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No
lying: We should've expected 9/11
By
Dara Purvis
RAW STORY COLUMNIST
When the Sept. 11 commission first began investigating
the circumstances of government foreknowledge and actions
before the terrorist attacks, I expected to learn of
some mistakes made: some nuances overlooked that, given
the benefit of hindsight, would be accorded more significance
than could have been possible at the time. After all,
in the vast bureaucracy covered by U.S. intelligence,
it would be impossible to take note of every individual
spark of potential threat.
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As the commission has continued
its work, however, it has become clear that this was
not a matter of individual sparks overlooked amongst
a sea of glints. As former and current administration
officials give each new public testimonial, and the
commission wrests alerts and memos out of clutching,
white-knuckled hands, the picture becomes more horrifying.
There were numerous warnings from many different intelligence
sources that bin Laden was planning to strike within
the United States. Intelligence as far back as 1996
indicated bin Laden had been considering attacking CIA
headquarters by ramming it with a hijacked airplane.
The New York Times has reported extensively on the trickle
of memos that have been declassified, with titles such
as “Bin Laden Threatening to Attack U.S. Aircraft,”
“Bin Laden Planning Multiple Operations,”
“Bin Laden Threats are Real,” and “Bin
Laden’s Plans Advancing.” CIA Director George
Tenet was given a brief in August 2001 titled, “Islamic
Extremist Learns to Fly,” after Zacarias Moussaoui
was arrested while taking flight lessons.
But remember on that horrible, horrible morning, the
surprise, the unutterable shock we all felt that Bin
Laden had used hijacked airplanes as deadly missiles?
Surely we could not expect the flag-wrapped, bloody-shirt-waving
fascists who took over the national security apparatus
in January 2001 to have anticipated such a stunning
innovation? It turns out that they should have, and
did, anticipate exactly that.
In 1996, during preparations for the Olympics in Atlanta,
none other than Richard Clarke was concerned that a
plane might be used as a weapon to attack the athletic
competition. He put a protection system in place for
the Olympics, then proposed that such a system be instituted
permanently above the Capitol and the White House, combining
anti-aircraft weaponry, radar and patrolling helicopters.
The funding request for such a program was not approved,
and Clarke could not get anyone in the administration
to go to bat to argue that the money was needed. (I
note that this was the reviled Clinton administration,
so its actions cannot be laid at the door of our current
Chief Idiot.)
Our “pray-sident” was on the job, however,
in June 2001, when Italian and Egyptian intelligence
indicated that bin Laden was planning to load a plane
with explosives and crash it into the G8 conference
in Genoa, Italy, while Bush and other heads of states
were in attendance. The Italian security forces installed
anti-aircraft weapons around the conference site and
closed the airspace above the site to all planes.
And of course, the now-famous Aug. 6 memorandum, declassified
late on a Saturday, when the news cycle is at its low
ebb, which Condoleeza Rice referred to as “historical.”
Far from taking a leisurely, analytical tone, the brief
was titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in
U.S.” Among other things, the memo specifically
stated that the FBI had detected patterns of activity
“consistent with preparations for hijackings,”
and that a building in Lower Manhattan might be a target.
Such a briefing typically would be two to three paragraphs
long. The Aug. 6 briefing was a page and a half. It
is therefore chillingly clear that, as we citizens stupidly
went about our parochial business in the year before
Sept. 11, 2001, the hard, supposedly sharp corporate
security men who now run America should have known pretty
well what bin Laden had in store for us.
So what does Bush have to say for these failures? “Had
there been a threat that required action by anybody
in the government, I would have dealt with it.”
William Saletan pointed out the absurdist tautology
contained in that statement in an excellent article
published in Slate. Faced with revelation after revelation
of warnings that went unheeded, the best Bush can come
up with is a prime demonstration of circular logic:
If there were warnings that required action, I would
have done something. I did not do anything; therefore
there were no warnings that required action.
How on Earth can we accept this sort of logic from
the supposed leader of our country? The disclosures
from former officials follow like products on an assembly
line: Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, Rand Beers,
and so on. Bob Woodward, whose investigative spirit
seemed dulled years ago, who has churned out fawning
tomes profiling those occupying the halls of power he
once rocked, released a book April 19 with several embarrassing
instances of Bush’s single-minded focus on Iraq.
It has become clear that the administration, populated
by former officials schooled and practiced in Cold War
methodology, not only were unable but also were truculently
unwilling to change their worldview to incorporate the
new sphere of threats. The Bush administration came
in wanting to attack Iraq, and barely waited 12 hours
after the attacks of Sept. 11 to seize the moment, as
it were, and put those plans into motion with a new
justification.
For the last two years, I have been stunned at the
bald exploitation of a national tragedy to implement
reactionary attacks on our civil liberties and to justify
invading a country that was obviously in the crosshairs
from day one of the reign of Bush. And as we learn more
about how this single-minded focus on targets from 10
years ago not only colored the administration’s
perception of events after Sept. 11, but how it blinded
those responsible for our protection to the threats
looming large on the horizon before that day, I have
been left dumbfounded at the audacity of Bush and his
cronies.
To this day, Bush reacts with astonishment and even
indignation at the idea that he has anything to apologize
for. Bin Laden, he says, is the man responsible for
the attacks. Sure, George. The man ultimately responsible
for a burglary is the thief. But can we not also fault
the security guard who left the back door open when
he left to loot the house next door?
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