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.

[Steve_Seattle]

Richard Ben-Veniste

He's a partisan prick of the worst sort, a complete a**hole; I remember him using the "So what?" mantra during the Whitewater hearings as various questionable dealings were described by witnesses.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Can you just imagine if the FBI started rounding up flight school students from ME countries on slim evidence available at the time?"

Good point. I can just hear Molly Ivins: "Somebody needs to tell John Ashcroft that it's not a crime to attend flight school, even if you don't look like a blonde, blue-eyed Christian." And so forth . ..

[HenryLeeII]

Want answers, ladies? Read Invasion by Michelle Malkin. She exposes how political correctness and the bleeding hearts put us in such a position.

BINGO!!! Also, knowing that something is a possibility and knowing that it is actually being planned are two different things. We could all come up with hundreds of scenarios that terrorists could carry out, but with limited resources and the PC-creeps butting in and putting a stranglehold on intelligence and investigative tactics, the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. can't root out every plot before it happens. Instead of pointing at the Bush administration, what about the fact that several of the hijackers were here on expired visas, what about the fact that metal weapons were snuck aboard the aircraft, etc.

[HenryLeeII]

Open all records?!?! Are you kidding, or are you serious? Not all records can or should be open. The world is a dangerous place, and doing as you suggest would make it a whole lot more dangerous. Besides, Watergate was not a dangerous crime, not like Clinton's overriding of established procedures to have his technology transfers to the Chinese or giving them control of the Panama Canal's locks and Atlantic and Pacific port facilities, so I find it interesting you chose that example.

[HenryLeeII]

Coop, I've checked the replies to PapaBear's insane suggestion and noticed he hasn't replied to one of them. Looks like another DU-type wandering over here and blowing his cover before his first reply is even complete!

[Coop]

There was an attempt to hijack a plane and crash it into the White House in the 1970's. The CIA had evidence of two other plots - one to crash a plane into the CIA HQ, and one into the Eiffel Tower. Clancy wrote about using a plane to crash into the Congress. I'm very uncomfortable when our NSA says that she couldn't have imagined anyone hijacking a plane to use it as a weapon.

And there was the nut who tried to kill Clinton at the White House with his small plane. I do agree that it was a ridiculous statement by Dr. Rice (and I normally love to hear her speak).

[Bommer]

Heh. Yeah, never mind that "informants" are a regular source of information for any intelligence operation. Besides you're mixing apples and oranges here. The "prevention" of 9/11 and the apprehension of Saddam are not similar in scope, mission, or operation.

Oh really? Newsweek has a direct contact to Osama, Tenant does not. The CIA was looking for Saddam, but it was the 4th Infantry that found the informant that turned him in. The CIA knew of plans to fly airplanes into building as early as 1991, no precausions. Recent papers found connect Mohammed Ada (SIC) to training in Bagdad, yet the CIA will still not connect Salmon Pak to 9/11. Please tell me more about the CIA and George Tenents effectiveness?

[fourhorsemen]

These people have come to praise Bubba, not to bury him

It is hard for me to come up with anyone more critical of Clinton than Bob Kerrey

[jeremiah]

I believe that this is criticism of Condoleeza Rice, and George Tenet. They should have known, and probably did. Of course there is the possibility that they are stupid or incompetent. Of the two choices, I would vote for the last. They should have both lost their jobs, if only because someone has to. It is the same way with football coaches, if they cannot get the job done.........without excuses, they are in the wrong business.

[bvw]

"Da, Commissar. I am person evilly seek truthing, and I have offend and question the undeniable Goodness and Allknowingness of the Federal Government under Premier Bushchev! Dispatch me and my family and neighbors to Gulags!" Is what he should say, given the virulence of FR's home grown PC nannies.

That mindless PC-ism will be the ruination of President Bush. It has got to stop.

[oceanview]

Washington DC was part of the attack, Rumsfeld was in the Pentagon, if all these top administration people "knew", why didn't they all clear out of town?

[fourhorsemen]

What was missed by our government, but (obviously) picked up by Al Qaeda, was that numerical deaths was not the most important metric by which Al Qaeda measured its own success. A different attack could well have killed twice as many Americans in Topeka, perhaps, and at half the cost, and it would not have been a tenth as rewarding to Al Qaeda as 9/11 was.

Interesting post. I thought Stratfor's analysis of the strategic value of 9/11 was pretty interesting. They argued that Al Qaeda's goal was not taking down the towers, but instead was to cause an event that would spark a massive confrontation between Islamic nations and the U.S. The idea was that the U.S. would respond to the attacks, which would then spark a massive uprising against U.S. friendly regimes in the middle east (Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt), thus starting the coversion of the middle east into a fundamentalist wahhabi region.

Instead, the uprising never happened, those responsible for the attacks have been crushed, and if anything, Al Qaeda is less popular in the region then it was prior to 9/11.

By their analysis, the attacks of 9/11 were a terrible strategic failure on Al Qaeda's part, much like the attacks on the U.S. on Dec. 7, 1941.

[oceanview]

so Rice should have ordered all US airliners grounded the first day she took office, is that it?

[jpl]

Kean brings up some good points, especially about the warnings that were clearly ignored about the pilot training, but the FBI and the CIA are not the same thing as the Bush administration. Most of those employees were there well before he ever took office.

[swarthyguy]

People also forget that the 2001 G8 Conference was held in Genoa that summer, and the US insisted on anti aircraft missiles around the luxury cruise ship and other venues in that city.

So the threat was no secret.

And remember that plane that crashed into the WH in 94/96?

And the foiled plot in France when jihadis tried to crash a plane into the Eiffel Tower but were foiled during a fake refueling stop?

[oceanview]

Its obvious someone reached out to Kean for this, once Saddam was caught, the media needed to setup a new line of attack, a discrete call is placed to Kean from one of his elite Ivy League buddies, and we have this story.

[oceanview]

do you really think the media is running with this story to bring down some mid-level career people at FBI and CIA?

[Recovering_Democrat]

Yes, really. I'm surprised you don't know this. Then again maybe I'm not.

[jpl]

do you really think the media is running with this story to bring down some mid-level career people at FBI and CIA?

No, of course they're not, but I believe (or at least hope) that the average person has enough sense to know that Bush isn't to blame for the screwups of some mid-level career bureaucrats. If Kean is in fact trying to imply otherwise, he should be absolutely ashamed of himself.

[MEGoody]

Yes, the 9/11 attack was preventable.

If Clinton had nabbed Bin Laden when he had the chance, it wouldn't have happened.