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REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 |
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b.
Difficulties in Adjusting to Terrorist Targets The communications sophistication of stateless terrorists in general and al-Qa'ida in particular clearly surprised NSA officials. The rise of al-Qa'ida seemingly paralleled in some respects what NSA 's Director referred to as "the telecommunications and information revolution" of the past ten years. He noted that al-Qaida operatives are skilled users of the global telecommunications infrastructure, "al-Qa'ida is in many respects different from NSA's typical SIGINT targets of the past 50 years." In spring 2001, NSA began to change direction: rather than analyzing what was collected, NSA would dissect its targets' communications practices to determine what to collect. This is commonly referred to at NSA as hunting rather than gathering. This procedure was in its infancy when the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred. c. Problems Keeping Pace with [ ] Advances before September 11 [ ]. The Director of NSA did acknowledge NSA' s deficiencies in dealing with some forms of modern communications, but was also quick to credit his organization for working on the building blocks before September 11, so that [Page 401] fielding additional capabilities after September 11 was expedited]. NSA's Director apparently felt handcuffed in his effort to move forward in this area, citing his inability to "churn" (redirect) some $200 million into "new age signals ...because we were going to erode our coverage of [other intelligence issues] as part of this effort." Indeed, General 381 Hayden told the Joint Inquiry that he was severely criticized on several occasions for abandoning so-called legacy communication paths in favor of developing robust new capabilities. [There is some apparent inconsistency concerning NSA's concentration. On at least one occasion, the Director of NSA asserted that it was not so much NSA's inability to collect some modern communications, but other factors. The bulk of the information available to the Joint Inquiry, however, suggests NSA was behind the curve in this area and only began to catch up after September 11, 2001]. E. Insufficient Resources for Counterterrorism at NSA Although NSA has had difficulty in generating consistent, accurate personnel numbers for the Joint Inquiry, it appears from interviews and the limited information provided that personnel employed in the counterterrorism organization were largely static over several years, despite repeated efforts by local managers to increase the numbers of linguists and analysts. General Hayden testified that in hindsight he would have liked to have doubled hjs resources against al-Qa'ida. NSA acknowledged it had insufficient numbers of linguists and analysts on the counterterrorism target. This acknowledgment seems to have come from leadership in retrospect, while those closer to the counterterrorism problem stated to the Joint Inquiry they had been requesting personnel increases for years, mostly to little or no avail. [Page 402] Declining overall resources made it difficult to dramatically expand counterterrorism coverage. As discussed in more detail in a separate chapter, for much of the 1990s NSA's budget and manpower were steadily reduced to a point that all collection efforts were impeded. Cuts were "salami-sliced" across the agency rather than specifically targeted, a tactic employed by NSA for many years to cope with declines while still trying to satisfy an increasing number of intelligence requirements, and competing priorities ( especially force protection requirements) that drained scarce resources, such as Arabic linguists. Funds for [ ] collection, historically two of NSA's most lucrative reporting sources, were essentially put in a maintenance 382 mode, with investment focused on other collection sources that NSA felt needed to be developed to have a more balanced SIGINT collection system. There was little significant, sustained reaction to the DCI's declaration of war on al-Qa'ida in 1998. Indeed, L TG Hayden (who became Director of NSA in 1999) noted that by 1998, NSA was already at a heightened counterterrorism posture and thus no additional wholesale shifts in resources were made at that time. L TG Minihan, the Director of NSA at the time of the DCI's declaration, told the Joint Inquiry that he felt the DCI was speaking for the CIA only. In his view, the DCI generally left Intelligence Community matters to the head of the Community Management Staff. [Numerous individuals noted that counterterrorism was but one of several seemingly equally high priority targets levied on NSA prior to September 11. Although the Director of the Signals Directorate stated that in addition to al-Qa'ida, [ ] was the only other Tier 0 (highest priority) target in the 1998-2001 timeframe, there did not seem to be an objective method for resource assignment within NSA, nor guidance from the DCI. The Director of NSA