Man Warned Twin Towers Would Be Attacked Again

THE 9/11 Commission REPORT Final Study 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 information technology to the President of the United States, the United States Congress, and the American people for their consideration. Ten Commissioners-five Republicans and five Democrats chosen by elected leaders from our nation's capital at a time of groovy partisan division-have come together to present this report without dissent. We have come together with a unity of purpose because our nation demands it. September xi, 2001, was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United states of america. The nation was unprepared. A NATION TRANSFORMED At 8:46 on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United states of america became a nation transformed. An airliner traveling at hundreds of miles per hour and carrying some 10,000 gallons of jet fuel plowed into the North Tower of the Globe Merchandise Centre in Lower Manhattan. At nine:03, a second airliner hit the South Tower. Fire and smoke billowed upward. Steel, glass, ash, and bodies vicious below. The Twin Towers, where up to fifty,000 people worked each 24-hour interval, both collapsed less than 90 minutes later. At 9:37 that aforementioned morning, a third airliner slammed into the western face of the Pentagon. At 10:03, a fourth airliner crashed in a field in southern Pennsylvania. Information technology had been aimed at the Us Capitol or the White House, and was forced down past heroic passengers armed with the knowledge that America was nether attack. More than 2,600 people died at the World Trade Heart; 125 died at the Pentagon; 256 died on the four planes. The death cost surpassed that at Pearl Harbor in Dec 1941. This immeasurable pain was inflicted by 19 young Arabs interim at the behest of Islamist extremists headquartered in distant Afghanistan. Some had been in the U.s.a. for more than a year, mixing with the residue of the population. Though four had training as pilots, most were not well-educated. Nigh spoke English poorly, some hardly at all. In groups of 4 or v, conveying with them only small knives, box cutters, and cans of Mace or pepper spray, they had hijacked the four planes and turned them into deadly guided missiles. Why did they practice this? How was the assault planned and conceived? How did the U.S. regime fail to anticipate and prevent information technology? What can nosotros practise in the future to prevent similar acts of terrorism? A Daze, Not a Surprise The nine/eleven attacks were a stupor, 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 big numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade. In February 1993, a group led past Ramzi Yousef tried to bring downward the Earth Merchandise Centre with a truck flop. They killed 6 and wounded a thousand. Plans by Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and other New York City landmarks were frustrated when the plotters were arrested. In Oct 1993, Somali tribesmen shot down U.Southward. helicopters, killing 18 and wounding 73 in an incident that came to be known as "Blackness Hawk downwardly." Years afterwards information technology would be learned that those Somali tribesmen had received aid from al Qaeda. In early 1995, constabulary in Manila uncovered a plot past Ramzi Yousef to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners while they were flight over the Pacific. In November 1995, a automobile bomb exploded outside the office of the U.S. program manager for the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh, killing v Americans and two others. In June 1996, a truck bomb demolished the Khobar Towers flat complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and wounding hundreds. The attack was carried out primarily by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had received assistance from the government of Iran. Until 1997, the U.S. intelligence community viewed Bin Ladin as a financier of terrorism, not every bit a terrorist leader. In February 1998, Usama Bin Ladin and four others issued a cocky-styled fatwa, publicly declaring that it was God'southward decree that every Muslim should endeavour his utmost to kill any American, military machine or civilian, anywhere in the earth, because of American "occupation" of Islam's holy places and assailment against Muslims. In August 1998, Bin Ladin's grouping, al Qaeda, carried out virtually-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. In December 1999, Jordanian police foiled a plot to flop hotels and other sites frequented by American tourists, and a U.S. Customs agent arrested Ahmed Ressam at the U.S. Canadian border equally he was smuggling in explosives intended for an attack on Los Angeles International Airport. In October 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, about sinking the vessel and killing 17 American sailors. The 9/eleven attacks on the Globe Trade Center and the Pentagon were far more elaborate, precise, and destructive than any of these earlier assaults. But by September 2001, the executive branch of the U.S. regime, the Congress, the news media, and the American public had received clear alert that Islamist terrorists meant to kill Americans in loftier numbers. Who Is the Enemy? Who is this enemy that created an arrangement 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/xi attack was driven past Usama Bin Ladin. In the 1980s, young Muslims from around the world went to Afghanistan to join as volunteers in a jihad (or holy struggle) against the Soviet Union. A wealthy Saudi, Usama Bin Ladin, was one of them. Following the defeat of the Soviets in the belatedly 1980s, Bin Ladin and others formed al Qaeda to mobilize jihads elsewhere. The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin shapes and spreads his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of Islam's 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 change as they confront modernity and globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources-Islam, history, and the region's political and economical angst. Bin Ladin also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, which is the domicile of Islam's holiest sites, and against other U.S. policies in the Heart East. Upon this political and ideological foundation, Bin Ladin built over the class of a decade a dynamic and lethal arrangement. He built an infrastructure and organization in Afghanistan that could attract, railroad train, and use recruits against ever more than ambitious targets. He rallied new zealots and new money with each demonstration of al Qaeda's capability. He had forged a shut alliance with the Taliban, a regime providing sanctuary for al Qaeda. Past September xi, 2001, al Qaeda possessed leaders able to evaluate, approve, and supervise the planning and direction of a major operation; a personnel system that could recruit candidates, indoctrinate them, vet them, and give them the necessary training; communications sufficient to enable planning and direction of operatives and those who would be helping them; an intelligence effort to gather required data and form assessments of enemy strengths and weaknesses; the power to motility people great distances; and the power to raise and move the coin necessary to finance an attack. 