This is an extended version of the eight categories of the Basic Human Dignity Needs Holistic Index, with over 600 sub-categories.
Basic Human Dignity Needs include:
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS - Secret Agencies
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From: www.cbsnews.com
Congress: Our Spy Guys Blew It
WASHINGTON, Dec. 11, 2002
(CBS) Congress Wednesday released recommendations based on an investigation that lawmakers say succeeded in identifying the intelligence
problems that became apparent after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We concluded that the intelligence community was not properly postured to meet the threat of global terrorism against the people of the United
States," said Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who co-chaired the committee.
There are more than a dozen recommendations, including that individuals be held more accountable for mistakes, that Congress study whether
a domestic spy agency separate from the FBI is needed and that a single cabinet-level official be in charge of all intelligence, to solve the
problem of competing spy agencies which often end up keeping secrets from each other.
"The creation of a cabinet-level Department of National Intelligence ... would provide the full range of management, budgetary and personnel
responsibilities to make the United States intelligence community operate as a coherent whole," said Graham.
The final report of the committee is pretty tough, reports CBS News Capitol Hill Correspondent Bob Fuss, calling performance of some at the
nation's spy agencies "unacceptable" and pointing to failures that led to them missing the clues before the Sept. 11 attack.
The CIA, FBI and other agencies received some pretty rough criticism from the committee for not putting together all the warnings that came
before Sept. 11 and for not cooperating with each other.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the Senate Intelligence Committee's top Republican, went further at a Wednesday news conference than the
report, saying the heads of the CIA and National Security Agency need to be held accountable for their failures. Shelby has been calling for the
resignation of CIA director George Tenet for more than a year.
Other recommendations include increasing the funding of intelligence agencies and getting more people in them who speak the right foreign
languages.
Lawmakers acknowledge this is only a first step toward trying to fix them.
The final report of the House and Senate Intelligence committees investigating the attacks was approved in a closed-door meeting Tuesday.
The report's findings on the circumstances surrounding the attacks are classified and it is unclear how much of it will be disclosed to the public
or when. The committee disagrees with the White House on how much can be made public. The recommendations are unclassified.
Some lawmakers said the recommendations were sometimes short on specifics of how problems should be resolved.
Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said intelligence staff sometimes didn't probe deeply into the causes of intelligence shortcomings. "They were not able to
get into the depth of questioning that they should have," he said.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill, said the report "is going to add to the national debate about how to improve the safety and security of America."
"But nothing is going to happen until these agencies decide to modernize and cooperate with each other," he said.
The joint inquiry's work will be followed up by an independent commission headed by Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state. It will go
beyond a review of intelligence failures to examine other issues related to the attacks, such as immigration and aviation security.
Former Sen. George Mitchell will serve as the panel's co-chair and, on Tuesday, former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., was named to the panel.
The joint inquiry's recommendations followed months of public and private hearings in which congressional staff faulted the CIA, FBI and other
intelligence agencies for failing to share information that, if pieced together, might have uncovered the Sept. 11 plot.
In one example cited by inquiry staff, the CIA had identified two of the future hijackers as having attended an al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in
January 2000. But the two were not placed on a State Department watch list until weeks before the attacks and some agencies were never told
to be on the lookout for them.
Also, memos in the summer of 2001 from FBI agents in Phoenix and Minnesota suggesting possible terrorist plots using airplanes weren't
shared with other agencies.
Durbin said the full classified report includes criticism of other failures that are not yet public knowledge.
"A lot of these are very tough and I don't think they will be declassified," he said.
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said while the investigation didn't uncover a "smoking gun," it suggested the attacks might have been stopped "if
we had different structures in place and a much more effective use of technology in terms of data mining, and so forth."
The creation of the national intelligence director is intended to improve that structure.
Tenet oversees the overall intelligence apparatus as director of central intelligence, but he doesn't control military intelligence, whose budget is
controlled by the Pentagon.
"There needs to be one person who has more authority, or the ultimate authority, over intelligence in this country," said Sen. Mike DeWine,
R-Ohio.
But creating an intelligence director's position probably would be opposed by the Pentagon and its supporters in Congress.
Any calls for a domestic intelligence agency would also likely be resisted by the FBI, which says it has made fighting terrorism its top priority.
Some lawmakers are also concerned a domestic intelligence agency could threaten Americans' privacy.
Critics have said the FBI is too focused on solving crimes at the expense of gathering intelligence on possible terrorist attacks.
©MMII CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated
Press contributed to this report.
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