Fighting the bureaucratic enemy, not the real one

Perhaps, the most damning thing about the CIA Inspector General’s report into the Agency’s performance into the run up to 9/11 is that even after George Tent concluded that the United States was at war with terrorist organisations petty turf wars between the intelligence agencies continued. Take this dispute between the CIA and the National Security Agency, which the Washington Post reports on this morning:  “the NSA had long refused to share raw transcripts of intercepted al-Qaeda communications with the CIA but finally relented and allowed one CIA officer to review the intercepts at the NSA for a brief period in 2000.”

When we debate the whole question about whether we are safer now than we were before 9/11, one of the things that we have to remember is that this kind of turf war is now far less frequent.

PS The declassified version of the CIA report is available here and well worth reading in full.