Troublesome "facts?"

[rah]

Che, while I agree that the administration probably dropped the ball on this one, it has to be taken into account that there are probably hundreds of threats made daily. Deciding which ones are legit and which ones are rumors is one heck of a lot easier using hindsight. And saying "major newspapers" doesn't do anything for me in terms of credibility

If the US took every threat seriously, the nation would have to close down.


RAH

[DaShi]

Your words chill me to the bone as they ring so true to what we currently know.

[chequita guevara]

Rah, while I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt before, even with the highest people in the Administration knowing of a serious hijacking threat (and believing it, as Ashcoft stopped using civilian airliners for travel), when three foreign governments all give you the same warning, in addition to the information you already had, and you are still blindsided, then I think we have to drop the benefit of the doubt and start issuing some blame.

Without a doubt, the blame lies entirely at the feet of the evil people who planned, financed, and caried out this attrocity. But the people whose job it is to protect us from those evil people did more than just drop the ball.

There needs to be a Congressional investigation (that's their job). Bush himself is probably faultless since he doesn't really make the decisions. But his people screwed up, and he's responsible for the mistakes of his people.

[rah]

The question still remains, WHAT should have been done. (keeping in mind that I generally agree with you)

Would you have arrested people taking flying classes?
They hadn't done anything illegal yet.

Would you have beefed up Airline security?
Which they have done over the last year but remains IMO ineffective. Sneaking box cutters onto planes is still not very difficult. Or many other things that could have been used. People were not worried about suicide highjackers then. Which is about the only good thing that came out of that tragady. People will not sit by idle anymore.

Would you have grounded all commericial airline travel for and indeterminate length of time? (none of the warning seemed to be very specific on dates)

Would you have had fighter planes flying cover on all US cities. (none of the warning seemed to be very specific on locations, even though major targets might have been easier to assume)

You recieve hundreds of threats a day. Just how much would you respond to each one? It's not an easy decision.

Again, I also believe we underreacted, I'm just trying to help paint a picture that is not so clearly black and white as some would present.

RAH

[SpencerH]

What hasnt been mentioned is that analysts have to try to distinguish disinformation from legitimate info. By the nature of the job, intel analysts can become pretty wary of almost everything.

[rah]

I was thinking that same thing when I was posting and thought I had mentioned it, but upon review, I didn't.

Thanks for the addition.

RAH

[chequita guevara]

It's rather hard for me to give a simple solution, as if it were up to me, there would litterally be a revolution in how things are done in the US. However, assuming I'm a moderate rather than a commie for a moment, there are three major things I would have done prior to getting that information.

1) Put real pressure on the Israelis to make peace with the Palestinians. Many nations have peace negotiations while actual fighting is going on, the US has done this at least twice (in Korea and Vietnam). Why should this situation be different? This, of course, would likely get me killed by a Mossad assassin.

2) Have the CIA and the FBI agressively look into the funding of the terrorists (which was known even before this to be largely from the Saudis). The exact opposite happened, they were prohibitted from persuing Saudi sources of funding for terrorism.

3) Make anti-terrorism a larger priority for the FBI, as opposed to anti-drug interdiction. However, that would have to be within guidelines, and not simply an excuse for the Feds to start investigating "everyone" who is a dissident aginst the US government (having personally been investigated by the Feds myself).

After receiving serious warnings from three allies including the President of Russia himself, coupled with the belief that there were going to be multiple hijakings (remember, the Administration was aware of the later and has admitted it), I would have ordered the FBI to be on a heightend lookout for anything that might be involved with this.

They should have increased security, including reintroducing air marshals. They had a credible threat. They believed they had a credible threat. They were warned the threat was even bigger than they believed. They didn't do anything.

[chequita guevara]

Remember, we aren't just talking about simple pieces of information among hundreds of thousands of other pieces. We are talking about stuff that was already sifted by foreign intelligence agencies. In at least one case, the information was apparently so credible that it was passed to the President of Russia who personally contacted the US government about it. The Jordanians were so alarmed by what they discovered that they not only told the US, but told the Germans in order to get them to get the US to pay attention.

[rah]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
It's rather hard for me to give a simple solution, as if it were up to me, there would litterally be a revolution in how things are done in the US. However, assuming I'm a moderate rather than a commie for a moment, there are three major things I would have done prior to getting that information.

1) Put real pressure on the Israelis to make peace with the Palestinians. Many nations have peace negotiations while actual fighting is going on, the US has done this at least twice (in Korea and Vietnam). Why should this situation be different? This, of course, would likely get me killed by a Mossad assassin.

2) Have the CIA and the FBI agressively look into the funding of the terrorists (which was known even before this to be largely from the Saudis). The exact opposite happened, they were prohibitted from persuing Saudi sources of funding for terrorism.

3) Make anti-terrorism a larger priority for the FBI, as opposed to anti-drug interdiction. However, that would have to be within guidelines, and not simply an excuse for the Feds to start investigating "everyone" who is a dissident aginst the US government (having personally been investigated by the Feds myself).

After receiving serious warnings from three allies including the President of Russia himself, coupled with the belief that there were going to be multiple hijakings (remember, the Administration was aware of the later and has admitted it), I would have ordered the FBI to be on a heightend lookout for anything that might be involved with this.

They should have increased security, including reintroducing air marshals. They had a credible threat. They believed they had a credible threat. They were warned the threat was even bigger than they believed. They didn't do anything.

Would any of this prevented what happened?
I highly doubt it.

1. Even if we had pressured Israel into peace. I doubt it would have been as effective as in the others. And I doubt that would have any impact on Osama's war against the infidels. He was still pissed about our influence in Suadi Arabia.

