Astute analysts or stopped clocks

All of the post 9/11 investigations operate in a context that assumes that there were clear signals that were "missed" by the leadership of CIA, the FBI, and the White House. (I discussed this question in a series of posts beginning here.)

Journalists have reduced these signals to short-hand-- the Phoenix memo, Colleen Rowley, The Man who Knew. PDB 6 August 2001. Yet, on close examination, all of these signals are less clear than commonly portrayed.

Rowley is a case in point. She rose to stardom by revealing that FBI headquarters mishandled the investigation of Moussaoui. She became one of those brave, smart, analysts who understood the threat better than her bosses.

Check out this letter she sent to the FBI director in February 2003.

The bottom line is this: We should be deluding neither ourselves nor the American people that there is any way the FBI, despite the various improvements you are implementing, will be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq. What troubles me most is that I have no assurance that you have made that clear to the president.

Here she was just flat wrong. Her threat assessment was completely flawed; the wave of terror she predicted did not occur.

On the two issues she went public with, Colleen Rowley is no more accurate than a flipped coin.

See also here.

And this speech by Rowley is interesting in light of issues she addressed in her second letter to Mueller.