avoiding responsibility for 9/11

I just attended a remarkable public talk
in the Washington, DC area.

A local university professor (George Mason University)
talked about work he was doing
that could assist intel analysts
in finding "evidentiary patterns" in data,
that could be useful in forestalling future 9/11s.

That seems like rather a "bottom-up" analysis.
Another way of approaching the problem
is to identify the possible threats the country might face,
then devise ways of seeing if those threats are materializing.
(Clearly both approaches are needed.)

Being a believer in responsibility and accountability,
I asked several questions.
Here they are, and their (non)answers:

1. Q: What agency/branch/office of the govt.
   is responsible for identifying threats the US might face?
   
   A: GMU, and other universities,
   have contracts to do just that,
   and have various smart grad students and professors
   working on that.
   
   
2. Q: That's fine, but who in the government
   is responsible for this critical issue?
   
   A: We can't tell you.
   There is someone working on it,
   but we can't tell you who.
   (Hint, hint: Maybe it's the CIA.)
   (They didn't say that, that's my interpretation.
   
   
3. Q: The president, as part of his daily intel brief,
   sees a Threat Matrix.
   Was the 9/11 scenario on that Threat Matrix,
   or was it at least part of one of the lines of that matrix?
   
   A: No, it was not.
   
   
4. Q: Why isn't someone being fired over that?
   
   A: What good would that do?