Methinks before this is all through that we'll see they ALL screwed up.
Posted on 05/02/2004 8:57:16 PM PDT by liberallarry
Saturday, May. 01, 2004
John Ashcroft received a rare public rebuke from his own boss last week when the White House revealed that President Bush told the 9/11 commission he was "disappointed" in him for ambushing Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, a former Justice Department official. Ashcroft not only attempted to blame her for setting up barriers to intelligence and law-enforcement information-sharing in his testimony to the panel earlier this month, using a just-declassified memo she'd written in 1995; he then furthered the attack by putting yet more documents on his Website the day before Bush's interview with the commission.
Most experts say those barriers had been firmly in place since the mid-1980s. But if blame for insufficient terror-fighting tools is being doled out, maybe Ashcroft is in for a bit too. When Janet Reno's Justice Department protested efforts in the 1990s to make it easier for Silicon Valley to export encryption technology overseas, then-Senator Ashcroft seemed unconcerned with her contention that terrorists were turning to Internet encryption to communicate. One example she, FBI head Louis Freeh and others in law enforcement cited: Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing, used encryption to hide details of his plot to blow up 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific. But Ashcroft, in a 1997 piece in USIA Electronic Journal, wrote that while coded messages and maps might be used to facilitate crimes, the Administration's "police state policy on encryption" was at odds with the Bill of Rights — an argument that foes of the Patriot Act might be surprised to hear from him now. President Clinton, he said, "is attempting to foist his rigid policy on the exceptionally fluid and fast-paced computer industry."
Former Clinton Commerce Department officials say pressure from Capitol Hill played a large role in their eventual decision to lift export controls on encryption technology. "They had us against the wall," says one. Ashcroft at the time said he was "pleased" that "the Administration finally has listened to those of us in Congress who long have urged export decontrol." That was in 1999, a year after the U.S. indicted Wadih El Hage in the plot to bomb two American embassies in East Africa. According to the indictment, El Hage sent encrypted e-mails to associates in al-Qaeda. Since becoming Attorney General, Ashcroft has not pushed to change the policy.
Methinks before this is all through that we'll see they ALL screwed up.
I don't think "screwed up" is the right phrase.
None of them had true foresight. I sure didn't. Despite all previous terror attacks, including the previous attempt on the Towers, I was taken completely by surprise. I never dreamed such a thing could really happen...although if you'd ask me whether I thought it was possible I would have answered yes.
I was not alone. Most people thought that way. It would have been very hard for a leader to see it differently...and impossible for him to act on his beliefs - at least directly.
I know what key encryption is...or at least I used to. It was considered unbreakable until some genius proved it wasn't.
Contrary to most posters I don't view this as a party issue. Prior to 911 most people had much different priorities and that includes "leaders" on both sides of the aisle.
We were all blinded by our conceptions of normality.
Prior to this attack, airlines thought that a hijack would result in an out of the way landing and maybe a hostage situation. Remember that this was the first time the pilots were killed and hijackers took over the plane.
Prior to this attack, small knives were routinely allowed on airlines, I flew with my trusty swiss army knive numerous times. The sudden viciousness of the attacks was something unheard of.
I do believe if data was routinely sharred among our agents, that some people may have stumbled on the plot. Also the fact that some flights were "preflown" a week earlier may have tipped off a really suspecious person. What if a computer asked to review why the same names flew the same flight twice in a week, (oh wait, businessmen do this all the time.)
The fact that we were all trying hard to be good and not suspect people just because they looks like suspicious swarmy middle eastern young men makes it hard to say what we really needed to do, and no one would have done it, I could lose my job for what I just wrote. (I am retired now, and could not lose my job.) But these are the kinds of things that made it easy to commit the crime and difficult to prevent it. But we should never be fooled by our misconceptions again.
Right.
But we should never be fooled by our misconceptions again
Impossible. Circumstances change in ways no human being can anticipate. All we can hope for is that we don't make too many mistakes and the mistakes aren't too costly.
Let's face it, we are sitting ducks for any organized plot to inflict terror within the US. The role of the 9/11 commission was to investigate the failure of the US to protect our citizens and recommend changes to increase our security. After getting bogged down in the political blame game, that role has disappeared. We are left with the samo, samo, bumbling bureaucracy that allowed 9/11 to happen.
1) Civil liberties should not be lightly abandoned despite the threats to national security.
2) If we cannot impose the same controls on all encryption vendors we grant a competitive advantage to those whom we cannot control
3) The pace of technological advance renders government attempts at control moot.
I believe you are ignoring his first argument and emphasizing his second to make political points. In fact he is as guilty as Gorelick of not giving sufficient weight to the imminent threat to our national security - if guilt is the correct world to apply (which it isn't).
Yes, avoiding all attacks is an impossibility, but failing to admit that our attackers are hiding within the religion of Islam and not taking direct steps to hinder them is a mistake we can (and often seems like we are) making.
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