OVERVIEW
Faced with the highest level threat in decades and severe warnings of the upcoming attacks, President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and their national security team did not take reasonable and prudent precautions to protect the nation. The warnings were:
• A Bin Laden declaration of war, a history of al-Qaeda attacks, and expert advice that the al-Qaeda network was the gravest and most immediate threat to the United States.
• An unprecedented surge of warnings during the spring and summer that a major catastrophe was about to befall our nation. These warnings came from various sources, including three Heads of State and a number of close foreign allies.
• The warnings reported that (1) al-Qaeda intended to hijack our aircraft and use them as weapons and (2) al-Qaeda members were here in the U.S. planning the attacks and learning to fly.
From the outset, the President did not give the al-Qaeda threat the attention it deserved. As the threat grew and became more menacing, he made no attempt to prevent the attacks, or protect commercial aviation, or inform the public of the impending danger.
Neglect of the threat and failure to prepare for the attacks left our nation so vulnerable that the 9/11 terrorists could not help but succeed. Following the disaster, the President evaded any responsibility and conducted a massive cover-up. He resisted investigation and allowed lower levels to bear the brunt of White House mistakes.
The politically-divided 9/11 Commission did not deal with the White House role or assess its preparedness for the upcoming attacks, as required by law. Among other things, its report omitted the critical warnings noted above and a CIA emergency visit to the White House in July urging action at that very moment. Ending this article are some lessons learned.
For a look at how the most advanced threat in U.S. history had developed into a clear and present danger, we begin with its emergence during the last two years of the Clinton administration.
TERRORISM UNDER THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION
The al-Qaeda threat escalated when, in 1998, Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States and bombed two U.S. embassies, killing 224 people and wounding about 5000. Clinton became the first President to coordinate counterterrorism directly from the White House and have the chief coordinator report directly to him. The President responded as follows:
• More than doubled anti-terrorism budgets.
• Launched cruise missiles at al-Qaeda training camps.
• Tried diplomatically to have Bin Laden expelled from Afghanistan.
• Gave the CIA a death warrant -- covert authority to capture or kill Bin Laden and his chief lieutenants.
• Developed the improved Predator, an unmanned aircraft with video capable of spying on al-Qaeda training camps and recognizing Bin Laden. It was to be armed with a hellfire missile so that Bin Laden could be found and killed in real time.
• Began a global crackdown on terrorist funding involving some 30 industrial nations.
Some additional efforts to take out Bin Laden were aborted. Either the CIA Director pulled the plug or Clinton’s national security team rejected the plans, because they were unworkable, or Bin Laden had already left the scene, or there would be too much collateral damage. Clinton personally received a pipeline of daily reports on al-Qaeda activities and exercised extreme caution at the turn of the century to prevent domestic attacks. Several terrorist plots were disrupted and one attack involving the Los Angeles Airport was halted.
Just before the 2000 presidential election, terrorists struck again – this time the target was the USS Cole. The ship almost sank and we lost 17 servicemen. The strike prompted the Clinton administration to prepare a bold plan of attack to rout al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. But, the President decided that he first needed proof of responsibility, especially since the war would have to be conducted by a newly elected administration.
During transition, President Clinton and his team warned the incoming Bush administration that Bin Laden and al-Qaeda would be their "gravest" and "greatest" threat. In addition, Clinton’s planned response to the USS Cole was passed on to the new administration in special briefings with Vice-President Cheney and National Security Advisor Rice.
TERRORISM UNDER THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION
In January 2001, at the outset of the new Bush administration, CIA Director Tenet warned Congress in open testimony that "the threat from terrorism is real, it is immediate, and it is evolving." He said that Bin Laden and his global network remained the most immediate and serious threat to U.S interests and that Bin Laden had declared all U.S. citizens to be legitimate targets. He testified further that Bin Laden is capable of planning multiple attacks with little or no warning.
Despite recent CIA testimony, the Bush administration proceeded to downgrade terrorism. The Counterterrorism Coordinator in the White House no longer had access to the President or agency heads. In late January 2001, the Chief Coordinator urgently requested a cabinet-level meeting on the al-Qaeda threat. He reported that there were al-Qaeda cells in the United States and that we would make a major error if we underestimated the threat. No meeting was held. Clinton’s global crackdown on terrorist funding was abandoned in response to a powerful banking lobby.
At the end of January 2001, a bipartisan U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century reported that the United States was vulnerable to a catastrophic terrorist attack and that many lives may be lost. In White House meetings, the Commission Chair urged creation of a National Homeland Security Agency. Congress was seriously interested and wanted to hold hearings on terrorism. However, the White House cut a deal with Congress -- drop the hearings and new agency, and President Bush would turn over to the Vice President a "national effort" to respond to domestic attacks. That project never got off the ground although a report was due Congress by October 1.
