CIA–FBI incompatible computer systems
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CIA,FBI incompatible computer systems is the technical half of John Kiriakou's explanation for the intelligence failure preceding the September 11 attacks, the other half being institutional hatred between the two agencies.

What each side knew

Kiriakou distinguishes an easy answer about the pre-attack warnings from a harder one. The easy answer concerns the intercepted chatter, including the coded references he describes in the honey salesman warning.

The harder answer, he says, has only emerged over the last couple of years: the CIA knew that the hijackers were in the United States and never told the FBI, because the CIA thought it had a shot at recruiting these men and turning them against al-Qaeda, an idea Kiriakou calls fantasy. At the same time the FBI knew the names and identities of the hijackers and never told the CIA, on the reasoning that it was not the CIA's business until an arrest could be made.

The systems

Kiriakou then gives the mechanical constraint underneath the rivalry. From the founding of the CIA in 1947 until 2009, he says, the FBI and CIA computer systems were not even compatible with one another: a message could not be sent from one agency to the other, intelligence could not be shared from one to the other, and the systems simply were not set up that way.

It was only in the sixteen years before his telling, he says, that the two agencies finally got past the institutional hatred they had held for one another.

Relation to his wider account

The claim sits alongside Kiriakou's longer treatment of the CIA,FBI rivalry, which he traces to J. Edgar Hoover's opposition to the National Security Act, and forms part of his standing description of September 11 as the greatest intelligence failure in American history.

See also

- CIA,FBI interagency rivalry and 9/11
- Founding of the CIA (1947)
- The honey salesman warning
- 9/11 Commission
