Now Clarke says they made a difference, but as the actual LAX terrorist was a nervous and inept terrorist who triggered the suspicions of an alert customs agent, it's frankly unclear to me if all those alerts did anything or not.
Good questions. Again, read the books. In the 99 millenium stuff, they stopped multiple attacks, at least 3 and possible 5. Talking globally. The degree to which the "shake out" business contributed to that is unknowable. But if the shoe were on the other foot right now and Gore were president in the summer of 01 and had not gone to maximum alert as in late 99, you would be first up on the podium attacking them. And with justification.
My own concern, at least right now, is not so much that the Bush folk did not do that, though they should have.
My larger concern is that they are trying to do a cover up. Had they simply said in late 01, look we were focused on different things, we were caught by surprise, but we get it now, here's what we are doing. And we're going to dump the memory slots onto commissions so everyone knows precisely what happened, the better to do systemic corrections to guard against the next.
Had they done that, they would have been in much better shape now and we would all be a bit safer. Instead, they chose the "we made no mistakes" route, the noncooperation route. And the price for going that direction doesn't look good. |
