Aside from the communication failures, the fundamental problem is the "suits".

The kind of people who are able to climb a governement bureaucracy and gain control are very different psychologically from the hunter-killers who operate most effectively in counter-terrorism situations.

The differences are so great, in fact, that it almost inevitiably leads to conflicts. Parks versus Dowding in the RAF in teh Battle of Britain in WW2 is an example of this.

As a matter of fact, large numbers of the hunter-killers got fed up with getting sat on by the suits and left the agency, and not only in the sections dealing with counter-terrorism.

If there's a long term lesson in this, it's value the differences. In the short term, please set the hunter-killers in control of counter-terrorism - in other words, don't just not punish the whistle-blowers who by-passed the bureacracy, put them in charge of this, and do it now.

ep