Panel faults 'failure of imagination"...
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| Thu, 07-22-2004 - 10:05am |
This report is pretty much as expected, IMO.
9/11 panel faults 'failure of imagination'
http://www.suntimes.com/output/terror/cst-nws-probe22.html
The Sept. 11 commission concludes that a "failure of imagination," not governmental neglect, allowed 19 hijackers to carry out the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history. The panel calls for an intelligence overhaul to confront an al-Qaida organization intent on striking again.
While faulting institutional shortcomings, the bipartisan report being released Thursday does not blame President Bush or former President Clinton for mistakes contributing to the 2001 terrorist attack, Bush administration officials familiar with the findings said.
The report, which is the culmination of a 20-month investigation into the plot that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, describes the meticulous planning and determination of hijackers who sought to exploit weaknesses in airline and border procedures by taking test flights.
A surveillance video that surfaced Wednesday shows four of the hijackers passing through security gates at Washington Dulles International Airport shortly before boarding the plane they would crash into the Pentagon. In the video, the hijackers can be seen undergoing additional scrutiny after setting off metal detectors, then being permitted to continue to their gate.
White House officials and congressional leaders were briefed on the panel's findings, and Bush was to receive a copy just before the 11:30 a.m. EDT release Thursday on the commission's Web site and in bookstores.
The president, bracing for a report that will be sharply critical of the government's intelligence-gathering, said Wednesday he looked forward to reading it. He also said his administration was doing everything possible to combat terrorism, a major theme of his re-election campaign.
"Had we had any inkling whatsoever that terrorists were about to attack our country, we would have moved heaven and earth to protect America," Bush said. "I'm confident President Clinton would have done the same thing. Any president would."
Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar in the Clinton and Bush administrations and now an ABC consultant, said on the network's "Good Morning America" the commission avoided controversy. "To get unanimity they didn't talk about a number of things, like what effect is the war in Iraq having on our battle against terrorism. Did the president pay any attention to terrorism during the first nine months of his administration? The controversial things, the controversial criticisms of the Clinton administration as well as the Bush administration just aren't there."
"What they didn't do is say that the country is actually not safer now than it was then because of the rise in terrorism after our invasion in Iraq."
One administration official said the 575-page report concludes that Bush and Clinton took the threat of al-Qaida seriously and were "genuinely concerned about the danger posed by al-Qaida," but didn't do enough to stop the terrorist organization headed by Osama bin Laden.
There was a "failure of imagination" to provide either Bush or Clinton with new options-- particularly military approaches-- to deal with al-Qaida, the official said. There also was a failure to adapt to the post-Cold War era, and people just kept trying the same kinds of things that didn't work, the official said.
While administration officials offered a preview of the report, their summary was far from a complete accounting of the commission's findings.
Less than four months before the presidential election, the commission's work already has ignited partisan debate over whether Bush took sufficient steps to deal with terrorism in the first year of his administration.
As expected, the report will propose a national counterterrorism center headed by a new Cabinet-level national director of intelligence. The director would have authority over the CIA, FBI and other agencies, while congressional oversight also would be strengthened.
The commission described a rapidly changing al-Qaida threat that has become more dispersed and harder to detect. A national intelligence chief would coordinate information-sharing and intelligence analysis to thwart al-Qaida terrorists who are keenly interested in launching a chemical, biological or nuclear attack, commissioners say.
The Bush administration is reserving judgment on that recommendation, and officials doubt it could be approved by Congress this year.
Four administration officials briefed reporters on the content of the report Wednesday on condition of anonymity because it has not been publicly released.
"There were deep institutional failings within our government," an official said. "And that's what they really examine at some length over a long period of time-- that there were a variety of factors spanning many years and many administrations that contributed to a failure to share information amongst agencies for both legal and policy reasons."
In particular, the official said, the commission found the FBI was not set up to collect intelligence domestically, in part because of civil liberties concerns.
The report lists a series of missed operational opportunities to stop the hijackers, such as the bungled attempts to kill or capture bin Laden and the FBI's handling of terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August 2001 before the hijackings, the official said.
It also "debunks" some theories that once circulated widely, such as that the Saudi government had funded the hijackers and that the White House allowed a group of Saudis to slip out of the country just after Sept. 11 when all planes were grounded, the official said.
Commissioners have said the report also will fault Congress for poor oversight of intelligence gathering and criticize government agencies for their emergency responses to the attacks. The harshest criticism will be leveled at the FBI and CIA.
But the 10-member panel declined to recommend a separate domestic spy agency modeled after Britain's MI5, as some outside experts have suggested, deciding that reform efforts by FBI Director Robert Mueller were on the right track despite the FBI's historical focus on law enforcement, said Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas.


