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THE 911 COMMISSION REPORT: AN APPRAISAL
by Joseph D. Douglass, Jr.
September 7, 2004

“The nation was unprepared. How did this happen,
and how can we avoid such a tragedy again?”

The 9/11 Commission Report page xv

I recommend The 9/11 Commission Report to every American who likes to be well informed. It is long and packed with detail, but easy to read. It is good to have so much information on the record concerning what actually happened and why the attacks on 9/11 caught us by surprise. I believe that most people will find the story fascinating, independent of their political perspectives.

At the same time, the Commission was not brought into being to create a historical document. Their mission was to investigate the facts and circumstances of the attack to make recommendations on measures that could be taken to prevent future terrorist acts. Their focus was not on history but on what went wrong and what can be done to fix it.

But, from my perspective, at that very point the facts reported become troubling. The critical problem areas revealed are warning and leadership decision making. As difficult as the warning function was, the responsible agencies in the government were warned in advance of 9/11, well warned. About that there is no question. More could have been done to alert defenses and to guide preparedness. However, the failure or “surprise” was not lack of warning but in the lack of any engagement with the warnings at the top.

There is no indication in the 9/11 report of any serious interest and involvement of cabinet level officials in the developing crisis. Notwithstanding a surge of information on a coming al Qaeda attack (termed by the CIA four months in advance of 9/11, “the most dangerous group we face” with “leadership, experience, resources, safe haven in Afghanistan, and focus on attacking U.S.” (p. 203)), the top leadership of our country took no actions to warn the nation, alert critical defenses, or increase preparedness. There was a leadership vacuum. Although not discussed in the report, this is the primary message I draw out of the information presented.

The details on the trails of the various terrorists who struck our country on 9/11 are fascinating. It is unfortunate that an equivalent amount of energy in the 9/11 report did not go into examining the actions taken, or not taken to respond to the threat, and the reasons why. This is especially important in light of the information that was briefed to all those who would become the war Principals even before they took office. Unfortunately, it seems that the Commission made a decision not to address the crucial decision-making process and its contribution to our unpreparedness on 9/11.

Too often, the Commission or its staff did not drill down to get the answers to embarrassing questions. Too often, what was not reported was as telling as what was reported. As an example of this problem, in the one section where preparedness is addressed (pp. 278-323), all the attention is directed to the preparedness of those who had to respond to the effects of the attack. None was directed to the tragic non-performance of the Federal Aviation Administration and military/intelligence systems to respond to the hijackings. That this aspect of U.S. defense seriously malfunctioned is evident earlier in the text (pp. 1 - 46), but there was no effort to dig into this most serious problem to understand the reasons behind the malfunction. Why were those with the responsibility so ill prepared?

As an indication of the Commission’s reluctance to find fault, consider the following two observations presented in the 9/11 report: First, “The defense of U.S. airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with preexisting training and protocols. It was improvised by civilians who had never handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disappear, and by a military unprepared for the transformation of a commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction.”  As indicated in the record, there was information on what was happening almost from the instant the first plane was hijacked, over a half hour before it crashed. The information never even got to the most important people, beginning with the President. The air defense system did little. What it did do it did wrong.

According to the report, information on the first hijacking was known 30 minutes before it crashed into the World Trade Center. There was information and those at all levels in the system did not seem to know what to do. The President was not informed for over 30 minutes, until after the crash, and then he was badly misinformed by being told that it was a small twin-engine plane. Had this happened in an air defense exercise in the days in which defense was considered a serious mission back in the nineteen fifties and sixties, all those involved likely would have been replaced – quickly. Second, contrast this major failure with, “We do not believe that the true picture of that morning reflects discredit on the operational personnel at NEADS or FAA facilities.” If not the operators, then who was responsible for their training, exercise, and evaluation?  Was there not an “after actions” assessment of why the system malfunctioned and identification of corrective measures? How can such lack of performance be tolerated – especially when there is a serious concern over terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?

Apparently, none of the elements of the in-place crisis management capability performed as they should have. They were all badly unprepared. No attempt to pinpoint the malfunctions is seen. Nor were any actions taken by the national command authorities to alert this portion of our defensive system when for over five months the intelligence warning system, “was blinking red.” In both cases (tactical and strategic warning) there was substantial time available to take action.

The lack of action in the face of an attack, real or impending, is the basic story of the eight months preceding the 9/11 attack as set forth in The 9/11 Commission Report. A mass of information told of a greatly increasing threat situation in which the United States was a target. Yet, no one seems to take any action other than call meetings to discuss policy options.

While the report is 550 pages long, only 170 pages (Chapters 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 11) focus on what was known, when, and what actions were taken. These 170 pages are important to read and dissect because this is where the essence of the 9/11 problem is presented. There were clear indications of serious terrorist intent to strike America and in mid-July, the best estimate was that it would come within 2 months. The senior White House official with responsibility to sound the alarm (Richard Clarke, head of the NSC Counterterrorism Support Group) could not even get U.S. officials to bring the issue before the Principals so that a decision to alert the nation and mobilize our capabilities could be made.

(The “Principals” is a short-hand term for the Principals Committee of the NSC. It is, in effect, the National Security Council less the President, plus a few special officials, such as the head of the NSC Counterterrorism Support Group, Richard Clarke, during the Clinton Administration. It is chaired by the National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice. Another group, called the Deputies, is composed of the various deputies to the Principals. This is a discussion group that is supposed to review issues before they go to the Principals. The Deputies is chaired by Rice’s deputy, Steve Hadley.)

The difficulty in getting the attention of the Principals – and the President – is both important and confusing. In their final report, the 9/11 Commission focuses their conclusions (recommendations) almost exclusively on the need for organization reform; specifically they recommend a new National Intelligence Director and a National Center for Counterterrorism. Meanwhile, the heart of the problem in the text appears to be not the “organization.” Rather, it seems to be awareness and decision making at the top echelons in our government.

The 9/11Commission evidently decided to avoid the politically sensitive issue of decision making: responsibility and accountability. Yet, reading their report, the problem that shines through is not organization “stove pipes,” boxes, and walls, but the horrendous problem of getting someone at the top to understand that “something terrible was planned.” Many lesser but still senior officials understood and were “desperate” for direction. As late as a week before 9/11, the head of the NSC Counterterrorist Support Group, Clarke, was still trying to convince National Security Advisor Rice that it was urgent to get a decision at the top that the threat was real because we urgently needed to take defensive actions. What was needed was that decision – not more meetings to re-evaluate policy options respecting Afghanistan, or debate whether regime change in Afghanistan should be our policy. What was needed was action to greatly increase American preparedness.

The focus on reorganization is further puzzling because the 9/11 report itself demonstrates the good possibility that had the government exposed the nature of the threat and been honest with the people, the media, and the government generally, the 9/11 attack might have been seriously if not fully disrupted. While not an explicit conclusion, it seems clear that the intent of the 9/11 report is to present this very real possibility.

To understand the tremendous importance of this need to mobilize American attention to the threat, the 9/11 report presents an excellent example – what happened during the 1999-2000 millennium crisis. The report contrasts the widespread alert to terrorist actions in the millennium crisis with the situation during the summer of 2001. The facts in the millennium case illustrate a basic bureaucratic truth: When a threat is believed serious at the top, the system underneath for the most part puts aside organizational and bureaucratic problems and rallies together to win the battle. The importance of this truth is essential to understand. Consider just a few quotes from the 9/11 report review of the millennium experience.

“In the period between December 1999 and early January 2000, information about terrorism flowed widely and abundantly. The flow from the FBI was particularly remarkable because the FBI at other times shared almost no information. That from the intelligence community was also remarkable, because some of it reached officials – local airport managers and local police departments – who had not seen such information before and would not see it again before 9/11, if then. And the terrorist threat, in the United States even more than abroad, engaged the frequent attention of high officials in the executive branch and leaders in both houses of Congress … These were not events whispered about in highly classified intelligence dailies or FBI interview memos. The information was in all major newspapers and highlighted in network television news.” (p. 359)

That is, because the crisis was real and treated as such, information flowed. “Stove pipes” and walls mostly disappeared. Americans were aware and alert. Numerous possible terrorists were apprehended both at home and abroad. This is when an alert Customs agent caught a Middle East terrorist, Ahmed Ressam, bringing explosives across the Canadian border into the United States. The Los Angeles airport was his target. The 9/11 report says that this was just a “chance discovery.” Maybe it was. Or, maybe it was because that Customs agent was more alert than usual because of all the attention placed on possible terrorism over the millennium transition.

