Earlier in this report we detailed various missed opportunities to thwart the
9/11 plot. Information was not shared, sometimes inadvertently or because of
legal misunderstandings.Analysis was not pooled. Effective operations were not
launched. Often the handoffs of information were lost across the divide sepa-
rating the foreign and domestic agencies of the government.
new challenges of the twenty-first century.The agencies are like a set of spe-
cialists in a hospital, each ordering tests, looking for symptoms, and prescrib-
ing medications.What is missing is the attending physician who makes sure they
work as a team.
ment.This management should have ensured that information was shared and
duties were clearly assigned across agencies, and across the foreign-domestic
divide.
rity Agency (NSA) analyzed communications associated with a man named
Khalid, a man named Nawaf, and a man named Salem.Working-level officials
in the intelligence community knew little more than this. But they correctly
concluded that "Nawaf " and "Khalid" might be part of "an operational cadre"
and that "something nefarious might be afoot."
to respond energetically to any request made. But it waited to be asked.
same sources. Some of this information had been reported; some had not. But
it was all readily accessible in the database. NSA's analysts would promptly have
discovered who Nawaf was, that his full name might be Nawaf al Hazmi, and
that he was an old friend of Khalid.
With the name "Nawaf al Hazmi," a manager could then have asked the State
Department also to check that name. State would promptly have found its own
record on Nawaf al Hazmi, showing that he too had been issued a visa to visit
the United States. Officials would have learned that the visa had been issued
at the same place--Jeddah--and on almost the same day as the one given to
Khalid al Mihdhar.