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September, 2004
The 9/11 Investigation Final Report:
WHAT'S WRONG WITH KANSAS?
By Stephen Simac
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If this road goes in it must come out" said the
Scarecrow, "and as the
Emerald City is at the other end, we must go wherever it leads
us."
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
Three years have passed since the 9/11/01 Attack on America. Two investigations into the events and details of that day have been conducted and
results published. One conclusion has been reached by the investigations, the
media and the shell shocked public.
The first Joint Investigation (JI) was an inside job by the two houses
of Congress, co-chaired by long time intelligence insiders, Senator Bob Graham
and Congressman Porter Goss of Florida. (Goss has since been nominated for the
head of the CIA by George Bush.)
Whole chapters and numerous pages of the JI's final report were blanked
out for "national security." Their conclusion: only the hijackers and
Al Quaida were to blame, no individual or agency in the government was held
responsible.
This satisfied most of the American major media and their
audience, but some family members of the victims were not. They lobbied
tirelessly for an independent investigation, pushing aside the resistance of
the Bush administration and a deadened apathy of the country to "just get
over it," like the consensus to "just get over" the stolen
election of 2000.
Bush was forced to agree to a second investigation after a year of
entrenched opposition to new hearings. His first choice, Henry Kissinger had
too many conflicts of interests; customers of his possibly linked with 9/11.
Former Governor Thomas Kean of New Jersey was then chosen to be titular head of
the commission. Kean also had obvious conflicts of interest, but they were
overlooked by the media.
Most members of the Kean Commission (KC) who did accept
appointments to the "non-partisan," (equal numbers of Democrats and
Republicans; no other parties) had conflicts of interest but the members'
biases and most of their public hearings were studiously ignored.
It wasn't quite another Warren Commission, the investigation into
the assassination of President Kennedy. Allan Dulles, who had been recently
fired by JFK as head of the CIA, was a member of the WC. Those hearings were
widely followed by the media and the public. Thirty five years later, former
President Gerald Ford, also a WC member, admitted that their final report had
lied about the location of the bullet hole in JFK's shirt to support their
"magic, single bullet" theory.
The Kean Commission (KC) held hearings for 18 months, only two
weeks of which were widely covered by the media. In July they issued their
final report, a massive 500 plus page tome. Most reports skimmed the surface of
its findings, headlining the official conclusion; no individual or agency of
the US government was responsible or censured, only the hijackers and al Qaeda,
(and maybe the Iranians) were to blame.
"Quick Dorothy!," Aunt Emma screamed. "Run for the cellar!"
Although there were failures in "policy, capabilities and
management" the commission agreed that any blame for allowing the
hijackers to succeed in their long shot plan was primarily "a failure of
imagination." This was compounded by the intelligence community
"relax"ing after the Y2K/Millennial Threat frenzy.
Without any strong media hooks, their final report sank like a
lead weight below the media and public attention span shortly after it was
issued. This was days before the DNC in Boston was held. Then there was the
Code Orange alert based on three year old information. Then the Olympics, and
the ongoing celebrity or murder trial of the month.
"Because if you did not wear spectacles the brightness and
the glory of the Emerald City would blind you." said the Green
Man. It's unrealistic to expect the media to read through
this massive report on daily deadlines before the next news cycle then report
on it in any in-depth way, much less to question its conclusions based on the
evidence presented by the commission.
The only stories that followed were on the KC's proposals for
structural reform of the $40 plus billion US intelligence
"community," especially the call for an overall Intelligence Director
to ride herd over the "intelligence community." Their structural
reform doesn't mean firing any one, only hiring more people.
Iran's not stamping the hijackers passports when they passed
through on their way home from Afghanistan headlined for a few days, softening
up the opposition to an Invasion of Iran, future Nuclear Terror. These angles
seemed to satisfy most of the media chorus. On Aug. 17th the
New York Times described a "largely glowing reaction to the Sept. 11
commissions final report," even though it "documented intelligence
and law enforcement failures before" the attacks, and held no individual
or agency responsible. They reported a "whirlwind of unusual midsummer
activity on Capitol Hill" to pass legislation to create a "national
intelligence director to oversee all spy agencies, including those within the
Defense Department." Infighting from the Defense Department
and the Justice Department to avoid losing control over their intelligence
budgets will probably torpedo this plan, but the story became buried inside.
