Posted on 05/21/2005 11:21:47 AM PDT by Destro
WHY AMERICA SLEPT: The Failure to Prevent 9/11
Gerald Posner
Ballantine Books
Current Affairs/Politics
ISBN: 0812966236
As a detailed, carefully documented exposé of ignorance, complacency, shortsightedness and negligence, WHY AMERICA SLEPT is perhaps the most important of the recent books addressing various aspects of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
A similar case could be made for James Bovard's TERRORISM AND TYRANNY, which examines not causes but effects, specifically the government's response to 9/11, which has consisted largely of an unprecedented assault on the Bill of Rights, especially in the areas of privacy and due process. It is a vastly important book that every American ought to read.
Gerald Posner's concern, however, is with life-and-death issues, primarily the question of why the intelligence community failed to discover the al-Qaeda plot to hijack civilian airliners and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Although Posner's approach is generally detached and restrained, he has conceded that he was "infuriated" by some of his discoveries and "disgusted" in particular by President Clinton's failure to neutralize the threat posed by the al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden. Posner provides details of opportunities to capture bin Laden, opportunities that he says Clinton either ignored or rejected. Moreover, he says, Clinton declined offers by both Sudan and Qatar to arrest bin Laden and deliver him to the United States. Perhaps for purposes of comic relief, Posner also quotes Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, as saying that as early as 1996 the administration was "trying to get bin Laden with everything we had."
In this carnival of boneheadedness and floundering incompetence, Posner recounts one outrage after another. Among the worst, in terms of consequences, was the unwillingness of the FBI and CIA to cooperate and share information. Each had information of vital importance to the other, but the rules of their long-standing rivalry prohibited mature behavior. An FBI agent who asked the CIA for information about Zacarias Moussaoui received an official reprimand for doing so. Moussaoui was one of those aviation students who wanted to learn how to steer large airliners but had no interest in learning how to take off or land. The FBI agent was Coleen Rowley, one of the very few figures in this bleak history who behaved intelligently and honorably.
WHY AMERICA SLEPT is filled with evidentiary specifics that attest to the thoroughness of Posner's research, and one suspects that this former Wall Street lawyer might have been happier as a prosecutor. But having turned to investigative reporting --- he is now the author or co-author of ten books --- Posner apparently finds sufficient satisfaction in fulfilling the imperative of the people's right to know, and in this book, most decisively, the people's need to know.
He has pinpointed individual anomalies and systemic weaknesses that made America vulnerable to attack. This much and no more lies within the bounds of investigative reporting; readers have a shared responsibility to press for the necessary corrections to the problems he has identified.
--- Reviewed by Harold V. Cordry
Thanks Destro. For quite a while there, it was nearly forbidden for anyone to suggest we should have prevented 09/11. Now I think folks are starting to understand how miserably our intelligence agencies and political leadership failed us.
No, those comments weren't intended as an indictment of Bush. However, Bush stands alone at this time as the most clear threat to this nation trough his ignorance related to controling our borders.
Why are we still allowing immigration from terrorist states? Why are we allowing an open border situation to exist that lets anyone who bears a grudge against this nation to enter? Why is there no visible understanding or concern evidenced by Bush's actions, that reveal his understanding of a central and south American originated gang presence in our nation?
Color me disgusted, from invasion central...
I hold Bill Clinton 100 percent the reason for it The title for it should have been as Bill Clinton staines blue dress
Exceptional book. I recommend to everyone who wants to make the US and the world a better place, not just wave a flag and have a parade. Some bits of it are a bit high-handed, but overall it is really on-target.
Almost four years out from that day, we need to start having genuine discussion. The time for CYA should be over.
It takes an entire book to figure it out?
Just ban all visas (indeed, all entries into the U.S.) from islamic countries, and all islamic names.
Ninety percent of the problem solved. And we can save trillions in not devising ways to abuse our own citizens in the name of "safety".
(I do not consider muslims who abtain citizenship fraudulently actually to be citizens).
Bush won't touch the illegal immigration issue because as soon as you touch it you'll get called a racist.
I acknowledge that plays into it, but better to be thought a racist by some than watch thousands to millions of your fellow U.S. Citizens die through your negligence.
This is a red herring valuable to communists, socialists and progressives among us. The enemy within.
The real and permanent damage is the trillions of $ it has taken to adopt the "politically correct" solutions.
If not abandoned soon, it shall take us down as a country.
Im thinking it is time that FReepers became a political force for the next election.
Imagine if we put all our resources behind someone outside of the main two parties next time.
The Democrats wont be that much of a threat this time - they still have a preoccupation with gay marriage.
Weren't we told that an understudy in Janet Reno's justice department, one Jamie Gorelick, wrote a regulation banning cooperation between agencies?
It was done to prevent any processing of William The Bent's earlier un-American activities. It also prevented proper intelligence gathering on the 9/11 perps.
Looks to me like the Clinton administration is the basic problem here.
I have always assumed, or at least hoped, that anyone who aspires to be president has matured beyond schoolyard fears of namecalling...
"I hold Bill Clinton 100 percent the reason for it "
Agreed.
Clinton was the biggest do-nothing president of modern times.
If he had been attending to the business of the country instead of mass abusive woman chasing, perhaps he could have done something.
Only in this 1984 like world are "Bill of Rights" a tool for communists.
That can't possibly be true because Murrymom sez -
"[Billy Jeff's] book was a little too short for my tastes. If he could have served the country another 4 or 8 years we might have been spared the unpleasantness of 9/11 and the tens of thousands of innocent human lives lost in its aftermath. Having [the impeached Bubba] in office for another 8 years would have made the extra 500 or so pages worth reading, even if the price of the paperback edition skyrocketed to $15 or so."
Isn't that right - Murrymom?
Plus the fact that he had the chance to get Bin Landen many times and refused...
People hold Bush and Clinton responsible for the lapses in Intelligence organizations and while they can bear some of the blame. I blame the people pointing the fingers. It was Congress, the Senate and the Judiciary that emasculated our intelligence organizations in the 70s and 80s. Now, because of their knee jerk reactions to so called abuses of power, the chickens have come home to roost.
I read that book about a year ago. It was a great read. It is amazing what we didn't do.
Ping for you, pretty lady...
" . . .an unprecedented assault on the Bill of Rights, especially in the areas of privacy and due process."
An oft-heard allegation, remarkably lacking in substantive evidentary proof.
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