In comparing the government’s approach to the millennium threat with its approach to 9/11, the 9/11 report says:

“In the summer of 2001, DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] Tenet, the Counterterrorism Center, and the Counterterrorism Security Group did their utmost to sound a loud alarm, its basis being intelligence indicating that al Qaeda planned something big. But the millennium phenomenon was not repeated. FBI field offices apparently saw no abnormal terrorist activity, and headquarters was not shaking them up.” (p. 359)

“In sum, the domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction, and did not have a plan to institute. The borders were not hardened. Transportation systems were not fortified. Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat. State and local law enforcement were not marshaled to augment the FBI’s efforts. The public was not warned.” (p.265)

“Between May 2001 and September 11, there was very little in newspapers or on television to heighten anyone’s concern about terrorism. Front-page stories touching on the subject dealt with the windup of trials dealing with the East Africa embassy bombings and Ressam [the person apprehended bringing explosives into the United States in December 1999]. All the reportage looked backward, describing problems satisfactorily resolved. Back-page notices told of tightened security at embassies and military installations abroad and government cautions against travel to the Arabian Peninsula. All the rest was secret.” (pp. 359-360)

It is at this time – the beginning of the Bush Administration – that the new administration’s preoccupation (if not obsession) with secrecy became well recognized. It is also clear in the 9/11 report that the President was doing nothing to shake people up, nor was the Vice President and certainly, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was not either. The Defense Department was in no way engaged. “Why?” The senior officials and groups with the counterterrorism responsibility – Tenet, the CIA Counterterrorism Center, and the NSC Counterterrorism Support Group – were all sounding the claxon loud and clear.

What was known, when, and who did what

Chronologically, there seem to be five critical watersheds in what we knew about the threat that bin Laden and al Qaeda posed to America – how alert we were and what actions were taken or not taken. They were:

I. 1998 - Warning

II. End 2000 - Warning of Intent to Attack the U.S. Homeland

III. Late January 2001 - All New U.S. Principals Informed, No Evident Actions Taken

IV. Spring - Surge in Intelligence Reports – Something is Coming

V. Mid-Summer - “The System Was Blinking Red” but the Principals Did Nothing

I. 1998 - Warning

By the end of 1998, the Clinton administration had clear warning about a  terrorist threat worthy of serious U.S. attention. There were several instances in which bin Laden stated his concern and consequent intentions growing out of the threat presented to Islam by U.S. policy. In a public fatwa in February 1998, bin Laden declared war – jihad – on the United States and within six months there was ample evidence (escalating attacks on U.S. embassies and military presence) that he was serious. He made his position clear, explained why he was taking this position – there was no mistaking his intent.

It was also clear that the United States homeland had become a target. On December 4, 1998, a President’s Daily Brief (PDB), which is prepared by the CIA, was titled Bin Laden Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks. Among other things, it stated that two al Qaeda agents had evaded a security check in a trial run at a New York airport. (p.117) That same day, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), George Tenet, issued a directive to the intelligence community stating: “We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the Community.”

II. End 2000 - Warning of Intent to Attack the U.S. Homeland

By the end of the year 2000, top U.S. experts knew bin Laden was serious, imaginative, and intended to attack the United States. The Counterterrorist Security Group (CSG) of the NSC headed by Richard Clarke stated in writing that “foreign terrorist sleeper cells are present in the U.S. and attacks on the U.S. are likely.” (p.179)  These statements were not mere assertions. They were statements of fact backed up by data. One of bin Laden’s terrorists, Ressam, was caught entering the United States from Canada with a car loaded with explosives in December 1999 and headed to Los Angeles airport. Next, and especially important, was the successful attack on the U.S.S. Cole on October 12, 2000. It caused massive damage and took the lives of 17 crewmen, only three months before the Bush Administration began. (pp. 212-213)

By the end of 2000 it is clear that there were major problems with U.S. response policy -- the actions taken and not taken. Plans were unrealistic. Major problems in planning and decision making were evident. Actions taken were unsuccessful – fatally flawed from the beginning.

Plans were constrained by three considerations: 1) a desire to avoid war in Afghanistan (especially “boots on the ground”), notwithstanding the fact that bin Laden had already declared war and launched numerous attacks, 2) a goal of not putting intelligence agents and military in harm’s way and, instead, 3) to seek surrogates from within the Muslim community to fight our war for us, for a price of course.

With the exception of the CIA Counterterrorism Center, and the NSC Counterterrorism Support Group, there was not a clear understanding that the threat was serious, was real, and that serious actions by the United States were necessary. Accordingly, none were taken. This stands in marked contrast to the response to the millennium threat, where interest was on response and doing everything possible to defeat the threat rather than keeping it secret.

There were no proposed military options that were politically acceptable. In effect, the situation demanded a U.S. response but no one wanted to take any risks or commit to action. The United States faced a dilemma and there was no effective leadership to bring about a resolution. The nature of U.S. policy goals, risks, costs, benefits, and possible options never seems to have been examined in efforts to resolve the dilemma. Similarly, there does not seem to have been in evidence an appraisal of the motivations behind bin Laden’s declaration of war, his strengths, and how this “new” terrorism differed from or was aligned with the motivations of the older Middle East terrorist organizations. None of these appears to have happened. Instead, the diplomatic and intelligence options that were implemented depended on the unrealistic course of enlisting the help of the Taliban and various Islamic countries in various U.S. anti-bin Laden schemes. The one action taken to attack bin Laden was evidently undermined by warning Pakistan intelligence (who had been helping the Taliban and al Qaeda) in advance of U.S. actions, thus compromising operational security and enabling bin Laden and his top associates to escape in advance. (p.117)

The CIA kept worrying about being charged with running or attempting an assassination. The origins of this concern go back to an anti-assassination Executive Order signed by President Reagan in 1981. This problem could have been solved in the same way it was created: by the stroke of an executive pen. Further, they were told that dealing bin Laden a death blow would be a matter of national self-defense, not an assassination.  Rather than resolve this problem, air strikes were launched to hit a target where bin Laden was reported. The option was intended as an assassination under the cover of plausible deniability. This is what the attack on Libya was all about in the Reagan Administration. The same approach has also dominated thinking in the Bush Administration. In all of these cases, the mid-level people were unwilling to even suggest sending a trained sniper team in to eliminate the target without a clear, specific Presidential directive, and evidently no one was about to ask for such a directive.

After the air strike to kill bin Laden and his top echelon failed, the plan settled on paying Afghan tribal elements to capture bin Laden. However, the United States placed such rigorous restrictions on the tribal efforts to ensure bin Laden’s capture rather than death that the tribal elements did not undertake any effort. The reason behind the restrictions seems clear. In an effort to avoid any risk of mud splashing back on the CIA if bin Laden were killed in the process, the CIA made it crystal clear to the tribal elements that if there were any question that they had killed bin Laden rather than take the risks associated with attempting as best they could to capture him alive, they would not get paid.

It seems from the 9/11 report that no one outside Tenet, the CIA Counterterrorism Center, and the NSC Counterterrorism Support Group really considered this a war. No one was willing to assume the risk of bad publicity associated with failed covert actions in Afghanistan. Everyone in the policy, intelligence, and operations planning seemed to be stuck in the same rut; trying to figure out how to capture bin Laden or possibly kill him in a way that was not an assassination and do so without risking U.S. lives or initiating a real war in Afghanistan. In effect, the approach paralyzed all actions. Let the next administration take the risks.

