by Joseph Carlson
Now that Al Qaeda had planned their attack most of the hijackers were in the states and making the last preparations for attack. The CIA and FBI were untangling themselves from red-tape. This was to be a major problem throughout the pre-9/11 data collection: policy.
It seems that since each department had it's own way of keeping records, and even communicating within it's own agency that transparency was a problem. In one case several months before 9/11 some agents from the FBI and CIA got together to look at photographs with several hijackers in them.
At the time they didn't know they were hijackers but some of them were involved in the USS Cole bombing and had US visas. As the agents were talking some of them in the room believed the others, whether they were in their own department or with another agency, didn't have clearance to talk about these situations. Some of the issues of visas or where these suspected terrorist weren't even brought up because of a need to know basis.
Then there was a matter of time. Some of the things that did cause red flags only did so in August of 2001. So by the time the information went up to different department heads and was dissected it was too late. On top of this many of the memos regarding the possible terrorist had a low priority stamp on them, so it would take people even longer to look through the info. This was just another stumbling block in the already complicates situation of trying to bring to light these issues.
The 9/11 Commission Report is available digitally and in bookstores.
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