The CIA Failed to Prevent 9/11 and Faced No Real Accountability, Requiring Structural Reform
Source: https://www.facebook.com/americanspectator/. "9/11: Remembering the CIA’s Failure to Protect America | The American Spectator | USA News and Politics." September 9, 2026. spectator.org
The Gist
The author argues that the CIA and other intelligence agencies badly failed to prevent 9/11, and instead of facing consequences, they got more money and their leaders kept their jobs. Because these agencies have continued to fail at stopping terrorist attacks since then, the author believes Congress should finally break up or seriously reform the CIA and FBI.
Conclusion
The CIA (along with the FBI and DHS) failed catastrophically in its core mission to prevent terrorist attacks, faced no meaningful accountability for that failure, and should now be restructured or broken up by Congress.
Premises
- The CIA's stated mission is to preempt threats and protect U.S. national security, yet it failed to stop the deadliest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor.
- John Brennan's own account of 9/11 in his memoir is evasive, downplaying details like the Pentagon attack, the World Trade Center as the primary target, and the heroism of Flight 93 passengers.
- Despite this failure, no CIA leadership, including Director George Tenet, faced discipline, demotion, or dismissal.
- The CIA's budget was significantly increased after 9/11, rewarding failure rather than correcting it.
- The FBI similarly failed to prevent 9/11, yet Director Robert Mueller remained in his post for over a decade.
- Post-9/11 institutions like the Department of Homeland Security continued to fail to prevent subsequent terrorist attacks (Fort Hood, Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, Orlando), suggesting a pattern of systemic bureaucratic failure rather than isolated incidents.
- Intelligence expert Angelo Codevilla argued as early as 2020 that FISA should be abolished, the FBI reformed, and the CIA broken up, indicating that qualified insiders recognized the need for structural reform.
Assumptions
- Increased funding after a security failure indicates a lack of accountability rather than a legitimate response to identified resource gaps.
- The continuation of leadership tenure after a failure necessarily indicates absence of appropriate accountability measures.
- Structural reform (breaking up agencies) would more effectively prevent future attacks than other potential fixes (improved coordination, better funding allocation, cultural change within agencies).
- Brennan's memoir style (omitting certain details) reflects an intentional evasion of responsibility rather than stylistic or spatial constraints of memoir writing.
- A pattern of failures across multiple agencies and years reflects a common systemic flaw rather than the inherent difficulty of preventing all terrorist attacks in a free society.
- The reader trusts Codevilla's expertise and recommendations as authoritative without independent verification of his arguments' merits.