Could a Attcak Like 911 Happen Again

THE nine/eleven Committee Written report Final Written report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the Usa EXECUTIVE SUMMARY We present the narrative of this report and the recommendations that flow from it to the President of the U.s., the U.s. Congress, and the American people for their consideration. Ten Commissioners-five Republicans and 5 Democrats chosen past elected leaders from our nation'south capital letter at a time of peachy partisan partition-have come together to present this report without dissent. We have come together with a unity of purpose because our nation demands it. September 11, 2001, was a solar day of unprecedented stupor and suffering in the history of the Usa. The nation was unprepared. A NATION TRANSFORMED At 8:46 on the morning of September eleven, 2001, the U.s.a. became a nation transformed. An airliner traveling at hundreds of miles per hr and conveying some 10,000 gallons of jet fuel plowed into the North Tower of the World Trade Heart in Lower Manhattan. At ix:03, a second airliner hitting the South Tower. Fire and fume billowed upwards. Steel, glass, ash, and bodies vicious below. The Twin Towers, where up to 50,000 people worked each day, both complanate less than 90 minutes after. At 9:37 that same morning time, a third airliner slammed into the western face of the Pentagon. At 10:03, a fourth airliner crashed in a field in southern Pennsylvania. It had been aimed at the U.s. Capitol or the White House, and was forced down by heroic passengers armed with the knowledge that America was under assail. More than 2,600 people died at the Earth Trade Center; 125 died at the Pentagon; 256 died on the iv planes. The death toll surpassed that at Pearl Harbor in Dec 1941. This immeasurable pain was inflicted by 19 young Arabs acting at the behest of Islamist extremists headquartered in afar Afghanistan. Some had been in the United States for more than a year, mixing with the residual of the population. Though four had training equally pilots, well-nigh were non well-educated. Most spoke English poorly, some hardly at all. In groups of iv or 5, carrying with them only modest knives, box cutters, and cans of Mace or pepper spray, they had hijacked the four planes and turned them into mortiferous guided missiles. Why did they practise this? How was the attack planned and conceived? How did the U.Due south. government fail to conceptualize and prevent information technology? What can nosotros do in the future to prevent similar acts of terrorism? A Shock, Not a Surprise The 9/xi attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to impale Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a point threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade. In Feb 1993, a grouping led past Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World Merchandise Center with a truck bomb. They killed six and wounded a thousand. Plans by Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow upward the Kingdom of the netherlands and Lincoln tunnels and other New York Urban center landmarks were frustrated when the plotters were arrested. In Oct 1993, Somali tribesmen shot down U.S. helicopters, killing eighteen and wounding 73 in an incident that came to be known as "Black Hawk down." Years later information technology would exist learned that those Somali tribesmen had received help from al Qaeda. In early on 1995, police in Manila uncovered a plot by Ramzi Yousef to accident up a dozen U.South. airliners while they were flying over the Pacific. In November 1995, a car flop exploded exterior the office of the U.S. program manager for the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh, killing 5 Americans and two others. In June 1996, a truck flop demolished the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Kingdom of saudi arabia, killing 19 U.Southward. servicemen and wounding hundreds. The attack was carried out primarily past Saudi Hezbollah, an system that had received assistance from the government of Islamic republic of iran. Until 1997, the U.S. intelligence customs viewed Bin Ladin as a financier of terrorism, not as a terrorist leader. In February 1998, Usama Bin Ladin and four others issued a self-styled fatwa, publicly declaring that it was God's prescript that every Muslim should try his utmost to kill any American, military or noncombatant, anywhere in the world, considering of American "occupation" of Islam's holy places and aggression against Muslims. In August 1998, Bin Ladin's grouping, al Qaeda, carried out near-simultaneous truck bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands more than. In December 1999, Jordanian police force foiled a plot to bomb hotels and other sites frequented past American tourists, and a U.S. Customs agent arrested Ahmed Ressam at the U.Due south. Canadian border as he was smuggling in explosives intended for an attack on Los Angeles International Airport. In Oct 2000, an al Qaeda team in Aden, Republic of yemen, used a motorboat filled with explosives to blow a pigsty in the side of a destroyer, the USS Cole, almost sinking the vessel and killing 17 American sailors. The 9/11 attacks on the Globe Trade Middle and the Pentagon were far more elaborate, precise, and subversive than any of these earlier assaults. Only by September 2001, the executive branch of the U.S. government, the Congress, the news media, and the American public had received articulate alert that Islamist terrorists meant to kill Americans in loftier numbers. Who Is the Enemy? Who is this enemy that created an organization capable of inflicting such horrific damage on the United States? We now know that these attacks were carried out past various groups of Islamist extremists. The 9/11 assail was driven by Usama Bin Ladin. In the 1980s, young Muslims from effectually the world went to Afghanistan to bring together as volunteers in a jihad (or holy struggle) against the Soviet Matrimony. A wealthy Saudi, Usama Bin Ladin, was ane of them. Post-obit the defeat of the Soviets in the late 1980s, Bin Ladin and others formed al Qaeda to mobilize jihads elsewhere. The history, civilization, and body of behavior from which Bin Ladin shapes and spreads his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam'southward past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur'an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic alter as they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources-Islam, history, and the region'south political and economical angst. Bin Ladin also stresses grievances against the Us widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, which is the home of Islam'south holiest sites, and confronting other U.S. policies in the Eye East. Upon this political and ideological foundation, Bin Ladin congenital over the course of a decade a dynamic and lethal organization. He built an infrastructure and organization in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan that could attract, train, and use recruits against always more than ambitious targets. He rallied new zealots and new money with each sit-in of al Qaeda's capability. He had forged a shut alliance with the Taliban, a authorities providing sanctuary for al Qaeda. By September 11, 2001, al Qaeda possessed leaders able to