1998 to September 11, 2001 The August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania established al Qaeda as a potent antagonist of the U.s.. Later on launching prowl missile strikes against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the embassy bombings, the Clinton administration applied 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 foreign agents to capture or kill 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 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 somewhen culminate in the 9/11 attacks. Bin Ladin and his chief 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 as KSM, to bear out worldwide terrorist operations. KSM claims that his original plot was fifty-fifty grander than those carried out on 9/11-10 planes would attack targets on both the E and Westward coasts of the U.s.a.. This plan was modified past Bin Ladin, KSM said, owing to its scale and complication. Bin Ladin provided KSM with four initial operatives for suicide plane attacks within the The states, and in the fall of 1999 preparation for the attacks began. New recruits included four from a cell of expatriate Muslim extremists who had clustered together in Hamburg, Frg. One became the tactical commander of the operation in the United States: Mohamed Atta. U.South. intelligence frequently picked up reports of attacks planned by al Qaeda. Working with strange security services, the CIA broke upward some al Qaeda cells. The cadre of Bin Ladin'due south arrangement nevertheless remained intact. In Dec 1999, news about the arrests of the terrorist cell in Hashemite kingdom of jordan and the arrest of a terrorist at the U.Southward.-Canadian border became part of a "millennium alarm." The government was galvanized, and the public was on alert for whatsoever possible attack. In Jan 2000, the intense intelligence effort glimpsed and so lost sight of ii operatives destined for the "planes operation." Spotted in Kuala Lumpur, the pair were lost passing through Bangkok. On Jan fifteen, 2000, they arrived in Los Angeles. Because these two al Qaeda operatives had spent little time in the West and spoke little, if any, English language, it is plausible that they or KSM would have tried to identify, in accelerate, a friendly contact in the United States. We explored suspicions about whether these two operatives had a support network of accomplices in the U.s.. The evidence is thin-simply not there for some cases, more worrisome in others. We do know that soon after arriving in California, the two al Qaeda operatives sought out and plant a group of ideologically agreeing Muslims with roots in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, individuals mainly associated with a immature Yemeni and others who attended a mosque in San Diego. Afterward a brief stay in Los Angeles almost which nosotros know little, the al Qaeda operatives lived openly in San Diego under their truthful names. They managed to avoid attracting much attending. Past the summertime of 2000, three of the four Hamburg cell members had arrived on the East Coast of the United States and had begun pilot training. In early 2001, a fourth hereafter hijacker airplane pilot, Hani Hanjour, journeyed to Arizona with another operative, Nawaf al Hazmi, and conducted his refresher pilot preparation there. 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 Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. They besides renewed secret efforts with some of the Taliban'south opponents-the Northern Alliance-to get enough intelligence to attack Bin Ladin directly. Diplomatic efforts centered on the new military government in Pakistan, and they did not succeed. The efforts with the Northern Brotherhood revived an inconclusive and secret debate about whether the Usa should take sides in Afghanistan'southward ceremonious state of war and support the Taliban'south enemies. The CIA as well produced a plan to ameliorate intelligence collection on al Qaeda, including the utilize of a pocket-sized, unmanned airplane with a video camera, known every bit the Predator. Afterward the October 2000 assail on the USS Cole, bear witness accumulated that it had been launched past al Qaeda operatives, just without confirmation that Bin Ladin had given the order. The Taliban had earlier been warned that information technology would exist held responsible for another Bin Ladin attack on the United States. The CIA described its findings as a "preliminary judgment"; President Clinton and his chief advisers told united states they were waiting for a conclusion before deciding whether to take military activeness. The war machine alternatives remained unappealing to them. The transition to the new Bush administration in late 2000 and early 2001 took identify with the Cole issue even so awaiting. President George W. Bush-league and his chief advisers accustomed that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the Cole, but did not similar the options available 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 risk free. The Bush administration began developing a new strategy with the stated goal of eliminating the al Qaeda threat inside iii to five years. During the spring and summer of 2001, U.South. intelligence agencies received a stream of warnings that al Qaeda planned, as one report put it, "something very, very, very big." Director of Fundamental Intelligence George Tenet told us, "The organisation was blinking cherry." Although Bin Ladin was determined to strike in the United States, equally President Clinton had been told and President Bush was reminded in a Presidential Daily Brief article briefed to him in August 2001, the specific threat information pointed overseas. Numerous precautions were taken overseas. Domestic agencies were not 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 program in 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 well-nigh the Predator shipping, which was before long to be 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'southward principal advisers approved the typhoon 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 