Ex-CIA chief Tenet charged with failing to stop 9/11 attacks on America

A CIA inquiry into the agencys performance before the 9/11 terror attacks in America, has directly blamed former director George Tenet for failures leading up to the atrocity.

London, Aug.22 : A CIA inquiry into the agency's performance before the 9/11 terror attacks in America, has directly blamed former director George Tenet for failures leading up to the atrocity.

According to the CIA report, Tenet's leadership has been described as so poor that the CIA's inspector general had recommended in June 2005 that the CIA set up "accountability boards" to consider disciplinary action against him and other top officials for their failures.

The request, however, was turned down by Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, reports The Times and the BBC.

The internal CIA report, declassified by a congressional committee yesterday, is the first independent assessment that lays the agency's intelligence failures squarely at Tenet's door.

Though Tenet had declared in 1998 that the threat from the al-Qaeda was a top priority for him, the report found that he failed to produce a comprehensive strategy to fight the terror organisation before 9/11.

It said that he did not make effective use of his authority to marshal support for a counter-terrorism effort against a network he said America was at war with three years before the hijackings.

Tenet and three other top CIA officials were singled out in the report for not using all the funds allocated for counter-terrorism activities. Tenet was also criticised for failing to allow intelligence to flow freely to various departments within the US intelligence networks.

According to the report, "This intelligence was not voluminous and its significance is easier to understand in hindsight, but it was noteworthy even in the pre-9/11 period, because it included the allegation that terrorists were being sent to the United States to engage in activities on behalf of Bin Laden."

The report, which was completed in June 2005, said top CIA officers "did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner" and it described a "systemic breakdown" in a watch list for tracking terrorism suspects who seek to enter the United States.

Tenet resigned from the agency in 2004. In a statement last night he called the CIA report "wrong".

ANI