In early February 2001, Vice-President Cheney received a briefing that the Bin Laden group was indeed responsible for the USS Cole attack. Barton Gellman’s Pulitzer Prize winning book (Angler – The Cheney Vice-Presidency), notes that during the spring the Vice-President received at least five recommendations in writing for a military response to the USS Cole. No action was taken. According to Time Magazine’s Secret History on 9/11, Clinton’s planned response to the USS Cole attack became a "victim of not invented here, turf wars and time spent on pet policies of top Bush officials."
During the presidential campaign, Bush had said "there must be a consequence" for the USS Cole. Now in charge, he did not respond to the attack or resume the CIA death warrant against Bin Laden. During the campaign, Cheney said "Any would be terrorist needs to know that if you’re going to attack, you’ll be hit very hard and very quick." He went on to say: "It’s not time for diplomacy and debate. It’s time for action." Given the opportunity to do both, he did neither.
The remotely controlled unmanned Predator (called "Operation Afghan Eyes") was the best possible source of intelligence on what was going on in Bin Laden’s terrorist camps. However, the program got bogged down because of DOD/CIA bureaucratic infighting over who would control the program, pay for it and have authority to shoot the new hellfire missile. According to Gellman’s book on the Vice-Presidency, Cheney and Cabinet-rank advisors declined to decide. The Predator was sitting idle on September 11.
FOREIGN ALLIES WARN U.S. OF UPCOMING ATTACKS
Portions of Bin Laden’s 9/11 plans had gradually seeped out to intelligence agencies around the world. Our allies, in turn, relayed this information to the Bush administration. Of the many allies reporting to us, some just gave frantic warnings while others identified (1) a time frame, (2) the existence of al-Qaeda members in our country and (3) the actual means of attack. These warnings are fully documented in the book, The Terror Timeline, but omitted from the Commission report.
• March 2001 – based on wiretaps, Italy warned U.S. of a "very, very secret" plan and the forging of documents for al-Qaeda agents to be sent to the United States. One of the callers sounded like a previous one who had described a massive strike involving aircraft.
• April – Afghanistan source reported an al-Qaeda plot to attack the U.S. in suicide missions involving airplanes. Al-Qaeda agents were already in place inside the U.S. and were being trained as pilots.
• May – key al-Qaeda operatives reported leaving Afghanistan to go to U.S., Canada and Great Britain – while others were preparing for martyrdom.
• May-July – National Security Agency picked up 33 (classified) communications about impending attacks.
• June – Germany warned the CIA of terrorist plans to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as missiles against U.S. and Israel targets.
• June - Bin Laden said in a TV interview "coming weeks will hold important surprises that will target American and Israeli interests."
• July – Egypt warned us that 20 al-Qaeda members had slipped into the U.S. – 4 of them training to fly. Egypt had informants inside al-Qaeda.
• July – Due to fear of severe U.S. retaliation, Afghanistan Foreign Minister warned local consul and UN officials of huge attack on targets inside U.S. that would kill thousands.
• July – Argentina relayed warning to us from reliable source of an attack of major proportions against the United States.
• July and again in August – England warned us of "a very serious threat" involving multiple airplane hijackings and that al-Qaeda was in the final stages of preparing the attack. British spy agencies and Prime Minister Blair were involved. Warnings said to have reached Bush.
• Late summer – Jordan warned twice that aircraft would be used in a major attack inside U.S. -- code named "The Big Wedding". Warning was deemed so important that one message was sent through the King’s men and the second through Germany. Following 9/11, Bush administration reportedly had Jordan retract the warnings. However, The Christian Science Monitor called the warnings "confidently authenticated". "The Big Wedding" is code for 9/11.
• August – Israel warned us that a "major assault on the U.S. imminent"; gave terrorist list of persons residing in U.S.; 4 actual hijackers were on the list.
• August – Morocco warned us that Bin Laden planned large scale operation in summer or fall and that he was very disappointed that the 1993 World Trade Center attack had failed. Information came from a source that penetrated al-Qaeda deeply enough to be close to Bin Laden.
• August – Russia’s Vladimir Putin instructed his intelligence people to warn Bush "in strongest possible terms" that pilots were in training for suicide missions on U.S. targets. Following 9/11, the Russian head of intelligence said "we had clearly warned them on several occasions."
• August – France echoed earlier Israel warning.
• August – Egypt warned us that al-Qaeda was in advanced stages of planning significant attack on U.S. Following 9/11, President Mubarach confirmed the warning was sent.
• August – Former CIA agent passed along information from Persian Gulf informant of "spectacular terrorist operation" that would occur shortly.
The House/Senate joint inquiry into pre-9/11 intelligence found warnings on use of aircraft as weapons stretching into the summer of 2001. The 9/11 Commission omitted the House/Senate findings from its report.
