> there was a fear of "alert fatigue" coupled with a lack of confidence about the strength of the signals they were getting.

This and the parent comment might be correct, but also, the US has one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world and the US defence budget dwarfs everyone else’s.

They failed spectacularly in the role they exist to perform. This deserves criticism.

I think reality is that “lowercase p” politics just lowered the heat on Bin Laden from an attention point of view.

They did a reorg, and Richard Clarke, who was the terrorism and Bin Laden “guy” was in effect demoted and lost access to the president.

The timing was bad for the US. Clinton was deeply personally engaged in this stuff. Bush was an arms length guy who delegated. Personally, I think Bin Laden and his cronies had a really good read or an instinct in this dynamic.

and then the new york times pushed us into the iraq war.

I don't buy htat given they felt it was necessary to engage in a massive amount of domestic spying and further expansion of foreign intelligence.