WASHINGTON, 12 December 2002 — The congressional panel looking into intelligence failures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror strikes will not blame individuals or suggest penalties, one of its leading members said. But Republican Sen. Richard Shelby said, “I think accountability is important, if you are commander you are accountable, the CIA director, the FBI director, the middle management, whoever was making these decisions should be accountable, there has not been accountability.”
Shelby told ABC television the bipartisan panel was not out to lay blame. “I believe there should be accountability, people brought to heel to say, ‘Gosh what did you do, or what didn’t you do,’” he added, noting “some people on the committee don’t want to assign the blame or accountability.”
But “I will have a separate report, separate views dealing with that,” Shelby said. Shelby said “George Tenet has been director of the CIA and there has been more failure on his watch before this massive intelligence failure than any CIA director in history. Yet he is still there. A lot of the people who made those decisions or didn’t make the decisions, are still there. The same thing with the FBI. It is inexplicable to me and that’s why I’ve been outspoken,” Shelby said.
On Tuesday the report and its recommendations are expected to be adopted, sources in Democratic Sen. Bob Graham’s office said. Recommendations including naming a Cabinet level intelligence director are to be made public. But conclusions about FBI and CIA intelligence failures in seeing attacks coming will not be made public immediately, according to Paul Anderson, spokesman for Graham.
The US needs a “chief executive” in charge of its various spy agencies to ensure they overcome a reluctance to share information, Sen. Graham, a Florida Democrat, said that if all the information available to the country’s various intelligence agencies had been put together, the hijack plot that killed 3,000 people might have been averted. (AFP)
