A variety of intelligence factors may have played into the United States' apparent lack of any advance warning about the series of stunning terrorist attacks on Tuesday, intelligence experts told CNN.
“A lack of up-to-date technology, rules restricting the use of certain informants, and more, were all factors why the government failed to play a bigger role in thwarting the attacks,” they said.
"People call this attack the biggest event since Pearl Harbor, the biggest attack on the US, surprise attack," said retired US Army Lt. Gen. William Odum, former director of the National Security Agency.
"The intelligence community was completely caught off-guard then," he said. "And the CIA and the intelligence community was created by the 1947 National Security Act to prevent future such surprises, which raises real questions about what has happened in the last 50 years."
The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have sparked a new debate over the state of the US intelligence system.
On Sunday, the Bush administration said it was re-examining all intelligence rules and considering changes - such as lifting the ban on CIA assassinations - in order to better fight terrorism across the world, reported the network.
In Congress, sources told CNN that officials also were considering the creation of a new "terrorism czar" to streamline the flow of intelligence information across agencies, such as the FBI and the CIA, that collect it.
The subject of US intelligence was discussed by Odum, along with former CIA director James Woolsey and former US Ambassador Paul Bremer, the chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism, on a joint appearance on CNN's Late Edition Sunday afternoon.
Odum said leaks about US intelligence over the past 10 to 15 years may have allowed people such as Osama bin Laden - the Saudi suspected terrorist who the Bush administration believes may be behind the attacks on Washington and New York – “to learn a great deal about how to evade it.”
In addition, he said, the nation's intelligence community may not have kept pace with modernization in communications technology – Albawaba.com
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