evaluate, approve, and supervise the planning and direction of a major performance; a personnel system that could recruit candidates, indoctrinate them, vet them, and give them the necessary training; communications sufficient to enable planning and management of operatives and those who would be helping them; an intelligence effort to gather required information and course assessments of enemy strengths and weaknesses; the ability to move people swell distances; and the power to enhance and movement the money necessary to finance an set on. 1998 to September 11, 2001 The August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania established al Qaeda equally a strong adversary of the United States. Afterward launching cruise missile strikes against al Qaeda targets in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the embassy bombings, the Clinton administration practical diplomatic pressure to try to persuade the Taliban regime in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan to expel Bin Ladin. The administration also devised covert operations to use CIA-paid strange agents to capture or impale Bin Ladin and his chief lieutenants. These actions did not stop Bin Ladin or dislodge al Qaeda from its sanctuary. By late 1998 or early on 1999, Bin Ladin and his advisers had agreed on an idea brought to them by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) called the "planes operation." It would eventually culminate in the 9/11 attacks. Bin Ladin and his master of operations, Mohammed Atef, occupied undisputed leadership positions atop al Qaeda. Within al Qaeda, they relied heavily on the ideas and enterprise of strong-willed field commanders, such every bit KSM, to carry out worldwide terrorist operations. KSM claims that his original plot was even grander than those carried out on 9/eleven-ten planes would set on targets on both the East and West coasts of the United States. This plan was modified by Bin Ladin, KSM said, owing to its scale and complexity. Bin Ladin provided KSM with four initial operatives for suicide airplane attacks inside the United States, and in the fall of 1999 grooming for the attacks began. New recruits included 4 from a cell of expatriate Muslim extremists who had clustered together in Hamburg, Germany. 1 became the tactical commander of the operation in the U.s.a.: Mohamed Atta. U.S. intelligence frequently picked up reports of attacks planned by al Qaeda. Working with foreign security services, the CIA broke up some al Qaeda cells. The core of Bin Ladin'south arrangement all the same remained intact. In Dec 1999, news near the arrests of the terrorist cell in Jordan and the arrest of a terrorist at the U.S.-Canadian edge became office of a "millennium alert." The government was galvanized, and the public was on warning for any possible attack. In January 2000, the intense intelligence effort glimpsed then lost sight of two operatives destined for the "planes operation." Spotted in Kuala Lumpur, the pair were lost passing through Bangkok. On January xv, 2000, they arrived in Los Angeles. Because these two al Qaeda operatives had spent lilliputian time in the Westward and spoke niggling, if any, English language, it is plausible that they or KSM would have tried to place, in accelerate, a friendly contact in the United states. We explored suspicions about whether these two operatives had a back up network of accomplices in the United States. The evidence is thin-simply not there for some cases, more worrisome in others. We do know that presently after arriving in California, the two al Qaeda operatives sought out and establish a group of ideologically agreeing Muslims with roots in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, individuals mainly associated with a young Yemeni and others who attended a mosque in San Diego. After a brief stay in Los Angeles nearly which nosotros know niggling, the al Qaeda operatives lived openly in San Diego under their true names. They managed to avoid attracting much attention. By the summertime of 2000, three of the four Hamburg jail cell members had arrived on the East Coast of the Us and had begun pilot training. In early 2001, a fourth future hijacker pilot, Hani Hanjour, journeyed to Arizona with another operative, Nawaf al Hazmi, and conducted his refresher airplane pilot training in that location. A number of al Qaeda operatives had spent time in Arizona during the 1980s and early 1990s. During 2000, President Bill Clinton and his advisers renewed diplomatic efforts to go Bin Ladin expelled from Afghanistan. They also renewed secret efforts with some of the Taliban's opponents-the Northern Brotherhood-to get plenty intelligence to assault Bin Ladin directly. Diplomatic efforts centered on the new armed services government in Pakistan, and they did not succeed. The efforts with the Northern Alliance revived an inconclusive and hole-and-corner debate most whether the United States should take sides in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan'due south civil war and support the Taliban'southward enemies. The CIA also produced a plan to amend intelligence drove on al Qaeda, including the use of a small, unmanned airplane with a video photographic camera, known as the Predator. After the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, evidence accumulated that it had been launched by al Qaeda operatives, but without confirmation that Bin Ladin had given the order. The Taliban had earlier been warned that information technology would be held responsible for another Bin Ladin assault on the Us. The CIA described its findings as a "preliminary judgment"; President Clinton and his chief advisers told us they were waiting for a conclusion before deciding whether to take military action. The military alternatives remained unappealing to them. The transition to the new Bush administration in belatedly 2000 and early 2001 took place with the Cole issue still awaiting. President George West. Bush and his principal directorate accepted that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the Cole, but did not like the options bachelor for a response. Bin Ladin's inference may well have been that attacks, at to the lowest degree at the level of the Cole, were run a risk costless. The Bush administration began developing a new strategy with the stated goal of eliminating the al Qaeda threat within three to five years. During the spring and summer of 2001, U.S. intelligence agencies received a stream of warnings that al Qaeda planned, every bit i written report put it, "something very, very, very large." Manager of Central Intelligence George Tenet told usa, "The system was blinking red." Although Bin Ladin was adamant to strike in the United States, every bit President Clinton had been told and President Bush was reminded in a Presidential Daily Cursory commodity briefed to him in August 2001, the specific threat information pointed overseas. Numerous precautions were taken overseas. Domestic agencies were non finer mobilized. The threat did non receive national media attention comparable to the millennium alert. While the United States continued disruption efforts around the world, its emerging strategy to eliminate the al Qaeda threat was to include an enlarged covert action plan in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan, as