performance" was progressing, the plotters had issues of their own in 2001. Several possible participants dropped out; others could not gain entry into the United States (including one denial at a port of entry and visa denials not related to terrorism). One of the eventual pilots may have considered abandoning the planes functioning. Zacarias Moussaoui, who showed up at a flight training school in Minnesota, may have been a candidate to supercede him. Some of the vulnerabilities of the plotters get clear in retrospect. Moussaoui aroused suspicion for seeking fast-track training on how to pilot large jet airliners. He was arrested on August 16, 2001, for violations of immigration regulations. In late August, officials in the intelligence community realized that the terrorists spotted in Southeast Asia in Jan 2000 had arrived in the United States. These cases did non prompt urgent action. No one working on these belatedly leads in the summertime of 2001 connected them to the high level of threat reporting. In the words of ane official, no analytic work foresaw the lightning that could connect the thundercloud to the ground. As final preparations were under style during the summer of 2001, dissent emerged among al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan over whether to proceed. The Taliban's chief, 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 day began with the 19 hijackers getting through a security checkpoint organization that they had evidently analyzed and knew how to defeat. Their success rate in penetrating the organization was 19 for 19.They took over the iv flights, taking advantage of air crews and cockpits that were not prepared for the contingency of a suicide hijacking. On 9/11, the defense of U.South. air space depended on shut interaction between two federal agencies: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Northward American Aerospace Defence force Command (NORAD). Existing protocols on 9/xi were unsuited in every respect for an attack in which hijacked planes were used as weapons. What ensued was a hurried try to improvise a defense by civilians who had never handled a hijacked shipping that attempted to disappear, and by a military unprepared for the transformation of commercial shipping into weapons of mass devastation. A shootdown authority was not communicated to the NORAD air defense sector until 28 minutes subsequently United 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania. Planes were scrambled, but ineffectively, every bit they did non know where to get or what targets they were to intercept. And once the shootdown club was given, it was non communicated to the pilots. In short, while leaders in Washington believed that the fighters circling to a higher place them had been instructed to "take out" hostile aircraft, the just orders actually conveyed to the pilots were to "ID type and tail." Similar the national defence force, the emergency response on 9/xi was necessarily improvised. In New York City, the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police Department, the Port Potency of New York and New Jersey, the building employees, and the occupants of the buildings did their best to cope with the effects of well-nigh unimaginable events-unfolding furiously over 102 minutes. Casualties were well-nigh 100 percent at and higher up the affect zones and were very high among starting time responders who stayed in danger equally they tried to save lives. Despite weaknesses in preparations for disaster, failure to achieve unified incident command, and inadequate communications amongst responding agencies, all but approximately ane hundred of the thousands of civilians who worked below the impact zone escaped, often with help from the emergency responders. At the Pentagon, while there were also problems of control and control, the emergency response was generally constructive. The Incident Control Organization, a formalized direction structure for emergency response in place in the National Capital letter Region, overcame the inherent complications of a response beyond local, state, and federal jurisdictions. Operational Opportunities Nosotros write with the do good and handicap of hindsight. We are mindful of the danger of beingness unjust to men and women who made choices in conditions of uncertainty and in circumstances over which they often had piffling control. Nonetheless, in that location were specific points of vulnerability in the plot and opportunities to disrupt it. Operational failures-opportunities that were not or could not be exploited by the organizations and systems of that fourth dimension-included not watchlisting future hijackers Hazmi and Mihdhar, non trailing them after they traveled to Bangkok, and not informing the FBI about one time to come hijacker'due south U.South. visa or his companion's travel to the U.s.; not sharing data linking individuals in the Cole set on to Mihdhar; not taking adequate steps in time to find Mihdhar or Hazmi in the United States; not linking the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, described every bit interested in flight training for the purpose of using an airplane in a terrorist act, to the heightened indications of attack; not discovering simulated statements on visa applications; non recognizing passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner; not expanding no-fly lists to include names from terrorist watchlists; not searching airline passengers identified by the computer-based CAPPS screening system; and non hardening aircraft cockpit doors or taking other measures to fix for the possibility of suicide hijackings. GENERAL FINDINGS Since the plotters were flexible and resourceful, we cannot know whether whatsoever unmarried step or series of steps would accept defeated them. What we tin can say with confidence is that none of the measures adopted by the U.South. government from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al Qaeda plot. Across the government, there were failures of imagination, policy, capabilities, and management. Imagination The about important failure was i of imagination. Nosotros do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat. The terrorist danger from Bin Ladin and al Qaeda was non a major topic for policy debate amongst the public, the media, or in the Congress. Indeed, it barely came up during the 2000 presidential campaign. Al Qaeda'south new brand of terrorism presented challenges to U.Southward. governmental institutions that they were not well-designed to meet. Though top officials all told united states that they understood the danger, nosotros believe in that location was uncertainty among them as to whether this was