The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States – W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. (2004) 567p. (S) **
Let’s, for a moment, take a page from the Karl Rove playbook; when attacking an opponent, don’t go after his weaknesses, go after his strengths. (How else is one to explain the temerity and audacity of a candidate of George W. Bush’s caliber [i.e. a deserter of the Air National Guard] making outrageous and shameless assaults on the military record of John Kerry, a decorated, two-tour combat veteran?) These days, one doesn’t have to wait long before yet another member of the Bush administration, yet again, reveres publicly the events of 9/11/01 – the raison d’etre of the Bush foreign policy, and some might argue, the raison d’etre of the administration itself. Perversely, for whatever self-serving reasons, the Bush administration has chosen to wear the 9/11 tragedies – the worst breakdown and failure of the national security system in our nation’s history – as a badge of honor. (Why Democrats aren’t focusing more of their resources on this neo-con “strength” leaves one a bit incredulous.) What makes the 9/11 attacks especially suspicious is their highly anomalous nature. To understand exactly how much of an aberration were the attacks (i.e. nothing like it has happened before or since), consider the following statistics: on any given day in the United States, there are 80,000 flights, 60,000 of which are civilian passenger flights. That’s an awfully lot of potential variables in a system, that in order to function, must be highly tuned and regulated, making one wonder just exactly how do four flights go missing within a two hour period? If the 9/11 hijackers, including four flight school students of mediocre ability, were really able to pull off the highly sophisticated 9/11 attacks without any external assistance, then one would rationally expect airplanes to be crashing into buildings, or falling from the sky in other terrorist scenarios, occurring with much more frequency.
The most relevant and important part of this report is its first 46 pages, as they deal directly with the actual events of “Terrible Tuesday.” In these pages so many contradictions abound that it is difficult to know where to begin. To start, why did it take Boston air traffic controllers 27 minutes to determine that American Airlines flight 11 had been hijacked? (Or, perhaps a more plausible scenario, why, when Boston air traffic control got on the phone to the FAA and NORAD, a busy or dead signal is all they got?) As this, AA flight 11, was the first plane to strike its target (the WTC North Tower), one could reasonably argue that the authorities’ response hangs on how it chose to react to this first flight deviation. Instead, the commission offers this blunt statement with no explanation, “Boston Center did not follow the protocol in seeking military assistance through the prescribed chain of command.”(p.20) And again they make a similar statement: “The defense of U.S. airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre-existing training and protocol.”(p.31) The report also claims that some NORAD personnel were less than honest in answering some of the commission’s questions. So the big follow-up question is why? In their end notation, the commission report writers give us a glimpse. “On 9/11, NORAD was scheduled to conduct a military exercise, Vigilant Guardian.”(p.458) This is where the analysis of Michael Ruppert, author of Crossing the Rubicon, begins and becomes most helpful. Ruppert asserts that it is quite possible, that within the confusion of a military exercise that strangely enough hypothesized a scenario of hijacked aircraft (one can imagine that given this preposterous coincidence that personnel would become confused, operating at the nexus of reality and the virtual reality of a war game scenario), the attacks were able to have their success. According to Ruppert, in order for this to happen, there had to be complicity and facility at the highest levels of government. This is, of course, the most frightening scenario of all, an area in which the commission, not surprisingly, dares not tread.
Amazingly, at one point it is stated, “The 9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack.”(p.169) Also, there is this: “ . . . it cost al Qaeda about $30 million per year to sustain its activities before 9/11.”(p.170) Compare this to the CIA’s annual budget of $30 billion, 1,000 times that of al Qaeda’s. And Osama bin Laden is still unaccounted for? What, exactly, is wrong with this picture?
There is also the issue of semantics. “Calling this struggle [the “war on terrorism”] a war accurately describes the use of American and allied forces to find and destroy terrorist groups and their allies in the field . . . ”(p.363) This follows what on the same page the commission writes “terrorism is a tactic . . . ”(p.363) So which is it? How, exactly, does one prosecute a war against a tactic? Calling a war a “war on terrorism” makes about as much sense as declaring war on war. What is the difference between war and terror?
