9-11 commission’s final report tells America, ‘We are not safe’
Panel urges Congress, White House to act quickly
Washington ? The Sept. 11 commission blamed the U.S. government for failing to envision domestic suicide hijackings or to understand the severity of terrorist threats, and it issued a final report Thursday recommending an array of domestic and foreign policies to improve security.
“The most important failure was one of imagination,” the report said suggesting intelligence analysis that will better detect potential attacks, security that will better prevent them and foreign policy that will better discourage them.
Commissioners exhorted the White House and Congress to quickly enact their proposals or face political consequences.
“Put simply, the United States is faced with one of the greatest security challenges in our long history,” said chairman Thomas Kean. “We have struck blows against the terrorists since 9-11. We have, we believe, prevented attacks on the homeland. We do believe we are safer today than we were on 9-11. But we are not safe.”
In its final report, the commission also said New York City should get far more federal homeland security money and slammed Congress and the administration for giving billions of dollars to areas that face little terrorist threat.
“That’s one of the most important recommendations,” Kean said.
But the main proposal among 41 recommendations is to put a single person, reporting directly to the president, in charge of all intelligence gathering and analysis to close gaps that let vital clues fall through the cracks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Armed with the broadest range of intelligence, a national intelligence director could detect plots before they unfold or envision scenarios that need to be addressed.
The 567-page report, building on preliminary statements issued since March 2003, provides new details, including a dramatic recounting of the passenger revolt on Flight 93 that apparently came within seconds of controlling the plane before hijackers crashed it in a field in Pennsylvania.
Actions criticized
Although no individual or administration is singled out for blame, the report criticizes some post-Sept. 11 actions.
Nearly two years after U.S.-led forces toppled the Afghan government harboring al-Qaida, southern and western Afghanistan are prime areas to establish a terrorist base, according to foreign officials and military leaders the commission interviewed.
Domestically, the report notes that 90 percent of the money spent on transportation security goes to protect passenger planes — “to fight the last war” — while vulnerabilities remain in maritime and surface transportation and air cargo. The Transportation Security Administration, created shortly after Sept. 11, has failed to write a security plan covering the entire transportation sector or individual components.
The recommendations range from rebuilding scholarship and exchange programs with Muslim countries to setting standards for drivers licenses to improving education in Pakistan, where illiterate youths are drawn to terrorist causes.
In what could be interpreted as criticism of how the Bush administration is waging the war on terrorism, the report calls for a “balanced” strategy that includes not just military action but diplomacy and goodwill, and is multilateral.
“America’s strategy should be a coalition strategy that includes Muslim nations as partners,” the report said. “Our efforts also should be accompanied by a preventive strategy that is as much or more political as it is military. The strategy must focus clearly on the Arab and Muslim world.”
Partisanship avoided
But the report avoids partisanship, which commission members say would undermine its recommendations. Striking some balance, it discloses an intelligence memo President Bill Clinton received in December 1998 describing Osama bin Laden’s preparations for attacks in the United States.
U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., said the commission report should be put in legislative form and considered by Congress.Brownback said he noted the report’s recommendation that the United States develop a strategy to diffuse militant Islamic politics.”We are in a long-term battle with militant, politicized Islam,” Brownback said.”To drain the swamp on this topic we need to keep pushing for democracy, religious freedom, gender equality.”It is a tough group that has gotten hold of a fair portion of the Middle East and it is going to be a long-term fight,” he said. |
The document, which resembles a previously released memo President Bush received in August 2001, says bin Laden and allies “are preparing for attacks in the U.S., including an aircraft hijacking to obtain the release” of terrorists jailed for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
But neither president is accused of inaction. Both men knew bin Laden was a danger, but neither “fully understood just how many people al-Qaida might kill and how soon it might do it,” the report said.
Kean, the commission chairman, said Bush and Clinton “were not served properly by the intelligence agencies.”
The commission declined to assign blame specifically because failures “took place over many years and many administrations,” Kean said. “Any person in a senior government position during this time bears some responsibility.”
Criticism for Congress
Some commission members had sharp words for lawmakers who in recent days have criticized the recommendation to create a national intelligence director to oversee a single, government-wide counterterrorism intelligence center.
“If something bad happens and these recommendations are sitting there, the American people will fix responsibility politically and they will be entitled to do that,” Republican James Thompson said.
Commissioners acknowledged that the main recommendations would be difficult to enact because they would take resources and power from agencies, particularly the Defense Department, which controls about 80 percent of the intelligence funding. The commission proposal would give a national intelligence director control over all 15 intelligence agencies and their budgets.
Although the CIA and FBI have improved information sharing and analysis, the report said interagency cooperation issues “have not been resolved.” A new National Counterterrorism Center would coordinate intelligence, managing how leads are handled and assigning tasks to agencies.
Bush, who has endorsed intelligence reform but no specifics, called the recommendations “very constructive.”
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who supports establishing an intelligence director, said in a statement, “It’s time to act — now.”
Homeland security
One of the report’s harshest criticisms was that billions in homeland security grants have been given out as “pork barrel” with money going to every state regardless of its vulnerability. The commission said this distribution should end and money should go to areas faced the highest threat.
“The overarching evidence that every intelligence agency tells us is that the two biggest targets remain New York and Washington,” Kean said.
The commission, whose charter expires next month, will continue to lobby for its recommendations and issue a report card next year grading the implementation process.
But commissioner Bob Kerrey said he was “not optimistic that these changes will be enacted prior to the next terrorist attack” because lawmakers and agency directors will not want to cede power.
Members of Congress had reportedly been lobbying the commission not to propose changes that would take away their authority.
Relatives of people killed on Sept. 11 supported the report even though no one was held accountable, as some had urged.
“That’s really not an important issue,” said Stephen Push of Virginia, whose first wife was on the plane the hit the Pentagon. “It’s really about reorganizing the government in a way that it can provide security to the American people.”