III. Late January 2001 - All New U.S. Principals Informed, No Evident Actions Taken

By the end of January, 2001, all the key players in the new Bush Administration had been told by Clinton officials that bin Laden was a lethal threat.

Candidate Bush had received a CIA briefing, one hour of which was on terrorism and al Qaeda, in September, 2000. President-elect Bush had been told by President Clinton in December that bin Laden and al Qaeda were “by far his biggest threat.” (p.199)  James Pavitt, head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center also told President-elect Bush (and Cheney and Rice) that bin Laden was “one of the gravest threats to the country.” (p. 348)

In early January, Clarke briefed National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on terrorism, bin Laden and al Qaeda. He also briefed Vice President Cheney, Steven Hadley (Rice’s deputy), and Secretary of State Powell. The fact that bin Laden and al Qaeda were a determined enemy and intended to attack the U.S. homeland should have been clearly understood. Maybe it was. Nevertheless, there is no indication that it was in any sense accepted or understood. No actions aside from bureaucratic discussions and coordination meetings appear to have been taken. Bureaucratic business-as-usual was the course of action.

Clarke in his testimony to the Commission stated that he had submitted a strong memo to Condoleezza Rice on January 24. In it he stressed the “urgent need” for a meeting of the Principals specifically to decide if al Qaeda was or was not “a first order threat.”  But, this absolutely critical message never got across.

Several years earlier, because of the seriousness of the terrorism threat, Clarke had been made a special adjunct member of the Principals Committee who attended whenever there was to be a discussion of any subject concerning terrorism or related matters. On January 25, Condoleezza Rice revoked Clarke’s membership on the Principals Committee. Whether she did this before or after receiving Clarke’s January 24 memo is unclear.  The basis of her decision, which prevented Clarke from bringing the issue to the Principals’ collective attention, was evidently because “he broke china.” (p. 200)

As a direct result of Rice’s actions, the bin Laden and al Qaeda threat was not brought before the Principals until September 4, 2001.  Clarke was not invited to the meeting. No decision for immediate actions to increase U.S. preparedness emerged from the Principals’ September 4 meeting. Seven crucial months and the urgency of Clarke’s message had been lost. Clarke’s frustration reached such a level that in May or June he asked to be reassigned from the terrorist group to a cybersecurity group. About all Rice could say was that she did not recall Clarke expressing his frustration to her. The Commission did not pursue this “red flag.”

Based on the 9/11 report, I concluded that Rice’s January 25^th action was the single most evident act of negligence or bureaucratic interest in reining in someone said to “break china.” The effect was to muzzle the one person at that time trying to sound an alarm. Again, one is struck by the absence of any top-level decision that this threat was real, was serious, and we needed to do something. There was no indication in the 9/11 report of any Presidential sense of urgency or understanding that the problem was imminent. There was no discussion of it among his top advisors, the Principals.

The only judgment possible respecting accountability is that none of the Principals took a responsible stance. The 9/11 report does not explicitly bring out this unexplained behavior. The report does not discuss it and try to understand what was happening. This is a continuing failure of the report and, with it, of the performance of the Commission not to dig deeper to understand what was happening and why. There is little information on discussions or dialogues of the Principals with each other, with Clarke, and with the President that enables one to understand what is going wrong or right with the top-level decision-making.

Nevertheless, decision-making and responsible action seems to have been the principal problem, not stove pipes, boxes, and bureaucratic falderal. Stove pipes, boxes, bureaucracies, and other malfeasances have been used as excuses to deflect attention away from the more fundamental problem: no sense of importance or urgency at the top of the organization. The real underlying problems, as illustrated by the millennium crisis, were:

·                                                         top-level understanding and acceptance of the facts,

·                                                         leadership and decision making,

·                                                         commitment, and

·                                                         action.

At this point – late January – there is another item skipped over in the 9/11 report that seems to be of extraordinary potential significance. At the first NSC meeting in January, as reported by former Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill (in The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind), O’Neill was surprised when Saddam Hussein was brought into the discussion. Evidently there was no discussion on bin Laden or al Qaeda. If Hussein, a minor threat in comparison, was on the agenda, why on earth were bin Laden and al Qaeda not brought up? The same thing happened in the second NSC meeting a few days later. There is no mention in the Suskind book of any discussion in the NSC of bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban at this meeting either. If not bin Laden, why Hussein and why did not the Commission look into this?

Who set the NSC agenda? Normally it is the National Security Advisor to the President Condoleezza Rice who would set the agenda. Vice President Cheney, who had several briefings on the threat posed by bin Laden, was also a regular attendee. Did neither of these officials think that bin Laden was far higher on the priority list than Hussein – considering the immediate or near-term threat bin Laden posed to the United States? The 9/11 report is totally silent about all of this. Did the threat posed by bin Laden and al Qaeda not get the attention it deserved because several powerful Cabinet members and those who advised them had wanted for some time deal with Hussein, not bin Laden?

The discussion on Iraq, as reported by Paul O’Neill was not just a trivial side bar. The discussions on Hussein quickly became deadly serious with talk on oil reserves, preliminary plans for their management, and of the need for a preemptive strike on Iraq. By February the talk was focused on logistics. The issue was not why to attack Iraq, but how and how quickly. Don Rumsfeld, O’Neill recalled, was focused on how an incident might cause an escalation in tensions and what the U.S. response to an incident, like the shooting down of an American plane, might be. According to O’Neill, Rumsfeld said the U.S. needed an incident to justify going to war with Iraq.

IV. Spring - Surge in Intelligence Reports – Something is Coming

During the spring there was a sudden and marked increase in information on terrorist activities; specifically, bin Laden and al Qaeda. The surge was massive, there was no mistaking it. Something large was looming. None the less, the NSC continued dragging its feet on the bin Laden and al Qaeda threat.

On March 7, Rice’s deputy, Steve Hadley, called an informal Deputies meeting to discuss Clarke’s proposals vis a vis bin Laden and al Qaeda. The threat evidently was not even serious enough to call an official Deputies meeting. More talk. At the same time, in early March, there was a meeting of the Principals on “Iraq and Sudan.” Almost simultaneously, Rice defers a meeting of the Principals on al Qaeda until the “Deputies had developed a new policy for their consideration.” (p. 203) What is meant by “defers”? Was a meeting scheduled and then deferred and, if so, why? Why a new policy? What obviously was needed and requested to Rice in January was a top-level determination that this threat was real, was serious, and needed to be dealt with as a matter of urgency.

It is clear from the foregoing that the need for issues to be discussed by the Deputies before going to the Principals is not a hard and fast rule. It certainly did not stop Iraq from going to the Principals. How many times Iraq was discussed by the Principals we are not told. Again, the potential to lay the threat out before the Principals as a group was killed by Rice.

The question “Why?”, like many other questions, is not pursued in the 9/11 report. Was this Rice’s initiative or was she responding to higher level advice? This train of events brings to mind the early days of the Nixon Administration. Shortly after the President’s National Security Advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger, was sworn into office, a series of NSSMs (National Security Study Memorandum) were sent to various agencies and departments involved in national security. In each case, studies were requested in response to questions that, presumably, would determine a new direction for U.S. policy. There was considerable excitement and energy as various responses were prepared. Staffs worked evenings and weekends. This went on for over a year. Eventually, the excitement and energy disappeared as people began wondering what had become of the responses to earlier NSSMs.

It was some time before a few members of the various staffs began to recognize that there was no high level interest in what they had to say in response to the questions. The questions (NSSMs) had merely been asked to keep the staffs busy and out of the way while those in charge went about implementing their own policy agenda.

In reading through the 9/11 report and other articles and books (for example, The Price of Loyalty, Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke, and Imperial Hubris by Anonymous) it has seemed increasingly plausible that the reason the warnings of the bin Laden terrorist threat fell on deaf ears may have been that those in charge had a different agenda. The real questions with which they were wrestling was not how to counter the bin Laden threat but how to use it to further what was to them a more important policy objective – regime change in Iraq. If there is one lesson to draw from the study of national policy it is never to underestimate the power of secret agendas and the duplicity of those at high levels. A long, long list of highly respected books justifies this disturbing observation.

