Congress damns US intelligence agencies for 11 September failure

The CIA was accused yesterday of failing to relax its guidelines on the recruitment of infiltration agents overseas, despite the glaring lack of high-quality human intelligence on terrorist groups that was revealed by the 11 September attacks.

The existing guidelines – requiring CIA field officers to get prior approval from Washington before taking on people with dubious backgrounds – date from 1995, when the Agency was reeling from accusations that its operatives had been involved in human rights abuses, especially in Latin America.

"As of today, those guidelines have not been rescinded," said Saxby Chambliss, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on terrorism. The failure was "a continuing part of the problem and the puzzle at the CIA", he said. Mr Chambliss was speaking before the release of a declassified summary of a secret 140-page report to the full intelligence committee, reviewing the intelligence failures that allowed the 11 September tragedy to happen. Its recommendations are likely to be echoed in the findings of the joint Senate and House inquiry into the attacks.

The House report distributes the blame across the entire fragmented American intelligence spectrum, saying that not only the CIA, but the FBI and the National Security Agency had also displayed shortcomings.

The CIA is criticised for falling short on traditional human intelligence, reflected in its inability to penetrate organisations such as al-Qa'ida. The FBI, says the report, suffered because of its decentralised structure and its focus on catching criminals rather than preventing the crimes they commit.

The NSA, a specialist in electronic eavesdropping, needs to sharpen its technology to crack the increasingly sophisticated communications of the terrorist groups. The agency had to change from being a passive gatherer of information – much of which it did not have the means to process – into "an active hunter", as another subcommittee member added.

Even Congress must accept a part of the blame, the report says, noting its refusal before the attacks to vote for the extra resources that the intelligence agencies needed and had requested.

Both the FBI and CIA claim they have already corrected most of the shortcomings identified by the report – including their mutual rivalry.