Then there is the laundry list of things that go completely ignored by the commission’s report. Here’s a sample: no where is Colleen Rowley (an FBI field agent in Minnesota) mentioned by name, nor is the promotion of Rowley’s superiors at FBI headquarters who obstructed and thwarted Rowley’s investigation, the collapse of WTC 7 and what might have caused it, Bush’s reaction to the news that a second plane had hit the WTC, the expedited removal of steel debris from ground zero before proper metallurgic tests could be done, the Israeli “art students” who shadowed the 9/11 hijackers, Attorney General John Ashcroft’s decision to stop using civilian aircraft in the days prior to 9/11, and the likely shootdown of United flight 93 over Pennsylvania. (Instead, the commission devotes an interesting six pages as to who has the authority to give a shootdown order.) In one case, the commission is outright erroneous when it writes that the special Saudi flights only began after the nationwide air traffic grounding order had been lifted. Many news reports have written that the flights did indeed occur while everyone else in America who was an air passenger was stranded at airports.
The final 65 pages of the report is devoted to policy recommendations (a nod to the Bush administration’s “suggestion” for the commission to be more “forward thinking”). These recommendations include more widespread use of biometrics for identification purposes and the creation of a “national intelligence director” position as well as a “national counterterrorism center.” Iran-contra convict, John Negroponte, has realized the national intelligence director position.
Since the majority of this report doesn’t focus directly on the 9/11 attacks themselves, preferring instead to use lots of filler in the background of U.S. counterterrorism policy and the history of the al Qaeda movement, and, of course, the just mentioned recommendations, one can easily envision this being a report that the administration would be well satisfied with. No wonder so many copies were rushed to print. Fortunately, there are plenty of other resources available for the curious and astute reader. Foremost there is Michael Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon. No one to date has dared to put into print the accusation that the Bush administration had explicit complicity in the events of 9/11 themselves. Given how the attacks were such a tremendous aberration in terms of historical events in the linear continuum, it would seem that Ruppert’s conclusion is among the most rational. Better for the reader to reward Ruppert’s beyond courageous work by buying a copy of his book, than to drop $10 on what amounts to pretty much a whitewash, even with its 100 plus pages of fine print notation.
Let’s, for a moment, take a page from the Karl Rove playbook; when attacking an opponent, don’t go after his weaknesses, go after his strengths. (How else is one to explain the temerity and audacity of a candidate of George W. Bush’s caliber [i.e. a deserter of the Air National Guard] making outrageous and shameless assaults on the military record of John Kerry, a decorated, two-tour combat veteran?) These days, one doesn’t have to wait long before yet another member of the Bush administration, yet again, reveres publicly the events of 9/11/01 – the raison d’etre of the Bush foreign policy, and some might argue, the raison d’etre of the administration itself. Perversely, for whatever self-serving reasons, the Bush administration has chosen to wear the 9/11 tragedies – the worst breakdown and failure of the national security system in our nation’s history – as a badge of honor. (Why Democrats aren’t focusing more of their resources on this neo-con “strength” leaves one a bit incredulous.) What makes the 9/11 attacks especially suspicious is their highly anomalous nature. To understand exactly how much of an aberration were the attacks (i.e. nothing like it has happened before or since), consider the following statistics: on any given day in the United States, there are 80,000 flights, 60,000 of which are civilian passenger flights. That’s an awfully lot of potential variables in a system, that in order to function, must be highly tuned and regulated, making one wonder just exactly how do four flights go missing within a two hour period? If the 9/11 hijackers, including four flight school students of mediocre ability, were really able to pull off the highly sophisticated 9/11 attacks without any external assistance, then one would rationally expect airplanes to be crashing into buildings, or falling from the sky in other terrorist scenarios, occurring with much more frequency.