Pages
http://www.9-11commission.gov/
with the following contents
Complete 9/11 Commission Report
7.4 MB
Executive Summary
5.9 MB
Public Statement by the Chair and Vice Chair Regarding the Report
36 KB
Contents, List of Illustrations and Tables, Members, and Staff 233 KB
Preface 67 KB
Chapter 1: "We Have Some Planes" 952 KB
Chapter 2: The Foundation of the New Terrorism 1.44 MB
Chapter 3: Counterterrorism Evolves 188 KB
Chapter 4: Responses to al Qaeda's Initial Assaults 185 KB
Chapter 5: Al Qaeda Aims at the American Homeland 312 KB
Chapter 6: From Threat to Threat 209 KB
Chapter 7: The Attack Looms 949 KB
Chapter 8: "The System Was Blinking Red" 146 KB
Chapter 9: Heroism and Horror 2.3 MB
Chapter 10: Wartime 109 KB
Chapter 11: Foresight--and Hindsight 133 KB
Chapter 12: What to do? A Global Strategy 184 KB
Chapter 13: How to do it? A Different Way of Organizing the Government 158 KB
Appendices 109 KB
Notes 669 KB
C
War of Ideology
By DAVID BROOKS
When foreign policy wonks go to bed, they dream of being X. They dream of writing the all-encompassing, epoch-defining essay, the way George F. Kennan did during the cold war under the pseudonym X.
Careers have been spent racing to be X. But in our own time, the 9/11 commission has come closer than anybody else. After spending 360 pages describing a widespread intelligence failure, the commissioners step back in their report and redefine the nature of our predicament.
We're not in the middle of a war on terror, they note. We're not facing an axis of evil. Instead, we are in the midst of an ideological conflict.
We are facing, the report notes, a loose confederation of people who believe in a perverted stream of Islam that stretches from Ibn Taimaya to Sayyid Qutb. Terrorism is just the means they use to win converts to their cause.
It seems like a small distinction - emphasizing ideology instead of terror - but it makes all the difference, because if you don't define your problem correctly, you can't contemplate a strategy for victory.
When you see that our enemies are primarily an intellectual movement, not a terrorist army, you see why they are in no hurry. With their extensive indoctrination infrastructure of madrassas and mosques, they're still building strength, laying the groundwork for decades of struggle. Their time horizon can be totally different from our own.
As an ideological movement rather than a national or military one, they can play by different rules. There is no territory they must protect. They never have to win a battle but can instead profit in the realm of public opinion from the glorious martyrdom entailed in their defeats. We think the struggle is fought on the ground, but they know the struggle is really fought on satellite TV, and they are far more sophisticated than we are in using it.
The 9/11 commission report argues that we have to fight this war on two fronts. We have to use intelligence, military, financial and diplomatic capacities to fight Al Qaeda. That's where most of the media attention is focused. But the bigger fight is with a hostile belief system that can't be reasoned with but can only be "destroyed or utterly isolated."
The commissioners don't say it, but the implication is clear. We've had an investigation into our intelligence failures; we now need a commission to analyze our intellectual failures. Simply put, the unapologetic defenders of America often lack the expertise they need. And scholars who really know the Islamic world are often blind to its pathologies. They are so obsessed with the sins of the West, they are incapable of grappling with threats to the West.
We also need to mount our own ideological counteroffensive. The commissioners recommend that the U.S. should be much more critical of autocratic regimes, even friendly ones, simply to demonstrate our principles. They suggest we set up a fund to build secondary schools across Muslim states, and admit many more students into our own. If you are a philanthropist, here is how you can contribute: We need to set up the sort of intellectual mobilization we had during the cold war, with modern equivalents of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, to give an international platform to modernist Muslims and to introduce them to Western intellectuals.
Most of all, we need to see that the landscape of reality is altered. In the past, we've fought ideological movements that took control of states. Our foreign policy apparatus is geared toward relations with states: negotiating with states, confronting states. Now we are faced with a belief system that is inimical to the state system, and aims at theological rule and the restoration of the caliphate. We'll need a new set of institutions to grapple with this reality, and a new training method to understand people who are uninterested in national self-interest, traditionally defined.
Last week I met with a leading military officer stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq, whose observations dovetailed remarkably with the 9/11 commissioners. He said the experience of the last few years is misleading; only 10 percent of our efforts from now on will be military. The rest will be ideological. He observed that we are in the fight against Islamic extremism now where we were in the fight against communism in 1880.
We've got a long struggle ahead, but at least we're beginning to understand it.
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
http://nytimes.com/2004/07/24/opinion/24brooks.html?hp
Will I'm glad this is finally becoming clear. I still don't think the report goes far enough investigating the "Why". Why are the terrorists attacking America. I don't believe GWB's "because of our freedom". I believe it is because of our actions, and if we don't examine our foreign policies we'll never understand the world situation. To bad GWB isn't capable of seeing beyond his own verbage.
Shelby was ranking Republican on joint intelligence committee.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/24/qaeda.leaks/index.html
A Republican senator is under investigation in the leak of classified al Qaeda communications that apparently referred to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, law enforcement sources said Saturday.
The Justice Department referred the case of Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama to the Senate Ethics Committee on Thursday, the sources said, adding that the FBI's criminal investigation was not complete.
