State personnel by 4-1. This is wrong and needs to be corrected in the post-cold war era.

Dryden, N.Y.: I understand the rivalry that made it possible for the FBI and CIA not to cooperate. What is the role of the National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice? Are her duties limited to threats arising outside the United States or should she have been receiving and reviewing information generated domestically?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: NSC Advisor Rice must receive ALL information that deals with national and international issues, but she has devoted too much attention to domestic politics. She was wrong to say that 9/11 was not another Pearl Harbor...of course, it was. Until she realizes that gravity of this situation, it will be difficult to find the cause of the failure and to determine what needs to be done. The president has many domestic advisers, but too few international ones. Rice must be that key international adviser and she must learn why important and sensitive information did not get to the White House.

Alexandria, Va.: What is the current status of the claim that Mohammad Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague prior to the Sept. 11 attacks?

A Czech official has recently repeated this claim. Is it a credible one?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: There is no substantiation of such a meeting and William Safire is irresponsible in continued to claim that such a meeting took place. Safire has done this in the past when he has been wrong and he serves no purpose in using his influential post to create his own facts. He is welcome to his opinions, but cannot make up his own facts.

Harlingen, Tex.:
There is considerable conflict between the need to protect sources and the potential need to disseminate terrorism-related information rapidly to a variety of organizations that may have few or no people with the appropriate security clearances.

Is there any indication how the Administration intends to deal with this problem?

Also, how will an anti-leak bill, if enacted, affect information sharing?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: The issue of sources and methods is largely a red herring. Of course, sources and methods must be protected, but that is not terribly difficult. Meanwhile, key information must be circulated to the right people, which is why we created a CIA after the Pearl Harbor failure in the first place. Most agencies(including NSA after the 1993 WTC attack) hide behind sources and methods in order to gain power from their priviledged information. The president must stop this.

Alexandria, Va.: If the proposed restrictions on visitors to the Mideast (mandatory fingerprinting, etc.) had been in place last September could some aspects of the Sept. 11 attacks have been prevented?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I don't believe so. We had sufficient information on at least two hijackers that would have led us to an additional 8 or 9 (half the total hijacking team) via foreign liaison and our own intelligence collection. Congress has underfunded INS and the politicians need to wake up to the problem. Meanwhile, we are going to have to balance tolerance and vigilance in determining our immigration policies.

Northern California: Do you anticipate that Bush will be criticized by members of his party for expanding the size of the government with this new agency? Also, what are the implications for Ridge's role?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I imagine the libertarians might go after Bush and some of the out-of-touch Naderites. But only the hard-core right will see this as an incorrect expansion of government. This is an indication of the lack of a real mission for Ridge and it points to the political (and not policy) nature of his job.

McLean, Va,: Tonight the President will propose the establishment of a new cabinet level agency with broad responsibilities for homeland security, including intelligence analysis. In your opinion, will the creation of a new agency help or hurt efforts to improve intelligence capabilities for homeland security?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: As I mentioned at the outset, I see this new agency as a definite plus in view of the failure at CIA and FBI. Let's face it, we have to start over in the intelligence world because the current agencies have failed us terribly. We have had Pearl Harbor II and Bush is trying to prevent Pearl Harbor III. This effort should be supported.

Indianapolis, Ind.: Do you care to express and opinion on the plans Attorney General Ashcroft has set out for finger pinting certain people from certain countries? In theory I tend to agree with him only in view of 9/11, but I wonder what would have happened if the information gathered by the CIA and FBI had been better used.

Of course hindsight is 20/20; but, they (FBI and CIA) obviously knew quite a lot about the movements and activities of at least two hijackers without taking a single fingerprint. So what will profiling and finger printing really accomplish?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I am very skeptical that the latest step to fingerprint Moslems will have any impact on terrorism. We need to think seriously about intelligence, terrorism, immigration, domestic security, etc. and these shortcut measures that have not been debated or seriously discussed will problem do more harm than good. Yes, if the intelligence that we had had been properly disseminated and analyzed, then perhaps we could have prevented 9/11.

Oklahoma City: It seems that some new organizational arrangement might be in order -- say, putting Tom Ridge in as director of a reconfigured Federal Bureau of Homeland Security and Investigation -- so Bob Mueller can enjoy his pension. Are the agencies' interests too entrenched to allow such thinking?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I think that the president has it right and that you have it wrong. Mueller has at least acknowledged that the FBI got it wrong and that the culture was to blame. Meanwhile, CIA Director Tenet still believes that the agency did a good job and he has left for the Middle East on a policy mission (no place or position for a CIA director, by the way)without admitting that things must be changed at his own intelligence agency. I am not convinced that Ridge is the man for this job. I believe that it was unfair to take a man from state government and place him in a delicate federal position that requires deep knowledge and experience in the federal bureaucratic morass.