It was not until April 30 that a full Deputies meeting was held on bin Laden and al Qaeda. At this meeting a CIA presentation called al Qaeda “the most dangerous group we face” citing its “leadership, experience, resources, safe haven in Afghanistan, [and] focus on attacking U.S.” The slides warned: “There will be more attacks.” The action agenda adopted was to send more money to the Northern Alliance, begin a review of U.S. policy on Pakistan, and explore policy options on Afghanistan. No actions respecting preparedness or intelligence were evidently taken. (p. 203) This no-action approach to dealing with the threat rules the top-level U.S. decision-making process until it is overtaken by events on September 11. The outcome of the Deputies meeting held at the end of June was similar – a decision to explore the possibility of obtaining help from the Taliban. Another item discussed was whether or not to consider a policy goal of regime change in Afghanistan. A second action adopted was to approach Pakistan in an effort to talk them into taking anti-al Qaeda actions.

Before continuing with the key events in late June, there is another important action about which precious little appears in the 9/11 report. On May 8 President Bush announced that Vice President Cheney would himself lead an effort to investigate preparations for managing a possible attack by WMD and the more general problem of national preparedness. (p. 204) Coming as this announcement did, about two months after a marked growth in reports on terrorist attack planning and activities, there seems to be an obvious question to pursue: What triggered this action? Why is this not explained in the 9/11 report? There had to be some serious discussion that led up to the creation of the task force. What was it?

No explanation is offered in the 9/11 report. What is said is that the next four months were spent finding a staff and getting an Admiral back from the Sixth Fleet to run the task force. It was reported to be just ready to start when the planes hit the World Trade Center.

Several more questions are obvious, though not asked by the 9/11Commission. Who was on the task force? Why did it take so long to get started? Were they going outside the government or inside, and if outside, why? Why wait upon a Navy Admiral, who could have flown back in a few days, to run the task force that presumably was being headed by Vice President Cheney? Why an Admiral? Of all the military services, the Navy has been the service least interested in WMD for several scores of years. They do not like nuclear weapons because they sink ships. They are not involved with small nuclear weapons of the nature suited for terrorists. They look at chemical weapons with disdain because chemical weapons do not sink ships. Biological weapons are even further down on their list of priorities. What happened after the task force was ready to start, just at the time of 9/11? Were they too late and hence disbanded? Did the government suddenly realize they had to take real action following 9/11 and dared not give the impression they were just constituting another task force? Assuming the task force simply disappeared, that is also unfortunate insofar as national preparedness was in great need of attention. Here was a newly constituted task force, up and running, instantly available. Within three weeks we would be seeing the first real WMD attack with anthrax. Was this Cheney task force real or was it established mainly for image – to convey the impression of attention to the threat – and is this why it seems to have simply disappeared?

Assuming this Cheney task force was serious, it appears to have been the only attempt before 9/11 to investigate national preparedness. Yet nothing happens. Why? Why does the 9/11 Commission not seem to be interested in this? Is not there something critically wrong? Did they even look for the reasons behind this task force and why Cheney evidently decided to take his time in getting it started?

V. Mid-Summer - “The System Was Blinking Red” but the Principals Did Nothing

By June 21, the threat level was so pronounced that U.S. Central Command raised the alert levels for U.S. troops in six countries and instigated several preparedness actions. This and defense preparations at U.S. embassies overseas are the only actions evident to increase U.S. overseas preparedness. There were numerous pending attack warnings. Clarke’s assessment was that what was happening was too sophisticated to be merely a deception to keep the United States on edge. One intelligence report warned that something “very, very, very, very” big was about to happen (p. 251) and that most of bin Laden’s network was reportedly anticipating the attack. In response, disruption operations against al Qaeda-affiliated cells in 20 countries were launched. How serious or effective they were and what surrogates they may have depended upon is not discussed in the 9/11 report.

In mid-July it became apparent that bin Laden’s attack plans had been delayed, “maybe for as long as 2 months.” Why this was believed to be the case is not discussed in the 9/11 report. Later in July 23, there was a marked decline in reports on terrorist activities that continued up until September 11: the calm before the storm. The Commission found no indications of any discussions among the President and his top advisors during this period. “At no point before 9/11 was the Department of Defense fully engaged in the mission of countering al Qaeda, though this was perhaps the most dangerous foreign enemy then threatening the United States.” (p. 351) In late 2000, DCI Tenet recognized the deficiency of strategic analysts in counterterrorism. He appointed a senior manager in the Counter Terrorism Center, who in March recommended creating a strategic assessments center. This was done four months later in July. They were allotted an increase of 10 analysts, but could not find any. The new chief of this branch reported for duty on September 10. (p. 342) In other words, notwithstanding the blinking red lights, nothing of substance was accomplished at the CIA. Nor were any discussions of increasing U.S. preparedness evidently uncovered. The reasons why evidently were not pursued by the Commission insofar as there is no related discussion in the 9/11 report. On May 9, the Attorney General testified that the “most fundamental responsibility is to protect its citizens . . . from terrorist attack.” The budget guidance issued the next day highlighted gun crimes, narcotics trafficking, and civil rights as priorities, not counterterrorism. (p.209) There was no mobilization at all. “They [the domestic agencies] did not have direction.” (p. 265)

One senior official from the NSC Counterterrorism Support Group told the 9/11 Commission that at the end of June, “he and a colleague were considering resigning in order to go public with their concerns.” (p. 260) The 9/11 report does not indicate the nature of their concerns. How possibly could the Commission not have followed up on this statement? It seems most unlikely that their concerns were over the likelihood of a calamitous terrorist attack. Rather, it seems more logical that the types of concern that would cause them to resign in order to go public would have been over something even more alarming, like the inattention of top administration officials to the information, the lack of any serious defense preparedness efforts, or the need to warn Americans on the imminent dangers ahead.

Summing Up What Was Known and What Actions Were and Were Not Taken

Decision making in the pre-9/11 phase is very difficult to assess because so few details are presented in the 9/11 report. It does not even indicate what information the Commission had or was denied. This is inexcusable in any serious investigation. Material that should have been examined, but does not seem to have been, includes all minutes, memos, briefs, PDBs (President’s Daily Briefs), and notes on conversations from NSC meetings, Principals meetings, Deputies meetings, President Bush’s morning discussions with Clarke, and interagency communications related to terrorism, al Qaeda, Islam, Muslims, Afghanistan, its neighbors, and the Middle East.

From my reading of the 9/11 report, it is clear that the major role in preventing any serious impending threat discussion by the top presidential advisors as a group was played by the President’s National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice. Based on what little is presented in the 9/11 report, my concerns regarding other probable errors in leadership and decision making are:

President Bush failed to take any action to counter the imminent danger that he had inherited though he had been told it should be the top priority item on his national security agenda. It was not even near the top of his priority list. He told this to Bob Woodward when he was interviewing the President for Bush At War. The impression has been conveyed that President Bush asked for a summary of the bin Laden and al Qaeda terrorist problem and that the response to his request was the August 6 PDB article “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” According to the 9/11 report, CIA analysts took it on themselves to produce this article in an effort to get President Bush to understand how serious the problem was. There is no indication in the 9/11 report of any follow-up questions or actions that followed this PDB, notwithstanding the fact that it talked about intent to strike the United States and training to hijack large airplanes.

Vice President Cheney failed to bring the issue of bin Laden and al Qaeda up at the first or second NSC meetings. Why should the NSC be discussing regime change in Iraq rather that regime change in Afghanistan when there is no indication or evident discussion of either a serious or urgent or even near-term threat from Iraq? This is a critical issue that the 9/11 report ignores.

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld failed to recognize the need to respond to the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and to get prepared to respond if and when al Qaeda did strike the U.S. homeland. Again, it was clear that such a strike was the enemy’s intention and efforts to bring explosives into the United States had been thwarted only a year earlier by a “chance discovery.” While the attack on the U.S.S. Cole was only three months old when the Bush Administration took office, key people like deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, was not interested in worrying about responding to the attack. It was “stale” in his opinion. Wolfowitz is also the only U.S. official identified in the 9/11 report who challenged the credibility of the intelligence warning on possible direct attack on the United States.