well as diplomatic strategies for Transitional islamic state of afghanistan and Pakistan. The process culminated during the summer of 2001 in a draft presidential directive and arguments nigh the Predator shipping, which was soon to exist deployed with a missile of its own, so that it might be used to attempt to kill Bin Ladin or his chief lieutenants. At a September 4 meeting, President Bush'south main advisers approved the draft directive of the strategy and endorsed the concept of arming the Predator. This directive on the al Qaeda strategy was awaiting President Bush's signature on September 11, 2001. Though the "planes operation" was progressing, the plotters had bug of their own in 2001. Several possible participants dropped out; others could not gain entry into the United States (including ane denial at a port of entry and visa denials not related to terrorism). I of the eventual pilots may have considered abandoning the planes functioning. Zacarias Moussaoui, who showed up at a flight training school in Minnesota, may accept been a candidate to supersede him. Some of the vulnerabilities of the plotters become articulate in hindsight. Moussaoui aroused suspicion for seeking fast-runway training on how to airplane pilot large jet airliners. He was arrested on August xvi, 2001, for violations of immigration regulations. In tardily August, officials in the intelligence community realized that the terrorists spotted in Southeast Asia in January 2000 had arrived in the United States. These cases did not prompt urgent action. No one working on these late leads in the summer of 2001 connected them to the high level of threat reporting. In the words of one official, no analytic piece of work foresaw the lightning that could connect the thundercloud to the ground. As final preparations were under way during the summer of 2001, dissent emerged amidst al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan over whether to continue. The Taliban's main, Mullah Omar, opposed attacking the United states. Although facing opposition from many of his senior lieutenants, Bin Ladin finer overruled their objections, and the attacks went forward. September 11, 2001 The twenty-four hour period began with the 19 hijackers getting through a security checkpoint system that they had evidently analyzed and knew how to defeat. Their success rate in penetrating the system was 19 for 19.They took over the iv flights, taking reward of air crews and cockpits that were not prepared for the contingency of a suicide hijacking. On 9/11, the defense of U.Southward. air infinite depended on close interaction between ii federal agencies: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD). Existing protocols on nine/11 were unsuited in every respect for an attack in which hijacked planes were used equally weapons. What ensued was a hurried try to improvise a defense force 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. A shootdown authorization was non communicated to the NORAD air defence force sector until 28 minutes after United 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania. Planes were scrambled, merely ineffectively, as they did non know where to go or what targets they were to intercept. And once the shootdown lodge was given, it was not communicated to the pilots. In curt, while leaders in Washington believed that the fighters circumvoluted above them had been instructed to "take out" hostile shipping, the only orders actually conveyed to the pilots were to "ID type and tail." Like the national defense force, the emergency response on 9/eleven was necessarily improvised. In New York Metropolis, the Fire Section of New York, the New York Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the building employees, and the occupants of the buildings did their best to cope with the effects of most unimaginable events-unfolding furiously over 102 minutes. Casualties were well-nigh 100 pct at and above the affect zones and were very high among first responders who stayed in danger as they tried to salvage lives. Despite weaknesses in preparations for disaster, failure to attain unified incident command, and inadequate communications amid responding agencies, all but approximately 1 hundred of the thousands of civilians who worked beneath the impact zone escaped, often with help from the emergency responders. At the Pentagon, while in that location were also issues of command and control, the emergency response was generally effective. The Incident Control Organization, a formalized direction structure for emergency response in place in the National Capital Region, overcame the inherent complications of a response across local, state, and federal jurisdictions. Operational Opportunities We write with the do good and handicap of hindsight. We are mindful of the danger of being unjust to men and women who fabricated choices in conditions of uncertainty and in circumstances over which they often had little control. Nonetheless, there were specific points of vulnerability in the plot and opportunities to disrupt it. Operational failures-opportunities that were not or could not be exploited past the organizations and systems of that fourth dimension-included not watchlisting futurity hijackers Hazmi and Mihdhar, not abaft them later they traveled to Bangkok, and not informing the FBI about one hereafter hijacker'southward U.Southward. visa or his companion's travel to the United States; non sharing information linking individuals in the Cole attack to Mihdhar; not taking adequate steps in fourth dimension to find Mihdhar or Hazmi in the U.s.; not linking the abort of Zacarias Moussaoui, described as interested in flying grooming for the purpose of using an airplane in a terrorist act, to the heightened indications of assault; not discovering false statements on visa applications; not recognizing passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner; not expanding no-fly lists to include names from terrorist watchlists; non searching airline passengers identified by the reckoner-based CAPPS screening system; and not hardening aircraft cockpit doors or taking other measures to prepare for the possibility of suicide hijackings. GENERAL FINDINGS Since the plotters were flexible and resourceful, we cannot know whether any single step or serial of steps would have defeated them. What we tin say with confidence is that none of the measures adopted by the U.S. authorities from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al Qaeda plot. Across the regime, in that location were failures of imagination, policy, capabilities, and direction. Imagination The virtually important failure was i of imagination. We do non believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat. The terrorist danger from Bin Ladin and al Qaeda was not a major topic for policy contend amidst the public, the media, or in the Congress. Indeed, it barely came up during the 2000 presidential entrada. Al Qaeda's new make of terrorism presented challenges to U.S. governmental institutions that they were not well-designed to meet. Though top officials all told usa that they understood the danger, we believe at that place was uncertainty amid them as to whether this was just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary terrorist threat the The states