A couple of weeks ago I submitted several questions to James Bamford, who was doing a public Q and A to mark the showing of a PBS Nova documentary he had helped make about an al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen, the hiding of two of the 9/11 hijackers from the FBI by the CIA and the warrantless wiretapping controversy.

Bamford answered one of my questions (as well as lots put by other people). It was:

"Did the NSA’s inspector general write reports covering the NSA’s failures before (a) the 1998 embassy bombings, (b) the 2000 USS Cole bombing, (3) 9/11? In each case the NSA had intercepted calls to/from al-Hada that could have been exploited to prevent the attacks, but did nothing with them. If the inspector general did draft such reports, what do they say?"

He replied:

"I know of no IG reports written on those incidents. In the past, most of the IG reports have dealt with employee complaints and not about failed policies."

Not a definitive answer, but helpful nonetheless.

Continued here