Lawmakers flag intell agencies

House Intelligence Committee's Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee

The intelligence agencies have not had the technology to effectively do their jobs, in part because Congress has not provided the funding. That must change, a report by the House Intelligence Committee's Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee says.

The report, released July 17, found that these problems in part resulted from the country's surprise at the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The subcommittee focused on the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency and found that there were communications problems among agencies, a shortage of language experts and a failure of agencies -- and lawmakers -- to pay enough attention to terrorism.

Specifically, the subcommittee's 10-page summary of its classified, 140-page report cited the FBI's much-discussed information technology problems.

It also critiques the National Security Agency's need for a worldwide collection across the global communications network. "NSA has been unable to organize itself to define and implement an integrated system that can follow targets across the global intelligence network, beyond high-level goals and plans," the report says.

"NSA also needs to balance modernization funds across its collection systems in order to continue to produce intelligence on" counterterrorism, the report says.

Furthermore, NSA has "fundamental acquisition management problems. Technical solutions continue to be solved by tackling isolated, smaller 'manageable' projects and lack a larger plan on how these small projects will integrate into a whole," the report says.

Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the subcommittee chairman, said he didn't know if the attacks could have been prevented if the recommendations had been in place before Sept. 11.

"Even knowing everything we know today, this was such a closely held, compartmentalized act of devastation that was carried out by the terrorist community, that we don't know of any way it could have been prevented," he said.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the subcommittee's ranking minority member, said that the intelligence agencies would receive more money to improve their IT infrastructure.