In testimony before the 9/11 Commission on March 24, 2004, CIA Director George Tenet was asked why the CIA didn’t protect the American people on 9/11. He replied: ” ‘We didn’t steal the secret that told us what the plot was. We didn’t recruit the right people or technically collect the data, notwithstanding enormous effort to do so. …We didn’t integrate all the data we had properly, and probably we had a lot of data that we didn’t know about that, if everybody had known about, maybe we would have had a chance. …Visa policies, watch list policies. We didn’t watch-list [the hijackers]; the FBI didn’t find them.’ ”
– Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, Without Precedent, Page 165