CIA Director Tenet failed to target additional intelligence resources on al Qaeda’s world-wide activities. A massive and intensive increase was called for in Tenet’s own December 1998 directive but there was no evident follow-through or necessary allocation of resources, including at the CIA, which he headed, according to the 9/11 report. Most of this increase did not require language skills other than English. His bark was definitely more ferocious than his bite.  Equally serious was the seeming lack of any effort by Tenet to emphasize the seriousness of the problem and need for actions to President Bush. Given the nature of his close relationship with the President, does this failure to raise the problem with President Bush suggest that Tenet knew this was not something Bush wanted to hear? Perhaps he did try, but was unable to get Bush’s attention. Unfortunately, there was no summary in the 9/11 report of what Tenet and Bush discussed regarding this subject at any of their daily meetings prior to 9/11.

Attorney General Ashcroft failed to move the FBI and other internal security components into a state of alert and initiate high-priority investigations of all foreign intelligence and possible al Qaeda terrorists and supporters/sympathizers operating within the United States. Ashcroft was also clearly warned about the presence of al Qaeda cells in the United States and their efforts in December 1999 to bring explosives into the United States.

In general, not one of the Principals seems to have lacked information and advice. Yet none seemed to have had the sensitivity or wisdom to command serious actions or courage to raise the issue with conviction. The problem demanded their collective attention but the strong and clear advice of two people who had the expertise and responsibility, Richard Clarke and James Pavitt, fell on deaf ears. There is little question from the 9/11 report that the chief obstacle to Clarke’s efforts to communicate the impending doom and the need to mobilize the bureaucracy was National Security Advisor Rice.

Could any more have been done? Yes; for example, look at what took place during the millennium crisis as a start. As it was, nothing was done. Why? Because neither the President nor the Vice President nor the President’s National Security Advisor evidently believed the situation was important enough to really get involved and address the issue. Was the lack of information a problem?  Certainly more detail would have been nice, but that was not the underlying problem. There was more than ample information. Plenty of people trying to tell them to pay attention. The enemy was known, Their use of commercial aircraft was known, They had run test operations to check security at a New York airport. And on and on. “Many of the [intelligence] officials told us they knew something terrible was planned, and they were desperate to stop it.” (p. 263) Again, unfortunately, the 9/11 report fails to expand on this testimony. Who said this? Who did they try to alert? What did those they told do or say? Why were so many officials ignored? Was the top echelon simply in a state of denial? Alternatively, why were those who could, as Condoleezza Rice likes to say, “move heaven and earth,” so disposed to do nothing? Were they so interested in an incident to justify an attack on Iraq that they were blinded to the enormity of the imminent catastrophe that might ensue?

Is it the enormity of such a possible conclusion that drove the Commission’s decision to focus on organization to the exclusion of decision making in their conclusions?

Three further questions remain unanswered.

First, did not any of the military chiefs consider suggesting to the Secretary of Defense that they take this matter seriously and begin taking actions to defend America? The 9/11 report seems to imply that the senior military officers, including the chiefs, were keep out of the information loop! (p. 351) (As a historical note, this is, in effect, the same thing that was done early in the Kennedy Administration. A major policy review of NATO and nuclear weapons was conducted. The military were carefully excluded. For those with appropriate access, this is examined in detail in Supplement to WSEG 126, The Conflict Over Tactical Nuclear Weapons Policy in Europe, August 1968.)

Second, why was the NSC more interested in Saddam Hussein than in bin Laden, al Qaeda, and their intentions to hit the United States?

Third, did President Bush immediately direct an internal investigation to learn what happened and why, like President Kennedy did following the Bay of Pigs fiasco? If so, what happened to it? If not, why not? How could anyone in his position tolerate being kept in the dark for over a half hour (about the time it takes a missile to fly half way around the world) and then be misinformed?

The failure of the 9/11 report to attack the decision-making issue – why was the warning claxon sounded by Clark, Pavitt, and many others not heard – undermines the entire effort of the Commission. After 20 months and many millions of dollars, the Commission explained 9/11 as the result of organization “stove pipes” and concluded that what was needed was a new Director of National Intelligence. Yet, intelligence nowhere seems to be the leading problem. Rather than investigate decision making as a possible culprit, they evidently decided to avoid such a politically incorrect practice and, instead, assigned blame to the “system.” This approach keeps everyone happy. No sacred cows are gored. No one loses his or her job. Attention is diverted to organizational changes, which tranquilizes the public.

Did They All Think Alike?

Another serious weakness in the 9/11 report that is part of the Commission’s evident policy of political correctness is the absence of different views and beliefs of the individual members of the Commission.

Evidently, the Commission agreed to present a unanimous view upon which each member could agree. This is unfortunate because there are clearly questions and issues that remained unresolved, but this is rarely evident. Moreover the unanimity of position ends of conveying the characteristic of an advocacy position paper permeated with a heavy dose of political correctness.

Toleration of different points of view and conclusions would be more representative of the open society. Even the Supreme Court has room for minority opinions. The “united front” squelches minority positions, to the overall detriment of the quality of the report.

The most evident aspect of political correctness or “group think” is the failure (expected) to hold any officials accountable. Notwithstanding the recognized importance of bin Laden, the al Qaeda, their declaration of war, and the documented danger of a direct attack on the United States (all of which were clearly understood within the NSC counter-terrorist group and the CIA Counter Terrorism Center), there is no indication in the 9/11 report of any cabinet or near-cabinet level official in either the Clinton or Bush administrations (especially the latter) who was upset with the threat and lack of serious action response – lip service yes, but no anger, notwithstanding the seriousness of the situation. This would appear to apply to the 9/11 Commission as well, otherwise it seems unlikely that there would be no exceptions noted to any of the findings and recommendations.

The Absence of Good Follow-Up

There are too many cases where information on what was known and happened deserves explanation or much more careful scrutiny than is evident in the 9/11 report. In addition to the numerous examples already been pointed out, there is the curious behavior of President Bush in the Florida grade school classroom when Andrew Card came in and said to him, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.” In response, the President did nothing. He just sat there for an additional “five to seven minutes” until the children had finished their readings. Ever since that morning, people have asked, “why did he not immediately stand up, excuse himself, and leave?”

Even more curious, the report states that before President Bush entered the classroom, Karl Rove came up and told Andrew Card and the President that “a small twin-engine plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. The President’s reaction was that the incident must have been caused by pilot error.” The President also called Condoleezza Rice at the White House before entering the classroom. She stated that she told him that it was a twin-engine aircraft – and then a commercial aircraft – that had struck the World Trade Center.” (p. 35) There is no evident effort by the Commission to learn why and how the President could have been so misled. In reviewing a serious crisis as this, the normal practice is to identify the precise time sequence when people were notified and what was said. This is especially true because the key information centers that are involved in real time, centers at the CIA, DoD, White House, and NSA, all have recorded records on communications. It seems clear from the text and footnotes that no effort to really lay out what happened from the instant of the hijackings from a decision-making perspective has been made.

As indicated earlier, there has been serious concern that there was a secret agenda taking priority over the findings of those with the warning and crisis management responsibility. Was politics taking priority over national security, and is that why no serious effort was marshaled to stop bin Laden and al Qaeda in advance of 9/11? The 9/11 report does not address the reports by Treasury Secretary O’Neill on NSC meetings when evidently the need to attack Iraq was raised and the need for an incident that would justify such an attack. Might this have been behind President Bush’s direction to Clarke on September 12 to “See if Saddam did this … See if he’s linked in any way?” (p. 334) Might this have been why in telling General Myers to start identifying targets to hit, Secretary Rumsfeld said his instinct was to hit Saddam as well as bin Laden and why Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz recommended hitting Iraq during “this round” of the war on terrorism? (pp. 334-335)

Similarly, while Tenet discussed intelligence matters with the President, key members of his personal staff, and Condoleezza Rice every morning, there is no mention of what they discussed though that might have had a bearing on the 9/11 attack warning and the state of our unpreparedness. All the 9/11 report states is that the morning meetings were attended by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Card, and Tenet and that between January 20 and September 10 there were 40 articles in the PDBs addressing bin Laden and al Qaeda. Well, what were they and what was discussed? All we are given is a few of the titles, which stress the reality of the threat.