just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary terrorist threat the United States had lived with for decades, or it was indeed radically new, posing a threat beyond any yet experienced. Every bit tardily as September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke, the White Business firm staffer long responsible for counterterrorism policy coordination, asserted that the regime had non yet made up its heed how to respond the question: "Is al Qida a large deal?" A week later came the answer. Policy Terrorism was not the overriding national security business concern for the U.S. government 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.S. invasion of Afghanistan as practically inconceivable before ix/11. Capabilities Before ix/11, the United States tried to solve the al Qaeda problem with the capabilities it had used in the last stages of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. These capabilities were insufficient. Little was done to aggrandize or reform them. The CIA had minimal chapters to conduct paramilitary operations with its own personnel, and it did not seek a large-scale expansion of these capabilities before 9/11. The CIA also needed to improve its capability to collect intelligence from man agents. At no point earlier 9/11 was the Department of Defense fully engaged in the mission of countering al Qaeda, fifty-fifty though this was perhaps the most unsafe strange enemy threatening the United states of america. America's homeland defenders faced outward. NORAD itself was barely able to retain any warning bases at all. Its planning scenarios occasionally considered the danger of hijacked aircraft beingness guided to American targets, merely just shipping that were coming from overseas. The most serious weaknesses in agency capabilities were in the domestic arena. The FBI did not have the capability to link the collective cognition of agents in the field to national priorities. Other domestic agencies deferred to the FBI. FAA capabilities were weak. Any serious exam of the possibility of a suicide hijacking could take suggested changes to fix glaring vulnerabilities-expanding no-wing lists, searching passengers identified by the CAPPS screening arrangement, deploying federal air marshals domestically, hardening cockpit doors, alerting air crews to a unlike kind of hijacking possibility than they had been trained to await. Notwithstanding the FAA did non adjust either its own training or grooming with NORAD to take account of threats other than those experienced in the past. Management The missed opportunities to thwart the 9/11 plot were as well symptoms of a broader inability to adapt the fashion regime manages problems to the new challenges of the twenty-first century. Action officers should have been able to describe on all bachelor knowledge about al Qaeda in the regime. Management should have ensured that information was shared and duties were clearly assigned across agencies, and across the foreign-domestic divide. In that location were also broader direction issues with respect to how top leaders set up priorities and allocated resources. 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 inside CIA or the Community." The memorandum had little overall effect on mobilizing the CIA or the intelligence community. This episode indicates the limitations of the DCI's authority over the direction of the intelligence community, including agencies within the Department of Defense. The U.S. authorities did not find a way of pooling intelligence and using information technology to guide the planning and consignment of responsibilities for joint operations involving entities as disparate every bit the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, the military machine, and the agencies involved in homeland security. SPECIFIC FINDINGS Unsuccessful Diplomacy Beginning in February 1997, and through September 11, 2001, the U.S. authorities tried to use diplomatic pressure to persuade the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to end being a sanctuary for al Qaeda, and to expel Bin Ladin to a country where he could face justice. These efforts included warnings and sanctions, simply they all failed. The U.S. regime also pressed two successive Pakistani governments to need that the Taliban cease providing a sanctuary for Bin Ladin and his organization and, failing that, to cutting off their support for the Taliban. Before 9/11, the United States could not find a mix of incentives and pressure that would persuade Pakistan to reconsider its fundamental relationship with the Taliban. From 1999 through early on 2001, the United States pressed the United Arab Emirates, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to pause off ties and enforce sanctions, especially those related to air travel to Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. These efforts accomplished little before nine/11. Saudi arabia has been a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism. Before 9/eleven, the Saudi and U.Due south. governments did not fully share intelligence information or develop an acceptable joint effort to rails and disrupt the finances of the al Qaeda organization. On the other mitt, regime officials of Kingdom of saudi arabia at the highest levels worked closely with top U.S. officials in major initiatives to solve the Bin Ladin problem with affairs. Lack of Military Options In response to the request of policymakers, the military prepared an array of limited strike options for attacking Bin Ladin and his organisation 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 military machine officials and policymakers placed smashing accent on actionable intelligence as the key factor in recommending or deciding to launch military activeness against Bin Ladin and his organization. They did not want to risk significant collateral harm, and they did not desire to miss Bin Ladin and thus brand the The states wait weak while making Bin Ladin await strong. On three specific occasions in 1998-1999, intelligence was deemed apparent enough to warrant planning for possible strikes to kill Bin Ladin. But in each case the strikes did not get forrad, because senior policymakers did not regard the intelligence as sufficiently actionable to offset their assessment of the risks. The Director of Fundamental Intelligence, policymakers, and armed forces officials expressed frustration with the lack of actionable intelligence. Some officials inside the Pentagon, including those in the special forces and the counterterrorism policy office, also expressed frustration with the lack of military activeness. The Bush administration began to develop new policies toward al Qaeda in 2001, but