THE MOST URGENT THREAT IN DECADES
The 9/11 Commission did report that during the spring, the "drum beat had begun" and by summer the warnings had reached a "crescendo." Counter-terrorism officials thought the warnings were "the most urgent in decades." Intelligence reporting referred to upcoming attacks as "occurring on a calamitous level ... causing the world to be in turmoil and that they would consist of multiple -- but not necessarily simultaneous attacks." Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to the warnings as an impending Hiroshima on U.S. soil.
In June, an intelligence analysis claimed that "most of the Al-Qaeda network is anticipating an attack." In late June the CIA Director sent an intelligence summary to the White House saying there would be an attack within several weeks – it "will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties and will occur with little or no warning – this is going to be a big one." A June 30 briefing to top administration officials said Bin Laden operatives expected the attack would have dramatic consequences of catastrophic proportions.
By July, according to the CIA Director, the "system was blinking red" and later in the month he said the warnings could not "get any worse." Based on communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence, the CIA Director and his Counterterrorism Chief had developed a compelling case that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. As confided to Bob Woodward (in his book State of Denial), the CIA Director took the unusual step of making a hurried and unscheduled visit to the White House to brief the President’s national security team.
During the meeting the CIA Director urged a military attack to remove al-Qaeda from its sanctuary in Afghanistan and asked for covert authority for his organization to proceed against Bin Laden and his people. This was his second request for the same covert authority that Clinton had previously given him. The CIA Director believed the time to act was at that very moment – military and covert – to thwart Bin Laden. This was the starkest warning given the White House to date. No action was taken. He left the meeting "feeling frustrated." because "no immediate action meant great risk." The 9/11 Commission omitted this crucial meeting from its report.
Later in August, the CIA head of counterterrorism made a public speech on the subject, saying "we are going to be attacked soon ... many Americans are going to die." Two counterterrorism officials were so concerned that they considered resigning to go public. According to Time’s Special Report on 9/11, a frustrated high ranking FBI official in New York did resign and became security chief of the World Trade Center. He did not survive the attack.
During the months leading up to 9/11, 40 CIA daily briefings described the al-Qaeda threat to President Bush. Briefing headlines included "Bin Laden Threats Are Real," "Bin Laden Planning High Profile Attacks" and "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." The last briefing said that al-Qaeda had operatives residing in the U.S. and that the FBI had found "patterns of suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijacking". The CIA considered this briefing an opportunity to tell the President that the Bin Laden threat was "both current and serious". It was not the historical relic that National Security Advisor Rice alluded to when she testified before the 9/11 Commission.
In addition, the CIA Director made a special trip to Crawford Texas to brief the President on the FBI arrest of the 20th hijacker who had a lot of unexplained cash and was hurriedly learning how to take off and land a Boeing 747. Although the President and CIA Director declined acknowledge of this briefing, the meeting has been confirmed (see Addendum).
THE WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE
CIA Director Tenet briefed the President, Vice-President, and National Security Advisor regularly on the al-Qaeda threat, and he briefed other top officials (like Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Powell and Attorney General Ashcroft) as needed. Tenet felt that the best solution was to go on the offense and dislodge al-Qaeda from its sanctuary in Afghanistan, or Bin Laden would continue to operate with impunity and recruit and train more Islamic extremists. It would be only a matter of time before he would do more damage to the United States. Tenet proposed a joint operation -- CIA covert authorities plus small teams of military Special Forces to attack al Qaeda training camps and take Bin Laden out.
White House Chief Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke tried at various times to get the attention of top decision makers and conducted interagency meetings on defensive security alerts. He had conceived the Clinton attack plan that was passed on to top Bush officials. That plan was in accord with CIA Director Tenet’s views, but was not acted upon until after the 9/11 attacks. It was creative and amazingly simple:
• Support the ongoing Afghan resistance (Northern Alliance) against the Taliban government so that al-Qaeda training graduates would have to stay in Afghanistan to fight and die for the Taliban. (Note: Al-Qaeda feared the Northern Alliance – two associates, disguised as journalists, murdered their leader just two days before the 9/11 attacks.)
• Use the unmanned Predator to locate al-Qaeda training camps, conduct air strikes and then use U.S. Special Forces to destroy the training camps and kill or capture Bin Laden.
By late June, Clarke had sent two letters to National Security Advisor Rice -- one describing several reports of al-Qaeda personnel talking about a pending attack and the other saying that al-Qaeda’s activity had reached a "crescendo." His various letters sounded desperate, saying such things as "when these attacks occur ... we will wonder what more we could have done to stop them" and "imagine a future day when hundreds of Americans lay dead."
According to the Acting FBI Director, Attorney General Ashcroft appeared disinterested and denied their request for about $50 million in terrorist funding. His priorities for the FBI and his goals for the Justice Department omitted counterterrorism. According to the Acting FBI Director, Ashcroft said he did not want to hear anymore about terrorism. However, after July, Ashcroft began flying expensive charters rather than commercial aircraft because of an "official threat assessment."
