“September 11, 2001, was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United States,” proclaimed “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States.” The nation was “unprepared,” notes the 2004 report, including the agency that should have been the best prepared, the Central Intelligence Agency.

Before 9/11, “no agency had more responsibility, or did more, to attack al Qaeda, working day and night, than the CIA,” but the bosses “believed they desperately needed funds just to continue their current counterterrorism effort.” To some officials, “the CIA’s leadership did not give sufficient priority to the battle against Bin Laden and al Qaeda.” After CIA director George Tenet obtained a supplemental appropriation, “the CIA still believed that it remained underfunded for terrorism.” On the other hand, the report leaves little doubt that the CIA underperformed.

Information from the National Security Agency (NSA) and CIA “often failed to make its way to criminal investigators.” The intelligence unit of the Federal Aviation Administration was supposed to receive “a broad range of intelligence” from the CIA, but didn’t.

After the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000, the CIA “had no definitive answer on the attack, how or by whom.” The agency “was not able to find or disrupt al Qaeda’s money flow,” and “analysts stopped distributing written reports about who was responsible.”

Counterterrorism director Richard Clarke warned that the CIA bureaucracy was “masterful at passive aggressive behavior” and “a hollow shell of words without deeds.” In May 2001, reports were surging that al Qaeda terrorists Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Nawaf al-Hamzi had arrived in Los Angeles but “the CIA official who reviewed the cables took no action regarding them.” When al-Mihdhar flew to New York on July 4, 2001, “no one was looking for him.”