The Intelligence Failure

STRATFOR | 9/11 | George Friedman

[oxi-nato]

As of this moment, what is clear is that a substantial number of civilian aircraft were hijacked this morning by pilots with sufficient ability to maneuver those multi-engine aircraft into collisions with major buildings. The flights originated at a number of airports. Each incident required the presence of at least one and probably more hijackers, each prepared to die in the attack.

Mounting an attack of this sort is not simple. In the case of the World Trade Center, the collapse of the towers indicates massive delayed explosions. This means either the planes were loaded with explosives or that massive explosive charges were planted in the buildings to go off later. This is supposition, but a secondary explosion is a necessary factor for explaining the collapse.

This means many individuals had to be involved in the operation. There had to be a coordinated effort spanning several continents, timed to occur at roughly the same time. At best guess, dozens of people had to be involved. Messages had to flow, coded or otherwise. Yet no human intelligence sources appear to have been among or near the conspirators. No significant messages were intercepted or decoded.

For U.S. intelligence to have missed an operation of this magnitude indicates one of two things. First, the competence of U.S. intelligence is overrated or the willingness of policymakers to heed warnings has declined. In either case, the system is badly broken. Alternatively, the sophistication of terrorist counter-intelligence has improved to such an extent that the prior level of expertise bought to bear is simply no longer sufficient.

Whether we are facing a decline in U.S. intelligence capability or an increase in counter-intelligence blocking the United States, Sept. 11, 2001, will go down as one of the major intelligence failures in U.S. history.

[freedomlover]

The first thing I thought when I heard that we were under attack was "How will they blame Bush for this?". My thought was not if they would but how. Well here it is, in cadence from the news media.

[supercat]

This is supposition, but a secondary explosion is a necessary factor for explaining the collapse.

Nonsense. The plane would have substantially weakened much of the building's support structure in its immediate area and possibly damaged the thermal insulating coatings on some of the support columns. A steel column which gets heated to 900F [and no coating can stop 20,000 gallons of jet fuel from doing that eventually] will lose half its strength. At 1100F, it loses 3/4 of its strength. I would not expect the building to remain standing if a fire deprives an already-damaged structure of 3/4 of its strength.

[isiti]

Conduit and any like him, must be removed from all intellegence systems.

[washington10]

The first thing I thought of was that there has to be a possibilty that Americans did this attack. We seem to be forgetting that there are other Mcveigh's amongst us. I wonder if any of the callers from the plane made any mention of whether the hijackers were middle eastern type people or American.

[ContemptofCourt]

Your theory is errant due to the nature of the targets. McVeigh-types would have hit Federal installations, not the WTC and Pentagon.

[OzarkRepub]

This is supposition, but a secondary explosion is a necessary factor for explaining the collapse.

Nonsense. The plane would have substantially weakened much of the building's support structure in its immediate area and possibly damaged the thermal insulating coatings on some of the support columns. A steel column which gets heated to 900F [and no coating can stop 20,000 gallons of jet fuel from doing that eventually] will lose half its strength. At 1100F, it loses 3/4 of its strength. I would not expect the building to remain standing if a fire deprives an already-damaged structure of 3/4 of its strength. Absolutly correct. Another thing too is a large steel framed structure will act like a giant tuning fork. The initial impacts violently shook the buildings and they would have continued to vibrate for quite some time afterward. With this dynamic loading coupled with the heat of the fire, it wasn't long until the steel weakened and failed in compression. Also, the first building to collapse (the second one hit by a plane) had the damage lower down. The more mass above the point of failure only quickened the collapse. Classic gravity failure.

[boris]

"For U.S. intelligence to have missed an operation of this magnitude indicates one of two things. First, the competence of U.S. intelligence is overrated or the willingness of policymakers to heed warnings has declined. In either case, the system is badly broken. Alternatively, the sophistication of terrorist counter-intelligence has improved to such an extent that the prior level of expertise bought to bear is simply no longer sufficient."

Others have already pointed out that no explosives were required.

It is obvious that both our military and intelligence have been hollowed out by eight years of Clinton and many prior years of deliberate strangulation by the Democrats.

