The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission on

What you are allowed to think and what you do think are two different things, aren't they? That's another way of saying that this forum may be NSFW, if your boss is a Republican. A liberal won't fire you for it, but they'll laugh at you in the break room and you may not get promoted. Unless you're an engineer, of course, in which your obsession with facing reality is not actually a career-disabling disability.

Re: The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission o

Postby admin » Tue Mar 22, 2016 9:08 am

Part 2 of 2

11.3 CAPABILITIES

Earlier chapters describe in detail the actions decided on by the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each president considered or authorized covert actions, a process that consumed considerable time-especially in the Clinton administration-and achieved little success beyond the collection of intelligence. After the August 1998 missile strikes in Afghanistan, naval vessels remained on station in or near the region, prepared to fire cruise missiles. General Hugh Shelton developed as many as 13 different strike options, and did not recommend any of them. The most extended debate on counterterrorism in the Bush administration before 9/11 had to do with missions for the unmanned Predator-whether to use it just to locate Bin Ladin or to wait until it was armed with a missile, so that it could find him and also attack him. Looking back, we are struck with the narrow and unimaginative menu of options for action offered to both President Clinton and President Bush.

Before 9/11, the United States tried to solve the al Qaeda problem with the same government institutions and capabilities it had used in the last stages of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. These capabilities were insufficient, but little was done to expand or reform them.

For covert action, of course, the White House depended on the Counterterrorist Center and the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Though some officers, particularly in the Bin Ladin unit, were eager for the mission, most were not. The higher management of the directorate was unenthusiastic. The CIA's capacity to conduct paramilitary operations with its own personnel was not large, and the Agency did not seek a large-scale general expansion of these capabilities before 9/11. James Pavitt, the head of this directorate, remembered that covert action, promoted by the White House, had gotten the Clandestine Service into trouble in the past. He had no desire to see this happen again. He thought, not unreasonably, that a truly serious counterterrorism campaign against an enemy of this magnitude would be business primarily for the military, not the Clandestine Service.30

As for the Department of Defense, some officers in the Joint Staff were keen to help. Some in the Special Operations Command have told us that they worked on plans for using Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and that they hoped for action orders. JCS Chairman General Shelton and General Anthony Zinni at Central Command had a different view. Shelton felt that the August 1998 attacks had proved a waste of good ordnance and thereafter consistently opposed firing expensive Tomahawk missiles merely at "jungle gym" terrorist training infrastructure.31 In this view, he had complete support from Defense Secretary William Cohen. Shelton was prepared to plan other options, but he was also prepared to make perfectly clear his own strong doubts about the wisdom of any military action that risked U.S. lives unless the intelligence was "actionable." 32

The high price of keeping counterterrorism policy within the restricted circle of the Counterterrorism Security Group and the highest-level principals was nowhere more apparent than in the military establishment. After the August 1998 missile strike, other members of the JCS let the press know their unhappiness that, in conformity with the Goldwater-Nichols reforms, Shelton had been the only member of the JCS to be consulted. Although follow-on military options were briefed more widely, the vice director of operations on the Joint Staff commented to us that intelligence and planning documents relating to al Qaeda arrived in a ziplock red package and that many flag and general officers never had the clearances to see its contents.33

At no point before 9/11 was the Department of Defense fully engaged in the mission of countering al Qaeda, though this was perhaps the most dangerous foreign enemy then threatening the United States. The Clinton administration effectively relied on the CIA to take the lead in preparing long-term offensive plans against an enemy sanctuary. The Bush administration adopted this approach, although its emerging new strategy envisioned some yet undefined further role for the military in addressing the problem. Within Defense, both Secretary Cohen and Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave their principal attention to other challenges.

America's homeland defenders faced outward. NORAD itself was barely able to retain any alert bases. Its planning scenarios occasionally considered the danger of hijacked aircraft being guided to American targets, but only aircraft that were coming from overseas. We recognize that a costly change in NORAD's defense posture to deal with the danger of suicide hijackers, before such a threat had ever actually been realized, would have been a tough sell. But NORAD did not canvass available intelligence and try to make the case.

The most serious weaknesses in agency capabilities were in the domestic arena. In chapter 3 we discussed these institutions-the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FAA, and others. The major pre-9/11 effort to strengthen domestic agency capabilities came in 2000, as part of a millennium after-action review. President Clinton and his principal advisers paid considerable attention then to border security problems, but were not able to bring about significant improvements before leaving office. The NSC-led interagency process did not effectively bring along the leadership of the Justice and Transportation departments in an agenda for institutional change.