in his testimony referred to the PDD-35 requirements system as "cumbersome." The requirements system in place on the eve of September 11 consisted of some 1,500 standing requirements calling for some 200,000 detailed pieces of information - ad hoc requirements that were received telephonically or via e-mail, and requests for additional information. In response, NSA juggled resources to cope with competing requirements but did not make dramatic cuts in other priorities to dramatically expand counterterrorism coverage]. [Page 403] The NSA Director also cautioned in his testimony, "If these hearings were about the war that had broken out in Korea or the crisis in the Taiwan Straits that had taken us by surprise or if we had been surprised by a conflict in South Asia or if we had lost an aircraft over Iraq or if American forces had suffered casualties in Bosnia or Kosovo, in any of these cases I would be here telling you that I had not put enough analysts or linguists against the problem. We needed more analysts and linguists across the agency, period." 383 F. Technical Collection at CIA Most of the technical collection operations at the CIA have a human access element, and the primary offices with responsibility are in the Directorate of Operations. The Counterterrorist Center has a Technical Operations Branch that is responsible for orchestrating special technical collection operations for terrorist targets. Some of these operations are conducted in concert with NSA, [ ]. [ ]. [Despite this [ ] effort, a senior CIA official testified that in hindsight he would have liked to have had more [ ]. G. NSA/CIA Disputes Over [ ] Collection [NSA and CIA failed to agree on an approach to collect [.], and both agencies independently developed a capability [ ]. After considerable discussion with NSA and CIA personnel, the Joint Inquiry [page 404] determined that CIA wished to have [ ] as soon as possible [ ], and NSA said it could not deliver in the requested timeframe. Accordingly, CIA developed its own capability while NSA continued with its program, which ultimately was delivered some 15 months early. In the end, peace was made and over time, NSA and CIA began to benefit from each other's capabilities]. Especially during periods of budgetary shortfalls, the competitive example just cited appears particularly wasteful. To avoid similar disputes, NSA and CIA have created the Senior Partnership Advisory Group (SPAG). 384 H. Technical Collection at FBI The FBI performs considerable technical collection within the United States to support its own intelligence and criminal investigations. It also supports the collection efforts of Intelligence Community agencies, [ ]. These activities are conducted pursuant to the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. [ ]. FBI was conducting relatively few technical collection operations against al-Qa'ida before September 11. The intelligence produced was of relatively limited value because the targets did not appear to be involved in significant activity. FBI officials indicated that after September 11 a joint program had begun with NSA [ ]. FBI is responsible for collecting the information. NSA receives the information and is responsible for reporting to the Intelligence Community and [page 405] intelligence customers. [ ]. FBI personnel maintain that collaboration [ ] can still be improved. Three agencies in the Intelligence Community have primary responsibility for HUMINT (intelligence from human sources) collection: the CIA, the FBI, and the DIA. Before September 11, none of these agencies had collected any information through HUMINT sources warning of the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. 385 [The agencies' attempts to use human penetrations to gather intelligence on al-Qa'ida steadily grew throughout the 1990s, until by the end of the decade it was a top priority. The CIA met with the most success through its foreign liaison relationships and with volunteers. It made only limited progress with unilateral attempts to place human assets in al-Qa'ida's leadership. The DIA's Defense Humint Services (DHS) had some success against the Taliban, but little against al- Qa'ida. The FBI collected valuable information on Islamic radical activity in the United States, but the Bureau's focus was often overseas. In addition, the FBI often failed to coordinate its human collection]. The Joint Inquiry collected information about the agencies' pursuit of HUMINT through interviews and reviews of documents. The Joint Inquiry was frequently unable to catalog or audit the HUMINT sources from the information delivered by CIA because the documents were heavily redacted for source protection. This did decrease the Joint Inquiry's ability to judge the breadth and depth of the HUMINT program at CIA. A. CIA Human Intelligence Collection [The CIA has tried to collect on Bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida since the mid-1990s. Collecting human intelligence on al-Qa'ida became an increasingly important priority at the CIA, and in 1996, the