During the months leading up to the 9/11 attacks, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld also appeared disinterested. He still had not filled his Department’s key position on counterterrorism. He did not have a mission for the al-Qaeda global network, although it was the most dangerous enemy the U.S. faced at the time. Congress tried to divert $600 million from Rumsfeld’s missile shield program to counterterrorism, but he stopped it by threatening a presidential veto.
In a meeting with other agencies, Rumsfeld’s deputy said: "I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, Bin Laden" -- "who cares about a little terrorist in Afghanistan." Top military chiefs informed the 9/11 Commission that there was little interest in military options for al-Qaeda. Rumsfeld believed the al-Qaeda warnings were a grand deception. He gave the 9/11 Commission a different story, however, saying he had given his "principle attention to other challenges."
Vice-President Cheney and National Security Advisor Rice were at the center of the storm, but left few fingerprints. They were the President’s advisors and attended many of the presidential daily briefings and special terrorist briefings.
National Security Advisor Rice worked near the Oval Office and her main job was to focus on problems of major concern to the President. Terrorism was not one of them. On the day of the attacks, she was supposed to give a speech on the "threats of today." Her speech promoted a missile shield defense against rogue states and contained no reference to numerous warnings of the upcoming terrorist attacks on our country. She, of course, never gave that speech.
There were opportunities for Rice to pull together members of the National Security Council, lay out the alarming evidence and ask members to present their views front and center to the President. Outside experts, such as former Presidents and Secretaries of State, could have been called in for advice on what was essentially a war-time situation. The ideal time would have been just after the CIA Director’s emergency visit to the White House pleading for immediate military action now. David Ignatius, of the Washington Post, put it this way:
...nothing would have prevented the national security advisor from mobilizing anti-terrorism policy against al-Qaeda in the months before 9/11. That’s what makes this story a tragedy – that existing institutions of government might have averted the disaster, if they had taken action".
Vice-President Cheney had the lead role in the White House on terrorism and intelligence and was told repeatedly in CIA briefings that we are going to be hit again. As noted in Gellman’s book on the Vice-Presidency, Cheney described the al-Qaeda warnings as a "noise in the system", saying he was not especially alarmed. Yet, one has to question: how could specific warnings from three Heads of State and other foreign allies -– all involving a similar pattern -- be considered a "noise in the system"?
Earlier in the spring, Cheney had helped derail congressional hearings on terrorism and the new Homeland Security Agency by taking on the job himself of preparing a defense against domestic attacks. His project never got underway. In his book, Gellman reports that President Bush agreed to chair a meeting of the National Security Council to review the Vice-President’s plans for domestic attacks. The President never held such a meeting. Gellman further discloses that a three-star general on the White House National Security staff (Donald Kerrick) found little interest in terrorism on the part of top officials, including the Vice-President.
It is important to understand that Cheney and Rumsfeld operated in tandem. They had worked together in a previous administration and had been close friends for decades. If the Vice-President had taken an interest in the threat, the chances are that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld would have too. The unwillingness of either Cheney or Rumsfeld to respond to the threat paralyzed the administration’s national security apparatus. Only the President could have made a difference.
President Bush never took control of the situation or put the nation in a crisis mode. For example, he did not:
• Call a National Security Council or cabinet meeting to coordinate a government response to the imminent al-Qaeda threat.
• Ask the Joint Chiefs for military options.
• Grant the CIA Director his twice requested covert authority to kill or capture Bin Laden.
• Act on the obvious requirement to protect commercial aviation.
• Alert the American people to the danger.
In early September, the National Security Council submitted a strategy to the President to eliminate al-Qaeda in 3-5 years. This long-term strategy "deferred decisions on what to spend, which steps to implement and when". It had no relevance to the immediate threat. At the Council meeting Rumsfeld appeared more interested in Iraq.
As the CIA Director had urged back in July, the time to act was now – that very moment. The CIA Director’s private view, as confided to Bob Woodard of the Washington Post, is that "he had sounded the loudest warning he could -- it hadn’t been heeded." He thought the earlier White House meeting in July was a tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the 9/11 attacks.
The Terror Timeline book, which documents the many advance warnings from our foreign allies, has about 1400 entries based on thousands of sources. It was published concurrently with the Commission report and concluded that:
"The public record reflects that the extreme focus on terrorism in place at the end of the Clinton administration dropped dramatically under the Bush administration. With few exceptions, little attention was paid to terrorism, even as the number of warnings reached unprecedented levels."
Time Magazine issued a Special Report on the Secret History of 9/11 as a cover story. It was based on many sources in and out of Washington, including reports from 15 key journalists located around the world. It concluded that:
The major terrorist attack wasn’t averted because of "a systemic collapse in the ability of Washington’s national security apparatus to handle the terrorist threat".
Neither the media nor Congress followed up on these remarkable conclusions to hold the Bush White House Accountable.