military machine plans did non change until after nine/11. Issues inside the Intelligence Community The intelligence community struggled throughout the 1990s and upward to 9/eleven to collect intelligence on and analyze the phenomenon of transnational terrorism. The combination of an overwhelming number of priorities, flat budgets, an outmoded structure, and bureaucratic rivalries resulted in an insufficient response to this new challenge. Many dedicated officers worked twenty-four hours and night for years to piece together the growing torso of testify on al Qaeda and to empathise the threats. However, while there were many reports on Bin Laden and his growing al Qaeda system, there was no comprehensive review of what the intelligence community knew and what information technology did not know, and what that meant. There was no National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism between 1995 and 9/11. Before 9/11, no bureau did more to attack al Qaeda than the CIA. But at that place were limits to what the CIA was able to attain past disrupting terrorist activities abroad and past using proxies to effort to capture Bin Ladin and his lieutenants in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan. CIA officers were aware of those limitations. To put it but, 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. But for more than three years, through both the tardily Clinton and early Bush administrations, the CIA relied on proxy forces, and there was growing frustration within the CIA'due south Counterterrorist Center and in the National Security Council staff with the lack of results. The evolution of the Predator and the button to help the Northern Brotherhood were products of this frustration. Issues in the FBI From the time of the first Globe Trade Center assail in 1993, FBI and Department of Justice leadership in Washington and New York became increasingly concerned about the terrorist threat from Islamist extremists to U.Southward. 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. Significant FBI resources were devoted to afterward-the-fact investigations of major terrorist attacks, resulting in several prosecutions. The FBI attempted several reform efforts aimed at strengthening its power to prevent such attacks, but these reform efforts failed to implement organization-broad institutional change. On September 11, 2001, the FBI was limited in several areas critical to an constructive preventive counterterrorism strategy. Those working counterterrorism matters did and so despite express intelligence drove and strategic analysis capabilities, a limited capacity to share data both internally and externally, bereft preparation, perceived legal barriers to sharing information, and inadequate resources. Permeable Borders and Immigration Controls In that location were opportunities for intelligence and police force enforcement to exploit al Qaeda's travel vulnerabilities. Considered collectively, the nine/11 hijackers included known al Qaeda operatives who could have been watchlisted; presented passports manipulated in a fraudulent way; presented passports with suspicious indicators of extremism; made detectable faux statements on visa applications; made false statements to border officials to proceeds entry into the United States; and violated immigration laws while in the The states. Neither the State Department'southward consular officers nor the Clearing and Naturalization Service'southward inspectors and agents were ever considered total partners in a national counterterrorism try. 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 metal content than a handgun and were most likely permissible. Though two of the hijackers were on the UsTIPOFF terrorist watchlist, the FAA did non apply TIPOFF data. The hijackers had to beat out only one layer of security-the security checkpoint procedure. Even though several hijackers were selected for actress screening past the CAPPS system, this led only to greater scrutiny of their checked baggage. Once on lath, the hijackers were faced with aircraft personnel who were trained to be nonconfrontational in the consequence of a hijacking. Financing The ix/eleven attacks toll somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute. The operatives spent more than $270,000 in the U.s.. Additional expenses included travel to obtain passports and visas, travel to the United States, expenses incurred by the plot leader and facilitators outside the Us, and expenses incurred by the people selected to be hijackers who ultimately did not participate. The conspiracy made extensive 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 among the billions of dollars flowing around the world every day. To date, we have not been able to make up one's mind the origin of the money used for the nine/11 attacks. Al Qaeda had many sources of funding and a pre-9/11 annual budget estimated at $30 million. If a detail source of funds had dried upward, al Qaeda could easily have plant enough coin elsewhere to fund the attack. An Improvised Homeland Defense The noncombatant and military defenders of the nation's airspace-FAA and NORAD-were unprepared for the attacks launched against them. Given that lack of preparedness, they attempted and failed to improvise an effective homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge. The events of that forenoon do not reflect discredit on operational personnel. NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector personnel reached out for information and fabricated the best judgments they could based on the data they received. Individual FAA controllers, facility managers, and command center managers were creative and active in recommending a nationwide alarm, ground-stopping local traffic, ordering all aircraft nationwide to country, and executing that unprecedented order flawlessly. At more senior levels, advice was poor. Senior military and FAA leaders had no effective advice with each other. The chain of control did not part well. The President could non reach some senior officials. The Secretarial assistant of Defence did not enter the concatenation of command until the morning's key events were over. Air National Guard units with different rules of date were scrambled without the knowledge of the President, NORAD, or the National Military Command Center. Emergency Response The civilians, firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians, and emergency management professionals exhibited steady decision and resolve under horrifying, overwhelming weather on nine/11.Their actions saved lives and inspired a nation. Effective decisionmaking in New York was hampered by problems in command and control 