Counterterrorist Center (CTC) set up a special Bin Ladin unit to increase its focus on Bin Ladin. The CIA used the three traditional mechanisms for developing HUMINT or field intelligence: unilateral sources, volunteers, and liaison relationships]. The CIA made the penetration of al-Qa'ida a top priority. The DCI characterized the counterterrorism effort against Bin Ladin and his organization to the Committees on June 18, 2002 in this way: We understood that our first priority was to try and stop the next attack that was going to occur and operate against these people around the world, and then penetrate a sanctuary through whatever means we could, to build the [capabilities] that would allow us to mount these kinds of operations. ...As we race through [a] period of threat when we're disrupting specific attacks against embassies and overseas facilities and thousands of people would be dead, except for what we did, I don't remember anybody saying you guys are too timid, you're not working it hard enough or you haven't expended a level of effort. 386 [To improve collection on, and efforts to disrupt, al-Qa'ida, a special unit focused on Bin Ladin was created in early 1996. The Bin Ladin unit initially had fewer than 20 people, and included operations officers, analysts who acted as targeteers, and desk officers who directed field operations. At the start, it did not have any case officers of its own deployed to the field. To conduct operations overseas for intelligence collection or disruption, the unit had to work through the Directorate of Operations (DO) area divisions and request the use of their operations officers to pursue al-Qa'ida related leads. With the passage of time and the increased priority of al-Qa'ida, more people were added to the Bin Ladin unit and more case officers were assigned to the field either permanently or temporarily. The area divisions also increased their case officers' efforts against the target]. However, Joint Inquiry interviews indicate that even into 2001, the Bin Ladin unit knew it needed more people -particularly experienced Headquarters desk officers and targeters -to effectively meet the HUMINT challenge. In early Spring 2001 briefing to the DCI, CTC [page 407] requested hiring a small group of contractors not involved in day-to-day crises to digest vast quantities of information and develop targeting strategies. The briefing emphasized that the unit needed people, not money. The penetration of al-Qa ' ida by an Intelligence Community human asset is an exceptionally difficult task. Intelligence Community officials in several agencies told the Joint Inquiry that members ofUsama Bin Ladin's inner circle have close bonds established by kinship, wartime experience, and long-term association. Information about major terrorist plots was not widely shared within al-Qa'ida, and many of Bin Ladin's closest associates lived in war-torn Afghanistan. The United States had no official presence in that country and did not formally recognize the Taliban regime, which viewed foreigners with suspicion. Pakistan is the principal access point to southern Afghanistan, where al-Qa'ida was particularly active, but U.S.-Pakistani relations were strained by Pakistani nuclear tests in 1998 and a military coup in 1999. This was an exceedingly difficult operational environment in which to conduct clandestine operations. [Nevertheless, CIA officials recognized the imperative of penetrating al-Qa'ida, particularly at the leadership level. A CTC presentation made to the CIA senior leadership on December 2, 1999 noted: 387
[On the next day, the CTC briefed the National Security Council Small Group about the CIA's lack of sources and the importance of recruitment: We will continue with disruptions of operations and renditions ... but with an increased emphasis on recruiting sources; at this time, we have no penetrations inside UBL's leadership]. [Page 408] [Because this target was such a high priority, the CIA tried many unilateral avenues to obtain access to Bin Ladin and his inner circle. Interviews of CIA officials and documents provided to the Joint Inquiry indicate the CIA tried to [ ] According to documents reviewed by the Joint Inquiry Staff, [ ]: "[ Despite these creative attempts, former CTC officers told the Joint Inquiry that before September 11 the CIA had no penetrations of al-Qa'ida's leadership, and the Agency never got actionable intelligence [ ]. In interviews with current and former CTC officers, the Joint Inquiry learned that [ 388 ]. The CIA frequently draws on an active set of volunteer sources, [ ], to gain intelligence. [ ]. [Page 409] [Volunteers needed particular scrutiny, as some of these individuals were suspected of being sent in from foreign intelligence services as counterintelligence assets, or they might have been al-Qa'ida provocations. [ ]. [ ]. Critical to the successful collection of intelligence and to the disruption of terrorist activities were the relationships forged with foreign liaison services. (See Section II). Because of the scarce personnel