Improve intelligence agencies, rather than interrogating CIA about Sept. 11

How predictable was Sept. 11?

Was there, on that terrible day, someone saying “I told you this would happen, but you didn’t listen!” Did any of us expect our friends and family to have predicted the horror of that otherwise humdrum day in the early fall?

The simple reality of it is that nobody could have predicted the widespread death and destruction of that day, not even one of the most sophisticated intelligence services in the world — the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency. Of course, a handful of congressmen disagree with this statement.

America has been shown — quite painfully — in recent months that we’ve asked the CIA and the FBI to do too much with too little money. The CIA is forced to monitor almost every nation on earth and a devil’s lineup of terror groups, foreign cults and various lone crazies that have been deemed a threat to national security.

The FBI, while able to focus exclusively on domestic matters, also has its hands full, to the point where several important cases have dropped through the cracks, including those involving domestic terror and hate crimes. With this wide variety of tasks and objectives, how can either agency be expected to truly scrutinize any one group or organization? Organization needs to be instilled before any legitimate effectiveness can be expected.

Can anyone reasonably expect the CIA to have predicted the tragedy that was Sept. 11? Al Qaeda is only one of hundreds of terror groups the CIA monitors, and Osama bin Laden, the leader of this band of cutthroats, is notoriously good at evading U.S. capture, as well as striking where we least expect it.

I find it hard to believe that Congress thinks that we should have been able to see this from a mile away. Did anyone see the Cole bombing coming? Did anyone predict the failed World Trade Center bombing? Terror is, in essence, the sowing of chaos. And chaos, by definition, is unpredictable.

So why is the director of the CIA being interrogated by Congress? There can be no reasonable expectation that the CIA either knew about al Qaeda's plans for Sept. 11, nor can there be any expectation that the CIA could have done anything to stop those events once they were put in motion. So why create a public fuss by having these congressional investigations? Perhaps they think that by destroying an innocent man's career, they can draw attention away from both the controversial living conditions at Guantanomo Bay, and from the equally scandalous “trial” of Zacarias Mousaoi. A red herring of monstrous proportions.

The director of the CIA is no more at fault than any other member of the government, or any American citizen for that matter. Sept. 11 was a completely unpredictable occurrence. Congress should stop attempting to scapegoat someone and start focusing on the real problem — the dismal state of our intelligence agencies.

If Congress truly cares about the President’s so-called “war on terror,” they should stop wasting time and money on interrogations of our own people, and start giving those same people the money they need to enable their agencies to do the job they were created to do: Defend the United States of America.

Morgan Gilbert is a columnist for The Daily Aztec at San Diego State University.
This column was distributed by U-Wire.

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