Remembering 9/11: Why America and terror changed the world 

A Special Report by Florence F. Hibionada

The writer (extreme left) with friends pose for the camera with the twin towers as a background.

Who could forget 9/11?, Rose Flores began when asked of her thoughts four years after America was devastated by the worst attack on American soil.  The answers are similar from other Ilonggo Filipino-Americans (Fil-Ams) whose thoughts are summed up by two words - disbelief and shock.  Not America.  It can not be America.      

Yet four hijacked planes later and within minutes thereafter, it was America who came under attack in September 11, 2001.  That day was to change the course of governance of the world particularly the nations whose governments rely and are dictated by American policies.  Altogether, it forced upon all governments to have an inside look on homeland security.  And a different, closer look on the face of terrorism.

For a country looked upon as a “Super Power” and its President dubbed as the “world's most powerful man,” America symbolized the land of the free and home of the brave.  For millions of migrants, Filipinos particularly included, America is the land of milk and honey.

September 11, 2001 changed it all and set forth anew a different understanding to the greatness of a now different America.

Americans and the world marked the fourth year of said ‘invasion,' the surrounding events made clearer with last year's release of “The 9/11 Commission Report,” the final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. 

“This independent, bipartisan panel was directed to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks, identify lessons learned, and provide recommendations to safeguard against future acts of terrorism,” the authorized edition wrote as it presented to the American public and the world a 567-paged book “for their consideration.”

Composed of five Republicans and five Democrats chaired by Thomas Kean, the Commission was aided by 81 senior staff members composed of noted Washington lawyers and professionals.  Altogether, 2.5 million pages of documents were reviewed, more than 1,000 hours of audiotape listened to, over 1,200 persons interviewed, ten countries visited, 19 days of hearings conducted and 160 witnesses - top US officials including former President William “Bill” Clinton and the incumbent Commander in Chief, President George Bush were heard under oath. 

The report begins with a clear statement – there is an enemy out there who is sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal.  His name now made a byword worldwide -  Usama Bin Ladin - the Commission wrote of how he rallied extensive support in the Arab and Muslim world in its intense hatred and hostility to America.  And eventually, to America's allies whom Bin Ladin would term in his declarations as “American agents.”

Bin Ladin's fight as he himself declared, makes no distinction between military and civilian targets. 

“Collateral damage is not in his lexicon,” Commission Chair Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton wrote.   

The Commission Report contained 13 chapters that dealt extensively on the attack itself, the foundation of Bin Laden's new terrorism, America's counterterrorism, responses to Bin Laden's Al Qaeda's initial assaults, heroism and horror of the attack, unheeded warnings and signs, foresight and hindsight on the incident and the corresponding recommendations for a global strategy and a ‘new' US government.

The details of how the attack unfolded could not be any clearer and gruesome – heard were cries for help from crew and passengers of the hijacked planes of American Airlines Flight 11 (AA 11), United Airlines Flight 175 (UA 175), and American Airlines Flight 77 (AA 77) and United Airlines Flight 93 (UA 93).  

From the initial take off of AA 11 at 7:59 am from Boston bound to Los Angeles and UA 93 at 8:42 am from Newark to San Francisco, lives of millions of Americans were to change in that 43-minute span and millions more worldwide in the next hours until the final official confirmation at 10:30 am that same morning - four planes down, chaos of unimaginable proportion up and all because of one man really.

Now the American public knows of how the suicide hijackers slashed the throats of a number of passengers and crew, learned of the heroic deeds of the passengers on board UA 93 and the seeming breakdown of its government's emergency response.

But then as the Commission noted, despite the multi-layered defenses in place and the protocols in place, “on the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.”

“I don't know where I'm scrambling these guys to.  I need a direction, a destination,” an officer of the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) called out after sending F-15 fighters on air at 8:46 am.  That very second the North Tower of the World Trade Center was hit by the very same plane the fighter jets were trying to locate. 

As records showed and verified, military notification of the first hijacking came 8:37:52 am or about nine minutes before it struck its first target. 

There was to be extreme confusion in the next hour as coded messages were passed from one agency to the other and calls came in from distraught family members of calls received from passengers of the four hijacked planes.

About an hour into the four confirmed hijacking, the order was finally handed out on all other aircrafts to land at the nearest airport.  Altogether, about 4,500 commercial and general aviation aircraft landed in various US airports in what remains as an unprecedented order carried out with no incident.