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 than units were actually dispatched than were ordered past the chiefs; some units cocky-dispatched; and once units arrived at the World Trade Middle, they were neither comprehensively deemed for nor coordinated. The Port Say-so's response was hampered by the lack both of standard operating procedures and of radios capable of enabling multiple commands to respond to an incident in unified fashion. The New York Police Department, considering of its history of mobilizing thousands of officers for major events requiring crowd command, had a technical radio capability and protocols more easily adapted to an incident of the magnitude of 9/11. Congress The Congress, like the executive branch, responded slowly to the rise of transnational terrorism equally a threat to national security. The legislative branch adjusted footling and did not restructure itself to address changing threats. Its attention to terrorism was episodic and splintered across several committees. The Congress gave little guidance to executive branch agencies on terrorism, did non reform them in whatsoever significant way to meet the threat, and did not systematically perform robust oversight to place, address, and endeavour to resolve the many problems in national security and domestic agencies that became apparent in the aftermath of 9/11. And so long as oversight is undermined by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not become the security they want and need. The United states needs a potent, stable, and capable congressional committee structure to give America'south national intelligence agencies oversight, support, and leadership. Are We Safer? Since 9/11, the Us and its allies have killed or captured a majority of al Qaeda's leadership; toppled the Taliban, which gave al Qaeda sanctuary in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan; and severely damaged the organization. Still terrorist attacks continue. Fifty-fifty as nosotros have thwarted attacks, nearly everyone expects they will come. How can this be? The problem is that al Qaeda represents an ideological movement, not a finite group of people. It initiates and inspires, even if it no longer directs. In this fashion it has transformed itself into a decentralized force. Bin Ladin may be limited in his ability to organize major attacks from his hideouts. Yet killing or capturing him, while extremely of import, would not end terror. His message of inspiration to a new generation of terrorists would keep. Because of offensive actions against al Qaeda since 9/11, and defensive deportment to improve homeland security, we believe we are safer today. Merely we are not safe. Nosotros therefore brand the following recommendations that nosotros believe can brand America safer and more secure. RECOMMENDATIONS Three years after ix/11, the national debate continues nigh how to protect our nation in this new era. Nosotros divide our recommendations into ii basic parts: What to practise, and how to do it. WHAT TO DO? A GLOBAL STRATEGY The enemy is not just "terrorism." Information technology is the threat posed specifically past Islamist terrorism, by Bin Ladin and others who describe on a long tradition of extreme intolerance inside a minority strain of Islam that does not distinguish politics from religion, and distorts both. The enemy is not Islam, the not bad globe faith, but a perversion of Islam. The enemy goes beyond al Qaeda to include the radical ideological motion, inspired in part by al Qaeda, that has spawned other terrorist groups and violence. Thus our strategy must match our means to two ends: dismantling the al Qaeda network and, in the long term, prevailing over the ideology that contributes to Islamist terrorism. The starting time phase of our post-9/11 efforts rightly included military action to topple the Taliban and pursue al Qaeda. This piece of work continues. Only long-term success demands the use of all elements of national power: affairs, intelligence, covert activeness, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, public affairs, and homeland defense. If we favor 1 tool while neglecting others, we exit ourselves vulnerable and weaken our national effort. What should Americans look from their government? The goal seems unlimited: Defeat terrorism anywhere in the world. Only Americans have also been told to expect the worst: An set on is probably coming; information technology may exist more devastating even so. Vague goals match an amorphous pic of the enemy. Al Qaeda and other groups are popularly described as being all over the globe, adaptable, resilient, needing lilliputian higher-level organization, and capable of anything. It is an image of an almighty hydra of destruction. That image lowers expectations of government effectiveness. It lowers them as well far. Our report shows a adamant and capable group of plotters. Withal the group was fragile and occasionally left vulnerable past the marginal, unstable people often attracted to such causes. The enemy made mistakes. The U.S. government was not able to capitalize on them. No president tin can promise that a catastrophic attack like that of 9/11 volition non happen again. Only the American people are entitled to wait that officials volition have realistic objectives, articulate guidance, and constructive system. They are entitled to see standards for functioning and then they can judge, with the help of their elected representatives, whether the objectives are beingness met. We propose a strategy with iii dimensions: (1) attack terrorists and their organizations, (2) prevent the continued growth of Islamist terrorism, and (three) protect confronting and prepare for terrorist attacks. Attack Terrorists and Their Organizations Root out sanctuaries.The U.S. government should identify and prioritize actual or potential terrorist sanctuaries and have realistic country or regional strategies for each, utilizing every element of national power and reaching out to countries that can aid united states of america. Strengthen long-term U.S. 