The Early Show

As we’ve been reporting, the commission investigating the September 11th attacks is prepared to recommend major changes in US intelligence gathering. The heads of the CIA and FBI testified Wednesday; they’re already making changes. James Woolsey is a former director of the CIA, and Steve Pomerantz is a former head of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.

Gentlemen, good morning.

Mr. JAMES WOOLSEY (Former CIA Director; Vice President, Booz-Allen): Good morning.

Mr. JAMES POMERANTZ (Former Head of FBI Counterterrorism Division): Good morning.

STORM: Mr. Woolsey, let me start with you. December 19, 1998, George Tenet says as he’s head of the CIA, ‘We’re in a war against terrorism. Yet, with a $30 billion budget, the CIA couldn’t figure out that al-Qaida was in the United States ready to attack New York and Washington, DC.’

Mr. WOOLSEY: Well, that…

SMITH: Does that suggest to you a system that needed to be–that needs to be repaired?

Mr. WOOLSEY: Well, in the first place, that’s not the CIA’s budget. That’s the budget of the entire US intelligence community, all the satellites and–and National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, and most of those people work directly for the secretary of Defense. That’s the first point, and that’s one thing the commission is talking about is whether or not the director of Central Intelligence ought to have more authority over appointments and budgets in those areas. As it is, he’s sort of a–like chairman of the board of the intelligence community and doesn’t own any stock, or at least if he does, it’s in one of those smaller agencies, the CIA.

I–a lot of the–what went wrong on September 11th did have to do with lack of in–information flowing back and forth between different departments and agencies. Some of them–the FBI that–in large part is not part of the intelligence community, it’s law enforcement. But those flows were blocked in many cases by law. The former attorneys general and congresses and–and directors of Central Intelligence had laid down regulations and laws barring communication between the FBI an–and the CIA in order to go the extra mile to protect civil liberties based on some of the cases back in the early ’80s and so on. So a lot of what was not in–in front of Tenet or in–in front of the–the FBI at the time was not their fault.

SMITH: Steve Pomerantz, does that ring true to you?

Mr. POMERANTZ: Oh, absolutely. Jim–Jim’s got it exactly right. You know, the world was much different pre-9/11 for the FBI as well as the–the CIA. I certainly can speak more intimately about the FBI since I was a–a part of it. We were absolutely discouraged by law, by practice, by–by Congress from aggressively collecting intelligence in this country. It–it had been a matter of decades in–in–in–in the building of–of those obstructions and now we have to tear them down and move ahead much more aggressively if we’re going to protect this country.

SMITH: Mr. Woolsey, let me start with you. Let me go–do–we–we have news reporters in Afghanistan interviewing people like Osama bin Laden threatening the–the–the United States and we–you’re going to say–you’re going to say because the–the law said we–we couldn’t investigate this stuff that–that should be an excuse? How–how…

Mr. WOOLSEY: Well…

SMITH: …could the news media know more about Osama bin Laden than a $30 billion infrastructure you just described?

Mr. WOOLSEY: The news di–did not know more about bin Laden. A news reporter talking to bin Laden doesn’t mean that it’s penetrated his planning. You could have said the same thing if John Walker Lindh–he–he got into al-Qaida but he didn’t know anything about the planning of 9/11 and neither did the news reporters.

Penetrating terror cells is very difficult. It’s much harder than penetrating a government and a–you know, I’ve said before I took over in ’92 at the CIA that it was if we had been struggling with a dragon for 45 years and finally defeated him in the Soviet Union and then found ourselves in a jungle full of a lot of poisonous snakes and the snakes were harder to keep track of than the dragon. Now a lot of the things that were built up over the years prohibited the CIA and the FBI each from doing their job. Congress did it, presidents did it, attorneys generals did it because they had other things they were trying to accomplish.

SMITH: Real quickly, Mr. Woolsey, should there be a new agency?

Mr. WOOLSEY: The–on the CIA side, what they’re talking about is a sort of a super director of Central Intelligence that has the ability to f–hire and fire the director of the NSA, lets say, and–and move money around. I think the director of Central Intelligence needs more authority like that than he has now. But I–but I–I’m not yet over the fence…

SMITH: Right.

Mr. WOOLSEY: …and saying that we need to have a whole new office.

SMITH: And Mr. Pomerantz, I’m sure you still have a lot of contacts in the bureau. How are people in the bureau responding to the beating they’re taking in the–in the commission hearings?

Mr. POMERANTZ: You know, it–it’s very demoralizing. These–these are w–men and women who–who are working very diligently, whose overwhelming desire and motivation is to protect this country and to–to take this kind of a beating is never–ne–never pleasant. I think that frankly we’re more or less accustomed to it. Thi–this–this goes in cycles. And let me tell you they are capable of doing this job. The idea of taking a–a creating a new agency and taking that responsibility away from the FBI is not good for the civil liberties of this country and not good for the protection of its citizens. They can do the job.

SMITH: All right. Mr. Pomerantz, thank you. James Woolsey, as always, we appreciate your time, gentlemen.

Mr. WOOLSEY: Good to be with you.

SMITH: You’re watching THE EARLY SHOW on CBS. We’ll be right back.