Posted by Tina
Trump has set fire in the media once again with a casual remark filled with fireworks. He asserted that George W. Bush was responsible for 911 because it happened under his watch. Trump then went on in typical fashion to point out how under his leadership such things wouldn’t happen. He’d take care of the border situation, for one thing. He also cites as proof his book, “The America We Deserve” in which he warned of Osama bin Laden’s evil intentions and the possibility of a WMD attack on our nation:
“One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan,” he wrote prior to the 2001 attacks. “He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.”
Since this remarkable boast the 911 issue is once again being bantered about in the media. The National Journal claims the wrong question is being asked in it’s piece, “Trump is Right about 911”:
There’s no way of knowing for sure if Bush could have stopped the September 11 attacks. But that’s not the right question. The right question is: Did Bush do everything he could reasonably have to stop them, given what he knew at the time? And he didn’t. It’s not even close. (emphasis mine)
Once again I have to say, the events of history should be placed in proper context. And Trump and the National Journal are not doing that. Not even close.
There are a number of things that differ in the reality of today compared to the reality of pre-911 2001. We must place ourselves in the proper time and setting if we are going to offer accurate analysis and assign responsibility. Consider:
During the Clinton administration we had intel on Osama bin Laden. Clinton himself said on September 10, 2001 that he had an opportunity to get bin Laden and chose not to do it:
“I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.”
I have to wonder, why not use our special forces as Obama did? Clinton offers a possible explanation, he had no “legal authority.”
The Huffingtonn Post reported a somewhat different version in a 2012 article:
Hank Crumpton, a former CIA officer and top counterterrorism official, said in a recent interview that President Bill Clinton’s White House missed a golden opportunity to take out terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in 1999.
Bin Laden was in Afghanistan in 1999, Crumpton told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in a segment that aired on Sunday. His convoy had been clearly identified by an early edition Predator drone, which at the time didn’t have weapons capabilities.
“We saw a security detail, a convoy, and we saw bin Laden exit the vehicle, clearly,” Crumpton told CBS’s Lara Logan, describing aerial images captured by a drone flying somewhere outside of Kandahar. “The optics were spot in, it was beaming back to us, CIA headquarters. We immediately alerted the White House, and the Clinton administration’s response was, ‘Well, it will take several hours for the TLAMs, the cruise missiles launched from submarines, to reach that objective. So, you need to tell us where bin Laden will be five or six hours from now.’ The frustration was enormous.”
The administration also denied the CIA’s request to engage their on-ground forces, Crumpton said, which could have acted more quickly. The missed opportunity led the CIA to speed the process of arming the unmanned drones with Hellfire missiles, so that they could act more swiftly if they found bin Laden again.
Bill Clinton appears to care more about his legacy than his obligation to protect the American people. It doesn’t make sense to me that he would not allow his ground forces to do the work they were trained to do. But this was toward the end of his administration and the nation was beginning to focus on the coming election, an election that would be extremely controversial and delay the ultimate decision by two months.
The Bush v Gore presidential race was not about foreign policy. It was about the economy and domestic issues:
Domestic issues as opposed to foreign policy dominated the campaign. Key issues were prescription drug prices, campaign finance reform, Social Security, and education. Each candidate claimed their economic plan would reduce the deficit.
The voting took place and an outcome produced…eventually. Prior to Bush taking office there was a little matter of the hanging chad, a ridiculous circus that helped delay the official outcome of the election until January of 2001. The transition period normally afforded a newly elected president was shortened by a couple of months as the Bush team dealt with lawsuits and uncertainty.
Osama bin Laden was not on the front burners. Even with intel the events that would happen seven months later were not being anticipated in a specific sense. Attacks involving airlines in prior times were hostage situations. Nobody imagined terrorists would fly our jets into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. No one could have imagined that another flight would be thwarted that was probably meant for the Capitol Building or the White House. Things were much different for everyone pre-911.
Even concerns about a possible WMD attack were not on the front burner. It was just part of a package of intelligence concerns that had been known for many years and was the stuff of action movies. Only after 911 did it become an immediate compelling concern. If terrorists would kill themselves by flying planes into buildings would they also die delivering a WMD. The anthrax letters only added to the feelings of pending dread.
America was in shock
Of course Bush is responsible for events on his watch. One thing that happened on his watch was the 911 commission. It determined that one of the major problems pre-911 was that our intelligence agencies were not communicating with each other and therefore failed to “connect the dots.” These are the agencies that would have been informing President Bush.
