9/11 panel spreads the blame
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
U.S. officials failed to grasp the seriousness of the threat posed by al Qaeda and lacked the "imagination" to stop the worst terror attacks in American history, the September 11 commission said yesterday in its final report.
The 567-page document, released after much fanfare and 12 public hearings over 15 months, calls for a vast reshaping of intelligence services and the creation of a national intelligence "czar" to oversee them.
The report does not blame President Bush or President Clinton personally for mistakes contributing to the 2001 attacks, saying legions of leaders bear some responsibility for failing to embrace post-Cold War changes needed to combat the rising threat of international terrorism.
The September 11 panel also offered the sobering conclusion that "we cannot know whether any single step or series of steps would have defeated" the 19 hijackers.
The commission's purpose was not "to assign blame," said Chairman Thomas H. Kean, who added that the nation's "failures took place over many years and administrations."
"Any person in a senior position within our government during this time bears some element of responsibility for our government's actions," the Republican former governor of New Jersey said at a press conference releasing the report.
The conclusions by the panel — officially called the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States — are based on more than 1,200 interviews and will be available for $10 in U.S. bookstores.
The document paints the pre-September 11 U.S. government as a body of agencies and policies gripped by a system that was shaped decades ago to respond to the threats of the Cold War.
"America stood out as an object for admiration, envy and blame. This created a kind of cultural asymmetry," the report states. "To us, Afghanistan seemed very far away. To members of al Qaeda, America seemed very close. In a sense, they were more globalized than we were."
Although large sections of the report are devoted to offering the most graphic account to date of how al Qaeda operatives turned four U.S. commercial flights into airborne suicide bombs, it also includes a multitude of recommendations for protecting the nation against future attacks.
The central recommendation calls for the establishment of a national intelligence-gathering center, unifying the more than a dozen U.S. agencies, including the CIA and collecting and analyzing national and international intelligence.
The center would be under the direction of a Senate-confirmed national director reporting directly to the president from a position ranking just below a full Cabinet member.
The intelligence "czar" would have the power to hire and fire deputies such as the CIA director and would be given control over the intelligence community's multiple budgets.
President Bush did not comment on those specific recommendations yesterday.
From the Rose Garden, the president said the report by the 10 panel members, five from each party, "puts out some very constructive recommendations."
Later, in a speech in Illinois, he said, "I agree with [the commission's] conclusion that the terrorists were able to exploit 'deep institutional failings' in our nation's defenses that developed over more than a decade."
"The commission's recommendations are consistent with the strategy my administration is following to address these failings and to win the war on terror," he said.
A senior CIA official, meanwhile, said that the agency is "very open" to the report and that the proposal to create a senior intelligence post to oversee U.S. spy agencies "deserves careful study."
"There is no inclination at the senior levels here to reject this idea," the official told reporters. "Nor is there an inclination to embrace it without looking carefully at it and asking a lot of questions.
"We have to make sure that this isn't some sort of an exercise where boxes are moved on a chart and everyone feels better when the exercise is over, and we move on, and the basic problems are not addressed," the official said.
In its report, the September 11 commission report hits the intelligence community particularly for the failure of multiple agencies to share information before the terror attacks.
The CIA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity yesterday, said critics have called the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies "a federation of loosely affiliated stovepipes."
"It isn't that anymore," the official said, while noting, "Yes, we could be more closely integrated."
In a statement, acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin said the agency will study the panel's conclusions and recommendations.
"We appreciate the commission's observation that the [CIA] is in the foreground of the story, and of some of its criticisms partly because before 9/11, no agency had more responsibility — or did more — to attack al Qaeda," he said.
The report also criticizes Congress for failing to "reorganize itself after the end of the Cold War to address new threats."
From a congressional oversight standpoint, "issues such as transnational terrorism fell between the cracks" throughout the 1990s, the report said. "Terrorism came under the jurisdiction of at least 14 different committees in the House alone, and budget and oversight functions in the House and Senate concerning terrorism were also splintered badly among committees."