THE WHITE HOUSE COVER-UP
Following any major attack on this country, a president would normally be anxious to work closely with an investigation to get at the heart of the problem and prevent future ones. The Bush White House did just the opposite. President Bush and Vice-President Cheney urged the Senate Majority Leader not to pursue an investigation and managed to block it for a year. However, the 9/11 families and individual members of Congress persisted until legislation was finally passed to create the 9/11 Commission. Pressured by the 9/11 families, and with midterm elections approaching, the President changed his stance and signed the legislation.
The Bush administration then proceeded to stonewall the 9/11 Commission for much of its existence. It screened all Commission requests for information and intimidated agency officials by having monitors present at their Commission interviews. After several months, the commissioners openly acknowledged lengthy delays, maddening restrictions and disputes over access to sensitive documents and witnesses. According to Commissioner Ben-Veniste, "a blow torch and pliers" were required to extract information.
The Commission finally had to settle for less than full access to sensitive White House documents and, to get those, it had to threaten use of its subpoena power. Only a few selected Commission members were allowed access to sensitive documents, such as the presidential daily intelligence briefings. Their notes were subject to White House review and security classification. The Commission reviewers were limited as to what portions they could see and what portions could be shared with the full Commission. Objecting to these terms of access, one Commissioner resigned. Ultimately, the various delays required an extension of the Commission‘s reporting deadline.
COMMISSION REPORT OMITS INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE
For the most part, members of the Commission were former politicians rather than experts. They were evenly divided politically – five Democrats and five Republicans. A presidential appointee (Republican) was put in charge as one of the President’s conditions for signing the legislation. The members were all distinguished people with fine reputations.
The Commission hired as Staff Director, Philip Zelikow, who had previously co-authored a book with National Security Advisor Rice. The two of them had also worked together during Bush’s presidential transition and during his administration. Following the Commission, Zelikow joined Secretary Rice as her Counselor at the Department of State. A recent book by 9/11 Commissioner Ben-Veniste, states that Zelikow had "blind spots" toward the administration and was too dominant of a personality and too close to Rice and the White House to be placed in charge of the investigative staff. The Commission’s choice of him as Staff Director presented a conflict of interest and was most unwise.
The President’s one-year delay in approving this investigation moved the timing of the Commission’s report to the presidential election year, not a good time for a politically-divided group with deeply-held party loyalty to assess White House preparedness for the attacks. As the Commission neared its reporting deadline, partisan warfare broke out among individual commissioners at public hearings. The subject was White House responsibility. At least one or two Republican members had a direct pipeline to the White House.
The Commission leadership wanted a consensus across party lines and a unified report that would gain public acceptance. To achieve this, the Commission decided to report facts and leave readers to draw their own conclusions. There were several problems with this agreement:
• The Commission didn’t report all the facts.
• The Commission decision not to assess White House responsibility was kept secret from the public and Congress.
• The Commission decision departed from its statutory mandate to assess U.S. preparedness.
• The Commission’s told the public and Congress in its report that "The most important failure was one of imagination." Yet, how could this be true when a number of foreign allies and Heads of State had notified us of the actual means of attack?
The Commission’s report did pinpoint policy and management issues, weaknesses in agency capabilities and lost opportunities at lower government levels to disrupt the attacks. The Commission recognized that federal agencies never mobilized a response, got direction or had a plan and that the public was not warned. The report, however, did not identify responsibility for these failures or explain why they occurred in view of all the advance warnings. The most serious omissions from the Commission report were:
• The omission, as previously discussed, of specific warnings received for months from Heads of State and close foreign allies, revealing the actual means of attack and presence of al-Qaeda members here in the U.S. learning to fly.
• The omission of the CIA Director’s final desperate act to confront the White House and plead for military and covert action now.
• The omission of any explanation for the President’s failure to act responsibly on top expert advice from (1) the previous President, (2) the Chair of the 21st Century National Security Commission, (3) the CIA Director and (4) the White House Chief Counterterrorism Coordinator.
• The omission of any explanation for serious conflicting information, such as the Joint Senate/House revelations of warnings about the use of hijacked aircraft as weapons and the Time Magazine special cover story about collapse of the White House national security apparatus.
The Commission said senior (unnamed) officials across government share in the responsibility and that our national leaders could have done more. It laid much of the blame on intelligence, FBI and immigration. However, no matter how well lower levels of government performed, any response to the threat was impossible without the support of the President and Vice-President. And, they, not the lower levels, had the benefit of numerous warnings of the upcoming attacks, daily CIA briefings and expert advice from multiple sources.
It would have been useful if the 9/11 Commission had defined what any reasonable and prudent President and his national security team would have done under similar circumstances and assessed U.S. preparedness on that basis.