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 relationship beyond oil, a relationship that both sides can defend to their citizens and includes a shared commitment to reform. Prevent the Continued Growth of Islamist Terrorism In October 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked if enough was existence done "to fashion a broad integrated plan to stop the side by side generation of terrorists." As part of such a plan, the U.S. government should Define the message and stand as an example of moral leadership in the world. To Muslim parents, terrorists like Bin Ladin have nothing to offering their children but visions of violence and death. America and its friends have the advantage-our vision tin offer a better time to come. Where Muslim governments, even those who are friends, do non offer opportunity, respect the rule of law, or tolerate differences, and so the U.s. needs to stand for a better future. Communicate and defend American ideals in the Islamic globe, through much stronger public diplomacy to reach more than people, including students and leaders outside of government. Our efforts here should be every bit strong as they were in combating closed societies during the Cold War. Offer an agenda of opportunity that includes support for public education and economical 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 issues like the treatment of captured terrorists. Devote a maximum effort to the parallel task of countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Expect less from trying to dry out up terrorist money and more from post-obit the money for intelligence, as a tool to chase terrorists, empathise their networks, and disrupt their operations. Protect confronting and Prepare for Terrorist Attacks Target terrorist travel, an intelligence and security strategy that the 9/11 story showed could be at least equally powerful as the effort devoted to terrorist finance. Address problems of screening people with biometric identifiers across agencies and governments, including our border and transportation systems, by designing a comprehensive screening system that addresses mutual problems and sets common standards. As standards spread, this necessary and ambitious effort could dramatically strengthen the world'south power to intercept individuals who could pose catastrophic threats. Quickly complete a biometric entry-exit screening system, i that besides speeds qualified travelers. Set up standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such every bit driver's licenses. Develop strategies for neglected parts of our transportation security system. Since ix/11, near ninety percent of the nation's $five billion almanac investment in transportation security has gone to aviation, to fight the last war. In aviation, prevent arguments about a new computerized profiling system from delaying vital improvements in the "no-fly" and "automated selectee" lists. Also, requite priority to the improvement of checkpoint screening. Decide, 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 brunt 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 board 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 Urban center and Washington, D.C., at the summit of the electric current list. Such help should not remain a programme for full general revenue sharing or pork-butt spending. Make homeland security funding contingent on the adoption of an incident command system to strengthen teamwork in a crisis, including a regional arroyo. Classify more radio spectrum and improve connectivity for public safe communications, and encourage widespread adoption of newly developed standards for private-sector emergency preparedness-since the individual sector controls 85 percentage of the nation's critical infrastructure. HOW TO Practise Information technology? A Different WAY OF ORGANIZING GOVERNMENT The strategy we have recommended is elaborate, even equally presented here very briefly. To implement it will require a government ameliorate organized than the i that exists today, with its national security institutions designed half a century ago to win the Cold War. Americans should not settle for incremental, advert 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 try across the U.Southward. government. As one official now serving on the front lines overseas put it to u.s.a.: "One fight, one team." We call for unity of effort in five areas, beginning with unity of endeavor on the challenge of counterterrorism itself: unifying strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamist terrorists across the foreign-domestic divide with a National Counterterrorism Eye; unifying the intelligence community with a new National Intelligence Director; unifying the many participants in the counterterrorism attempt and their cognition in a network-based information sharing organisation that transcends traditional governmental boundaries; unifying and strengthening congressional oversight to ameliorate quality and accountability; and strengthening the FBI and homeland defenders. Unity of Effort: A National Counterterrorism Eye The ix/11 story teaches the value of integrating strategic intelligence from all sources into articulation operational planning-with both dimensions spanning the strange-domestic divide. In some ways, since 9/xi, articulation work has gotten improve. The endeavor of fighting terrorism has flooded over many of the usual agency boundaries because of its sheer quantity and energy. Attitudes have changed. Only the problems of coordination accept multiplied. The Defence force Section alone has three unified commands (SOCOM, CENTCOM, and NORTHCOM) that deal with terrorism as ane of their principal concerns. Much of the public commentary virtually the 9/eleven attacks has focused on "lost opportunities." Though characterized every bit problems of "watchlisting," "information sharing," or "connecting the dots," each of these labels is too narrow. They depict the symptoms, not the disease. Breaking the older mold of organization stovepiped purely in executive agencies, nosotros propose a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) that would borrow the joint, unified command concept adopted in the 1980s past the American military in a civilian agency, combining the joint intelligence part alongside the operations work. The NCTC would build on the existing Terrorist Threat Integration Eye and would replace it and other terrorism "fusion centers" within the authorities. The NCTC would become the authoritative knowledge banking concern, bringing data to bear on common plans. Information technology should task collection requirements both within and exterior the United States. The NCTC should perform joint operational planning, assigning lead responsibilities to existing agencies and letting them direct the bodily 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 cabinet section) who reports to the National Intelligence Director, the NCTC would rail 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 and Homeland Security. The NCTC should non be a policymaking body. Its operations and planning should follow the policy management of the president and the National Security Council. Unity of Attempt: A National Intelligence Director Since long before 9/eleven-and continuing to this solar day-the intelligence community is not organized well