Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

No discipline in CIA worker deaths

CIA Director Leon Panetta outlines agency improvements.  (Associated Press / Abc This Week)

 WASHINGTON – Despite glaring security blunders, no intelligence officials will be fired or disciplined for failing to prevent a 2009 suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA employees in one of the deadliest attacks in the agency’s history, CIA Director Leon Panetta said Tuesday.

 Panetta said separate internal reviews concluded that critical warnings about the Jordanian double agent who set off the explosion inside a base in Afghanistan were not shared with other officials.

 A patchwork system left no one in charge of rigorously checking the double agent’s background and loyalties before he was taken to the base.

 Panetta told reporters Tuesday that the agency would undergo structural changes, including tightening security procedures and creating an analytic team to better spot double agents.

Associated Press