Beyond the terror of 9/11: Media's role
(Last of two parts)
An artists rendition of newly designed
World Trade Center site released
September 7, 2006.
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 am 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.
Five years beyond the terror. The battle continues.