The FBI did not have the capability to link the collective knowledge of agents in the field to national priorities. The acting director of the FBI did not learn of his Bureau's hunt for two possible al Qaeda operatives in the United States or about his Bureau's arrest of an Islamic extremist taking flight training until September 11.The director of central intelligence knew about the FBI's Moussaoui investigation weeks before word of it made its way even to the FBI's own assistant director for counterterrorism.

Other agencies deferred to the FBI. In the August 6 PDB reporting to President Bush of 70 full-field investigations related to al Qaeda, news the President said he found heartening, the CIA had simply restated what the FBI had said. No one looked behind the curtain.

The FAA's capabilities to take aggressive, anticipatory security measures were especially weak. Any serious policy examination of a suicide hijacking scenario, critiquing each of the layers of the security system, could have suggested changes to fix glaring vulnerabilities-expanding no-fly lists, searching passengers identified by the CAPPS screening system, deploying Federal Air Marshals domestically, hardening cockpit doors, alerting air crew to a different kind of hijacking than what they had been trained to expect, or adjusting the training of controllers and managers in the FAA and NORAD.

Government agencies also sometimes display a tendency to match capabilities to mission by defining away the hardest part of their job. They are often passive, accepting what are viewed as givens, including that efforts to identify and fix glaring vulnerabilities to dangerous threats would be too costly, too controversial, or too disruptive.

11.4 MANAGEMENT

Operational Management


Earlier in this report we detailed various missed opportunities to thwart the 9/11 plot. Information was not shared, sometimes inadvertently or because of legal misunderstandings. Analysis was not pooled. Effective operations were not launched. Often the handoffs of information were lost across the divide separating the foreign and domestic agencies of the government.

However the specific problems are labeled, we believe they are symptoms of the government's broader inability to adapt how it manages problems to the new challenges of the twenty-first century. The agencies are like a set of specialists in a hospital, each ordering tests, looking for symptoms, and prescribing medications. What is missing is the attending physician who makes sure they work as a team.

One missing element was effective management of transnational operations. Action officers should have drawn on all available knowledge in the government. This management should have ensured that information was shared and duties were clearly assigned across agencies, and across the foreign-domestic divide.

Consider, for example, the case of Mihdhar, Hazmi, and their January 2000 trip to Kuala Lumpur, detailed in chapter 6. In late 1999, the National Security Agency (NSA) analyzed communications associated with a man named Khalid, a man named Nawaf, and a man named Salem. Working-level officials in the intelligence community knew little more than this. But they correctly concluded that "Nawaf"and "Khalid" might be part of "an operational cadre" and that "something nefarious might be afoot."

The NSA did not think its job was to research these identities. It saw itself as an agency to support intelligence consumers, such as CIA. The NSA tried to respond energetically to any request made. But it waited to be asked.

If NSA had been asked to try to identify these people, the agency would have started by checking its own database of earlier information from these same sources. Some of this information had been reported; some had not. But it was all readily accessible in the database. NSA's analysts would promptly have discovered who Nawaf was, that his full name might be Nawaf al Hazmi, and that he was an old friend of Khalid.

With this information and more that was available, managers could have more effectively tracked the movement of these operatives in southeast Asia. With the name "Nawaf al Hazmi," a manager could then have asked the State Department also to check that name. State would promptly have found its own record on Nawaf al Hazmi, showing that he too had been issued a visa to visit the United States. Officials would have learned that the visa had been issued at the same place-Jeddah-and on almost the same day as the one given to Khalid al Mihdhar.

When the travelers left Kuala Lumpur for Bangkok, local officials were able to identify one of the travelers as Khalid al Mihdhar. After the flight left, they learned that one of his companions had the name Alhazmi. But the officials did not know what that name meant.

The information arrived at Bangkok too late to track these travelers as they came in. Had the authorities there already been keeping an eye out for Khalid al Mihdhar as part of a general regional or worldwide alert, they might have tracked him coming in. Had they been alerted to look for a possible companion named Nawaf al Hazmi, they might have noticed him too. Instead, they were notified only after Kuala Lumpur sounded the alarm. By that time, the travelers had already disappeared into the streets of Bangkok.

