Yes, the Failure to Detect the 9/11 Plot by the FBI Is All Just Due to Incompetence and Bungling

...even when the CIA intentionally blocks information about the 9/11 hijackers.

The case of the San Diego hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Al-Hazmi, has been a source of friction between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. since Sept. 11, and the inspector general cites missteps and communication failures at both agencies.

The two men were known to have taken part in a meeting of Qaeda operatives in Malaysia in 2000 and entered the United States weeks later, settling in San Diego before taking part in the Sept. 11 attacks as two of the hijackers who crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

The F.B.I. was aware of the Malaysia meeting but was not formally told by the C.I.A. that Mr. Midhar had gotten a visa to enter the United States, the report found. Still, an F.B.I. agent assigned to the C.I.A. knew about the visa and sought to share that and other information about Mr. Midhar with F.B.I. officials in New York and Washington, even drafting a memorandum.

But the report found that a C.I.A. supervisor blocked its sending, saying the agent did not have the proper authority. After another inquiry, the agent did not follow up.

The incident underscored problems in the use of F.B.I. agents assigned to the C.I.A. who found their jobs there were "ill-defined and with little direction," the report said.

Other missed opportunities came when F.B.I. agents failed to aggressively question a San Diego informant who was renting the men an apartment. Other key pieces of information were not passed from the C.I.A. to the F.B.I., the report found.

The F.B.I. in New York remained unaware of much of what the C.I.A. knew about the two men when bureau agents undertook a cursory search for them weeks before the attacks, the report said.

The New York office assigned few resources and an inexperienced agent to track the men, and "little urgency was given to the investigation," the report said. "The F.B.I. was not close to locating Midhar and Hazmi before they participated in the Sept. 11 attacks," it concluded.

See? It's all just bureaucratic bungling and a lack of urgency. I guess the FBI and CIA simply didn't know what terrorists could do before 9/11. (eye roll)