Based on interviews with 9/11 Commissioners and key staff members, Elizabeth Drew concluded in The New York Review of Books that "In an effort to achieve a unanimous, bipartisan report, the Commission decided not to assign individual blame and avoided overt criticism of the President himself." She reported further:
"They also knew that if they explicitly blamed Bush and his administration for failures to prevent the attacks, the energies of the White House and its political allies (including those in the press and television) would have been devoted to discrediting their work."
Years afterwards Commissioners are beginning to break ranks from their agreement to withhold conclusions on White House responsibility. Commissioner Ben-Veniste was the first to disclose on CNN the absence of conclusions in their report on presidential responsibility. In a new book, in 2009, he spoke more candidly:
"The summer of 2001 marked the most elevated threat level we had ever experienced, providing convincing evidence that a spectacular attack was about to occur", and after being told Bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States, "the President had done absolutely nothing to follow up".
Commissioner Bob Kerrey expressed it even more strongly in a film, 9/11: Press for Truth (on internet):
"The promise I made to keep this out of the campaign is over. Mr. President, you knew they were in the United States. You were warned by the CIA. You knew in July they were in the United States. You were told again in August that it was a dire threat. Didn’t do anything to harden our border security. Didn’t do anything to harden airport security. Didn’t do anything to engage local law enforcement ... and didn’t warn the American people. What did you do? Nothing as far as we can see."
In 2009, the White House Chief Counterterrorism Coordinator, Richard Clarke, also confirmed responsibility at the highest level of government in two newspaper articles. In the Washington Post, he reported that the White House had ignored the 9/11 warnings and feared disclosure would eliminate a second Bush term. In the New York Daily News he reported:
"The historical record is pretty clear by now that Bush did virtually nothing about the repeated warnings to him that those cataclysmic attacks were coming. Unfortunately, I can personally attest to that".
CONCLUSIONS
Faced with warnings of an impending catastrophe, our national leaders did not act with the required sense of urgency, lead a response to the threat, prepare a civil defense, or share crucial information with the American people. The threat had reached a heightened state and the timing was imminent. There was specific advance information about the hijacking of commercial airplanes and the presence of al-Qaeda members in this country learning to fly. This intelligence came from reliable foreign sources, including three Heads of State -- the King of Jordan, the Prime Minister of England and the President of Russia. Taken individually, the threat information was highly disturbing but, taken collectively, the information was overpowering. The failure of the President, Vice-President and their nation security team to act constituted a grave breach of official duty.
Exact knowledge of targets and timing were not required. All the administration had to do was protect against the hijacking of commercial aircraft – just that one thing. This would have meant doing such things as screening passengers, hardening cockpit doors, deploying air marshals and training air crews to resist takeover. Any one of these actions could have disrupted the attacks or acted as a deterrent.
The Commission’s chapter, The System is Blinking Red, concluded that the number and severity of reported threats was unparalleled and that many officials knew something terrible was planned. This meant that a major catastrophe was about to befall our nation and, therefore, to cope with it would require immediate presidential action. To comply with its statutory mandate, the Commission had no alternative but to assess White House preparedness for the attacks. An approaching presidential election should not have interfered with the Commission‘s legal and moral obligation to do so.
The Commission had two options. The first was for the Chairman to hold regular face to face meetings with opposing political sides to review the facts, allow each side to present their views and work toward a sustainable position. If (as one Commissioner reported) there was no chance of getting consensus on "what went wrong", the second option was to go ahead with a unified position on the remaining parts of the report and issue a minority report on White House responsibility. Commission minority reports are not an uncommon occurrence.
To this day, we do not know why our leaders left us so unprepared. Many will wonder why the President never warned the public. We may never know for sure. A major factor might have been the fear of slowing down an already troubled economy – the one thing that cost Bush’s father his second term. Soon after the attacks the President did call on the American people to "go shopping".
To help prevent the catastrophe, the people of the United States had to be highly aware, observant, and proactive. There had to be public and government-wide awareness as to the possibility of domestic attacks, as there was at the turn of the century under the Clinton administration. Public awareness may be our best defense. It was public awareness that halted the Los Angeles Airport attack (2000), grounded the 9/11 hijacked aircraft in Pennsylvania (2001), prevented the Xmas day commercial aircraft explosion (2009) and stopped the Times Square explosion (2010).
Leadership from both the President and agency heads would have stimulated a new level of energy, creativity, and cooperation within and among federal and local agencies. This leadership surely would have surfaced further information from intelligence agencies, the FBI and commercial flying schools, encouraged sharing of information and permitted the public to assist in averting or disrupting the attacks. With a reenergized government and public participation, the country would have been far better prepared to avert the horrible tragedy.
To illustrate, some people within government had important information, but did not know or appreciate its relevance. Without knowledge of the advance warnings, these people were unable to connect the dots. The outcome of the following two cases would surely have been different if the President had alerted the public to the threat and asked agency heads to give the matter their personal attention.
