9/11 Accusations Fly Within CIA

Top CIA Watchdog Advises Disciplining Officials; Rebuttals Filed

(CBS/AP)  CIA Director Porter Goss must decide whether to heed the recommendation of his top watchdog to hold disciplinary reviews for current and former officials who were involved in faulty intelligence efforts before the Sept. 11 attacks.

But CBS News has learned that all of the former top CIA officials singled out in the inspector general's report have already filed strong rebuttals to the agency.

The officials named in the report — including former CIA Director George Tenet — view the inspector general's report as "wrongheaded and wildly off the mark," a former intelligence official told CBS News correspondent Peter Maer.

Despite that, the official, who is close to Tenet, said the report will "send a chill" through the CIA, which he describes as already "devastated."

A CIA spokesman refuted the former official's sentiment.

"We are hardly beleaguered. We are focused on our mission," the spokesman told Maer. "We don't look back. We are looking to the future and fighting the war on terror."

The former officials are likely candidates for proceedings before an accountability board, which could take a number of actions, including letters of reprimand or dismissal. Alternatively, the proceedings could clear the former officials of wrongdoing.

The highly classified report, which spans hundreds of pages, was delivered to Congress on Tuesday night.

It contains censures of Tenet for allegedly failing to enact a plan to fight al Qaeda before 9/11, one of Tenet's former colleagues told CBS News, describing that as "particularly annoying," considering Tenet's testimony before the 9/11 commission covered plans that were used to pursue al Qaeda.

Following a two-year review into what went wrong before the suicide hijackings, Helgerson harshly criticizes a number of the agency's most senior officials, according to people familiar with the report. Among those singled out for criticism are George Tenet, former clandestine service chief Jim Pavitt and former counterterrorism center head Cofer Black.

Goss was among those who requested the inspector general's review as part of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people.

At the time, Goss, a Florida Republican, chaired the House Intelligence Committee. A CIA officer himself in the 1960s, Goss now must decide whether the current and former agency personnel should be considered for sanctions.

Those who know Goss well question whether the director, who took over the agency last September, will commission the disciplinary reviews.