The New York Times summary noted that there was a fear of "alert fatigue" coupled with a lack of confidence about the strength of the signals they were getting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/us/politics/cia-sept-11-i... (gift article)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/us/politics/cia-sept-11-i... (gift article)
This and the parent comment might be correct, but also, the US has one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world and the US defence budget dwarfs everyone else’s.
They failed spectacularly in the role they exist to perform. This deserves criticism.
'Keeping Americans safe' is not on their agenda. If it were, they wouldn't be sticking America's hand into Middle Eastern quagmires, like the one that radicalized OBL and provided a training ground for his friends and allies. If it were, they wouldn't be working half as hard in demonstrating to hundreds of millions of people that yes, America does, in fact, mean them harm, and is happy to inflict that harm on them.
Not really.
When you look back, seeing how things turned out, history looks different than it almost certainly felt to most people at the time.
It took 250-300 years for the Roman Empire to collapse. You could make a pretty strong argument that the US has been in decline for decades, and that cracks in Pax Americana were already forming during the Vietnam War era.
Even though I agree with you that the US shouldn’t have been executing the foreign policy it did, especially in Western Asia, I’m going to push back on your statement.
Since the 1920s, oil has been the #1 input to any industrialized economy, and since the 1960s, any economy. And since crude oil is the #1 commodity product (despite coming in different grades), it’s in not just the US’s interest but almost everybody’s interest to have a stable supply since a disruption anywhere causes pricing turmoil everywhere (as seen in the current situation). Without that, you disrupt food, healthcare, and production of almost any goods. So yes, it’s a form of self-interested safety.
Naturally even when you consider this as the policy driver, plenty of people will misunderstand, sometimes willfully, and use the machine for other purposes.
More importantly, though energy will remain the pre-eminent input to all economies,it no longer need be petrochemical. The US seems to be ignoring this, to its long (and short) term detriment.
It's quite clearly not.
This all goes to show that either the budgets are overblown or inefficiently used, in any case who's in charge is responsible.
I did not like the narrative of equating the pains of the two sides though, because they are very different in every sense.
There's definitely a third possibility, which is that it served his purposes to "discount" intelligence.
They did a reorg, and Richard Clarke, who was the terrorism and Bin Laden “guy” was in effect demoted and lost access to the president.
The timing was bad for the US. Clinton was deeply personally engaged in this stuff. Bush was an arms length guy who delegated. Personally, I think Bin Laden and his cronies had a really good read or an instinct in this dynamic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-th...