An FBI field agent analysis in July suggested a Bin Laden scheme to send students to U.S. aviation schools to prepare them for future terrorist attacks. His curiosity had been aroused by the inordinate number of Muslims in training at Arizona flight schools and his fear that they would use explosives to destroy a plane in flight. No one at FBI headquarters connected the dots and the field memo died.
•
A Muslim (named Moussaoui) was attending a flying school and stood out because with little knowledge of flying, he was interested only in learning in a few days how to take off and land a Boeing 747. The FBI field people took him into custody in August for a visa violation, but they actually wanted headquarters’ approval to inspect his laptop computer and discover why he was in flying school with a large sum of unexplained cash. Again, no one at headquarters connected the dots and would not approve the computer inspection. The FBI field person protested this decision to headquarters, saying that the suspect might be planning to hijack a plane and crash it "into the World Trade Center." Headquarters still would not approve the computer inspection.
It is especially important to recognize that the United States at this very time was virtually in a state of war with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Offensive action was more than justified by Bin Laden’s earlier declaration of war, his previous attacks on this country and repeated warnings of new ones predicting mass casualties. As the CIA Director had said, it surely was just a matter of time before Bin Laden would strike again. The President should have called his National Security Council together, approved the CIA request for covert action against Bin Laden and asked the Joint Chiefs for military options. In addition, no response to the USS Cole attack showed U.S. weakness and was a horrible mistake. Bin Laden was emboldened to strike once more.
In short, existing circumstances clearly dictated two immediate actions by the President – one offensive and the other defensive. An offensive action that made a lot of sense were the proposals of the previous administration and current CIA Director to use covert authority and elite military Special Forces to dispose of al-Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan and capture or kill Bin Laden. The unmanned Predator was available to search out al-Qaeda training camps and Bin Laden’s whereabouts. The obvious defensive action was for the President to alert the public and all agency heads to the danger and take immediate steps to protect commercial aviation.
ADDENDUM
On August 23, two and a half weeks before 9/11, the FBI did finally brief CIA Director Tenet about the extremist Muslim (Moussaoui) learning to "take off and land" a Boeing 747. The briefing was titled "Islamic Extremist Learns To Fly." A day later, the CIA Director reportedly went to Crawford, Texas to brief the President. The Director declined to acknowledge this visit, but the Office of the Press Secretary report of Bush activities at Crawford confirms it. The President was briefed again by the CIA Director on August 31. Mr. Moussaoui was found guilty as the 20th hijacker and is now in an American prison for life.
SOME THOUGHTS ON LESSONS LEARNED
CONSEQUENCES OF IGNORING HIGH-LEVEL THREAT
AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Failure of the President and Vice-President to defend against the upcoming attacks caused untold economic damage to the U.S. and huge loss of precious human life. It made Osama bin Laden a world hero among Muslims, attracted many recruits to his cause and provided an excuse for the war in Iraq. It gave Bin Laden hope that he could eventually bleed us into bankruptcy, a possibility that still exists.
By omitting crucial information and allowing politics to interfere with accountability, the 9/11 Commission excused our leaders from any role in the disaster. This allowed the President to have his convention later in the year near Ground Zero in New York City and campaign successfully for reelection using the slogan "Stay Safe: Reelect Bush".
White House accountability most likely might have averted another major disaster -- Katrina. The 9/11 Commission traded off accountability in one disaster and tens of thousands in another paid the price. Without accountability, history did repeat itself.
USING EXPERTS RATHER THAN RETIRED
POLITICIANS ON INDEPENDENT COMMISSIONS
Congress has considered several times patterning future commissions after the 9/11 one. Examples are commissions on investigating what went wrong with our economy and a truth commission on alleged war crimes and constitutional violations. The 9/11 experience has shown us that investigative commissions can be politicized, no matter how able their members are, and especially when very intense presidential elections are underway.
Members of future investigative commissions should be selected based on their broad expertise in the subject area and analytical ability. They should not be retired politicians who are vulnerable, as the 9/11 members were, to a politicized result. They should not be put in the predicament of deciding matters of national interest in conflict with their deeply-held party loyalty. A fifty-fifty political split did not protect the public interest in this case. Rather, it almost assured a standoff on what was the pivotal issue – U.S. preparedness for the upcoming attacks.
OFFICIAL RECORD ON 9/11 MUST BE REOPENED
9/11 Widows have strongly opposed the Commission’s work on the grounds that it did not assign any accountability for individual failures that allowed 9/11 to happen. They do not agree with the Commission’s "simplistic conclusion" that there was a "failure of imagination." Congress should reopen the record on 9/11 so that accountability is clear and the history of 9/11 is complete. The public and future historians deserve better information and analysis than they now have.
A COMPREHENSIVE GLOBAL STRATEGY TO REVERSE
THE CONSTANT THREAT OF TERRORISM
The Bush administration response to terrorism was too limited in scope to solve a global problem. Wars are not the answer. Yet, over a trillion dollars will be spent on two of them. Terror networks are international and move from country to country. They must be dismantled with specially trained elite forces using good intelligence and international cooperation. There must also be a global crackdown on sources of terror funds and far less U.S. dependence on Mideast oil.