had lived with for decades, or it was indeed radically new, posing a threat beyond any yet experienced. Every bit tardily every bit September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke, the White House staffer long responsible for counterterrorism policy coordination, asserted that the government had not all the same made upwardly its heed how to answer the question: "Is al Qida a big deal?" A week later came the answer. Policy Terrorism was non the overriding national security concern for the U.S. regime under either the Clinton or the pre-9/11 Bush administration. The policy challenges were linked to this failure of imagination. Officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations regarded a full U.Due south. invasion of Transitional islamic state of afghanistan as practically inconceivable before 9/xi. Capabilities Earlier 9/11, the United States tried to solve the al Qaeda problem with the capabilities it had used in the terminal stages of the Common cold War and its immediate aftermath. These capabilities were insufficient. Fiddling was done to expand or reform them. The CIA had minimal capacity to conduct paramilitary operations with its ain personnel, and it did not seek a large-scale expansion of these capabilities earlier 9/11. The CIA also needed to improve its capability to collect intelligence from man agents. At no point before nine/xi was the Section of Defence force fully engaged in the mission of countering al Qaeda, even though this was mayhap the nigh dangerous foreign enemy threatening the United States. America'due south homeland defenders faced outward. NORAD itself was barely able to retain any alert bases at all. Its planning scenarios occasionally considered the danger of hijacked aircraft existence guided to American targets, merely merely aircraft that were coming from overseas. The virtually serious weaknesses in agency capabilities were in the domestic loonshit. The FBI did not have the capability to link the collective knowledge of agents in the field to national priorities. Other domestic agencies deferred to the FBI. FAA capabilities were weak. Any serious examination of the possibility of a suicide hijacking could have suggested changes to fix glaring vulnerabilities-expanding no-wing lists, searching passengers identified by the CAPPS screening system, deploying federal air marshals domestically, hardening cockpit doors, alerting air crews to a different kind of hijacking possibility than they had been trained to await. Yet the FAA did non adapt either its own preparation or training with NORAD to have account of threats other than those experienced in the past. Management The missed opportunities to thwart the 9/11 plot were also symptoms of a broader inability to adapt the style government manages problems to the new challenges of the xx-commencement century. Activeness officers should take been able to draw on all available knowledge nearly al Qaeda in the authorities. Direction should have ensured that information was shared and duties were clearly assigned across agencies, and across the foreign-domestic carve up. There were also broader management issues with respect to how height leaders gear up priorities and allocated resource. For instance, on December 4, 1998, DCI Tenet issued a directive to several CIA officials and the DDCI for Community Management, stating: "We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either within CIA or the Community." The memorandum had niggling overall consequence on mobilizing the CIA or the intelligence community. This episode indicates the limitations of the DCI'southward authority over the direction of the intelligence community, including agencies within the Department of Defense. The U.S. government did not detect a manner of pooling intelligence and using information technology to guide the planning and assignment of responsibilities for joint operations involving entities as disparate as the CIA, the FBI, the State Section, the armed forces, and the agencies involved in homeland security. SPECIFIC FINDINGS Unsuccessful Diplomacy Starting time in Feb 1997, and through September 11, 2001, the U.S. authorities tried to use diplomatic pressure to persuade the Taliban authorities in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan to stop being a sanctuary for al Qaeda, and to expel Bin Ladin to a country where he could face up justice. These efforts included warnings and sanctions, but they all failed. The U.S. government besides pressed two successive Pakistani governments to demand that the Taliban cease providing a sanctuary for Bin Ladin and his organization and, declining that, to cut off their support for the Taliban. Before ix/11, the The states could non find a mix of incentives and pressure that would persuade Pakistan to reconsider its cardinal human relationship with the Taliban. From 1999 through early on 2001, the United states pressed the United Arab Emirates, one of the Taliban'southward only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off ties and enforce sanctions, peculiarly those related to air travel to Afghanistan. These efforts accomplished lilliputian before ix/xi. Kingdom of saudi arabia has been a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism. Before nine/11, the Saudi and U.South. governments did not fully share intelligence data or develop an adequate articulation endeavor to rails and disrupt the finances of the al Qaeda organization. On the other paw, government officials of Saudi arabia at the highest levels worked closely with superlative U.Southward. officials in major initiatives to solve the Bin Ladin problem with affairs. Lack of Armed services Options In response to the asking of policymakers, the war machine prepared an assortment of limited strike options for attacking Bin Ladin and his organization from May 1998 onward. When they briefed policymakers, the military presented both the pros and cons of those strike options and the associated risks. Policymakers expressed frustration with the range of options presented. Following the August 20, 1998, missile strikes on al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, both senior armed services officials and policymakers placed great emphasis on actionable intelligence as the key factor in recommending or deciding to launch military action against Bin Ladin and his organization. They did not want to risk significant collateral damage, and they did not want to miss Bin Ladin and thus make the United States expect weak while making Bin Ladin wait strong. On three specific occasions in 1998-1999, intelligence was deemed credible enough to warrant planning for possible strikes to kill Bin Ladin. But in each case the strikes did not go forward, because senior policymakers did non regard the intelligence every bit sufficiently actionable to offset their assessment of the risks. The Director of Cardinal Intelligence, policymakers, and military officials expressed frustration with the lack of actionable intelligence. Some officials inside the Pentagon, including those in the special forces and the counterterrorism policy role, also expressed frustration with the lack of armed forces action. The Bush-league administration began to develop new policies toward al Qaeda in 2001, but armed services plans did not alter until