Also, the 9/11 report states that the PDBs with sensitive material taken out were sent to senior executives in the government as Senior Executive Information Briefs (SEIB). Judging from the nature of the August 6 PDB in which preparations for hijacking aircraft and bin Laden getting ready to hit the United States, those “sensitive” tidbits were redacted in making up the SEIB. Who did the sanitization, what was so sensitive that caused someone to eliminate these critical passages, and did Tenet ask these questions? The 9/11 report, again, is silent.

The report states that “Clarke and his staff . . . did not have access to internal non-disseminated information at NSA, CIA, or FBI.” (p. 255) This is most curious. There is always internal “information” that is not distributed because they are “works in progress” or, in the case of NSA, are analyses that they are technically not supposed to do, but have to do, to do their job. But, the inference that Clarke, or more likely his staff, did not regularly spend a lot of time with the working levels at CIA and NSA going over even internal information and sharing ideas and that they did not have all the access they could use bothers me. In my experience, when an official or someone working on an issue for government with appropriate clearances is involved in a serious issue involving warning and possible imminent attack, where they would go to get information or even to better understand what they have, is to the people who produced the information at CIA or NSA. Someone serious about their work would not rely just on disseminated information.

When Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was asked by the 9/11 Commission what his staff (meaning deputy sec. def. Paul Wolfowitz and assistant secretary of defense Doug Feith, both of whom were just recently on board) were doing in the summer of 2001, he evidently countered with the statement that his people were busy “creating a twenty-first century military.” (p.208) Just what does that mean, creating a twenty-first century military? Both of them had been briefed on bin Laden and al Qaeda in the late spring and early summer. Evidently neither of them were motivated by the threat presentations. Why? It does seem that bin Laden and al Qaeda were not even on the Defense radar screen.

For a Change, Strategic Warning Was Not the Problem

When the 9/11 report is augmented with material from Congressional hearings testimony and documentation, the enormity of information on the threat is overwhelming. This magnitude is surprising because most of it was not made known to the public. The attack targets were somewhat uncertain. Yet, even the actual targets – the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – were present in various intelligence reports along with hijacking airplanes, using them as flying bombs, and doing training runs through security at airports. Airplanes, particularly large commercial airplanes have figured in many terrorist events and al Qaeda terrorist plans. Is not this information, coupled with a surge of terrorist activity information, enough so that all the signals were blinking red, enough to constitute warning? Senior officials at the third and fourth level were extremely upset. Why not the first two levels? How high on the list of concerns today is the possibility that al Qaeda or other terrorist organization might use a bunch of shoulder-fired SAMs to shoot down simultaneously several commercial airliners in the process of landing or taking off? Would such an event be a surprise?

Perhaps the threat was not considered all that serious. But, because of the paucity of information in the 9/11 report, this can not be determined either way. The critical decision-making process or absence thereof is simply not covered in the 9/11 report. The obvious conclusion is that none of those on the commission wanted to attach any blame to either of the two administrations. It seems that there were too many compelling reasons to find no one at fault and, instead, blame the “system.” This is precisely the way the 9/11 report seems to have been crafted. Alternatively, were they denied access to most of the record? Is so, why did they not indicate in the 9/11 report what their access was and was not?

Were the Public Hearings Serious or for Image?

Read through the list of people who gave testimony at the various hearings the Commission held (pp. 439-447). What do you find? Mainly politicians and bureaucrats in critical positions, few of whom have any incentive to speak their mind freely and most of whom are under pressure to say nothing that would incriminate either their own actions or the administration they serve or served.

One notable exception, of course, was Richard Clarke, who held a critical position, head of the NSC Counterterrorism Support Group, and who was not pleased with what had happened, and was the only one to admit failure and apologize to all those who had lost family members on 9/11. His name and his efforts to warn the top echelon comes up repeatedly in the 9/11 report.

What is missing from the list is the many people within the various organizations who want to speak out and who have far more experience actual problems, especially those of culture (or institutional mind-set or group think), than any of the politicians and bureaucrat managers that provided the overwhelming bulk of the testimony at the hearings.

To cite just three obvious examples of people with important information and opinions, take the three professional in Middle East intelligence and many years experience in the CIA: Robert Baer who authored the oft-cited book See No Evil, Reuel Marc Gerecht who wrote several insightful articles, and the anonymous author of Through Our Enemy’s Eyes and Imperial Hubris.

Their writings are most interesting because of how they focus on inept decision-making, culture, and the need to overhaul lower-level bureaucracies, all of which have everything to do with lack of preparedness on 9/11 and today and none of which are addressed by the 9/11 Commission. These are but three well known examples of an army of people who could tell the Commission “everything they needed to know but were afraid to ask” and who were most conspicuous by their near total absence on the Commission hearings lineup. (pp. 439-447) Also absent were the “many officials who told us they knew something terrible was planned, and they were desperate to stop it.” (p.262)

These are also the types of people that need to be consulted to learn about “culture,” a word thrown about so cavalierly by those at high-levels and outsiders but about which few people really understand. The problem of culture often came up during the Commission hearings but none of the fixes put forth in the 9/11 report address the depth and breadth of the culture cancer. This can not be done effectively without digging into the history and nature of individual organizations, such as the operations directorate (clandestine service) of the CIA, which is not going to reform by simply moving the box to a slightly different location on the organization chart. If the Commission focused just on one organization, the operations directorate of the CIA would have been a top contender for the honor. As it is, there does not appear to have been any serious investigation, and security classification is not an issue, as demonstrated by people like Baer, Beardon, Gerecht, Anonymous, and many others. In the end, the clandestine service was well shielded and remains a small box within the CIA totally unaffected by the Commission’s reorganization.

Another question that seems to have been ignored in the 9/11 report is why were there deficiencies in attention and action? What was lacking in decisions and leadership? Did CIA director Tenet do everything in his power to vastly increase the quality and quantity of intelligence in this area that he knew was so important during his watch as head of the CIA, and if not, what were the extenuating circumstances? It seems that the Commission went only skin deep in investigating the problems. While tremendous effort was placed on investigating what happened and when, almost no attention is given in their report to explaining what actions did not happen, why, and who stood in the way or was simply negligent.

I do not mean to imply the task would be easy. On the contrary, it likely would bring the Commission (or their staff) into a confrontation with the senior managers in the different bureaucracies who enforce the culture and a whole host of anti-discrimination and pro-diversity personnel policies that have sharply curtailed the advancement of people based on quality performance, one of the reasons why so many good people have left the government (including the CIA and DoD, especially in the 1990s).

To continue on this problem that evidently does not exist or did not contribute to the 9/11 attacks in the Commissioner’s minds, what good does reorganization make if the bigger problem is poor performance as a result of personnel policies? Certainly this topic is not something that is “classified.” Why were not personnel policies a subject for one of the Commission’s public hearings? Or, would none of the Commissioners been able or about to ask any of the embarrassing questions, especially under the glare of television lights and cameras? One of the subjects that the types of people identified above often bring up in their books and articles are the negative effects of promotion policies on operations and reporting. Insofar as this problem does not appear to have been on the Commission’s agenda, can any of the Commissioners say how meaningful to our lack of preparedness this problem was, or was not?