for articulation intelligence work. It does not employ common standards and practices in reporting intelligence or in training experts overseas and at home. The expensive national capabilities for collecting intelligence have divided direction. The structures are too complex and also secret. The community's caput-the Director of Primal Intelligence-has at least three jobs: running the CIA, coordinating a xv-bureau confederation, and being the intelligence analyst-in-principal to the president. No one person can practise all these things. A new National Intelligence Managing director should exist established with two main jobs: (ane) to oversee national intelligence centers that combine experts from all the collection disciplines confronting common targets- like counterterrorism or nuclear proliferation; and (2) to oversee the agencies that contribute to the national intelligence program, a chore that includes setting common standards for personnel and it. The national intelligence centers would be the unified commands of the intelligence world-a long-overdue reform for intelligence comparable to the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols police that reformed the organization of national defense. The home services-such equally the CIA, DIA, NSA, and FBI-would organize, train, and equip the all-time intelligence professionals in the globe, and would handle the execution of intelligence operations in the field. This National Intelligence Director (NID) should be located in the Executive Part of the President and written report directly to the president, yet be confirmed past the Senate. In add-on to overseeing the National Counterterrorism Center described in a higher place (which will include both the national intelligence center for terrorism and the joint operations planning effort), the NID should accept iii deputies: For foreign intelligence (a deputy who too would be the caput of the CIA) For defense intelligence (also the under secretary of defense for intelligence) For homeland intelligence (as well the executive assistant manager for intelligence at the FBI or the under secretary of homeland security for information assay and infrastructure protection) The NID should receive a public appropriation for national intelligence, should take say-so to hire and fire his or her intelligence deputies, and should exist able to set mutual personnel and information technology policies beyond the intelligence community. The CIA should concentrate on strengthening the drove capabilities of its cloak-and-dagger service and the talents of its analysts, building pride in its core expertise. Secrecy stifles oversight, accountability, and information sharing. Unfortunately, all the current organizational incentives encourage overclassification. This balance should modify; and as a start, open up information should exist provided virtually the overall size of agency intelligence budgets. Unity of Effort: Sharing Information The U.S. government has access to a vast amount of information. Simply it has a weak arrangement for processing and using what information technology has. The system of "need to know" should be replaced by a system of "demand to share." The President should lead a government-wide effort 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 after official has urged us to call attention to bug with the unglamorous "back function" side of government operations. Only no agency tin solve the problems on its ain-to build the network requires an attempt that transcends old divides, solving common legal and policy problems in ways that can help officials know what they tin can and cannot do. Once again, in tackling information issues, America needs unity of attempt. Unity of Effort: Congress Congress took as well footling action 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 practice more than to minimize national security risks during transitions between administrations. For intelligence oversight, nosotros advise two options: either a joint committee on the old model of the Joint Commission on Diminutive Energy or a single commission in each house combining authorizing and appropriating committees. Our central message is the same: the intelligence committees cannot carry out their oversight part unless they are made stronger, and thereby have both articulate responsibility and accountability for that oversight. Congress should create a single, master indicate of oversight and review for homeland security. There should be one permanent continuing committee for homeland security in each sleeping room. Nosotros propose reforms to speed upward the nomination, financial reporting, security clearance, and confirmation process for national security officials at the beginning of an administration, and advise steps to make sure that incoming administrations have the information they demand. Unity of Effort: Organizing America'due south Defenses in the U.s.a. We accept considered several proposals relating to the future of the domestic intelligence and counterterrorism mission. Adding a new domestic intelligence agency volition not solve America's bug in collecting and analyzing intelligence inside the United States. We do non recommend creating one. We propose the establishment 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 development of an institutional culture imbued with a deep expertise in intelligence and national security. At several points we asked: Who has the responsibility for defending us at domicile? Responsibility for America'south national defense is shared by the Department of Defense force, with its new Northern Command, and by the Department of Homeland Security.They must have a articulate delineation of roles, missions, and authorization. The Department of Defense and its oversight committees should regularly assess the capability of Northern Command's strategies and planning to defend against military threats to the homeland. The Department of Homeland Security and its oversight committees should regularly assess the types of threats the country faces, in gild to determine the adequacy of the government'due south plans and the readiness of the government to answer to those threats. * * * We telephone call on the American people to recollect how we all felt on 9/eleven, to remember not just the unspeakable horror merely how we came together as a nation-one nation. Unity of purpose and unity of try are the way nosotros will defeat this enemy and make America safer for our children and grandchildren. We look forward to a national debate on the claim of what we accept recommended, and we 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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