The intelligence fiasco (and I think that’s what it was, and it was many years in the making) that led to September 11 reminds me of the old Indian (subcontinent) tale of the blind men and the elephant.

None of them had ever seen an elephant. So each one decided to describe it to the others by feel. “An elephant is like a tree,” said one, as he grasped a leg. “No, no, an elephant is like a snake,” said another, feeling the long, sinuous trunk. “You’re both wrong–an elephant is more like a rope than anything else,” exclaimed the third, as he stroked the tail. In the National Lampoon version, they show another one, kneeling behind it in a pile of elephant digestive output, saying, “An elephant is soft, smelly and mushy…”

Mindles H. Dreck describes our government agencies in much the same state in the summer of 2001.

…different agencies of the government have been offering warnings about Al Qaeda’s plans since at least 1998. Each had a different part of the picture. Of course, Al Qaeda’s plans are clear in 20-20 hindsight, but it might even have been clear at the time if the CIA, the FBI and other branches of government were coordinating their information and actions. If the FBI sees suspicious middle-eastern enrollment in flight schools, can’t they alert the CIA and coordinate surveillance of the students and their correspondents?

The agencies charged with protecting us have failed to think laterally, to assemble disparate bits of information and attempt to make something coherent from them. This is, in turn, a failure of leadership. Clinton and Bush both knew Osama bin Laden was planning major actions against Americans. Heck, he had already carried two off, one involving significant involvement by domestic actors. It was clear in 1993 that the mandates for the FBI and CIA must overlap. Both presidents had plenty of time not just to make plans to take OBL out, but to build better preventative intelligence. Both of them talked a much bigger game than they were willing to play. Both of them surrendered their leadership to the imperatives of entrenched bureaucracies run by archaic rules.