9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable

CBS ^ | 17 December 2003

[Hal1950]

For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.

"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean.

"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."

Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.

To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a political landmine, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the president's top-secret daily briefs. Those documents may shed light on one of the most controversial assertions of the Bush administration – that there was never any thought given to the idea that terrorists might fly an airplane into a building.

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," said national security adviser Condoleeza Rice on May 16, 2002.

"How is it possible we have a national security advisor coming out and saying we had no idea they could use planes as weapons when we had FBI records from 1991 stating that this is a possibility," said Kristen Breitweiser, one of four New Jersey widows who lobbied Congress and the president to appoint the commission.

The widows want to know why various government agencies didn't connect the dots before Sept. 11, such as warnings from FBI offices in Minnesota and Arizona about suspicious student pilots.

"If you were to tell me that two years after the murder of my husband that we wouldn't have one question answered, I wouldn't believe it," Breitweiser said.

Kean admits the commission also has more questions than answers.

Asked whether we should at least know if people sitting in the decision-making spots on that critical day are still in those positions, Kean said, "Yes, the answer is yes. And we will."

Kean promises major revelations in public testimony beginning next month from top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, National Security Agency and, maybe, President Bush and former President Clinton.

[Mixer]

If that's how you feel then why bother with the War on Terror anyway. We may as well just duct tape our windows and pray we don't get hit.

Today there are credible threats that there will be attacks in Saudi Arabia. Are they 100% stopable because we have evidence they may happen? Give us the sure fire way to make sure nothing goes wrong in SA.

[Joe_October]

...The difference lies in whether we really want to find out who, what, why and how it was that 3000 of our fellow Americans were horribly murdered before our very eyes....

Well if you haven't figured out we know. It was 19 hijackers working with OBL trained by Iraq who came to the US because they assumed that President Bush was weak like Clinton. Sorry, that's all there is.

[Malsua]

Everything is preventable except death and taxes.

A long chain of IFs in place and you can prevent anything.

If Osama was stillborn, If Jimmy Carter has stood up to Iran and not emboldened Muslims, If Saudi Arabia wasn't a nest of Wahhabism, If we never let Muslims into this country, if if if.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

There's a better latin term for it, but I can't recall it. Basically it means "If I had done X instead of Y, Z wouldn't have happened"

[cwb]

"That's right: let's make excuses if it is at all possible that some of our folks may not have performed in a stellar manner."

Excuse me, but the one taking the hit here, is GW Bush. While I'm willing to spread the blame around, some people aren't...and they are ignoring very relevant issues related to the decontruction of our intelligence community over the last 30 years, and the ignorant mistakes made througout the 1990's. It's a little hard to accept that the man who was in office for less than 8 months is MORE responsible than the man who was in office for the last 8 years.

[sport]

Gordon Liddy says he is a serial liar.

He sure wanted to drop his awsuit against Gordon when he found out that Gordon was not going to fold.

I believe Gordon.

[eno_]

I don't think 9/11 could have been prevented, and NOBODY foresaw it.

A similar multiple hijack and bombing plot, called project Bojinka, was averted a few years before 9/11. How can you say it was unforeseen when it was almost implemented?

[cwb]

Yes he was...and he was in colusion with Linda Daschle, who as a lobbyist for some in the airline industry, were unwilling to impose the reforms and tough security measures (as suggested) because of the added cost to the industry. Another little detail that is overlooked

[thatdewd]

Well, for whatever its worth, this will force the Bush administration to discuss/leak just exactly what Clinton and the democraps did to our intelligence services and military.

[sport]

Why is Nixon a black mark On the Presidency?

Because he helped put the communist spy, and probably your hero, Hiss in prison ?

Because he allowed out troops to kill the communists that were killing them in Camboda?

[sport]

He will.

[4integrity]

'........and, who was President for 8 years.....'

And, was Rockefeller, Kerry, Kennedy et al in the Senate for,at least, 8 years. Why weren't these guys proactive? Why didn't they think that terrorists would dive planes into our buildings and therefore do something to prevent this type of attack? They had access to intellegence reports. Boy, the Dims won't waste any time replacing the Saddam capture with this.

[Joe_October]

Hey, if they built the buildings 50 feet to the right of where they built them, the planes would have missed.

How easy is that?

[sinkspur]

A similar multiple hijack and bombing plot, called project Bojinka, was averted a few years before 9/11. How can you say it was unforeseen when it was almost implemented?

And terrorists blew up the Cole, in 2000.

How were we to know that terrorists weren't focused on blowing up ships, instead of flying airplanes into buildings?

You're revising history.

Nobody knew, and there was no way for anybody TO know.

[Bommer]

Kean had damn well better not try and put this upon the current POTUS.

Sorry but Bush left Tenant in charge of the CIA, and so far they have not been effective in Jack $hit! We had to rely on an informat to tell us where Saddam was. You think these idiots are going to be able to find Osama? Clinton decimated the CIA its true, but you don't leave an incompetant director appointed by an incompetant President in charge of an agency and hope it changes because theres a new leader. Its like leaving a loosing football coach in charge of a team and expect them to become better because you've got a new owner. Looks like this could really hurt Bush badly! It only bolsters the Democrap paranoia of Bush Conspiracys.

[MJY1288]

"A similar multiple hijack and bombing plot, called project Bojinka, was averted a few years before 9/11. How can you say it was unforeseen when it was almost implemented?"

It's called "Getting Lucky"

I'm confident that if there was actionable Intel of a specific attack planned for 9/11, action would have been taken to prevent it, We didn't even have enough Arabic Translators at the CIA to translate the intercepts we were getting. So even if conversations between Mohammed Atta and his fellow Jihadist were intercepted a week before 9/11, we wouldn't have translated them in time to prevent the attacks.

Fact is... We were caught of guard and we learned a very tough & costly lesson on 9/11

[oldironsides]

Of course it was preventable. Had any one of the government agencies functioned in a competent manner.Justice Dept. after 1993 World Trade Center bombing. FBI, INS and CIA? The Air Egypt pirate yelling Allah while taking 250 people into the ocean could have been a warning. TWA 800? We all have questions. We all have one thousand questions.

[jimbo123]

Clinton's people testified that they believed a Bjoinka couldn't happen in the U.S. because there weren't many radical islamists in the US and the ones that were here were under FBI survelliance.

[Major_Risktaker]

To find out who failed and why, the commission has navigated a political landmine, threatening a subpoena to gain access to the president's top-secret daily briefs.

This country doesn't have time for this witch hunt. I agree fire Kean.

[GeronL]

The Fox Network had a TV show "The Lone Gunmen" where in the first episode (or the second in a 2-parter) where a plane was hijacked by remote control and they attempted to fly it into the World Trade Center.

[Donna Lee Nardo]

That lady is a liberal hack. A few sentences into her little angry juvenile-like review, and it is clear she is a hack. How dare she politicize the death of her husband. What a fool. I have no sympathy for how she is thoroughly disgracing the memory of all who perished that day -- and all who will always be affected because of what happened on 911 no matter where they were that day. That lady has no shame...