after 9/eleven. Issues inside the Intelligence Community The intelligence community struggled throughout the 1990s and up to 9/11 to collect intelligence on and clarify the phenomenon of transnational terrorism. The combination of an overwhelming number of priorities, flat budgets, an outmoded construction, and bureaucratic rivalries resulted in an bereft response to this new claiming. Many dedicated officers worked day and night for years to slice together the growing torso of prove on al Qaeda and to understand the threats. Yet, while in that location were many reports on Bin Laden and his growing al Qaeda organization, in that location was no comprehensive review of what the intelligence community knew and what information technology did non know, and what that meant. There was no National Intelligence Gauge on terrorism between 1995 and nine/xi. Before 9/11, no agency did more to assail al Qaeda than the CIA. But at that place were limits to what the CIA was able to reach by disrupting terrorist activities abroad and by using proxies to try to capture Bin Ladin and his lieutenants in Afghanistan. CIA officers were aware of those limitations. To put information technology merely, covert action was not a silver bullet. It was important to engage proxies in Afghanistan and to build various capabilities so that if an opportunity presented itself, the CIA could human action on it. Just for more than than three years, through both the late Clinton and early Bush administrations, the CIA relied on proxy forces, and there was growing frustration within the CIA's Counterterrorist Middle and in the National Security Quango staff with the lack of results. The development of the Predator and the push to aid the Northern Alliance were products of this frustration. Problems in the FBI From the time of the starting time World Merchandise Middle attack in 1993, FBI and Section of Justice leadership in Washington and New York became increasingly concerned about the terrorist threat from Islamist extremists to U.South. interests, both at home and abroad. Throughout the 1990s, the FBI's counterterrorism efforts against international terrorist organizations included both intelligence and criminal investigations. The FBI's approach to investigations was instance-specific, decentralized, and geared toward prosecution. Meaning FBI resources were devoted to after-the-fact investigations of major terrorist attacks, resulting in several prosecutions. The FBI attempted several reform efforts aimed at strengthening its power to preclude such attacks, but these reform efforts failed to implement organization-wide institutional change. On September 11, 2001, the FBI was limited in several areas critical to an effective preventive counterterrorism strategy. Those working counterterrorism matters did and then despite limited intelligence collection and strategic analysis capabilities, a limited capacity to share information both internally and externally, insufficient training, perceived legal barriers to sharing information, and inadequate resources. Permeable Borders and Immigration Controls There were opportunities for intelligence and constabulary enforcement to exploit al Qaeda'south travel vulnerabilities. Considered collectively, the ix/11 hijackers included known al Qaeda operatives who could have been watchlisted; presented passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner; presented passports with suspicious indicators of extremism; made detectable false statements on visa applications; made faux statements to edge officials to proceeds entry into the United states of america; and violated immigration laws while in the Us. Neither the State Department's consular officers nor the Immigration and Naturalization Service's inspectors and agents were ever considered total partners in a national counterterrorism effort. Protecting borders was not a national security issue before nine/11. Permeable Aviation Security Hijackers studied publicly bachelor materials on the aviation security system and used items that had less metallic content than a handgun and were near probable permissible. Though two of the hijackers were on the U.s.TIPOFF terrorist watchlist, the FAA did not utilize TIPOFF data. The hijackers had to vanquish only one layer of security-the security checkpoint process. Fifty-fifty though several hijackers were selected for actress screening by the CAPPS system, this led only to greater scrutiny of their checked baggage. In one case on board, the hijackers were faced with aircraft personnel who were trained to be nonconfrontational in the result of a hijacking. Financing The 9/eleven attacks cost somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute. The operatives spent more than than $270,000 in the United States. Additional expenses included travel to obtain passports and visas, travel to the U.s., expenses incurred past the plot leader and facilitators outside the United states, and expenses incurred by the people selected to be hijackers who ultimately did non participate. The conspiracy made all-encompassing use of banks in the United States. The hijackers opened accounts in their own names, using passports and other identification documents. Their transactions were unremarkable and essentially invisible amid the billions of dollars flowing around the world every day. To date, we have not been able to determine the origin of the coin used for the 9/xi attacks. Al Qaeda had many sources of funding and a pre-9/xi annual budget estimated at $xxx million. If a item source of funds had dried upward, al Qaeda could hands have constitute enough money elsewhere to fund the attack. An Improvised Homeland Defense force The civilian and military defenders of the nation'south airspace-FAA and NORAD-were unprepared for the attacks launched against them. Given that lack of preparedness, they attempted and failed to improvise an constructive homeland defence force against an unprecedented challenge. The events of that morning practise not reverberate discredit on operational personnel. NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector personnel reached out for data and made the best judgments they could based on the information they received. Private FAA controllers, facility managers, and control eye managers were creative and active in recommending a nationwide alert, ground-stopping local traffic, ordering all aircraft nationwide to land, and executing that unprecedented order flawlessly. At more senior levels, advice was poor. Senior military machine and FAA leaders had no effective communication with each other. The chain of control did non office well. The President could non reach some senior officials. The Secretarial assistant of Defense did not enter the chain of control until the morning's cardinal events were over. Air National Guard units with different rules of engagement were scrambled without the knowledge of the President, NORAD, or the National Armed forces Command Eye. Emergency Response The civilians, firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians, and emergency management professionals exhibited steady determination and resolve nether horrifying, overwhelming conditions on 9/xi.Their actions saved lives and inspired a nation. Effective decisionmaking in New York was hampered by issues in command