The Demise of Internal Security

By the end of the 1970s, following the Guidelines promulgated by Attorney General Levi, internal security was in a nose dive. The 9/11 report mentions these Guidelines (p. 75) but does not explain anything about them or tell why they were even worth mentioning. This is most unfortunate because these Guidelines constituted the coup de grace for internal security. As a result of the 1976 Levi Guidelines, the FBI was not allowed to have potential extremists or subversives under investigation unless they were known to have committed a crime or about to commit a crime. The number of subversives and extremists under investigation fell from roughly 20,000 in 1976 to 14 (10 individuals and 4 organizations) by 1982.  Defense, internal security, and preparedness by the 1980s had become almost non-existent, and they never recovered. The number of foreign intelligence agents and terrorists in the United States soared. The Levi Guidelines opened the door to an influx of saboteurs and provocateurs and disabled FBI abilities to watch and keep track of their activities. The Privacy Act finished the destruction. This act required the destruction of all intelligence background files in which the names of U.S. citizens appeared, the overwhelming bulk of U.S. internal security files.

Underlying this whole structure were serious problems in U.S. intelligence. For example, U.S. intelligence estimates on the Soviet threat were seriously misleading in too many critical respects. The United States never truly penetrated Soviet security and most of the few Russian volunteers were soon apprehended by the Soviet security services. In the 1990s, following the exposure of CIA official Aldrich Ames as a Russian spy and based in part on information obtained from East German intelligence files following the fall of the Berlin Wall, a CIA analyst began a study of foreign spies the CIA had recruited. His findings were most interesting and told, again, about the serious internal U.S. intelligence problems. 100 percent of East German agents the CIA had recruited, he concluded, were really double agents feeding the CIA false information. 100 percent of the CIA’s Cuban agents were likewise double agents. And over 90 percent of the recruited Communist agents were double agents. Our intelligence problem was not just a paucity of spies but, worse than that, what spies we had were mostly “bad,” which does not speak well for U.S. intelligence’s basic understanding of our primary enemies. (This is an excellent example of the problem of “culture.”)

As though this were not bad enough, as the Soviet Union went through a planned dissolution and metamorphosis back into Russia, U.S. policy quickly changed. Victory in the Cold War was declared. We assumed the Russians were no longer enemies but rather long-lost friends to be welcomed back with open arms. Accordingly, U.S. intelligence collection directed toward the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Afghanistan was, in effect, shut down except for a minuscule effort to keep track of strategic nuclear missiles. This curtailment, often blamed on the Clinton Administration, was a decision of the George H. W. Bush White House that was implemented even before Clinton was elected President in 1992. The decrease then continued under President Clinton.

Consistent with this, intelligence directed towards terrorism was substantially cut back. Why not? The Soviet Union had been the principal state sponsor of terrorism, especially Middle East terrorist groups. Because the Soviet Union no longer existed, state sponsored terrorism no longer existed and, thus, ceased to be of major concern by political fiat.

What few intelligence collection capabilities the United States had through out the Middle East went from bad to worse. It was not until 1996 that any concern emerged respecting a person by the name of bin Laden, almost ten years after al Qaeda was formed. Even then, probably the only reason for the new concern was the information provided by a walk-in defector from the al Qaeda inner circle. By then, we were playing catch-up ball in every respect. There was almost no concern over homeland defense, worry over indicators and warning, or knowledge about the alleged “new” shape of terrorism.

Counter-intelligence

One missing subject in which I have been most interested for twenty years is counter-intelligence, which as a subset should also include deception. Counter-intelligence is just what its name implies: identifying and countering foreign intelligence operations. It has never fared well in the United States because it deals with operations taking place both overseas and, most important, in the United States that originate overseas. Things overseas have been the purview of the CIA and things happening in the United States have been under the FBI. Accordingly, no one has done an effective job at counter-intelligence.

Too many reports (the 9/11 report is no exception) dismiss this subject with a comment like, “We tried this once, under Angleton, but all it did was alienate everyone and stop work.” James Jesus Angleton was head of counter-intelligence in the operations directorate for close to thirty years. Unfortunately, this is no way to look at counter-intelligence because Angleton’s shop was not counter-intelligence except in name. It was predominantly “internal security.” Angleton was mainly focused on the Soviet effort to penetrate the CIA. His focus was Soviet intelligence efforts to penetrate, influence, or recruit from within the CIA. Being in the CIA, the limit of his authority in the United States was the CIA. Accordingly, that is what he did, CIA internal security. I have seen no indication that his shop really addressed foreign intelligence operations run against the United States – such as terrorism, narcotics trafficking, organized crime, penetration of the media, recruitment of Congressmen and their staffs, penetration of the White House, spying on U.S. business and technology centers, or even the thousands of spies operating in the United States, or countering them.

The point is that terrorism and counter-terrorism and a wide variety of other operations should come under counter-intelligence, which is on a par with intelligence itself. It is as important as intelligence, and equally difficult, complex, and frustrating. To the extent a country has a Central Intelligence Agency it probably should also have a Counter-intelligence Agency. How the 9/11 Commission views it, as indicated in the 9/11 report, is as a tiny, tiny box under the FBI. Placing it there, as the 9/11 Commission has done and not addressing it for what it should be and where it should not be located, shows how little the Commission understands the intelligence problem. Terrorism, they should but evidently do not recognize, is mainly an intelligence operation. This is the way present-day terrorism was formed in the 1950s and 1960s, as an intelligence operation undertaken to attack a nation, especially the United States, in an indirect manner. Indeed, the principal place where the roots of terrorism run is to the GRU – military intelligence in Moscow.

Devising a mechanism to counter terrorism is more a counter-intelligence than a DoD or FBI mission. There are, of course, overlaps. For example, collecting information on foreign intelligence is, one can say, fundamentally an intelligence mission, which it is part of but a very small part. Moreover, if the task is listening to a telephone call between someone in the United States and someone in Afghanistan or Pakistan, problems are always present, particularly if the caller in the United States is a U.S. citizen. Counter-intelligence is always on the verge of being in hot water if it is doing its job. This may be why it is such an orphan. Nevertheless, it is very important, is not intelligence or domestic law and order, and to the extent national security is important, counter-intelligence is every bit as important as intelligence, perhaps even more so. Yet, it is almost totally ignored, as is the case in the 9/11 report.

Reorganization Justification

I found no justification for reorganization in the “what happened and why” section of the report. Yet this constitutes the Commission’s most publicized recommendations. As indicated earlier, this is confusing because the problem of 9/11 in the report seems overwhelmingly dominated by unsuccessful efforts to get the top decision makers to recognize that the bin Laden al Qaeda threat is real – not by organization boxes, “stove pipes,” and walls.

Reorganization may be a good thing. The question is why? The only answer I could find is in the introduction to the 9/11 report recommendations chapter. There, the authors state:

“As presently configured, the national security institutions of the U.S. government are still the institutions constructed to win the Cold War. The United States confronts a very different world today. Instead of facing a few very dangerous adversaries, the United States confronts a number of less visible challenges that surpass the boundaries of traditional nation-states and call for quick, imaginative, and agile responses.” (p.399)

This appears to be the justification for the recommendation to reorganize: the system was designed for a different threat so we should reorganized to accommodate the new threat. This sounds so logical. However, what precisely does the Commission mean by a “very different world today” – that by itself is not reason to change – and what are these “less visible challenges” we now face that evidently we did not face before? Presumably the answer is terrorism.

Just because the national security institutions were established fifty-five years ago does not mean they are out-of-date. If they are, they should be changed, but not without a careful explanation of what is wrong and how things will be made better with new institutions. What is different now and how would the reorganization proposed in the 9/11 report have changed history had it been in place prior to 9/11?

As an example of the problem, consider the position put forth in the provocative book, Imperial Hubris, that was written by a senior CIA officer with substantial experience in the Middle East and Afghanistan. In his book he states that what we face in Afghanistan and Iraq and around the world is not a new type of war. It was clearly present, he explains, in the 13 year Afghan war against the Soviets from 1979 to 1992, in which the United States was heavily involved.