Structural reform is eye-glazing, mind numbing wonkish stuff. The
most damning and actionable evidence revealed by the KC was virtually ignored
by all reporters, but it is a matter of public record. Through an extensive
reading of classified and unclassified documents and questioning hundreds of
individuals the KC discovered that there were many prior warnings from within
the intelligence agencies about terrorists hijacking planes and crashing them
inside the United States. "No indeed, I don't know anything. You see
I am stuffed so I have no brains at all. he answered sadly.
These began in the mid 90's and continued through the summer of
2001. They specifically warned of plans to hijack commercial airlines and crash
them as bombs into Washington, DC and New York City. These were based on
reliable sources and were "actionable" but very little actual and no
successful action was taken to prevent such attacks.
The KC discovered a 1995 National Intelligence Estimate that
predicted future terrorist attacks within the United States, specifying the
Capitol, Wall Street and the World Trade Center as probable targets. In early
1995, an accomplice to the 1993 WTC bombing told Philippine authorities
(immediately shared with US intelligence) of plans to fly a plane into CIA
headquarters, not that far from the Pentagon. In late 1998 there were reports
of an al Qaeda plan to hijack and crash an explosives laden plane into a US city.
In 1998 National Security Council counterterrorism coordinator
Richard Clarke held a paper exercise with the Pentagon, Defense Dept. and the
Secret Service with a "scenario" of a group of terrorists hijacking a
plane and crashing it into Washington DC. In December 1999, after the
millennium bomber was caught at the US border with explosives in his spare tire
planning to bomb LAX, Clarke's staff warned that "foreign sleeper cells
are present in the US and attacks in the US are likely." In
August of 1999 the FAA Civil Aviation Security identified suicide hijacking
operations by al Qaeda as a possible threat. The Gore Commission on Airline
Security had earlier called attention to lax screening of passengers and what
they carried onto the planes.
In 2000, Clarke held a Counterterrorism Security Group
"devoted largelyÉto a possible airline hijacking by al Qaeda."
Early in 2001, CIA Deputy Director of Operations James Pavitt, gave an
intelligence briefing to Bush and his staff, "conveying that Bin Ladin was
one of the gravest threats to the country." The
Presidential Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, received by Bush and his "high
level officials" directly from CIA director George Tenet was titled
"Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the US." It warned of planned
attacks by Bin Ladin cells in the states with "patterns of suspicious
activities consistent with preparations for hijackingsÉ including surveillance
of federal buildingsÉ" The KC report directly
contradicts National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice's famous excuse for not
preventing the attacks, that they "couldn't be imagined." They
acknowledge that "the possibility was imaginable, and imagined," yet
echo her excuse when they place the blame on "a failure of
imagination."
"You have no right to expect me to send you back to Kansas unless you do something for me. In this country everyone must pay for everything
they get." Oz, the Great and Terrible. The KC discovered that there
was no follow through by any agency on these specific warnings to develop the
most basic elements of a plan to deter such a surprise attack.
"There were no complete reports of [Osama bin Ladin's]
strategy, orÉ involvement in past terrorist attacksÉ or the scale
of the threat his organization posed to the United StatesÉThe methods
for detecting and then warning of surprise attacks the US government had so
painstakingly developed in the decades after Pearl Harbor did not fail, they
were not really tried, [against] the enemy most likely to launch a surprise
attack directly against the United States."
Hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps a trillion has been spent
since WWII on performing risk assessments and prevention exercises by the
numerous known and unknown intelligence agencies and sub-contracters. However
not even the most basic protocols had been done to prevent a known dangerous
threat to the country.