Fairfax Va: Instead of another bureaucratic entity, how about consolidating some true and not nominal authority for the DCI, as proposed by former Nat' Security Advisor and current PFIAB head Brent Scowcroft?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I agree that the current position of DCI has no meaning because 90% of the budget and personnel of the intelligence community belong to the Pentagon. But this is a separate issue. Certainly we have to separate the positions of Director of Central Intelligence and Director of CIA...the former position should be in the White House....the latter position must be at Langley where Tenet does not have sufficient time and energy to run the CIA on a day-to-day basis.

Alexandria, Va.: I must admit that I want to throw things at the TV when high-level government officals speak about the evil limitations on domestic spying that have apparently hampered U.S. intelligence for 30 years. Do they not remember WHY those rules were created? Dr. King ring a bell? Do they honestly believe that the good ol' days when Hoover could tap the phones of anyone he didn't like are preferable?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: And that is exactly why the job was not given to the FBI or the CIA, both of which violated domestic laws in the country in the 1960s and the 1970s. Placing the new agency in the White House is the correct move.

Boston, Mass.: Dr. Goodman -

So far intelligence failures have focused on what was known and when. But, as I understand it, we were well aware that Al Qaeda was up to something before Sept. 11. The defense among the administration is that there was no way to know they would turn planes into bombs.

But in order for the tactic to work, a successful hijacking was essential. Wouldn't hijacking be among one of the leading attack scenarios under consideration by the government. I know the FAA warned the airlines throughout the summer, but it seems that admonitions fell on deaf ears. Would more detail - Saudi operatives in the US - on the nature of the threat have changed this approach?

It seems that waiting for more information froze us out from responding to logical attack scenarios.

The larger question is, could we have responded differently to the threat of hijackings and in effect decreased the probability of success among the 19 hijackers?

Thanks.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: Clearly the CIA had the wrong working assumption and, as in nearly every intelligence failure, never changed or challenged the assumption when new evidence appeared. This was true for Pearl Harbor, Iran in 1979, and the October War in 1973. With 9/11, the working assumption was that the attack or hijacking would be abroad....not enough attention was given to an attack at home or an attack with our own commerical aircraft. It is interesting that the only two serious reports that looked at a new assumption were from the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress, using open sources, and a Univ. of PA. professor doing a contract paper for the FAA. Now, what does that tell us about the CIA??

Washington, D.C.: What the heck is the difference between "homeland" and "national" security? Isn't our nation our homeland? I fail to see how existing barriers will be eliminated by more barriers.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: Don't get hung up on homeland vs. national on this one. The important fact is that we will have an agency or office in the White House that will see ALL intell information on terrorism. This is long overdue....perhaps this should have been proposed in 1982 when our embassy in Beirut was attacked or certainly 1993 when the WTC was attacked. Nevertheless, this is a step in the right direction.

Washington, D.C.: Most countries have agencies for counterterrorism and agencies for counterintelligence. Do you think the FBI should be split in half?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I would have to think about that one. I'm probably opposed to splitting the FBI in half, but I would like to see the FBI get out of certain activities that waste its time. For example, why have an FBI do background investigations on government appointees. Waste of time. We have a Drug Enforcement Agency so why do we need the FBI devoted so much attention to drugs. The FBI and prostitution. Why? Etc. etc. So let's get the FBI right, which Mueller is trying to do, and the proceed.

Washington, D.C.: Re your comment Tenet's mission to the middle east -- what is up with that? I've tried to find out by visiting the CIA's web site, but there is no mention of it at all there . . . bizzare!

Dr. Melvin Goodman: President Clinton wrongly involved the CIA director in the Middle East peace process at the Wye meetings four years ago. Now Bush is compounding the problem by having Tenet return to the Palestinian security agencies that have already been annihilated after they were formed by the CIA director. How can the CIA director be involved in Israeli-Palestinian policymaking and still give the president the blunt intelligence assessments that the White House requires. This must be corrected!!

Boston, Mass.: It was reported that the new Homeland Security will be a Cabinet Level position. Isn't this what Congress has been asking of this position for several months now? And what happens to Tom Ridge?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: There will still be an Office of Homeland Security. The new agency will be a separate one. Perhaps all of us need to wait until 8 pm tonite to get a better understanding of this new bureaucracy. It sounds right to me but obviously things will have to be sorted out. And perhaps this is the end of the Office of Homeland Security as we presently know it. Clearly the Office has had trouble getting off the ground without budgetary authorization and a clear mandate.

