The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition)

http://nhw.livejournal.com/184890.html

it's a gripping story, told well, and basically leaves little room for conspiracy theorists - including conspiracy theorists who wanted the Iraqi government to be linked to the horrors of 9/11. The structure of the report is easily digestible, with the first (and probably the best) chapter a straight narrative of the events of the hijackings, told essentially from the point of view of the victims as far as that can be done. The point is repeatedly driven home that America was caught unprepared (the fighter planes scrambled to defend Washington were sent in the wrong direction, and in any case had not understood their orders correctly, and in any case were too late) and the most important success show more against the terrorists on the day was that won by the passengers of flight 93 who forced the hijackers of the fourth plane to abort their mission.

The rest of it is pretty convincing - with one exception: as an eagle-eyed Balkan practitioner I found it a bit surprising that Nawaf al-Hamzi, one of the Pentagon hijackers, is described as watching current news coverage of fighting in Bosnia in 2000, five years after the war there was over (perhaps this was a reference to the Presevo Valley conflict of that year, but it seems unlikely as that affair was almost ignored by Western media and anyway was not in Bosnia). But the other Albanian and Bosnian bits of the story confirmed what I knew or suspected. An Azerbaijan angle was hinted at but not really explained; Georgia crops up briefly too.

The account of the mistakes made in rescue efforts in New York on the day is gripping, but fairly straightforward, and the conclusions are backed up by the example from the Pentagon of how to run a rescue operation efficiently; the only two recommendations that matter are a) get a better radio system for the emergency services and b) designate the fire department as lead agency in the event of a similar event in future. The first has been implemented, the second seems unlikely to be.

After all this excellent narrative, the conclusions and recommendations are a bit of a let-down, and seem to be more like private axe-grinding by policy-makers who thought they had ideas, rather than "let's match more co-ordinated security efforts with a serious attempt to make friends with the Arab world" which seems the obvious conclusion to me. On the organisational mechanics, what leaps out of the text for me is that a) the FAA had no adequate plan for dealing with domestic hijackings (apparently they now do), and b) the FBI had no adequate intelligence analysis capacity.

I am not reassured on the latter point. The CIA's misses, though numerous, feel to me more like bad luck; the FBI's more like bad management culture, with good analysis happening in the field and totally cut off from headquarters - perhaps the most chilling passage is in the account on page 275 of the FBI's internal squabblings over the "20th hijacker", Zaccarias Moussaoui:

"There was substantial disagreement between Minneapolis agents and FBI headquarters as to what Moussaoui was planning to do. In one conversation between a Minneapolis supervisor and a headquarters agent, the latter complained that Minneapolis's FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] request was couched in a manner intended to get people "spun up." The supervisor replied that was precisely his intent. He said he was "trying to keep someone from taking a plane and crashing into the World Trade Center." The headquarters agent replied that this was not going to happen and that they did not know if Moussaoui was a terrorist."

The mind boggles.

Of course, a large part of my interest is that I do deal with similar material myself, though unlike a state intelligence agency our information is normally published at the end of the process (and if we don't publish, it's more likely because we decided the evidence wasn't good enough than because we thought it was too sensitive). I make the judgement every day as to whether or not a particular new piece of information is important enough to start phoning senior government officials and telling them there is a problem. The two things that are essential are a) when to make that judgement and b) knowing who to call. As far as I could tell from the 9/11 report, the CIA people at least were relatively free in both regards, whereas the FBI culture actually worked against effective use of intelligence. The report tries to be even-handed between the two agencies but I don't think this is really possible given the evidence.

Conclusion: anyone with the slightest interest in knowing what happened on 11 September 2001 should read this report. show less

Scary. Infuriating. Hilarious. The 9/11 Report methodically demonstrates that U.S. preparedness was not the fault of any one particular official but the result of institutionalized laxity and bureaucratic cautiousness. The report points out figures that will make your head spin:

Even in 2002, the number of U.S. Arabic degrees awarded was six.

U.S. air strikes on al Qaeda flew over Pakistan, which had to be informed each time. Pakistan's ISI then warned Bin Laden, who quickly evacuated.

Zakariya Essabar's own parents thought he was too religious.

The only real security layers between the terrorists and their objectives were visa application forms and airport metal detectors.

The FBI, CIA, and NSA were reluctant to share FISA information, show more underestimating their own legal abilities.

Airport security screening, CAPPS, simply required that suspected luggage be held off a plane until the passenger boarded. show less

On this 18th anniversary of the 9/11 disaster, I'd like to recommend reading (or rereading) this historical book. Some government reports require hacking through thickets of bureaucratese; not so in the case of the 9/11 Commission Report. Written in clear, simple English, it gives a fascinating account of not only the attacks, the victims, the terrorists, but also events that led up to that infamous day. The Report won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Admittedly, a lot more information has been discovered, reported, and published since the Report came out, but for people who were children at the time, and for others who may not recall all the details reported during those days, this is a riveting account.

It may be unusual that commission reports are readable, but this one is quite well-written and well-structured. I find the last chapters with recommendations for reorganization of the governments security efforts should have been left out and put somewhere else. In the version I have there is annoyingly no index.

I find two major omissions: The engineering report on the structural capability of the World Trade Center. As far as I remember this was intentional left out to a separate later report as the engineering modeling took long time. The other omission is the issue with the interrogation of detainees which may have involved torture. The commission report gets away with this issue by writing on page 146: "Our access to them has been show more limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place. [...] Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process". One may wonder what the "sensitive interrogation process" entails... show less

A grab-bag of sorts. Parts of it have almost literary value. Parts trouble me—this was the best they could do? But the sum is certainly the most important Congressional report of the last 20 years. If anything qualifies as a citizen's "must read," this does.

well I just finished this book and have to say...WHAT?? The government in it's infinite wisdom failed to call key witnesses, high ranking officals, anyone who might have really known or saw what happened that fateful day. There are still too many unanswered questions That I wont get into here. Lets just say this book has one redeeming factor its a great read that helps point out that the whole picture still has not been seen and the us government needs to answer some of the hard questions...Can anyone say The Warren Commission...I knew you could

Very comprehensive with those issues they chose to cover. The Comission, thanks to the placement of Jamie Gorelik by Hillary, acted as a Clinton Whitewash committee, as best as they could, while still trying to preserve their credibility. Their documentation of the events of that day were impressive.