On January 12, the head of the CIA's al Qaeda unit told his bosses that surveillance in Kuala Lumpur was continuing. He may not have known that in fact Mihdhar and his companions had dispersed and the tracking was falling apart. U.S. officials in Bangkok regretfully reported the bad news on January

13. The names they had were put on a watchlist in Bangkok, so that Thai authorities might notice if the men left the country. On January 14, the head of the CIA's al Qaeda unit again updated his bosses, telling them that officials were continuing to track the suspicious individuals who had now dispersed to various countries.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence of any tracking efforts actually being undertaken by anyone after the Arabs disappeared into Bangkok. No other effort was made to create other opportunities to spot these Arab travelers in case the screen in Bangkok failed. Just from the evidence in Mihdhar's passport, one of the logical possible destinations and interdiction points would have been the United States.Yet no one alerted the INS or the FBI to look for these individuals. They arrived, unnoticed, in Los Angeles on January 15.

In early March 2000, Bangkok reported that Nawaf al Hazmi, now identified for the first time with his full name, had departed on January 15 on a United Airlines flight to Los Angeles. Since the CIA did not appreciate the significance of that name or notice the cable, we have found no evidence that this information was sent to the FBI.

Even if watchlisting had prevented or at least alerted U.S. officials to the entry of Hazmi and Mihdhar, we do not think it is likely that watchlisting, by itself, have prevented the 9/11 attacks.Al Qaeda adapted to the failure of some of its operatives to gain entry into the United States. None of these future hijackers was a pilot. Alternatively, had they been permitted entry and surveilled, some larger results might have been possible had the FBI been patient.

These are difficult what-ifs. The intelligence community might have judged that the risks of conducting such a prolonged intelligence operation were too high-potential terrorists might have been lost track of, for example. The pre-9/11 FBI might not have been judged capable of conducting such an operation. But surely the intelligence community would have preferred to have the chance to make these choices.

From the details of this case, or from the other opportunities we catalogue in the text box, one can see how hard it is for the intelligence community to assemble enough of the puzzle pieces gathered by different agencies to make some sense of them and then develop a fully informed joint plan. Accomplish-ing all this is especially difficult in a transnational case. We sympathize with the working-level officers, drowning in information and trying to decide what is important or what needs to be done when no particular action has been requested of them.

Who had the job of managing the case to make sure these things were done? One answer is that everyone had the job. The CIA's deputy director for operations, James Pavitt, stressed to us that the responsibility resided with all involved. Above all he emphasized the primacy of the field. The field had the lead in managing operations. The job of headquarters, he stressed, was to support the field, and do so without delay. If the field asked for information or other support, the job of headquarters was to get it-right away.34

This is a traditional perspective on operations and, traditionally, it has had great merit. It reminded us of the FBI's pre-9/11 emphasis on the primacy of its field offices. When asked about how this traditional structure would adapt to the challenge of managing a transnational case, one that hopped from place to place as this one did, the deputy director argued that all involved were responsible for making it work. Pavitt underscored the responsibility of the particular field location where the suspects were being tracked at any given time. On the other hand, he also said that the Counterterrorist Center was supposed to manage all the moving parts, while what happened on the ground was the responsibility of managers in the field.35

Operational Opportunities

1. January 2000: the CIA does not watchlist Khalid al Mihdhar or notify the FBI when it learned Mihdhar possessed a valid U.S. visa.

2. January 2000: the CIA does not develop a transnational plan for tracking Mihdhar and his associates so that they could be followed to Bangkok and onward, including the United States.

3. March 2000: the CIA does not watchlist Nawaf al Hazmi or notify the FBI when it learned that he possessed a U.S. visa and had flown to Los Angeles on January 15, 2000.

4. January 2001: the CIA does not inform the FBI that a source had identified Khallad, or Tawfiq bin Attash, a major figure in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, as having attended the meeting in Kuala Lumpur with Khalid al Mihdhar.

5. May 2001: a CIA official does not notify the FBI about Mihd-har's U.S. visa, Hazmi's U.S. travel, or Khallad's having attended the Kuala Lumpur meeting (identified when he reviewed all of the relevant traffic because of the high level of threats).

6. June 2001: FBI and CIA officials do not ensure that all relevant information regarding the Kuala Lumpur meeting was shared with the Cole investigators at the June 11 meeting.

7. August 2001: the FBI does not recognize the significance of the information regarding Mihdhar and Hazmi's possible arrival in the United States and thus does not take adequate action to share information, assign resources, and give sufficient priority to the search.

8. August 2001: FBI headquarters does not recognize the significance of the information regarding Moussaoui's training and beliefs and thus does not take adequate action to share information, involve higher-level officials across agencies, obtain information regarding Moussaoui's ties to al Qaeda, and give sufficient priority to determining what Moussaoui might be planning.

9. August 2001: the CIA does not focus on information that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a key al Qaeda lieutenant or connect information identifying KSM as the "Mukhtar" mentioned in other reports to the analysis that could have linked "Mukhtar" with Ramzi Binalshibh and Moussaoui.

