2.5 What Went Wrong?

WHO? US Government.

WHAT? Collectively failed to prevent 9/11.

WHEN? By not detecting and disrupting the plot in the two years leading up to the attacks.

WHERE? The collective failure transcended agency boundaries and international borders.

WHY? Because those responsible failed to consider alternative, if implausible scenarios.

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress chartered the 9/11 Commission to investigate. Their findings were compiled in a comprehensive report that was released in July 2004. It is impossible within this short format to list all the problems identified in the 585-page report. We will focus on what we consider the more important highlights. Over 60% of the report is dedicated to recounting the events that led up to and culminated in 9/11. The remaining 40% deliberates the new threat posed by this catastrophe, and how to meet it. The report details how the hijackers were able to enter the country and obtain the tools and training necessary to stage the hijackings. It tells how they managed to circumvent the various layers of security to smuggle weapons aboard the aircraft. It explains how after taking control, they were able to confound air traffic controllers and confuse military air defenses. It further describes how our national command and control and emergency responders failed to adequately coordinate. The report raises a lot of questions, starting with, “How were known al Qaeda operatives able to freely come and go from the US? Where was the CIA?” Turns out the CIA did notice some of the operatives entering the country, but never gave them priority and lost track when they disappeared. “How were known al Qaeda operatives able to roam freely across the US? Where was the FBI?” FBI headquarters received notices from field offices in Minneapolis and Phoenix reporting suspicious flight school activity. Students wanted to learn how to fly, but not how to land. Again, these reports weren’t given priority and languished without attention until their importance became apparent after 9/11. “Why weren’t the operatives expelled after their visas expired?” Under-staffed and overwhelmed, the Immigration and Naturalization Service might have been forgiven for not acting in a timely manner to locate and deport the operatives. However, when visa extensions were automatically issued to the hijackers AFTER 9/11, you can understand why there is no longer an INS. INS did arrest one operative. At the request of the FBI, on August 17th INS arrested Zacarias Moussaoui for overstaying his visa. Although the FBI Minneapolis field office suspected Moussaoui of plotting a hijacking, they were unable to secure a warrant to search his laptop for possible evidence. Evidence linking him to the other hijackers only became apparent after 9/11. “Why wasn’t the plot disrupted when State Police stopped one of the operatives for speeding?” The speeding citation was issued along I-95 in Maryland just after midnight on September 9th. Conceivably, a cross-reference of Federal databases might have divulged the al Qaeda connection. “Why did airport security fail?” The operatives weren’t flagged by the terrorist database when they checked-in for their flights. And despite several of them setting off magnetic sensors, no weapons were found when they were individually scanned by security. “Why did the nation’s air defenses fail?” Neither the FAA nor NORAD followed proper protocol once it was learned aircraft were hijacked. In the confusion, intercept fighters were vectored out over the Atlantic Ocean, and were nowhere near the hijacked aircraft when they crashed. “Why did 343 firefighters die in the World Trade Center?” When the towers started to collapse, many firefighters did not get the call to evacuate because their radios were incompatible with those used by the New York Police Department which sent out the call. The 9/11 Commission attributed the individual and combined lapses to a “failure of imagination”. The report draws parallels between 9/11 and the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. In both cases, the evidence leading up to the attacks was clear and obvious in hindsight. According to the 9/11 Commission, careful consideration of alternative scenarios, i.e., a “little imagination”, would have made what was obvious in hindsight also obvious in foresight. The 9/11 Commission contended that if more attention had been given to the suicide-hijacking scenario conceived by some agencies, then indicators and warnings could have been devised, emerging evidence matched against them, and counteraction prepared in advance. Perhaps a more imaginative leadership might have thwarted 9/11. Perhaps not. The only thing known for certain was that US government was inadequate to the threat of domestic catastrophic destruction from non-state actors… this we learned from the 1995 Tokyo Subway Attacks. What we did know was that systemic change was needed.