In clarifying the record, the Commission wrote : “The defense of U.S. airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre-existing training and protocols.  It was improvised by civilians who had never handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disappear and by a military unprepared for the transformation of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction.  As it turned out, the NEADS air defenders had nine minutes' notice on the first hijacked plane, no advance notice on the second, no advance notice on the third and no advance notice on the fourth.”

This, as the panel maintained the scenario did not discredit the operational personnel at NEADS or any of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facilities. 

Media's role

The Commission in its report showed as well the important role of the media.  For instance, most federal agencies learned about the crash in New York from CNN.  At the White House, the world knows now how Vice President Dick Cheney was told by an assistant to turn on the television.  This as Vice President Cheney remarked, “how the hell could a plane hit the World Trade Center?”.

Meantime, President Bush was finally told by a top aide, “A second plane hit the second tower.  America is under attack.”  Thereafter, the President was briefed and watched the television coverage until Air Force One was readied for his departure from Florida.

“Air Force One departed at about 9:54 a.m. without any fixed destination.  The objective was to get up in the air – as fast and as high as possible – and then decide where to go,” the Commission learned from the Secret Service.

The American President, world's most powerful man on the run in his very own country following an execution of a terror plan of an Arab exile who does not even have a country of his own.

The media was to have played a bigger role as well to Bin Laden's campaign for support from his Muslim brothers and the ultimate creation of a Bin Laden unit by one CIA man named “Mike.”  It was his media declaration of war back in mid 90's till the series of pronouncements that would eventually get the White House and Congress to take notice of his potential as one very dangerous man to contend with.

Yet it worked against intense efforts of the American government as well when Al Qaeda senior leadership stopped using a particular communication channel after a leak to the Washington Times.

“This made it much more difficult for the National Security Agency to intercept his conversations,” the panel wrote of its further findings in one of the covert actions then taken in 1999.

In contrast to America's financial and human resources – about 4,000 strong U.S. Marshals Service, more than 4,500 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents, some 9,000 Border Patrol agents, 4,500 Immigration inspectors, 2,000 immigration special agents, terrorist watchlist in place, FAA 40-person intelligence unit, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a multi-layered defense under the National Security Agency (NSA) – America was no match to the ragtag army of Bin Laden.

And while some $3 Trillion a year in telecommunications industry is in place, America lost to the imagination of this man in executing his grand plan of hitting “the head of the snake” as he would label the U.S. No match too, were the extensive training and rehearsal for a Bin Laden capture plan developed by the CIA as far back in 1997 to the zealous Al Qaeda recruits armed with paper cutters and pepper spray.  And seeming futility as well to the millions of dollars spent for Special Operations aircraft overseas and reconnaissance operations launched to get him as Bin Laden managed till the present, to be a step ahead.

“Lost opportunities,” the men and women on Bin Laden's trail repeatedly would say as the system blinked on “code red” of probable attacks being planned by the Al Qaeda overseas and the apparent perpetration of something really big on American soil as also pronounced by Bin Laden.

Working-level CIA officials agreed that one planned operation in Kandahar, Afghanistan in May 1999 had the White House sounded the call on the actionable intelligence, “Bin Laden should have been a dead man that night.”

Further still, the Commission wrote of how the United States “caught glimpses” of the Al Qaeda “planes operation” in January 2000.  And the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief titled “Bin Ladin determined to strike in U.S.”

“The September 11 attacks fell into the void between the foreign and domestic threats,” the Commission would later say.  “In sum, the domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction and did not have a plan to institute.  The borders were not hardened.  Transportation systems were not fortified.  Electronic surveillance was not targeted against a domestic threat.  State and local law enforcement were not marshaled to augment the FBI's efforts.  The public was not warned.”

As such, even in the execution stage where the ‘enemy' made mistakes, America failed to capitalize in those mistakes and under-estimated the terror and horror of Al Qaeda.

“Now threats can emerge quickly.  An organization like Al Qaeda, headquartered in a country on the other side of the earth, in a region so poor that electricity or telephones were scarce, could nonetheless scheme to wield weapons of unprecedented destructive power in the largest cities of the United States,” this much was recognized by the panel.  “The present transnational danger is Islamist terrorism.”

With the Commission's work over, it can now be said, America and terror did change the world.  This, as nations move to adopt global strategies to cope and avert similar tragedy.