The report recommends the creation of either a joint committee or a single committee in each house that would combine authorizing and appropriating authorities to fix the "now dysfunctional" congressional oversight of intelligence and counterterrorism.
Although it says specific details of intelligence appropriations could remain classified, the report recommends that the "overall amounts of money being appropriated ... no longer be kept secret."
In recommending such large-scale changes, the report urged that the American public "should not settle for incremental, ad hoc adjustments to a system designed generations ago for a world that no longer exists."
Citing the present threat of terrorism, commission members yesterday challenged the White House and Congress to act immediately. Commission member Jamie S. Gorelick said she hoped the recommendations would be debated in the upcoming elections.
Mrs. Gorelick drew applause from family members of September 11 victims gathered for the report's release when she said: "There are bad consequences to being in the middle of a political season, and there are also good ones, because everyone who is running for office can be asked: 'Do you support these recommendations?' "
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential candidate, said he thought legislation "that contains the commission's recommendations" would be introduced in the Senate soon.
"This is a time to come together. This is a time for bipartisan solutions. And this is a time to act — now," Mr. Kerry said in Detroit. "The terrorists will not wait for us, and we must not wait for them."
Mr. Kerry then said Mr. Bush has failed to make reforms in handling the threat of terrorism.
"Mark my words: If I am elected president and there has still not been sufficient progress on these issues, I will not wait a single day more," he said. "I will lead."
Reaction to the report on Capitol Hill was positive, but few expected radical changes in the less than four months before the presidential election.
The report also is fraught with details discovered about the September 11 plot, drawing on information extracted from al Qaeda members arrested in the war on terror, such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), a top Osama bin Laden lieutenant captured in Pakistan last year.
The result is a fuller picture of al Qaeda dynamics and the personal lives of the hijackers, 15 of whom were of Saudi origin.
"KSM, for instance, denies that Saudis were chosen for the 9/11 plot to drive a wedge between the United States and Saudi Arabia," according to the report.
"He says that so many were Saudi because Saudis comprised the largest portion of the pool of recruits in the al Qaeda training camps. KSM estimates that in any given camp, 70 percent of the mujahideen were Saudi, 20 percent were Yemeni, and 10 percent were from elsewhere.
"Although Saudi and Yemeni trainees were most often willing to volunteer for suicide operation, prior to 9/11, it was easier for Saudi operatives to get into the United States," the report said.
The opening chapters of the report offer a description of how events unfolded on the morning of September 11, including previously unreleased details about cockpit recordings from United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field.
The report hails the plane's passengers as heroes for their brave attempt to overcome the hijackers, but never says the passengers' revolt took them into the cockpit.
Earlier accounts have suggested that the plane's crash was the result of the passengers actually overcoming the hijackers and entering the cockpit. The commission concluded that hijacker Ziad Samir Jarrah "began to roll the airplane to the left and right, attempting to knock the passengers off balance" during their assault on the hijackers.
The cockpit voice recorder captured "the sounds of the passenger assault muffled by the intervening cockpit door," the report says. "Some family members who listened to the recording report that they can hear the voice of a loved one among the din.
"Jarrah then continued to roll the plane sharply to the left and right and to pitch the nose of the plane up and down to disrupt the assault on the cockpit," the report said.
At 10 a.m., the plane stabilized, and "five seconds later Jarrah asked, 'Is that it? Shall we finish it off?' "
Another hijacker responded: "No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off."
Moments later, Jarrah stopped the violent maneuvers and said: "Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!"
He then asked again: "Is that it? I mean shall we put it down?"
The other hijacker replied, "Yes, put it in it and pull it down."
The report maintains that the "hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them."
•Bill Gertz contributed to this report from Washington; Charles Hurt contributed from Detroit; and James G. Lakely contributed from Illinois.
washingtontimes.com |