and command and in internal communications. Inside the Fire Department of New York, this was true for several reasons: the magnitude of the incident was unforeseen; commanders had difficulty communicating with their units; more units were actually dispatched than were ordered by the chiefs; some units self-dispatched; and one time units arrived at the World Trade Center, they were neither comprehensively accounted for nor coordinated. The Port Potency's response was hampered past the lack both of standard operating procedures and of radios capable of enabling multiple commands to respond to an incident in unified style. The New York Police Department, considering of its history of mobilizing thousands of officers for major events requiring crowd control, had a technical radio capability and protocols more hands adapted to an incident of the magnitude of 9/11. Congress The Congress, similar the executive co-operative, responded slowly to the rise of transnational terrorism every bit a threat to national security. The legislative branch adapted little and did not restructure itself to address changing threats. Its attention to terrorism was episodic and splintered beyond several committees. The Congress gave little guidance to executive branch agencies on terrorism, did not reform them in any pregnant mode to meet the threat, and did non systematically perform robust oversight to identify, address, and attempt to resolve the many problems in national security and domestic agencies that became apparent in the aftermath of 9/eleven. So long as oversight is undermined by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need. The The states needs a strong, stable, and capable congressional committee structure to give America's national intelligence agencies oversight, support, and leadership. Are We Safer? Since nine/11, the United States and its allies have killed or captured a majority of al Qaeda'south leadership; toppled the Taliban, which gave al Qaeda sanctuary in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan; and severely damaged the system. Yet terrorist attacks go on. Even as we take thwarted attacks, virtually everyone expects they will come. How can this be? The problem is that al Qaeda represents an ideological motion, non a finite group of people. It initiates and inspires, even if information technology no longer directs. In this way it has transformed itself into a decentralized strength. Bin Ladin may be express in his ability to organize major attacks from his hideouts. Yet killing or capturing him, while extremely important, would not cease terror. His message of inspiration to a new generation of terrorists would keep. Because of offensive actions against al Qaeda since 9/xi, and defensive deportment to improve homeland security, we believe nosotros are safer today. But nosotros are not safe. We therefore make the following recommendations that nosotros believe can brand America safer and more secure. RECOMMENDATIONS Three years after 9/11, the national argue continues well-nigh how to protect our nation in this new era. We divide our recommendations into 2 basic parts: What to do, and how to exercise it. WHAT TO Practise? A GLOBAL STRATEGY The enemy is not just "terrorism." It is the threat posed specifically past Islamist terrorism, past Bin Ladin and others who draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within a minority strain of Islam that does not distinguish politics from religion, and distorts both. The enemy is not Islam, the bully globe faith, only a perversion of Islam. The enemy goes across al Qaeda to include the radical ideological movement, inspired in part by al Qaeda, that has spawned other terrorist groups and violence. Thus our strategy must match our means to ii ends: dismantling the al Qaeda network and, in the long term, prevailing over the ideology that contributes to Islamist terrorism. The first stage of our post-9/11 efforts rightly included military action to topple the Taliban and pursue al Qaeda. This work continues. But long-term success demands the use of all elements of national power: affairs, intelligence, covert action, police force enforcement, economical policy, foreign aid, public diplomacy, and homeland defence force. If we favor ane tool while neglecting others, we get out ourselves vulnerable and weaken our national attempt. What should Americans expect from their regime? The goal seems unlimited: Defeat terrorism anywhere in the world. But Americans have also been told to expect the worst: An assail is probably coming; it may be more devastating still. Vague goals friction match an amorphous movie of the enemy. Al Qaeda and other groups are popularly described every bit being all over the world, adaptable, resilient, needing petty higher-level organization, and capable of anything. It is an image of an omnipotent hydra of destruction. That prototype lowers expectations of government effectiveness. It lowers them too far. Our written report shows a determined and capable grouping of plotters. Yet the group was fragile and occasionally left vulnerable by the marginal, unstable people often attracted to such causes. The enemy made mistakes. The U.S. regime was non able to capitalize on them. No president tin can promise that a catastrophic set on like that of 9/eleven will not happen once again. Merely the American people are entitled to expect that officials will have realistic objectives, articulate guidance, and effective organization. They are entitled to see standards for performance so they can guess, with the help of their elected representatives, whether the objectives are being met. We advise a strategy with three dimensions: (1) attack terrorists and their organizations, (two) prevent the connected growth of Islamist terrorism, and (3) protect against and set up for terrorist attacks. Assault Terrorists and Their Organizations Root out sanctuaries.The U.Due south. government should identify and prioritize actual or potential terrorist sanctuaries and take realistic country or regional strategies for each, utilizing every element of national power and reaching out to countries that tin can help us. Strengthen long-term U.South. and international commitments to the future of Pakistan and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. Confront problems with Saudi Arabia in the open and build a human relationship across oil, a relationship that both sides can defend to their citizens and includes a shared delivery to reform. Forestall the Connected Growth of Islamist Terrorism In October 2003, Secretarial assistant of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked if plenty was being done "to fashion a broad integrated plan to finish the next generation of terrorists." Equally role of such a plan, the U.South. government should Define the message and stand as an instance of moral leadership in the globe. To Muslim parents, terrorists like Bin Ladin have nothing to offer their children but visions of violence and death. America and its friends have the advantage-our vision tin can offering a better future. Where Muslim governments, fifty-fifty those who are friends, practice non offer opportunity, respect the rule of law, or tolerate differences, then the Us needs to stand for a better future. Communicate and defend American ideals in