It was also revealed during the commission hearings that Jamie Gorelick, who served as Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno and Bill Clinton, constructed a wall of separation between the agencies:
The Gorelick memo of 1995 erected a “wall” between counter-intelligence and law enforcement, which impeded investigation of al Qaeda in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks. Jamie Gorelick, then working as Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno was author of the memo.
The wall was nominally created in response to the “legitimate fear that agents denied criminal warrants would gain information through the backdoor from their buddies working under FISA.” [1]
Scott Wheeler wrote: Because the memo created a barrier for U.S. intelligence agencies to share information with the FBI, one of its unintended consequences might have been to prevent the FBI from receiving the necessary intelligence to stop the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the worst in American history. [2]
Attorney General John Ashcroft told the 9/11 commission: “The simple fact of September 11th is this … We did not know an attack was coming because for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to its enemies. Our agents were isolated by government-imposed walls.” [3]
At issue in the hearings was whether Clinton, Reno and Gorelick or Bush and Ashcroft were more responsible for the effect the “wall” had. The Democrats acknowledged building the wall but blamed the Republicans for leaving it in place.
Okay…did the Clinton administration inform the Bush people about this wall? Why would they? Would the issue have come up in any briefings with the President? I doubt it.
So the notion that Bush should have taken down the wall or that he could have done more is specious politicking.
We could go back thousands of years and find “if only” scenarios to explain failures regarding the evil march of evil terrorists. But it wouldn’t be any more helpful or prudent than are these ridiculous insinuations about Bush.
Politics! What a stupid game.
Just being the president when something extremely bad happens, like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 is going to cause a never ending string of accusations. There will never be enough answers to satisfy the conspiracy people.
However, Bush did have some warning. He was emphatically warned 12 times in 7 months that something big was coming, but it was so generalized we didn’t know where to start. However, if we look at the methods Muslim terrorists were using just before 9/11 we could conclude that tall buildings were a prime target and none more prime than the Twin Towers. They had been hit once before and they failed to bring it down, even more reason to think of them as targets. Next, terrorists were also hijacking planes, a lot of planes. And they were practicing bombing passenger planes just before 9/11.
There were many diverse clues…some might say enough to put together some likely scenarios and then take pre-emptive active to minimize the threats. That part was not done before 9/11 and afterward, we got totally stupid about it.
Our alphabet agencies didn’t ramp up to these warnings. In fact the warnings went unheeded, so much so, that when the key piece to 9/11 was gift wrapped and hand delivered to the FBI (Arab Muslims in flight school behaving suspiciously, learning to fly passenger jets but not land) the FBI failed to grasp the significance of it and nothing happened…nothing. It was just another suspicious incident report to be kicked up the FBI stairs to the big pile from other reports.
In the perfect clarity of hindsight we had many opportunities to stop 9/11. But, at the time it was really hard to know where to defend. There was a few things we should have done and didn’t…. The Airline Flight Attendants Union strongly asked that those cockpit doors on big planes be kept locked and strengthened. (Nah, too expensive, pilots like the door to be open anyway, its more friendly) And then there was Carter and Clinton, they both gutted the CIA and we lost valuable eyes and ears on the ground in those place where the hijackers came from or were being directed from.
Lots and lots of blame to go around on this one. So, yes Bush might have done a few things to help prevent a 9/11 attack, but we can’t close all our doors and chances a determined enemy would have just found another way to get us. Maybe their plan B wouldn’t have killed 3,000 people, but it would have done a lot of damage…that much you can count on.
Jack you wrote, “There were many diverse clues…some might say enough to put together some likely scenarios and then take pre-emptive active (action) to minimize the threats.”
I can imagine putting together some likely scenarios, even taking some preemptive action, as with the pilots learning to fly but not land. But I can’t imagine how we could have known enough to prevent what happened. Since you have some experience in these matters I sincerely ask what could have been done? And wouldn’t some of it require a great deal of luck?
I guess adamant Monday Morning quarterbacking just bugs me. I get Trump is just politicking and blowing his own horn but it still bugs me.
Tina, luck has a fair amount to do with any outcome in terrorism and law enforcement in general. It’s amazing to me to see how many times fate intervened to change the outcome of man’s best made plans. We think we’re in control, but in reality we’re not…it happens enough that even the atheist must conclude there are things going on beyond our ability to comprehend. Now back to subject, could Bush have prevented 9/11, probably not. Could we as a network of law enforcement and security agencies done more? Absolutely…and if we had we might have prevented the 9/11 attack. There were clues and people in this trade fumbled on the 1 yard line. But, that’s just my opinion. I just know what I would have done with the info. about middle east people learning to control an airliner in flight but not land. My instinct and common sense would have went thru the roof with this info and I would have been on it like a bulldog.
