 by Sen. John McCain May 29, 2002
The Sept. 11 attacks were incredibly depraved but not, as it turns out, unimaginable. As early as 1995, an accomplice of Ramzi Yousef revealed that the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack intended to plant bombs on 12 U.S.-bound airliners and crash a light plane packed with explosives into CIA headquarters. The accomplice had trained as a pilot at three separate U.S. flight schools. In 1999 the Library of Congress prepared a report for the National Intelligence Council warning that al Qaeda suicide bombers "could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives" into the Pentagon, CIA or the White House. Last July Kenneth Williams, an FBI field agent in Phoenix, suspected that terrorists had enrolled in an Arizona pilot training school. He urged the bureau to begin investigating whether other U.S. flight schools might be training terrorists to fly. A month later, FBI agents in Minnesota arrested flight school student Zacarias Moussaoui, whose lack of interest in learning how to land an aircraft had aroused the suspicions of his instructors, who dutifully alerted the FBI. It is uncertain how far up the chain of command suspicions about Moussaoui's intentions traveled. A week before Sept. 11, the FBI did notify the FAA of Moussaoui's arrest, his terrorist connections, and his interest in flying large commercial aircraft. The FAA chose not to share this rather pertinent information with the airlines. Throughout last summer, CIA analysts were increasingly anxious that Osama bin Laden's operatives were planning imminent terrorist attacks against the United States and possibly planning to hijack planes in this country. The agency shared its concern with the president in August. Apparently no one from either the CIA or the FBI shared with the president information that terrorists might intend to use hijacked planes to destroy civilian and government targets. Nor did the FBI and CIA make much of a habit of sharing information with each other. Had they done so, one presumes the President's Daily Briefing on Aug. 6 would have included a suspicion that the hijackers might have something much more atrocious than ransom demands on their agenda. As administration officials have observed, the president is not expected to work as an intelligence case officer. It is not his job to drag from different agencies various bits of information, murky clues and suspicions that, considered together, begin to reveal the dimensions of a clear and present danger. But it is the responsibility of officials who serve at his pleasure. Asking for, urging and demanding answers for why various agencies of the federal government failed to understand the enormity of the danger facing the United States is an obligation shared by all elected federal officials. As is the responsibility for understanding why and how the previous administration failed to combat the growing menace of international terrorism more effectively. As is responsibility for questioning Congress's inability or unwillingness to exercise more diligently its oversight responsibilities for these agencies. As is the expectation that officials who did not competently discharge their responsibilities be held accountable. It's hardly a surprise in a lively democracy that partisan and institutional loyalties will influence both sides of an honest debate on the most critical challenge confronting the federal government. The administration's critics and its defenders suspect each other of motives less civic-minded than an honest search for answers, impairing our own and the public's ability to arrive at fair conclusions about what went wrong and how to repair it. This is all the more reason to consider empaneling an independent commission of trustworthy, experienced statesmen who, if not entirely devoid of partisan loyalties, are sufficiently removed by time and wisdom from the appeal of such loyalties to know when they conflict with the national interest. Give them complete access to all intelligence reports and internal documents with arguable relevance to their inquiry, and charge them with rendering a judgment about who failed and why in this administration and its predecessors, as well as in Congress, and with recommending appropriate remedies to guard against a recurrence. An independent inquiry will not impose a serious burden on the administration as it prosecutes our just war against terrorism, any more than a similar inquiry after Pearl Harbor impeded Franklin D. Roosevelt's prosecution of World War II. Nor should it prevent members of Congress, the press or any American citizen from questioning or criticizing the government's apparent failures before and after President Bush's inauguration. All wars and national security failures have occasioned contemporaneous criticism, and the Republic has managed to thrive. It is irresponsible in a time of war, or any time for that matter, to attack or defend unthinkingly or because partisan identification is one's supreme interest. But it is not responsible or right to shrink from offering thoughtful criticism when and to whom it is due, and when the consequences of incompletely understanding failures of governance are potentially catastrophic. On the contrary, such timidity is indefensibly irresponsible especially in times of war, so irresponsible that it verges on the unpatriotic.
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