The long awaited CIA report is out and wastes no time in pinning George Tenant and his lack of leadership.

“Former central intelligence director George J. Tenet and his top lieutenants failed to marshal sufficient resources and provide the strategic planning needed to counter the threat of terrorism in the years before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to a long-secret CIA report released yesterday.

Despite promises of an all-out war against terrorism in the late 1990s, leaders of the spy agency allowed bureaucratic obstacles and budget shortfalls to blunt the agency’s efforts to find and capture al-Qaeda operatives, said the report, by the CIA’s inspector general. It also faulted agency leaders for failing to “properly share and analyze critical data.”

The 19-page document — a redacted executive summary of a classified report given to congressional intelligence committees two years ago — called for the creation of a special board to assess “potential accountability” for Tenet and other former CIA leaders. Its stark assessments triggered a sharp response, with Tenet and other former and current intelligence officials denouncing the inspector general’s conclusions.

“The IG is flat wrong,” Tenet said in a lengthy statement.

The CIA reluctantly released the report summary after Congress demanded that it be made public. Congressional leaders had requested the study specifically to determine whether individual CIA officials should be held accountable for intelligence failures before Sept. 11. or, alternatively, rewarded for outstanding service.

“Agency officers from the top down worked hard” against al-Qaeda but “they did not always work effectively and cooperatively,” the investigators concluded. While finding no “silver bullet” or single intelligence lapse that might have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks, the report identified numerous “failures to implement and manage important processes” and “follow through with operations.”

The report said Tenet bears “ultimate responsibility” for the CIA’s lack of a unified, strategic plan for fighting al-Qaeda. The intelligence community “did not have a documented, comprehensive approach” to al-Qaeda, the document said, and Tenet “did not use all of his authorities” to prepare one.

Congress requested the investigation after a 2002 joint House-Senate intelligence probe that examined intelligence failures leading to the Sept. 11 attacks. Members of the joint panel asked the CIA inspector general to review the panel’s own findings and to begin a narrow investigation of the issue of accountability.”

I’ve talked about this before. 9/11 was a result of Clinton/ Jamie Gorelick’s “Wall” which kept critical information from being shared among agencies, specifically the FBI and CIA. Moreover, they treated international terrorism as a “criminal matter”. Capt Ed says let the sleeping dog lay.

Hmmmm…

Naw. We never want another 9/11, so we need to insure another Clinton never get’s in the White House.

I’ll have more to comment on after I read the entire report.

But to be fair and balanced according to Bill he did try to kill Bin Laden (whether before or after he turned down the offer from the Saudis is unknown). Or was it Santa?