After a year investigating why the U.S. spying apparatus failed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, key lawmakers say the focus now is on reforming the intelligence structure which is crucial to the long fight ahead against terrorism. The Senate and House intelligence committees will wrestle this year with proposals to create an intelligence post above the CIA director, establish an agency similar to Britain’s MI5 to replace the FBI’s domestic intelligence role, and shift covert human spying operations to a unit separate from CIA. One thread that ran uniformly through the comments of the panels’ Republican chairmen and senior Democrats during recent interviews with Reuters was a critical need for improved cooperation in the labyrinth of 14 intelligence agencies. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The CIA and FBI were criticized for missing clues and failing to share information with each other and within their own bureaucracies that might have led authorities to uncover the plot. Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network was blamed for those attacks in which four hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, killing more than 3,000 people. Full Story
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