Boston, Mass.: What is your opinion on ethnic profiling at airports and other facilities for security reasons?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I know that I will get some incoming for this answer but I don't see how we can do our job correctly without some ethnic profiling at airports for security reasons. Otherwise, we will continue to see what I witnessed yesterday in Maine...the special security check of an octogenarian in a wheelchair. Boy, did that make me feel safe.

Washington, D.C.: Do the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Security Agency Report to the Pentagon or do they report directly to someone like the National Security Council? It seems like both these intelligence agencies should be under the CIA, which is, after all, supposed to be a CENTRAL Intelligence Agency.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: Well, you have touched on an important issue. The CIA is NOT a CENTRAL intelligence agency. The NRO and the NSA are "combat support agencies" that report to the Pentagon. The Indian nuclear test failure in 1998 can be attributed to that fact. That is why Gen. Scowcroft (and I agree) wants to demilitarize the intelligence community.

Washington, D.C.: From everything I've read, the IC's excessively secret culture/operations were significant problems contributing to the Sept. 11 intel failures. Yet, most unfortunately, many steps since Sept. 11 seem to be focused on even more secrecy, not less. Is there any possibility that the IC will recognize and implement what is needed -- a fundamental shift toward openness and effective information sharing, and away from the obsolete, Cold War based, ineffective, perilous mode of excessive secrecy?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: There is no question that excessive secrecy will produce a barrier to good intelligence collection and analysis. Moreover, the CIA has gutted its ability to do strategic and long-term analysis over the past twenty years. DCI directors Casey and Gates did great harm to the CIA in this important area...and it must be corrected. That is why you need to separate the directorates of intelligence and operations at the CIA. Also, you need to end the so-called "marriage" between the Department of Defense and the CIA, a word applied by the president and his press spokesman and now used by agency officials who don't seem to understand the necessity to keep intelligence separate from policy. Former DCI director Woolsey is also to blame for promoting a "partnership" between intelligence and operations. Wrong.

Washington, D.C.: I am becoming more and more outraged by the bad management and ineptitude shown by the FBI and the CIA. I believe now that Sept. 11 could have been prevented if the CIA talked to the FBI and if the FBI senior officials had listened to their field staff in Minnapolis. We don't need more spying. We don't need more "registration." We need to use what we have properly!

Dr. Melvin Goodman: Clearly the intelligence collection was adequate but the CIA failed to distribute and coordinate, and failed to analyze the problem. There has been a clear decline in the CIA's ability to do strategic intelligence (its number one task) and remember that the intelligence failure on the Soviet Union was never admitted by the CIA and never studied by the CIA or the Senate intelligence committee. The CIA is in decline and the Senate committee has been an enabler of this process.

Arlington, Va.: In studying the FBI's Milwaukee vs. HQ flap, I noticed that the FBI's HQ attorneys turned down Milwaukee's request to seek a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This suggested volumes to me, i.e., that the probable cause was considered so weak that the FBI wouldn't even consider asking Justice to pursue a warrant. Various critics (including Milwaukees' Ms. Rowley) have since contended that the info in the earlier "Phoenix memo" would have given them enough probably cause for a FISA warrant. But, from what I can tell in press reports, the Phoenix memo was only a hypothesis and thus could not have contributed any facts for inclusion in a FISA warrant application. While I applaud Ms. Rowley's letter, I'm not sure she's correct on that point. Your thoughts?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: Rowley is right and you are wrong. FBI Hqs took out a sentence from Rowley's request that dealt with information supplied by French intelligence regarding Moussaoui's links to terrorist organizations. With this sentence, it is possible that FISA would have granted authorization. Again, the FBI was stupidly trying to protect sources and methods...or doing something even worse.

Pacific Northwest: Dr. Goodman:

With reference to your comments about the State Department and the intelligence community, why has Colin Powell not been made more use of in this troubling time? Why is he not actively engaged in the process of addressing those countries that support terrorism; Saudi Arabia comes to mind.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I believe that Colin Powell has been marginalized in an administration that has adopted a policy of unilateralism that has reduced the role and importance of diplomacy. Powell has been the odd man out on many issues, but he has also been right many times.