10.August 2001: the CIA and FBI do not connect the presence of Mihdhar, Hazmi, and Moussaoui to the general threat reporting about imminent attacks.


Headquarters tended to support and facilitate, trying to make sure everyone was in the loop. From time to time a particular post would push one way, or headquarters would urge someone to do something. But headquarters never really took responsibility for the successful management of this case. Hence the managers at CIA headquarters did not realize that omissions in planning had occurred, and they scarcely knew that the case had fallen apart.

The director of the Counterterrorist Center at the time, Cofer Black, recalled to us that this operation was one among many and that, at the time, it was "considered interesting, but not heavy water yet." He recalled the failure to get the word to Bangkok fast enough, but has no evident recollection of why the case then dissolved, unnoticed.36

The next level down, the director of the al Qaeda unit in CIA at the time recalled that he did not think it was his job to direct what should or should not be done. He did not pay attention when the individuals dispersed and things fell apart. There was no conscious decision to stop the operation after the trail was temporarily lost in Bangkok. He acknowledged, however, that perhaps there had been a letdown for his overworked staff after the extreme tension and long hours in the period of the millennium alert.37

The details of this case illuminate real management challenges, past and future. The U.S. government must find a way of pooling intelligence and using it to guide the planning of and assignment of responsibilities for joint operations involving organizations as disparate as the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, the military, and the agencies involved in homeland security.

Institutional Management

Beyond those day-to-day tasks of bridging the foreign-domestic divide and matching intelligence with plans, the challenges include broader management issues pertaining to how the top leaders of the government set priorities and allocate resources. Once again it is useful to illustrate the problem by examining the CIA, since before 9/11 this agency's role was so central in the government's counterterrorism efforts.

On December 4, 1998, DCI Tenet issued a directive to several CIA officials and his deputy for community management, stating: "We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the Community."38The memorandum had little overall effect on mobilizing the CIA or the intelligence community.39

The memo was addressed only to CIA officials and the deputy for community management, Joan Dempsey. She faxed the memo to the heads of the major intelligence agencies after removing covert action sections. Only a handful of people received it. The NSA director at the time, Lieutenant General Kenneth Minihan, believed the memo applied only to the CIA and not the NSA, because no one had informed him of any NSA shortcomings. For their part, CIA officials thought the memorandum was intended for the rest of the intelligence community, given that they were already doing all they could and believed that the rest of the community needed to pull its weight.40

The episode indicates some of the limitations of the DCI's authority over the direction and priorities of the intelligence community, especially its elements within the Department of Defense. The DCI has to direct agencies without controlling them. He does not receive an appropriation for their activities, and therefore does not control their purse strings. He has little insight into how they spend their resources. Congress attempted to strengthen the DCI's authority in 1996 by creating the positions of deputy DCI for community management and assistant DCIs for collection, analysis and production, and administration. But the authority of these positions is limited, and the vision of central management clearly has not been realized.

The DCI did not develop a management strategy for a war against Islamist terrorism before 9/11. Such a management strategy would define the capabilities the intelligence community must acquire for such a war-from language training to collection systems to analysts. Such a management strategy would necessarily extend beyond the CTC to the components that feed its expertise and support its operations, linked transparently to counterterrorism objectives. It would then detail the proposed expenditures and organizational changes required to acquire and implement these capabilities.

DCI Tenet and his deputy director for operations told us they did have a management strategy for a war on terrorism. It was to rebuild the CIA. They said the CIA as a whole had been badly damaged by prior budget constraints and that capabilities needed to be restored across the board. Indeed, the CTC budget had not been cut while the budgets had been slashed in many other parts of the Agency. By restoring funding across the CIA, a rising tide would lift all boats. They also stressed the synergy between improvements of every part of the Agency and the capabilities that the CTC or stations overseas could draw on in the war on terror.41

As some officials pointed out to us, there is a tradeoff in this management approach. In an attempt to rebuild everything at once, the highest priority efforts might not get the maximum support that they need. Furthermore, this approach attempted to channel relatively strong outside support for combating terrorism into backing for across-the-board funding increases. Proponents of the counterterrorism agenda might respond by being less inclined to loosen the purse strings than they would have been if offered a convincing counterterrorism budget strategy. The DCI's management strategy was also focused mainly on the CIA.

Lacking a management strategy for the war on terrorism or ways to see how funds were being spent across the community, DCI Tenet and his aides found it difficult to develop an overall intelligence community budget for a war on terrorism.