Shelby was critical of the Bush administration's classification of portions of a congressional report, released in July 2003, on the attacks.
The House and Senate ethics committees were briefed Thursday on the investigation, the sources said.
Shelby's office could not be reached for comment, but he has previously -- and vigorously -- denied involvement in any leaks.
In June 2002, CNN and other news organizations reported on messages intercepted by U.S. intelligence on September 10, 2001, that consisted of Arabic-language telephone conversations between people in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.
One of the intercepts said, "The match begins tomorrow." The other said, "Tomorrow is zero hour." The intercepts, however, were not translated and analyzed until September 12, the day after the attacks. Sources said the intercepts would have been studied within 48 hours, regardless of the attacks.
The translated messages were provided to CNN by several congressional sources and discussed at a joint House-Senate intelligence committee meeting the same week.
The leaks so infuriated the Bush administration that Vice President Dick Cheney called leaders of the joint committee to complain. The committee leaders, Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss, both of Florida, then called on the Justice Department to investigate.
Shelby, now the chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, was the ranking Republican on the joint committee. Joining with many of his Democratic colleagues, he criticized the Bush administration's classification of nearly 30 pages of the committee's report.
"Ninety-five percent of that information could be declassified," he said at the time. "I think are classified for the wrong reason."
The pages were being withheld, he said, because the information "might be embarrassing to some international relations." (Me: Yes, 'right'!)
By RICHARD A. CLARKE
Published: July 25, 2004
Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions.
Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11, and that by invading Iraq the administration has left us less safe as a nation. (Fortunately, opinion polls show that the majority of Americans have already come to these conclusions on their own. )
What the commissioners did clearly state was that Iraq had no collaborative relationship with Al Qaeda and no hand in 9/11. They also disclosed that Iran provided support to Al Qaeda, including to some 9/11 hijackers. These two facts may cause many people to conclude that the Bush administration focused on the wrong country. They would be right to think that.
So what now? News coverage of the commission's recommendations has focused on the organizational improvements: a new cabinet-level national intelligence director and a new National Counterterrorism Center to ensure that our 15 or so intelligence agencies play well together. Both are good ideas, but they are purely incremental. Had these changes been made six years ago, they would not have significantly altered the way we dealt with Al Qaeda; they certainly would not have prevented 9/11. Putting these recommendations in place will marginally improve our ability to crush the new, decentralized Al Qaeda, but there are other changes that would help more.
First, we need not only a more powerful person at the top of the intelligence community, but also more capable people throughout the agencies - especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. In other branches of the government, employees can and do join on as mid- and senior-level managers after beginning their careers and gaining experience elsewhere. But at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., the key posts are held almost exclusively by those who joined young and worked their way up. This has created uniformity, insularity, risk-aversion, torpidity and often mediocrity.
The only way to infuse these key agencies with creative new blood is to overhaul their hiring and promotion practices to attract workers who don't suffer the "failures of imagination" that the 9/11 commissioners repeatedly blame for past failures.
Second, in addition to separating the job of C.I.A. director from the overall head of American intelligence, we must also place the C.I.A.'s analysts in an agency that is independent from the one that collects the intelligence. This is the only way to avoid the "groupthink" that hampered the agency's ability to report accurately on Iraq. It is no accident that the only intelligence agency that got it right on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department - a small, elite group of analysts encouraged to be independent thinkers rather than spies or policy makers.
Analysts aren't the only ones who should be reconstituted in small, elite groups. Either the C.I.A. or the military must create a larger and more capable commando force for covert antiterrorism work, along with a network of agents and front companies working under "nonofficial cover'' - that is, without diplomatic protection - to support the commandos.
Even more important than any bureaucratic suggestions is the report's cogent discussion of who the enemy is and what strategies we need in the fight. The commission properly identified the threat not as terrorism (which is a tactic, not an enemy), but as Islamic jihadism, which must be defeated in a battle of ideas as well as in armed conflict.
We need to expose the Islamic world to values that are more attractive than those of the jihadists. This means aiding economic development and political openness in Muslim countries, and efforts to stabilize places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Restarting the Israel-Palestinian peace process is also vital.
Also, we can't do this alone. In addition to "hearts and minds" television and radio programming by the American government, we would be greatly helped by a pan-Islamic council of respected spiritual and secular leaders to coordinate (without United States involvement) the Islamic world's own ideological effort against the new Al Qaeda.
Unfortunately, because of America's low standing in the Islamic world, we are now at a great disadvantage in the battle of ideas. This is primarily because of the unnecessary and counterproductive invasion of Iraq. In pulling its bipartisan punches, the commission failed to admit the obvious: we are less capable of defeating the jihadists because of the Iraq war.
Unanimity has its value, but so do debate and dissent in a democracy facing a crisis. To fully realize the potential of the commission's report, we must see it not as the end of the discussion but as a partial blueprint for victory. The jihadist enemy has learned how to spread hate and how to kill - and it is still doing both very effectively three years after 9/11.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/25clar.html?hp
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