The Pre-emption Commission
The virtues of the Patriot Act, among other surprises.
WSJ.com
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So the doctrine of pre-emption has its uses, after all. In a world of conflicting intelligence, uncertain consequences and potential foreign opposition, it is still sometimes necessary for America to attack an adversary before it attacks us.
That, reduced to its essence, is the main conclusion of yesterday's 567-page report from the 9/11 Commission. The September 11 attacks may have been a shock, it says, but they never should have come as a surprise. Our government--and the entire political class--knew enough to act against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, but it did not because of <font color=blue>"failures of imagination, policy, capability, and management."<font color=black> Though the bipartisan report can't quite bring itself to use the words, it would seem that the Bush anti-terror doctrine lives.
These columns have been rough on the Commission, especially for the partisanship that has marked its deliberations. But perhaps our pounding helped, because its unanimous final report seems on our first reading to be better than the process that produced it. Its narrative history is especially helpful, filling in much of the record of what the government knew, when it knew it, and what it didn't do about it.
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We refer readers specifically to the recitation of non-
action that starts on page 11 of the executive summary.
Beginning in 1997, the U.S. tried diplomacy to get the
Taliban to drop al Qaeda and Pakistan to drop the Taliban,
but the efforts failed. We now know that only an ultimatum
turned Pakistan, and only military force toppled Mullah
Omar.
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The report discloses that the CIA failed to infiltrate the terrorist Islamic network with even a single spy. The FBI failed to share crucial information about terrorist suspects. In other words, our security bureaucracies became hidebound and self-protective over the years, and their cultures need a thorough shaking up.
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The report is especially damning in its revelations about the law enforcement mindset toward terrorism that prevailed before 9/11. Top CIA analysts--many of whom are now critical of the Bush Administration--thought it was a manageable problem. FBI investigations were <font color=blue>"geared toward prosecution,"<font color=red> the report notes, and hampered by <font color=blue>"perceived legal barriers to sharing information."<font color=red> Part of this was due to the infamous <font color=blue><font color=blue>"wall of separation"<font color=red> between intelligence and law enforcement that was reinforced in 1995 by Clinton Deputy Attorney General (and 9/11 Commissioner) Jamie Gorelick.
The Patriot Act took down that wall, and the report
amounts to a rousing endorsement of that much-maligned
legislation.
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Notably, the Commission performs a service by defining the threat we now face in refreshing fashion. <font color=red>"The enemy is not just 'terrorism,' "<font color=black> it says. <font color=red>"It is the threat posed specifically by Islamic terrorism."<font color=black> Bush Administration officials say the same thing privately, but they have been reluctant to state this publicly lest they offend the broader body of peaceable Islam. But it is hard to defeat an enemy without defining who it is. And the fact that Islam has a problem with its radical factions is something that Muslims themselves have to face up to.
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This failure to speak candidly has ramifications at home, too, specifically in the Transportation Department's continued failure to endorse racial profiling in airport security checks. The policy reduces the government's credibility among ordinary Americans who understand that the policy defies common sense. Commissioner John Lehman noted at one hearing that any airline that set aside more than two Middle Eastern-looking passengers for secondary security clearing at any one time still faces large anti-discrimination fines.
The report also sheds new light on the issue of <font color=blue>"state sponsors"<font color=red> of terror, especially Iran and Iraq. The Iran information--including pass-through rights without border stamps for al Qaeda--should give pause to those who think diplomacy alone will mollify the mullahs.
As for Iraq, the final report retreats from its interim
judgment that there was no <font color=blue>"collaborative relationship."<font color=red>
The Commission now says it found no <font color=blue>"collaborative
operational relationship"<font color=red> to attack the U.S., but it does
record extensive and troubling contacts. This includes the
news that Richard Clarke, the former NSC aide, himself
believed that Iraq had ties to the chemical plant in Sudan
that was linked to al Qaeda and bombed by Bill Clinton.
The report quotes Mr. Clarke as speculating to a superior
about an <font color=blue>"Iraq-al Qida [sic] agreement"<font color=red> on the chemical
plant. Our readers may recall that Mr. Clarke more
recently said there was not a shred of evidence of such
ties.
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As for the Commission's many proposals, they deserve to be examined, though count us skeptical on the idea of unifying all intelligence agencies under the control of a Cabinet-level intelligence czar. It might change bureaucratic incentives for the better, but <font color=red>it might also create a new and equally dangerous kind of groupthink<font color=black>. At the very least Congress should wait until the intelligence review commission led by former Senator Charles Robb and federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman reports next year.
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The details, however, should not obscure the Commission's larger message about the dangers of not acting against a looming threat. After a year of recriminations against a President who chose to act against another threat, in Iraq, the report may even do some good.
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