Twenty months after the 2001 terrorist attacks, America’s spy agencies still don’t share troves of valuable threat information with each other, and rarely provide intelligence to state and local authorities on the front lines in the war on terrorism, according to government officials and private specialists. Conscious that gaps in intelligence-sharing prevented the arrest of at least some of the 9/11 hijackers, the Bush administration plans to open a new intelligence clearinghouse next week at CIA headquarters. But critics assert that the CIA’s secretive agency culture will continue to leave federal law enforcement authorities and local first responders in the dark. ”There is still a gap between what the Department of Homeland Security needs and what CIA is obliged to give the department,” said one congressional official who has been closely tracking the progress of the new homeland defense agency, an amalgam of all or part of 22 separate federal agencies. CIA officials acknowledge that gap but insist the new clearinghouse will provide ”actionable” intelligence quickly to those who can most effectively react to it. Full Story
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