One can say the same about terrorism. Terrorism is not new. It was reinvented by the Russians in the late 1950s. As indicated earlier, the Soviet Union has been the principal sponsor of state supported terrorism since 1955, especially the Middle East terrorist groups. In 1958, the Russians recruited Yasser Arafat in Egypt, where the Russians had a large presence. They were the major force in and present at the creation of the PLO, which emerged circa 1964, and so forth. The Russians developed and put in play the techniques for recruitment, training, planning and support, logistics, arms support, and financing of terrorists. By 1985, it was hard to find a terrorist group whose controls or apron strings did not run to the GRU in Moscow or to one of its many East European (and Cuban) intelligence surrogates. As regards terrorism, the role of the Russian intelligence services was clearly recognized by professionals in the early 1980s. (See, for example, Samuel T. Francis, The Soviet Strategy of Terror, The Heritage Foundation, 1981; Herbert Rommerstein, Soviet Support for International Terrorism, The Foundation for Democratic Education, 1981, and Terrorism: The Role of Moscow and its Subcontractors, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism of the Committee on the Judiciary, US Senate June 26, 1981; and The Role of Cuba in International Terrorism and Subversion, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism of the Committee on the Judiciary, US Senate, February 26, March 4, 11, and 12, 1982.)

In light of this background, how is it possible that the 9/11 report in its chapter on “The Foundation of the New Terrorism,” which examines the background and growth of international terrorism with a focus on the Middle East (pp. 47-70), no mention is made of the leading role of the Russians and their intelligence services? If they are unaware of the roots of Middle East terrorism and why it grew to what it is today, how can they make intelligent recommendations on how to combat it effectively?

One of the major questions among people with experience in terrorism and Soviet/Russian sponsorship has been the possible links between Russia and al Qaeda. This linkage is explicitly brought out in Jossef Bodansky’s book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, that was written before 9/11. Bin Laden’s connections were used in the mid-1990s to obtain explosives and ammunition and help in money laundering, which means the KGB. The connection with the Russian mafia (whose apron strings are tied to the KGB) was extremely important to him in moving money and in the drug trade from which the Taliban and al Qaeda profited. Additionally, considering the major presence of Russian (and East European satellite) intelligence services (both KGB and GRU) in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran and their lead role in terrorism, is it even conceivable that high-level ties did not exist between Russia and bin Laden/al Qaeda (especially after al Qaeda merged with Zawahiri’s group, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad)?

To the extent one (for example, those on the 9/11 Commission and its staff) really believes all this 9/11 report poppycock about a “new” threat and very different world, how can one possibly hope to devise changes that will address the problem? Why do they believe reorganization will fix things? The only thing that really changed on 9/11 is that the United States suddenly was shocked into awareness. We were just not recently “at war” or “under attack.” We had been under attack and at war, whether we wanted to admit it or not, for several decades.

One of the first top officials to recognize this was DCI George Tenet who wrote in his 1998 (pre-9/11) directive to the intelligence community, “We are at war.” But, this was not new. Even then the war had been going on for decades, and involved much more that just terrorism. International organized crime and international narcotics trafficking were organized and transformed during the late 1950s and 1960s into what they are today.

We are propagandized with cries of how devastating 9/11 was: over 3,000 were killed, surprisingly few casualties, and estimates on the cost of the destruction have ranged from several to as much as a hundred billion dollars. While this was a horrendous event, it is important to keep it in perspective. Compare this cost with the annual cost of drug trafficking. These costs include each year over 50,000 deaths, several hundred thousands high value casualties (our youth), monetary costs in excess of $200 billion, of which only about 10 percent is the cost of the war on drugs, and, what might be most serious, the tremendous corrupting and compromising effect of the massive illegal drug monies on politics, finance, banking, business, law and order, and justice. And, this has been going on for twenty years at about this level! The illegal drug problem, in my opinion, is far, far more serious than international terrorism, yet it gets no serious attention. Unfortunately the illegal drug videos do not capture the attention like a big airline crashing into massive skyscrapers followed by their collapse. Moreover, international organized crime is even worse insofar as narcotics trafficking, which experts estimate as being about 30 percent of organized crime. Among the other components of organized crime are the “new” problems of illegal arms sales (especially to terrorists) and WMD proliferation. Its annual income is estimated at 2 to 3 trillion dollars. This is all run through a very sophisticated money laundering operations that involves the big banks, top international law firms, and other international financial institutions, all with top political connections.  Keep this in mind. It will come to life in the subsequent discussion on the war on money laundering.

Somehow it seems to me that reorganization seems so detached from the nature of the problem posed by these “less visible (less visible than nuclear war and massive tank armies, that is) challenges” that I have to wonder who and why is pushing reorganization.

What War on Money Laundering?

Another item that is highly relevant to the entire problem of the 9/11 response (“fixing” the system) and understanding the problem as it really is concerns the efforts to cut the terrorists’ financial support. Following 9/11 when President Bush declared war on terrorism, he repeated stressed a sub-war to cut the terrorists’ financial support. This has supposedly been a high priority task since the war on terrorism began. The Commission’s view of this problem and an overview of the U.S. government’s accomplishments are presented in their report.

“To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origins of the money used for the 9/11 attack. Ultimately, the question is of little practical significance. As-Qaeda had many avenues of funding.” (p.172)  How convenient to dismiss this difficult problem just because it has multiple legs! Or, is this in some sense related to the significant role of the Russian mafia (KGB) in bin Laden’s financial support mechanisms, as explained in Bodansky’s Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (pp. 331-335)?

Even now, the administration seems to recognize the importance of all legs now that heroin production in Afghanistan has gone through the roof and some of that is believed to be funding bin Laden and the Taliban – again. Recent news articles even suggest that U.S. military may become involved in this war on drugs because of the dangers of heroin trafficking to the stability and control of the new government and because of the financial support the trafficking may be providing to bin Laden, al Qaeda, and Taliban remnants.

Will the military be able to accomplish what the non-defense side of the government has been unable to accomplish in thirty-five years? The war on drugs has been a farce since President Nixon declared war on drugs in 1970. The people in the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) know that best. What is not known so well is that the reason drug trafficking grows is that it is politically protected, in part, by the U.S. government, as is clearly indicated in Customs Commissioner William von Raab’s resignation letter when he was fired by President Bush the first. This political protection is described in detail in my earlier book Red Cocaine: the Drugging of America. See also former top DEA undercover agent Mike Levine’s Big White Lie, Mara Leverett’s The Boys on the Tracks, Sally Denton’s The Bluegrass Conspiracy: An Inside Story of Power, Greed, Drugs, and Murder, and Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance.

Attacking the financial support networks is a very important aspect of any serious war on terror and as an indicator of terrorist operations. Evidently the CIA even curtailed its own efforts to follow the money. “The Bin Laden station [of the CIA] was already working on plans for offensive operations against Bin Laden. These plans were directed at both physical assets and sources of finance. In the end, plans to identify and attack Bin Laden’s money sources did not go forward.” (pg. 109) The obvious question “why” is not addressed in the 9/11 report. It would seem to be important to every aspect of the problem. Logically, the problem of going after the terrorists and their money supply should have been discussed with Treasury Secretary O’Neill even before he took office. Then he might have raised the issue at those early NSC meetings. However, O’Neill’s name is hardly mentioned in the 9/11 report.

Still another even more revealing quote is: “After 9/11, the United States took aggressive actions to designate terrorist financiers and freeze their money, in the United States and through resolutions of the United Nations. These actions appeared to have little effect and, when confronted by legal challenges, the United States and the United Nations were often forced to unfreeze assets.” And, “Worldwide asset freezes have not been adequately enforced and have been easily circumvented, often within weeks, by simple methods.”  (pp.381, 382)

Three things should be evident. First, the financial support apparatus is very powerful, very resourceful, well connected, and not fearful of telling the United States, “hands off!” Second, perhaps the United States needs to approach disruption of the terrorist financial support as part of the war rather than as a diplomatic/legal initiative. Third, reorganization seems to have little to do with this important dimension of the problem. That these things should be evident has been clear for several decades and nothing has changed. Just how serious is this war on terrorism we are fighting?

The Less Visible Challenge Posed by Biological Warfare

Biological warfare may be the most invisible of the less visible challenges we face. For a brief period following the anthrax letter bombs attack in September and October following the September 11 attacks, biological warfare was suddenly being reported in the news media. Logically, these attacks shou