WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- The focus of congressional hearings into the pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures shifted to the lawmakers themselves Thursday, as FBI and CIA counter-terrorism officials placed much of the blame for their failure to thwart the terror attacks on Congressional budget cuts and inadequate resources.
"I can't tell you how much we wish we could have prevented this. But we did the best we could with the resources we had," said Dale Watson, the FBI's executive assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence. "We were not sitting on our hands. We were not asleep, thinking this could not happen in the United States. We were aware of that."
"Before Sept. 11, we did not have enough people, money, or sufficiently flexible rules of engagement. After Sept. 11, we jumped to a whole new level of effectiveness. We had the resources we needed to do the job," said Cofer Black, the director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center.
Watson described a history of inadequate funding, especially for personnel.
"In the 2000 budget, the FBI asked for 180 agents and 680 support people. It received five support people. In 2001, it asked for 30 agents and 397 support staff. It received none," Watson said.
"Given the status of our resources, our technological ability and analytical capacity, I come out thinking that we wouldn't have been able to stop the attacks in any case. If we had 6,000 analysts, it might have been different," he added.
In a shift of tone from weeks of hearings focusing on internal FBI and CIA problems, some members of Congress said they were willing to accept some of the responsibility for the pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures.
"When you look at the situation, you find that there is enough blame to go around for Congress and the president. None of us really got it. We just didn't provide the resources," said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio.
"There are things we missed: the same could be said of Congress as of your agencies," said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.
Watson said that the greatest challenge facing the FBI was to move from an organization focused on investigating crimes that have already occurred to one able to predict threats and provide analysis. That process is under way, but "it's the most difficult thing we've ever tried to do," he said.
He described an agency that was overwhelmed with information in the months before the attacks -- but one in which agents did not have the time to follow up on the vast majority of leads.
"Once something has occurred, it's very easy to pick out the red flag in the ocean of red flags. But before Sept. 11, we had threats coming in every day. It's a mess of information and a sea of threats. It's like working your way through a maze," he said.
