The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, ABC, CBS, and CNN -- uncritically reported Gen. Michael V. Hayden's January 23 claim that, if the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program had been in place before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it "would have detected some of the 9-11 operatives in the U.S., and we would have identified them as such." The remark by Hayden, a deputy director for national intelligence and former head of the National Security Agency (NSA) who is closely associated with the spying program, was also touted as "a clincher" for the administration by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. By contrast, The Washington Post, which noted that Hayden's claim echoed one made on January 4 by Vice President Dick Cheney, challenged Hayden's claim by noting that the Bush administration had information on two of the 9-11 hijackers well over a year before the attacks occurred and that, according to the September 11 Commission and congressional investigators, it was primarily bureaucratic problems -- rather than a lack of information -- that were responsible for the security breakdown.

From the January 24 Washington Post article by staff writers Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus:

Hayden echoed a claim earlier this month by Vice President Cheney that, if the NSA program had been in place prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, "it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the 9/11 al Qaeda operatives in the United States."

Like Cheney, however, Hayden did not mention that the NSA, CIA and FBI had significant information about two of the leading hijackers as early as January 2000 but failed to keep track of them or capitalize on the information, according to the Sept. 11 commission and others. He also did not mention NSA intercepts warning of the attacks the day before, but not translated until Sept. 12, 2001.

In a January 5 article that documented Cheney's original claim, the Post also cited the September 11 Commission to report that "bureaucratic problems -- not a lack of information -- were primary reasons for the security breakdown," and that the "bigger problem" was that FBI investigators "had missed numerous opportunities to track" down Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, who went on to participate in the hijackings. That article also cited Rand Corp. terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman's assessment that, in the Post's words, Cheney's comments "ignore[d] the breadth of the government failures before the attacks."

From the January 5 Post article:

Cheney said if the administration had the power "before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon."

Even without the warrantless domestic spying program, however, the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies had important clues about the Sept. 11 plot and the hijackers before the attacks, according to media reports and findings by Congress and the commission.

For example, the NSA intercepted two electronic messages on Sept. 10, 2001, that warned of the attacks -- but the agency failed to translate them until Sept. 12. The Arabic-language messages said "The match is about to begin" and "Tomorrow is zero hour," intelligence officials said.

U.S. intelligence sources have said that NSA analysts were unsure who was speaking on the intercepts but that they were considered a high enough priority for translation within two days.

Cheney's apparent reference to Alhazmi and Almihdhar is also incomplete, leaving out the fact that several government agencies had compiled significant information about the duo but had bungled efforts to track them.

According to the Sept. 11 commission's report, released in 2004, the NSA first identified Alhazmi and Almihdhar in December 1999, passing the information to the CIA but conducting no further research.

In 2000, the CIA failed to place Alhazmi and Almihdhar on a watch list despite their ties to a terrorist summit in Malaysia. The CIA also mishandled efforts to follow them after the summit and failed to share information about them with the FBI, including the crucial fact that both men had U.S. visas, the commission found.

By late August 2001, the FBI finally had information that Almihdhar had recently entered the United States. But the search for the suspected al Qaeda operative was treated as routine and assigned to a rookie agent, according to the commission report.

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads Rand Corp.'s Washington office, said it is unclear what communications could have been intercepted if the FBI and other agencies did not know where Alhazmi and Almihdhar were.

Hoffman also said Cheney's comments ignore the breadth of the government failures before the attacks, which were due to structural problems rather than a single missed lead.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

maybe some angry civil libertarian shoot them dead in the street. Not counting on it, but it would make me do the snoopy dance.

abandoning them on the moon would be nice too.

John Mccain Called his wife WHAT??

Things are looking increasingly circular and interconnected.  

Oh, there you are, Perry. -Phineas -SLB-

My gut reaction is that Obama's not going to make many waves with the intelligence community for a couple of reasons.  First, he'll want to make sure that no major attacks on the US happen during his first few years in office.  The first year is the most vulnerable time, and throwing chaos into the intelligence agencies just adds to the chance that they might miss something and let another major attack slip through.

And second, those intelligence guys can mess with him pretty badly if they feel like they're being hung out to dry.  I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist, but if you want to see a surefire route to a "coup-by-way-of-lone-nut-with-a-gun", messing with the spies is probably the way to do it.

President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to create tension within the Democratic Party.

Civil-liberties groups were among those outraged that the White House sanctioned the use of harsh intelligence techniques -- which some consider torture -- by the Central Intelligence Agency, and expanded domestic spy powers. These groups are demanding quick action to reverse these policies.

Mr. Obama is being advised largely by a group of intelligence professionals, including some who have supported Republicans, and centrist former officials in the Clinton administration. They say he is likely to fill key intelligence posts with pragmatists.

"He's going to take a very centrist approach to these issues," said Roger Cressey, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "Whenever an administration swings too far on the spectrum left or right, we end up getting ourselves in big trouble."