--Boris

[ValerieUSA]

How could any American have retained faith in the intelligence community after learning about the grossly clandestine and risky behavior of Congressman Gary Condit who sits on the Permanent House Intelligence Committee - and who remains on the committee even after the public exposure of his disregard for national security? I am watching Congress in session now and cannot be impressed with their so-called seriousness and bi-partisan resolve following the attacks yesterday. They were out to lunch about national security the day before - not a whit of resolve to clean their own house of weakness, incompetence and vulnerability. Condit represents them ALL as long as he remains on Capitol Hill. The failure of the intelligence community is the failure of Congress.

[brother steve]

There is no security against this kind of act. Those people knew what they were doing and matter of fact they must plan it long before. This kind of act come from a "very big leader" in a measure of Hitler, Stalin, etc. "Liberal" who do not care or not accountable for the consequences. Small timers, they might fill a car or van, but this was a coordinated act of someone "big guy" One of the real problem is, if I may say so; Religion (addiction) produces fanatics - suicides in the name of fantasy. Conclude; this is not a security failure, rather education failure.

[ctdonath2]

In the case of the World Trade Center, the collapse of the towers indicates massive delayed explosions.

NO.

A cross-country load of jet fuel dumped into a floor 3/4 up will burn hot enough and long enough to melt the support columns. When those give, the floors above will drop, and at SIX MILLION POUNDS PER FLOOR (times 10-20 floors) falling about 20 feet, there is no way the floor below will stand up to that impact and a domino effect will follow. Delivered into the right region, there's enough mass above to collapse it all and still avoid the extra-strong supports below.

No further conspiracy necessary.

I highly recommend the book Why Buildings Fall Down - obviously you need to read it. (Perhaps the 2002 reprint will include this event.)

[supercat]

I highly recommend the book Why Buildings Fall Down - obviously you need to read it. (Perhaps the 2002 reprint will include this event.)

I recommend as well 'Why Buildings Stand Up', by the same author.

[supercat]

I highly recommend the book Why Buildings Fall Down - obviously you need to read it. (Perhaps the 2002 reprint will include this event.)

I recommend as well 'Why Buildings Stand Up', by the same author.

[ctdonath2]

Excellent point. Let's say this a little louder:

Gary Condit was on the Senate Intelligence Panel during this event's planning and execution.

Eject him. Now.

[washington10]

Just like I dont know what they would and would not hit, you dont know what Mcveigh types would do.

[freefly]

"Mounting an attack of this sort is not simple."

On the contrary, an attack of this sort is VERY simple.
And almost impossible to prevent.

"In the case of the World Trade Center, the collapse of the towers indicates massive delayed explosions."

No, it means that buildings built like these can fall down when they sustain massive structural damage and fire.

"This means many individuals had to be involved in the operation. There had to be a coordinated effort spanning several continents, timed to occur at roughly the same time. At best guess, dozens of people had to be involved. Messages had to flow, coded or otherwise."

Without explosives being involved, the operation requires dedicated suicide hijackers,
access to aircraft timetables, a little money, and a minimum of intellegence.

[patlaw_guy]

So what do we even have Echelon for? If it's no good in detecting impending acts of war, why even use it? Is it the case that Echelon was never meant to spy on others, but instead to spy on us?

[Barak]

There is no security against this kind of act.

Bullsh!t. Of course there is. Just three or four armed private citizens on each of those planes--maybe even as few as one or two--could have saved the lives of dozens of thousands of people.

There is no government security against this kind of act, but that's because this is not an act against a government, but rather against people. Governments can arrange for their own protection, but they cannot arrange for the protection of their people: the people themselves have to arrange for that.

The US government, and many others around the world, have been begging for this sort of incident ever since they banned the carry of private concealed weapons on airliners.

And now, even though--as you pointed out--there is no government-based defense against this sort of thing, the government is going to tighten more security, take away more liberties, and make more promises. Our government is going to respond to this foreign attack on our liberties with a further domestic attack on our liberties.

Sometimes I wonder why we stand for it.

[beckett]

This bozo jumped into print with a bunch of factual errors, the mark of a true amateur. The more one reads STRATFOR, the more one sees they are just a bunch of kooks.

[ContemptofCourt]

Well, lets see, seeing how they tried to blow up the WTC before, I guess we did know what they would hit.

And "patriots" like McVeigh are going to hit symbols of Federal power - like the Fed; IRS; FBI; etc. Think...