The most relevant and important part of this report is its first 46 pages, as they deal directly with the actual events of “Terrible Tuesday.” In these pages so many contradictions abound that it is difficult to know where to begin. To start, why did it take Boston air traffic controllers 27 minutes to determine that American Airlines flight 11 had been hijacked? (Or, perhaps a more plausible scenario, why, when Boston air traffic control got on the phone to the FAA and NORAD, a busy or dead signal is all they got?) As this, AA flight 11, was the first plane to strike its target (the WTC North Tower), one could reasonably argue that the authorities’ response hangs on how it chose to react to this first flight deviation. Instead, the commission offers this blunt statement with no explanation, “Boston Center did not follow the protocol in seeking military assistance through the prescribed chain of command.”(p.20) And again they make a similar statement: “The defense of U.S. airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre-existing training and protocol.”(p.31) The report also claims that some NORAD personnel were less than honest in answering some of the commission’s questions. So the big follow-up question is why? In their end notation, the commission report writers give us a glimpse. “On 9/11, NORAD was scheduled to conduct a military exercise, Vigilant Guardian.”(p.458) This is where the analysis of Michael Ruppert, author of Crossing the Rubicon, begins and becomes most helpful. Ruppert asserts that it is quite possible, that within the confusion of a military exercise that strangely enough hypothesized a scenario of hijacked aircraft (one can imagine that given this preposterous coincidence that personnel would become confused, operating at the nexus of reality and the virtual reality of a war game scenario), the attacks were able to have their success. According to Ruppert, in order for this to happen, there had to be complicity and facility at the highest levels of government. This is, of course, the most frightening scenario of all, an area in which the commission, not surprisingly, dares not tread.
Amazingly, at one point it is stated, “The 9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack.”(p.169) Also, there is this: “ . . . it cost al Qaeda about $30 million per year to sustain its activities before 9/11.”(p.170) Compare this to the CIA’s annual budget of $30 billion, 1,000 times that of al Qaeda’s. And Osama bin Laden is still unaccounted for? What, exactly, is wrong with this picture?
There is also the issue of semantics. “Calling this struggle [the “war on terrorism”] a war accurately describes the use of American and allied forces to find and destroy terrorist groups and their allies in the field . . . ”(p.363) This follows what on the same page the commission writes “terrorism is a tactic . . . ”(p.363) So which is it? How, exactly, does one prosecute a war against a tactic? Calling a war a “war on terrorism” makes about as much sense as declaring war on war. What is the difference between war and terror?
Then there is the laundry list of things that go completely ignored by the commission’s report. Here’s a sample: no where is Colleen Rowley (an FBI field agent in Minnesota) mentioned by name, nor is the promotion of Rowley’s superiors at FBI headquarters who obstructed and thwarted Rowley’s investigation, the collapse of WTC 7 and what might have caused it, Bush’s reaction to the news that a second plane had hit the WTC, the expedited removal of steel debris from ground zero before proper metallurgic tests could be done, the Israeli “art students” who shadowed the 9/11 hijackers, Attorney General John Ashcroft’s decision to stop using civilian aircraft in the days prior to 9/11, and the likely shootdown of United flight 93 over Pennsylvania. (Instead, the commission devotes an interesting six pages as to who has the authority to give a shootdown order.) In one case, the commission is outright erroneous when it writes that the special Saudi flights only began after the nationwide air traffic grounding order had been lifted. Many news reports have written that the flights did indeed occur while everyone else in America who was an air passenger was stranded at airports.
The final 65 pages of the report is devoted to policy recommendations (a nod to the Bush administration’s “suggestion” for the commission to be more “forward thinking”). These recommendations include more widespread use of biometrics for identification purposes and the creation of a “national intelligence director” position as well as a “national counterterrorism center.” Iran-contra convict, John Negroponte, has realized the national intelligence director position.
Since the majority of this report doesn’t focus directly on the 9/11 attacks themselves, preferring instead to use lots of filler in the background of U.S. counterterrorism policy and the history of the al Qaeda movement, and, of course, the just mentioned recommendations, one can easily envision this being a report that the administration would be well satisfied with. No wonder so many copies were rushed to print. Fortunately, there are plenty of other resources available for the curious and astute reader. Foremost there is Michael Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon. No one to date has dared to put into print the accusation that the Bush administration had explicit complicity in the events of 9/11 themselves. Given how the attacks were such a tremendous aberration in terms of historical events in the linear continuum, it would seem that Ruppert’s conclusion is among the most rational. Better for the reader to reward Ruppert’s beyond courageous work by buying a copy of his book, than to drop $10 on what amounts to pretty much a whitewash, even with its 100 plus pages of fine print notation.
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