Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney wanted nothing to do with a new official who could touch the intelligence budget of the Pentagon, which controls four of the five largest U.S. intelligence agencies. House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, doing Rumsfeld’s bidding, immediately held up the committee’s final report to stall the bill.
What Ken misses (he always misses big things) is that Cheney operated as DNi back then, the norm was for agencies to report to the president, Cheney had them all report to him, and then he decided what made it to Lil Bush.
Cheney either intentionally let 9/11 happen, or it happened because he thought he could handle it an it happened due to his arrogance and incompetence.
The shadowy "intelligence community" he says refused to be reigned in don't have a problem with being reigned in, they have a problem with a political appointee holding those reigns. Cheney was VP, but came up as HW's SecDef, and HW was director of the CIA. Cheney was already an "insider" to the intelligence community long before he was VP. Hell, it was open speculation even during the election Cheney was gonna be the real president.
It's like people forgot the Republican party was controlled by the American intelligence community before Trump showed up. Their problem today isn't someone is running the show, it's the president is picking people to be in charge of intelligence agencies, and not intelligence agencies picking puppet presidents.