Washington, DC: The CIA's and IC's culture of excessive secrecy and not sharing information across agencies seemingly contributed to the the intellignece failures leading up to 9/11. Is there any hope that the IC's obsolete, Cold War-based, and perilous culture of excessive secrecy will be changed to a more productive and appropriate culture based on openness and information sharing?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: This culture will not change until the president knocks heads together, lets some of these heads roll, and demands change. He must do this in private with the key individuals. It is hard to change the culture of any organization but the president can certainly start this difficult process.

Baltimore, Md.: I am very concerned about this war. I've read that the enemy is well organized in this country and is in possession of stinger missles, chemical weapons and nuclear devices. The Vice President himself said there will be other attacks.

Do you feel that our intelligence is strong enough to prevent another attack and if not, aren't we just wasting our tax dollars on this? Wouldn't preventative measures be more effective by targeting resources to local communities and neighborhoods? For example, creating and training citizen groups.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I believe that you are a victim of disinformation and misinformation and that the problem must be solved at the federal level. But I also believe that these general warnings have been counterproductive and designed to divert discussion of such real issues as the intelligence failure and the causes of it.

Alexandria, Va.: In Israel people who support the construction of a border fence to keep out Palestinians sometimes say, "No Arabs, no terror."

In retrospect, should the U.S. have reduced the number of visitors from Arab countries prior to Sept. 11?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I would be very careful out of taking pages from the Israeli security book. Although locked doors on the pilot's cabin certainly would have been a step in the right direction. And I would be very careful about changing the nature of this country. A radical change in foreign visitors would make the country less open without guaranteeing any positive moves toward greater security. All changes should be discussed by the right congressional authorities, particularly Leahy's Justice Committee.

Maryland: A lot of Arabic-speaking agents and anaylysts left the CIA from 1992-1998 when President Clinton was here.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I have not seen the evidence on this and frankly I find your statement counterinstinctive and presumably counterfactual.

Hamburg, Germany: Dear Mr. Goodman,
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

How can anyone ever put some trust in what comes from the agencies involved, when news on them reveals that they had serveilled members of the alleged Sept. 11 groups long before the attacks, had ignored warnings like from President Mubarak of Egypt, prevented investigation of their own lawenforcement agents, as well long before Sept. 11, when the people who were responsable for the anthrax attacks were not the suspected middle eastern men but US scientists, working for the government. When so many members of secret services or other law enforcement agencies commit so many mistakes that lead to the death of so many people, it΄s about time to put public pressure on those responsible. They shouldn't escape their appropriate punishment. Especially for spreading so many lies to their own fellow countrymen and misleading and deceiving the world body public. There was definetely more behind all these failures and it looks to me like the attacks were willingly not prevented as to cover something even worse up with them.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I certainly cannot support your conspiracy theories about 9/11 although it is clear that terrible malfeasance took place. But the United States has had difficulty in recent years in assuring accountability and responsibility.

Washington, D.C.: Re the CIA failure to see the end of the Soviet Union, over ten years ago Moynihan said that since the CIA missed out on the reason it was created, the Soviet Union, disappearing -- he thought there might be some problems there . . . perhaps he was right. Does the CIA know what their job is today?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I said this in Senate testimony in 1991, but people like Senator Rudman and Senator Cohen tried to prevent CIA witnesses from stepping forward and testifying to the intelligence failure and the politicization of the CIA. There was no post mortem after the CIA's Soviet failure and we have waited to long for an inquiry after 9/11. And given the efforts by Rudman and Cohen in the past to prevent testimony, I belive that we need a blue-ribbon independent investigation.

Washington, D.C.: Hello, Dr. Goodman

I've heard on the news that the Bush adminstration has set up a "shadow government" to ensure that leadership will continue if we have another terrorist attack. And that a selected top government managers are located in an undisclosed location. Is this shadow government still in operation. I haven't heard too much about it lately. Except that the managers that are selected for this post are very unhappy with the outdated arrangements.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I would hope that we have people selected for key tasks in such an emergency and I would expect them to be suffering from boredom. But no one said that vigilance was entertaining.

Virginia: Can the President automatically create a new cabinet without Congressional approval? Does the President have more control now that we are in war -- have we even declared war yet? I don't see how the new cabinet would help bridge law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies. Wouldn't this cause more confusion instead of structure?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: This is a White House agency but not necessarily a Cabinet-level agency. Again, let's wait for 8 pm to learn more. Regardless, we need such a clearinghouse for information and intelligence on domestic security.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: Thank you for the wonderful questions and comments. Now it is important to listen to the president tonite and to learn if genuinely important steps are being taken to fill the gap of knowledge and analysis on domestic security. This is a potentially very important step and it means that we will not have to wait until the FBI and the CIA do their own housecleaning, which is also required.

washingtonpost.com:

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