Thanks Jack. I agree with you and deplore the fact that law enforcement basically had their hands tied.
I also realize an Achilles heal in America is our Constitutional rights. Until a crime is committed and all that. Is there something you could have done with the information about middle eastern men learning to fly (but not land) other than keep an eye on them, hoping their targets and the date would be revealed?
I’m struggling with a difference I perceive. Bill Clinton isn’t held accountable in the same way that Bush is yet he had the opportunity to send in ground forces to take bin Laden out in real time. Bush’s big failure is that he didn’t know what he could have known if only the wall had not been there.
Like I said MM quarterbacking bugs me, especially by Trump in this situation! But it also bugs me that this double standard continues to be maintained and a huge swath of the American people will continue to buy it.
You’d think I’d be used to it by now 🙂
This is why I read Post Scripts. Brilliant.
“I just know what I would have done with the info. about middle east people learning to control an airliner in flight but not land.”
No you don’t. Now, after the fact, you think you do, but, in real time, as you say … it would have taken a whole lot to persuade you that a handful of doofuses could have the audacity to take some Bruce Willis scenario into … real time.
Now, after the Aurora shooting, the Charleston shooting, the Roseburg shooting have made such audacities quite commonplace, you don’t wanna do nothin’. Why is that?
Seriously, I want you to think about it. Why is that?
Why so those dastardly Arabs have to be incarcerated sans due process … but your lone wolf white boys don’t even have to get background checked?
Jack seems to be absent; maybe he’s out of town.
Anyhoo, your accusation is wrong. Jack’s solution, as he’s articulated many times, is trained armed guards and/or teachers and school officials with concealed carry permits…you just don’t like that solution.
A new background check law wouldn’t have stopped Adam Lanza who used guns purchased legally by his mother who became Lanza’s first victim.
A new law wouldn’t have stopped James Holmes whose weapons were purchased legally after his name was submitted to the National Instant Criminal background Check system (NICS) for background check.
Likewise Jared Laughner’s name wasn’t flagged by the NICS.
The Adam Lanza case proves background checks won’t stop a determined killer. He will just steal the weapons he wants.
Hi Tina, I’m here. I’ve just been really busy.
That’s what I figured.
I hate to answer for you but I also hate to see the question go unanswered for what seems like too long. Just my dysfunctional need to please, lol.
What would I have done? Okay, lets say my agency had done their job and for the last few months I had been getting warnings about a major terrorist attack about to happen. This keeps me alert and prioritized, something that apparently didn’t happen with our FBI field agents.
Now lets say I get information that Arab nationals at a commercial flight school in FL are learning to control a commercial plane, but not to land it. I’m already jacked up about Arabs planning an attack, so naturally my first thought would be, okay, lets see who we have learning to fly! Hey, this is just common sense, right?
Now, at the very least, I would have done a link analysis on the subjects in question. Now this is where expertise helps!
Even back then the ability to connect dots with a link analysis is pretty darn good. From that overnight research I would know their most immediate associates, most likely I would soon know their green card status, some family history, home address, phone numbers in FL, maybe a credit card number or bank account number, some travel history, and this is just for starters. This is just SOP.
The Saudi Intel (SNSC) was pretty helpful at this time. No doubt just asking for help would have produced some really good intel.
Already, I have several red flags pop up because a couple of the student’s are here illegally. I see that we have unusual travel patterns, we monitor phone calls now… oh, and this is all real stuff, I’m not just making it up, this really is typical.
Now I know these guys are really suspicious and at the moment they are my best lead on a possible terrorist organization about to hit the US. With just a little extra effort I can find out that they are only removed from bin Laden by 3 or less separations. Yeah, we had that ability on 9/11, we could have really worked up some serious background on them…IF we were only motivated enough.
Okay, at this point its really looking serious to me and I’ve only been on it for a couple of days. To me, with just what I had so far, it looks like a hijack/suicide mission because there are too many people, profiles too similar, cant be a simple hijacking. What does this pilot training suggest? Right…suicide mission….its only too obvious. Okay, so let consider it could be a suicide mission, but where, and how? I think, they will probably hit one or more targets to cause the most mass causalities possible, possibly using large aircraft similar to what they’ve been training in. Doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure this out.
Days pass as we surveil, but nothing unusual. Then we monitor credit card traffic or telephone traffic, these guys and by now maybe we are on to the other Arab team from Saudi Arabia…and they are all buying east coast airline tickets, one way, all the same day, different airports, but about the same departure time. Could it be any more obvious now? No. But, it had to start somewhere and that was way back at the flight school. That was a great lead and we fumbled it.