Before September 11, 2001: CIA Allegedly Thoroughly Monitors Al-Qaeda, Including Using Over 100 Assets in Afghanistan

In a 2007 book, CIA Director George Tenet will say, “As a result of the intelligence community’s efforts, in concert with our foreign partners, by September 11, Afghanistan was covered in human and technical operations.” Tenet claims:
The CIA is working with eight separate Afghan tribal networks.
The CIA has “more than 100 recruited sources inside Afghanistan.”
Satellites are repositioned over Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda training camps are systematically mapped.
Efforts are stepped up to closely monitor news about al-Qaeda in the media around the world.
“Major collection facilities” are placed on the borders of Afghanistan.
Other “conventional and innovative collection methods” are used to penetrate al-Qaeda worldwide.
According to Tenet, “Leadership of the FBI [is] given full transparency” into the CIA’s efforts. [Tenet, 2007, pp. 120-121] Tenet has not explained how the CIA managed to miss learning about the 9/11 attacks if this is so, given that a major attack was being widely discussed in Afghanistan training camps in the months before 9/11 (see Summer 2001).