resources initially assigned to this target, and because of the intense pressure to capture Bin Ladin himself, CTC chose to have liaison services develop sources wherever possible to support the U .S. mission. In addition, as noted in section II, liaison services had 389 additional capabilities that made them particularly effective against the al-Qa'ida target. The DCI, the senior leadership of the CTC, and the leadership of the Directorate of Operations were actively engaged in building and maintaining these liaison relationships. Developing relationships with liaison services paid off handsomely when there was some actionable intelligence about a terrorist or a cell. For example, in July 2001, a Bin Ladin operative was arrested in the [ ]. Because of this arrest, a plot to bomb an American Embassy in Europe was thwarted. [Page 410] [The liaison relationship worked extremely well with the [-], as well as with other services in the [ ]. Liaison sources often provided valuable information about the al-Qa'ida network, but the CIA could not rely on them to provide access to Bin Ladin's leadership. Moreover, in other parts of the world, abdicating collection to foreign partners meant the CIA obtained precious little information. According to one U.S. Government official, if liaison services did not want to help, for example in certain Western countries, there was little that could be done, by CIA]. B. DIA Human Intelligence Collection [DIA's Defense HUMINT Service also plays a role in clandestine collection, though on a much smaller scale than CIA. According to General Dayton, the Director of DHS, after the Embassy bombings DHS "got excited" about Bin Ladin and al Qa'ida. They searched their old agent files and reestablished contact with [ ] sources that could help them with terrorist targets. [ ] former highly placed agents were reactivated. Prior to September 11, at anyone time, DHS had [ ] active. Based on those sources they produced several hundred intelligence reports from fall 1998 to September 2001. Most of the DHS sources were focused on [ ] and had little direct reporting capability against [ ]. DHS characterized its [ ] sources as well placed and extremely useful in the post-September 11 air campaign targeting effort. [ 390 C. FBI Human Intelligence Collection The FBI attempted to develop specific intelligence that could be acted upon before September 11 by penetrating terrorist organizations operating in the United States. Before September 11, the FBI had 70 full field investigations of individuals with al-Qa'idaties. [Page 411] However, Bureau and Department of Justice policy and practice may have hampered the FBI's coverage of the radical fundamentalist community in this country. Much of the FBI's effort against al-Qa'ida was actually expended overseas, with the investigations of the terrorist attacks against the US Embassies in Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000. Recruiting sources in fundamentalist communities within the United States is difficult for many of the reasons noted above with regard to the penetration of al-Qa'ida in general. However, even those FBI agents who were skilled at developing such sources faced a number of difficulties that may have hampered the Bureau's ability to gather intelligence on terrorist activities in the United States. According to several agents, for example, FBI Headquarters and field managers were often unwilling to approve potentially controversial activity involving human sources that could provide counterterrorism intelligence. The 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which specifically outlawed providing material support to terrorism, posed a particular problem. If all FBI source was involved in illegal funding or in terrorist training, the agent responsible for the source had to obtain approval from Headquarters and the Department of Justice to allow the source to engage in the illegal activity. This reportedly was a difficult process that sometimes took as long as six months. Because terrorist sources frequently engaged in activity that violated the 1996 Act, the cumbersome approval process negatively affected the Bureau's ability to operate more sources successfully. Sending sources recruited in the United States overseas proved particularly difficult. Some FBI agents also saw the requirement that the Director of Central Intelligence approve such 391 operations as a problem, claiming that the CIA took advantage of this requirement to prevent FBI sources from operating overseas. Another FBI agent stated that FBI Headquarters management did not readily approve overseas travel for sources because of its belief that the Bureau should focus on activity within the United States. When management did approve such operations, it often declined to allow the responsible agents to accompany the sources while traveling overseas, a decision some agents believe significantly diminished the quality of the operations. [Page 412] The Joint Inquiry was told by several officials that the FBI was not using its network of