the Islamic globe, through much stronger public affairs to reach more people, including students and leaders exterior of government. Our efforts hither should exist equally strong equally they were in combating airtight societies during the Cold State of war. Offering an calendar of opportunity that includes support for public education and economic openness. Develop a comprehensive coalition strategy against Islamist terrorism, using a flexible contact group of leading coalition governments and fashioning a common coalition approach on bug like the treatment of captured terrorists. Devote a maximum attempt to the parallel task of countering the proliferation of weapons of mass devastation. Expect less from trying to dry up terrorist money and more than from following the money for intelligence, as a tool to hunt terrorists, understand their networks, and disrupt their operations. Protect against and Prepare for Terrorist Attacks Target terrorist travel, an intelligence and security strategy that the 9/11 story showed could be at least as powerful every bit the effort devoted to terrorist finance. Address problems of screening people with biometric identifiers across agencies and governments, including our border and transportation systems, past designing a comprehensive screening system that addresses common issues and sets common standards. Every bit standards spread, this necessary and ambitious effort could dramatically strengthen the earth's ability to intercept individuals who could pose catastrophic threats. Quickly complete a biometric entry-go out screening arrangement, one that also speeds qualified travelers. Ready standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as commuter's licenses. Develop strategies for neglected parts of our transportation security arrangement. Since ix/11, about ninety percent of the nation'southward $5 billion annual investment in transportation security has gone to aviation, to fight the last state of war. In aviation, prevent arguments virtually a new computerized profiling system from delaying vital improvements in the "no-fly" and "automated selectee" lists. Also, give priority to the improvement of checkpoint screening. Determine, with leadership from the President, guidelines for gathering and sharing information in the new security systems that are needed, guidelines that integrate safeguards for privacy and other essential liberties. Underscore that as government power necessarily expands in certain ways, the burden of retaining such powers remains on the executive to demonstrate the value of such powers and ensure adequate supervision of how they are used, including a new lath to oversee the implementation of the guidelines needed for gathering and sharing information in these new security systems. Base federal funding for emergency preparedness solely on risks and vulnerabilities, putting New York City and Washington, D.C., at the top of the current list. Such aid should not remain a program for full general revenue sharing or pork-barrel spending. Make homeland security funding contingent on the adoption of an incident control system to strengthen teamwork in a crunch, including a regional approach. Classify more radio spectrum and improve connectivity for public safety communications, and encourage widespread adoption of newly developed standards for individual-sector emergency preparedness-since the private sector controls 85 percent of the nation's critical infrastructure. HOW TO Exercise IT? A Unlike WAY OF ORGANIZING GOVERNMENT The strategy we take recommended is elaborate, fifty-fifty as presented here very briefly. To implement it will require a government better organized than the one that exists today, with its national security institutions designed half a century agone to win the Cold State of war. Americans should non settle for incremental, advertisement hoc adjustments to a organisation created a generation ago for a world that no longer exists. Our detailed recommendations are designed to fit together. Their purpose is clear: to build unity of effort across the U.Southward. government. Every bit one official now serving on the front end lines overseas put it to united states: "I fight, ane team." We call for unity of effort in five areas, kickoff with unity of effort on the challenge of counterterrorism itself: unifying strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamist terrorists beyond the foreign-domestic split up with a National Counterterrorism Heart; unifying the intelligence customs with a new National Intelligence Manager; unifying the many participants in the counterterrorism effort and their knowledge in a network-based information sharing system that transcends traditional governmental boundaries; unifying and strengthening congressional oversight to improve quality and accountability; and strengthening the FBI and homeland defenders. Unity of Effort: A National Counterterrorism Center The nine/11 story teaches the value of integrating strategic intelligence from all sources into articulation operational planning-with both dimensions spanning the foreign-domestic split up. In some ways, since 9/xi, joint piece of work has gotten better. The effort of fighting terrorism has flooded over many of the usual bureau boundaries because of its sheer quantity and energy. Attitudes have changed. But the problems of coordination have multiplied. The Defense Section alone has three unified commands (SOCOM, CENTCOM, and NORTHCOM) that deal with terrorism as one of their principal concerns. Much of the public commentary about the 9/xi attacks has focused on "lost opportunities." Though characterized as problems of "watchlisting," "information sharing," or "connecting the dots," each of these labels is likewise narrow. They depict the symptoms, not the illness. Breaking the older mold of system stovepiped purely in executive agencies, we advise a National Counterterrorism Middle (NCTC) that would infringe the joint, unified command concept adopted in the 1980s by the American military machine in a civilian agency, combining the joint intelligence function alongside the operations work. The NCTC would build on the existing Terrorist Threat Integration Center and would supplant information technology and other terrorism "fusion centers" within the government. The NCTC would go the administrative cognition bank, bringing data to bear upon mutual plans. It should task collection requirements both inside and outside the Usa. The NCTC should perform joint operational planning, assigning lead responsibilities to existing agencies and letting them straight the actual execution of the plans. Placed in the Executive Office of the President, headed by a Senate-confirmed official (with rank equal to the deputy head of a chiffonier department) who reports to the National Intelligence Director, the NCTC would rails implementation of plans. It would be able to influence the leadership and the budgets of the counterterrorism operating arms of the CIA, the FBI, and the departments of Defence force and Homeland Security. The NCTC should non be a policymaking torso. Its operations and planning should follow the policy direction of the president and the National Security Council. Unity of Effort: A National Intelligence Director Since long before 9/xi-and continuing to this