The idea that the U.S. can cope with each and every country that supports or harbors terrorism is impossible to achieve. Deterring terrorism is a shared responsibility that requires leadership and cooperation from all heads of state. All nations must address root causes, dismantle terrorist activities in their own country, and carefully secure material used for nuclear weaponry.
Elite Special Forces of the larger countries should find and take down command structures and training camps of al-Qaeda and their affiliated groups -- wherever they exist. Any nation which continues to support them should be subject to strong diplomacy, sanctions and, if necessary, international military action.
The root causes that promote terrorism must be addressed with equal priority. The strongest possible international pressure must be brought to bear on solutions to the 60-year old Palestinian/Israel conflict.
Periodic meetings among Heads of State should be held on the global terrorist threat to review progress, hold each other accountable and find solutions for outlaw nations.
KEY SOURCES
The most important sources for the article are the first 13 below. They, in turn, contain many other sources. For example, The Terror Timeline book has many hundreds of sources and is the best guide for what the Bush administration actually knew about al-Qaeda’s intentions before 9/11. It and most of the other sources below can be found on the internet. Some members of the Bush administration and 9/11 Commission were given opportunity to comment and declined.
• Time Magazine’s Special Report and Cover Story on 9/11, The Secret History, August 12, 2002.
• Joint congressional inquiry into the intelligence community, December 20, 2002.
• A Strategy’s Cautious Evolution, Barton Gellman, Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2002.
• Warnings of Terrorist Attacks Lost Intensity by End of Summer, Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, May 2002.
• The 9/11 Commission Report, especially Executive Summary and Chapter on "The System Is Blinking Red, July 22, 2004.
• The Terror Timeline: Year By Year, Day By Day, Minute By Minute, A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11 and America’s Response, especially Part I, Chapter 1, Warning Signs and Chapter 3 Counterterrorism Before 9/11, Paul Thompson, Harper Collins, 2004. The information can also be found at http://www.historycommons.org, Complete 9/11 Timeline, Foreign Intelligence Agency Attack Warnings.
• Film, 9/11: Press for Truth (on internet).
• Pinning the Blame, Elisabeth Drew, The New York Review of Books, Sept. 23, 2004. Drew reached a similar conclusion as this article, based on her close reading of the Commission report and interviews with Commissioners and key staff members.
• Misuse of Power, chapter three – "New Far Right Agenda Ignores Terrorism," Ed Asner and Burt Hall, 2005. As just one example, pages 89-91 contain 20 references to material documenting the Bush administration cover-up of 9/11 and its stonewalling of the 9/11Commission.
• State of Denial, Bob Woodward, 2006 (pp. 49-52 and 79-80).
• Angler – The Cheney Vice-Presidency, Chapter Five, Barton Gellman, 2008.
• Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice, Washingtonpost.com, October 1, 2006.
• The Emperor’s New Clothes – Exposing The Truth From Watergate to 9/11, Richard Ben-Veniste, June, 2009.
OTHER SOURCES
• Aug. Memo Focused On Attacks in U.S., Bob Woodward and Dan Eggen, Washington Post, May 18, 2002.
• Bush knew of terrorist plot to hijack US Airplanes, Jason Burke and Ed Vulliamy, Guardian Unlimited, May 19, 2002.
• Egypt Warned U.S. of an al-Qaeda Plot, Mubarak Asserts, Patrick Tyler and Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times, June 3, 2002.
• Revealed: The Taliban minister, the US envoy and the warning of September 11 that was ignored, Kate Clark in Kabul, The Independent, Sept. 7, 2002.
• America had 12 warnings of Aircraft Attack, Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, Sept. 11, 2002.
• Plane Attacks Seen as Threat Before Sept. 11, Rebecca Carr, Palm Beach Post Washington Bureau, Sept. 19, 2002.
• Bush briefed on hijacking threat before September 11, John King, CNN Washington Bureau. CNN. Com.
• Israeli security issued urgent warnings to CIA of large-scale terror attacks, David Wastell and Philip Jacobson, The Telegraph, October 8, 2002.
• President Bush saved U.S. lives? That’s only more Karl Rove-style spin, Richard Clarke, N.Y. Daily News, Jan. 8, 2009.
• Trauma of 9/11 Is No Excuse, Richard Clarke, Wash Post, May 21, 2009.
• Bush Criticized By Former 9/11 Commission Member, Pete Yost, Associated Press, May 22, 2009.
• Two separate 9/11 Widows’ statements object to mistakes of the 9/11 Commission: An Open Letter to Senator Leahy, Buzzflash, Mar. 3, 2009 and Response to Xmas Day Terror Attempt, Opednews.com, Jan. 8, 2010.