counterterrorism sources in the most effective and coordinated manner. The Bureau focused source reporting on cases and subjects within specific field offices and did not adequately use sources to support a national counterterrorism intelligence program. In 1999, the FBI received reporting that a terrorist organization was planning to send students to the United States for aviation training. In response, an operational unit at FBI Headquarters instructed twenty-four field offices to "task sources" for information. However, it appears that no FBI sources were asked about the matter. The problems experienced in Phoenix and Minneapolis -both of which are discussed in separate sections -further suggest that the FBI did not effectively task its sources in the United States to follow up on suspicious activity. [This problem was painfully manifest in August 2001,when the FBI was made aware by CIA that terrorist suspects Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar were in the United States. Neither the FBI field offices that were involved in the search nor FBI Headquarters thought to ask FBI field offices to ask their sources whether they were aware of the whereabouts of the two individuals, who later took part in the September 11 attacks. A San Diego FBI field office agent who handled such sources, including the source who had numerous contacts with Nawafal-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, insisted to the Joint Inquiry that he would have been able to find them through his sources]. Finally, that same agent testified that he had "never" discussed any FBI interest in Bin Ladin or al-Qa'ida with that source prior to September 11, "because that was not an issue in terms of my assignments. I was interested in Hamas, Hizbollah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the whole different range." He stated that "we knew [al- Qa'ida] was an important person or important organization. But we 392 didn't have any presence. We didn't have any cases and we didn't have any source information that indicated that these guys were here in San Diego at that time." [Page 413] XIV. Summary of Joint Inquiry Review of Anthrax Attacks In October 2001, the Congress, the United States Postal Service (USPS), and elements of the domestic infrastructure were the targets of anthrax attacks that eventually killed five Americans. The Joint Inquiry requested that the General Accounting Office review those attacks, focusing on the difficulty of producing and spreading anthrax, mail as a delivery system, the status of USPS efforts to detect anthrax, the federal investigation into the attacks, and how the government is preparing for other incidents. When the Joint Inquiry report was filed, the GAO investigation had been substantially completed, with an initial finding that no consensus exists among experts regarding the ease with which terrorists or a disgruntled scientist could effectively produce and disseminate anthrax on U.S. soil. According to the GAO, technical experts believe that it would be very difficult to overcome technical and operational challenges to produce and deliver biological warfare agents sufficient to cause mass casualties. According to the experts the GAO interviewed, delivery of anthrax by mail is not as efficient a method of producing mass casualties as military technologies. However, in the public's mind and in terms of economic damage, anthrax powder in the mail represents a potentially significant problem. The USPS effort to defend against biological agents illustrates a key aspect of homeland defense: the distinction between reactive and proactive operational environments. Whereas the nation's posture had been to prevent attacks against military facilities, the anthrax attacks targeted civilian facilities that are unprepared to react. According to the GAO, the FBI is aware of numerous anthrax incidents throughout the United States, which were random in nature and determined to be hoaxes" Because this was the first time the FBI responded to an actual attack, however, there was some initial confusion about the investigative roles and responsibilities of various agencies. The Bureau has recognized the 393 need to involve subject-matter experts and, as a result, its investigative teams include scientists, criminal investigators, hazardous-material experts, investigators from other federal agencies, and federal laboratories. [Page 414] As a result of the anthrax attacks, the FBI and other investigative agencies have increased attention on chemical and biological threats. These agencies have reached agreements delineating roles and responsibilities, increased liaison with public health officials, developed a Center for Disease Control and FBI handbook for conducting investigations, and identified state and local officials who need security clearances for access to classified information. To date, no connection has been established between the anthrax attacks and the terrorist attacks of September 11. A copy of the GAO report can be found in the Appendix to this volume. 394 |