There was no analysis of how an aircraft could be used as a
weapon, of telltale indicators for this method of attack, requirements were not
proposed or set to monitor these indicators, and systemic issues to strengthen
security defense to protect aircraft against hijackings were not put on the national
policy agenda. The KC admits that all of these should have been done based on
the threat level, but still finds no one to blame for not doing so.
The US easily spends more on intelligence gathering than most
industrial nations combined. Yet these agencies, especially the CIA wanted more
money to increase their counterterrorism efforts against Bin Ladin, complaining
they had been "starved" since the end of the Cold War.
The KC report absolves any agency of blame because of
"how hard it was for the intelligence community to assemble enough to the
puzzle pieces gathered by different agencies to make sense of them then develop
a fully informed joint plan."
"There is only one thing we can do," returned the Lion,
"and that is to go to the Land of the Winkies, seek out the Wicked Witch
and kill her." "The most serious weaknesses were in the
domestic agencies, the FBI, the INS, the FAA. NORAD had planned scenarios of
hijacked planes being guided to American cities," but like a Maginot line
only from "aircraft that were hijacked overseas"
"At no point before 9/11 was the Department of Defense fully
engaged in the mission of countering al Qaeda, though this was the most
dangerous foreign enemy then threatening the United States."
The KC members were "struck with the narrow and unimaginative
menu of options for action offered to both Presidents Clinton and Bush."
After Clinton tried to kill Bin Laden based on CIA "actionable
intelligence," Joint Chiefs of Staff General Shelton opposed any further "waste
of good ordinanceÉ firing Tomahawk cruise missiles that cost more than
the 'jungle gyms and mud huts' at terrorist camps."
Clinton testified to the Commission that in his two hour one on
one transition meeting with Bush, he told his sucessor that the "biggest
threat is Bin Laden and the al Quaeda." Bush met with the commission only
after they agreed to his appearing together with his "second in
command" Cheney, off the record. George said he didn't remember "much
being said about al Quaeda" by Clinton. Bush was advised by
George Tenet that even killing Bin Laden wouldn't end the threat. Clarke pushed
for funding the Northern Alliance tribal warlords to harass the Taliban, plans
were worked up by the Special Operations Command to invade Afghanistan with special forces. The CIA was unenthusiastic "remembering covert actions,
promoted by the White House, had gotten the Clandestine Service into trouble in
the past."
One of the few joint CIA/FBI operations undertaken against
the threats was a failed search for two of the hijackers who had flown in from
South East Asia and began living in southern California in January 2000. They
had entered the US from a terrorist "operational cadre" meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
Although the CIA knew of their entry by March of 2000, they didn't
notify the FBI until January 2001. The hijackers lived in San Diego for several
months in 2000 with an FBI informant as their landlord, and their names were
listed in the telephone book, before they moved to Arizona to attend flight
schools.
FBI agents, very late in the game, began working with the CIA to
find them in the states. They were unable to even though one of the hijackers
flew to Europe then back into the U.S on July 4, 2001. The report
describes numerous instances of miscommunication and withheld information
between the FBI agents and CIA agents involved. This team of agents didn't play
well together because the CIA was playing "zone defense" and the FBI
went "man on man."
"Everyone had the jobÉ of managing the case to make sure
things get doneÉ No one looked behind the curtain."
"How can I help being a humbug," he said "when all
these people make me do things that everybody knows can't be done? It was easy
to make the Scarecrow, and the Lion and the Woodman happy, because they
imagined that I could do anything. But it will take more than imagination to
carry Dorothy back to Kansas, and I'm sure I don't know how it can be done.
In the end the Independent Investigation, like the Joint
Investigation (like the Warren Commission) held no individual or agency
responsible for not doing their jobs. Despite these and other clear warnings
and documented failures the KC detailed, no one was called on to resign or be
demoted. They laid any fault on the need for structural reform of
the intelligence community. They clearly made a strong case for the need, but
not for their specific reform choices.
One glaring deficiency they highlighted was the need "to
institutionalize
imagination," for which they had no suggestions.