day-the intelligence community is not organized well for joint intelligence work. Information technology does not employ common standards and practices in reporting intelligence or in training experts overseas and at domicile. The expensive national capabilities for collecting intelligence accept divided management. The structures are too complex and too secret. The community's caput-the Managing director of Primal Intelligence-has at least iii jobs: running the CIA, coordinating a 15-agency confederation, and being the intelligence annotator-in-chief to the president. No one person can do all these things. A new National Intelligence Manager should be established with two main jobs: (1) to oversee national intelligence centers that combine experts from all the drove disciplines confronting mutual targets- similar counterterrorism or nuclear proliferation; and (two) to oversee the agencies that contribute to the national intelligence program, a task that includes setting common standards for personnel and it. The national intelligence centers would exist the unified commands of the intelligence world-a long-overdue reform for intelligence comparable to the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols law that reformed the organization of national defence force. The dwelling services-such as the CIA, DIA, NSA, and FBI-would organize, train, and equip the best intelligence professionals in the world, and would handle the execution of intelligence operations in the field. This National Intelligence Director (NID) should be located in the Executive Office of the President and report direct to the president, yet be confirmed by the Senate. In addition to overseeing the National Counterterrorism Center described to a higher place (which will include both the national intelligence middle for terrorism and the joint operations planning endeavor), the NID should accept iii deputies: For foreign intelligence (a deputy who also would be the head of the CIA) For defense intelligence (likewise the nether secretarial assistant of defence for intelligence) For homeland intelligence (too the executive assistant director for intelligence at the FBI or the under secretary of homeland security for information analysis and infrastructure protection) The NID should receive a public appropriation for national intelligence, should have authority to hire and fire his or her intelligence deputies, and should be able to set mutual personnel and information engineering science policies across the intelligence community. The CIA should concentrate on strengthening the drove capabilities of its clandestine service and the talents of its analysts, building pride in its core expertise. Secrecy stifles oversight, accountability, and data sharing. Unfortunately, all the current organizational incentives encourage overclassification. This balance should alter; and every bit a beginning, open information should be provided about the overall size of agency intelligence budgets. Unity of Effort: Sharing Data The U.S. government has access to a vast amount of information. Just it has a weak organization for processing and using what it has. The organisation of "demand to know" should exist replaced by a system of "need to share." The President should atomic number 82 a regime-wide try to bring the major national security institutions into the information revolution, turning a mainframe system into a decentralized network. The obstacles are not technological. Official later official has urged us to call attention to issues with the unglamorous "back role" side of regime operations. But no agency can solve the bug on its own-to build the network requires an effort that transcends old divides, solving mutual legal and policy issues in ways that can assist officials know what they can and cannot practise. Once more, in tackling information issues, America needs unity of effort. Unity of Effort: Congress Congress took too footling activity to adjust itself or to restructure the executive co-operative to address the emerging terrorist threat. Congressional oversight for intelligence-and counterterrorism-is dysfunctional. Both Congress and the executive need to do more to minimize national security risks during transitions between administrations. For intelligence oversight, nosotros propose two options: either a joint commission on the old model of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy or a single committee in each house combining authorizing and appropriating committees. Our central message is the same: the intelligence committees cannot conduct out their oversight function unless they are made stronger, and thereby have both clear responsibility and accountability for that oversight. Congress should create a single, master point of oversight and review for homeland security. At that place should exist ane permanent standing committee for homeland security in each chamber. We advise reforms to speed up the nomination, financial reporting, security clearance, and confirmation process for national security officials at the start of an assistants, and suggest steps to make sure that incoming administrations have the information they need. Unity of Effort: Organizing America'due south Defenses in the Usa We have considered several proposals relating to the future of the domestic intelligence and counterterrorism mission. Adding a new domestic intelligence agency will not solve America'due south problems in collecting and analyzing intelligence inside the United States. We do non recommend creating one. We propose the institution of a specialized and integrated national security workforce at the FBI, consisting of agents, analysts, linguists, and surveillance specialists who are recruited, trained, rewarded, and retained to ensure the evolution of an institutional civilization imbued with a deep expertise in intelligence and national security. At several points nosotros asked: Who has the responsibility for defending us at home? Responsibleness for America'southward national defense is shared by the Department of Defense force, with its new Northern Command, and past the Section of Homeland Security.They must have a articulate depiction of roles, missions, and authority. The Department of Defense and its oversight committees should regularly appraise the adequacy of Northern Command'south strategies and planning to defend against military threats to the homeland. The Department of Homeland Security and its oversight committees should regularly appraise the types of threats the state faces, in club to determine the adequacy of the regime'south plans and the readiness of the government to respond to those threats. * * * We call on the American people to remember how nosotros all felt on 9/11, to remember not only the unspeakable horror just how nosotros came together every bit a nation-one nation. Unity of purpose and unity of effort are the way nosotros will defeat this enemy and make America safer for our children and grandchildren. Nosotros look forrard to a national debate on the claim of what we take recommended, and nosotros will participate vigorously in that debate.

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Source: https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Exec.htm

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