2. These attacks required minimal funding once the people had been planted. What it is, a buck and a half for a box cutter, so unless this was done years prior, it would have had no impact.

3. I doubt the US citizens in general would have gone along with the "curbing" of personal freedoms without an example like 9/11 out there. Really, it is still being fought even with it.

4. Reintroducing air marshall's caused my biggest chuckle. Even at it's height, the percentage of planes covered was so low that the odds of an air marshall being on one of those four planes was quite low. And I doubt Vegas would have even laid odds on them being on two of them, it being such a long shot.


So while your reasoning is sound, I still ask, would it have prevented anything? I think not. But that's just my opinion.

RAH

[SpencerH]

What you have are vague warnings that something is going to happen. Maybe something with aircraft, maybe, maybe, maybe...

No one is going to shut down the country over these kind of vague warnings, its not possible.

Clearly there were some chances to catch the terrorists that were overlooked because of bureaucratic nonsense within the intel community. Without specific info nothing could have stopped that attack short of shutting down the airports.

[chequita guevara]

You are now assuming that these are vague warnings, when in fact they were not only specific, they were believed. Let's see if I can help you here.

1) The Administration is briefed that al-Qaeda is likely to try to hijack some planes last summer. This warning is taken so serious by THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES that he stops using commerical airlines.

2) Specific threats that al-Qaeda terrorists are planning on hijacking airliners and crash them into buildings are taken SO SERIOUSLY BY OUR ALLIES that THE PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA WARNS THE US PERSONALLY!!!!!

Given these two facts, is DOING NOTHING a valid action?!?

All the Administration had to do was to tell the FBI to look into it. If they had done so, they would have found that there was already a report that was being ignored about people linked to al-Qaeda taking lying lessons in the US. It doesn't take a leap of faith or logic to put one and two together and come up with three.

Stop coddling incompetence.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by rah
So while your reasoning is sound, I still ask, would it have prevented anything? I think not. But that's just my opinion.

RAH

It may not have prevented anything. The question is why they did nothing. They considered the hijackings, at least, to be a credible threat.

I also realize that given the lack of 9/11, many people, including me, would be screaming about the increase in spying by the Feds. This is do to the often ham-handed way in which the FBI deals with political dissidents. They certainly haven't proved themselves any better in the last year, scooping up thousands of people on little more than rumor, disrupting their lives and businesses and destroying their livelyhoods, then releasing them without so much as an oops, sorry. One man identified by name by the President himself on national TV was recently relseased after the FBI admitted it never had any evidence against him.

One can be both for increased anti-terrorism efforts and at the same time opposed to the erosion of our civil liberties. Our civil liberties have been eroded and I really don't feel like the US is any safer than it was before.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
You are now assuming that these are vague warnings, when in fact they were not only specific, they were believed. Let's see if I can help you here.

A specific warning is one with a date.

1) The Administration is briefed that al-Qaeda is likely to try to hijack some planes last summer. This warning is taken so serious by THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES that he stops using commerical airlines.

A threat of hijacking. It isnt as if planes havent been hijacked before.

2) Specific threats that al-Qaeda terrorists are planning on hijacking airliners and crash them into buildings are taken SO SERIOUSLY BY OUR ALLIES that THE PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA WARNS THE US PERSONALLY!!!!!

The link to a newspaper report that quoted an interview with Putin did not say anything about crashing planes into buildings. Even if it did which buildings would you protect? Again, on what date?

Given these two facts, is DOING NOTHING a valid action?!?

All the Administration had to do was to tell the FBI to look into it. If they had done so, they would have found that there was already a report that was being ignored about people linked to al-Qaeda taking lying lessons in the US. It doesn't take a leap of faith or logic to put one and two together and come up with three.

Stop coddling incompetence.

While the intel agencies may be incompetent, I'm not coddling them. I've known of their limitations for over 20 years. Your comments make it clear to me that you've been watching too many spy movies if you think that the intel community can (or wants to) work in that fashion.

[Ned]

Che, I failed to see the meeting Atta had with the Iraqi intelligent agent in the Czech Republic. This tells me something about the politics of this information.

But aside from that, it is clear that the US knew that OBL and al Qaida were a threat and that we had warnings galore about iminent attacks on the US. Congress even knew. Yet we failed to act to prevent them.

There definitely was an intelligence failure. Heads should role - particularly the guilty and not the scapegoats.

However, I do not subscribe to the notion that Bush was behind 9/11. This is so far fetched as to be simply beyond the Pale.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Ned

But aside from that, it is clear that the US knew that OBL and al Qaida were a threat and that we had warnings galore about iminent attacks on the US. Congress even knew. Yet we failed to act to prevent them.

I love these kinds of comments. If congress knew why didnt congress push for action?

Anything that congress "knows" about a sensitive intel matter isnt pertinent. Only the intelligence committee will be briefed at some level of top secret (there are a number of levels) and that intel is not relayed to the rest of congress.

The real questions are

1) whether the intelligence community should/could have known about the specifics of the attack ?

IMO the answer is yes, but it would have required a totally re-organized intelligence agency which didnt happen and wont happen in the future.

2) Aside from knowing that aircraft would be hijacked, and used as missles on 9/11 2001 in New York and Washington, was this terrorist action preventable ?

No. The American people wont stand for (or pay for) the security measures that are required.

There definitely was an intelligence failure. Heads should role - particularly the guilty and not the scapegoats.

Which guilty people? The government who began to hogtie the intelligence agencies in the 70's, the heads of the agencies whose excesses led to the crackdown? The people who failed to recognize the changing intel requirements after the fall of the SU?

Take your pick. Blaming political paper-pushers like Louie Freeh for failures that took 20 years to develop wont change anything.