> Some 9/11 attackers were CIA assets and protected from FBI/police scrutiny as such

Citation seriously needed. This is untrue unless the words you are using are not to be understood in any sense common to English speakers. The most generous fact based interpretation I can give it is that Saudi financiers were underscrutinized for political reasons, resulting in missed opportunities to stop the attacks. The actual attackers were not CIA nor FBI assets.

> The most generous fact based interpretation I can give it is that Saudi financiers were underscrutinized for political reasons, resulting in missed opportunities to stop the attacks.

We more or less agree. "Asset" does not mean card-carrying CIA agent.

> To some extent, the CIA (unintentionally?) aided and abetted the 9/11 terrorist attacks

This is unsubstantiated. If you dissolved the CIA at the end of the Cold War, chances are 9/11 still happens.

I think if the US had an intelligence strategy priotized around protecting the homeland rather than interfering in distant lands, it is highly unlikely that 9/11 would have succeeded.

Keep in mind 9/11 was a godsend for the latter strategy. PNAC was begging for a new Pearl Harbor to increase defense/IC spending just months before it happened.

> if the US had an intelligence strategy priotized around protecting the homeland rather than interfering in distant lands, it is highly unlikely that 9/11 would have succeeded

Sure. That still doesn’t implicate the CIA in a domestic intelligence failure.

The CIA didn’t aid and abet 9/11—I frankly thought this nonsense died a decade ago.