Responsibility for domestic intelligence gathering on terrorism was vested solely in the FBI, yet during almost all of the Clinton administration the relationship between the FBI Director and the President was nearly nonexistent. The FBI Director would not communicate directly with the President. His key personnel shared very little information with the National Security Council and the rest of the national security community. As a consequence, one of the critical working relationships in the counterterrorism effort was broken.

The Millennium Exception

Before concluding our narrative, we offer a reminder, and an explanation, of the one period in which the government as a whole seemed to be acting in concert to deal with terrorism-the last weeks of December 1999 preceding the millennium.

In the period between December 1999 and early January 2000, information about terrorism flowed widely and abundantly. The flow from the FBI was particularly remarkable because the FBI at other times shared almost no information. That from the intelligence community was also remarkable, because some of it reached officials-local airport managers and local police departments-who had not seen such information before and would not see it again before 9/11, if then. And the terrorist threat, in the United States even more than abroad, engaged the frequent attention of high officials in the executive branch and leaders in both houses of Congress.

Why was this so? Most obviously, it was because everyone was already on edge with the millennium and possible computer programming glitches ("Y2K") that might obliterate records, shut down power and communication lines, or otherwise disrupt daily life. Then, Jordanian authorities arrested 16 al Qaeda terrorists planning a number of bombings in that country. Those in custody included two U.S. citizens. Soon after, an alert Customs agent caught Ahmed Ressam bringing explosives across the Canadian border with the apparent intention of blowing up Los Angeles airport. He was found to have confederates on both sides of the border.

These were not events whispered about in highly classified intelligence dailies or FBI interview memos. The information was in all major newspapers and highlighted in network television news. Though the Jordanian arrests only made page 13 of the New York Times, they were featured on every evening newscast. The arrest of Ressam was on front pages, and the original story and its follow-ups dominated television news for a week. FBI field offices around the country were swamped by calls from concerned citizens. Representatives of the Justice Department, the FAA, local police departments, and major airports had microphones in their faces whenever they showed themselves.42

After the millennium alert, the government relaxed. Counterterrorism went back to being a secret preserve for segments of the FBI, the Counterterrorist Center, and the Counterterrorism Security Group. But the experience showed that the government was capable of mobilizing itself for an alert against terrorism. While one factor was the preexistence of widespread concern about Y2K, another, at least equally important, was simply shared information. Everyone knew not only of an abstract threat but of at least one terrorist who had been arrested in the United States. Terrorism had a face-that of Ahmed Ressam-and Americans from Vermont to southern California went on the watch for his like.

In the summer of 2001, DCI Tenet, the Counterterrorist Center, and the Counterterrorism Security Group did their utmost to sound a loud alarm, its basis being intelligence indicating that al Qaeda planned something big. But the millennium phenomenon was not repeated. FBI field offices apparently saw no abnormal terrorist activity, and headquarters was not shaking them up.

Between May 2001 and September 11, there was very little in newspapers or on television to heighten anyone's concern about terrorism. Front-page stories touching on the subject dealt with the windup of trials dealing with the East Africa embassy bombings and Ressam. All this reportage looked backward, describing problems satisfactorily resolved. Back-page notices told of tightened security at embassies and military installations abroad and government cautions against travel to the Arabian Peninsula. All the rest was secret.
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Re: The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission o

Postby admin » Tue Mar 22, 2016 9:09 am

Part 1 of 2

12. WHAT TO DO? A GLOBAL STRATEGY

12.1 REFLECTING ON A GENERATIONAL CHALLENGE


Three years after 9/11, Americans are still thinking and talking about how to protect our nation in this new era. The national debate continues.

Countering terrorism has become, beyond any doubt, the top national security priority for the United States. This shift has occurred with the full support of the Congress, both major political parties, the media, and the American people.

The nation has committed enormous resources to national security and to countering terrorism. Between fiscal year 2001, the last budget adopted before 9/11, and the present fiscal year 2004, total federal spending on defense (including expenditures on both Iraq and Afghanistan), homeland security, and international affairs rose more than 50 percent, from $354 billion to about $547 billion. The United States has not experienced such a rapid surge in national security spending since the Korean War.1

This pattern has occurred before in American history. The United States faces a sudden crisis and summons a tremendous exertion of national energy. Then, as that surge transforms the landscape, comes a time for reflection and reevaluation. Some programs and even agencies are discarded; others are invented or redesigned. Private firms and engaged citizens redefine their relationships with government, working through the processes of the American republic.

Now is the time for that reflection and reevaluation. The United States should consider what to do-the shape and objectives of a strategy. Americans should also consider how to do it-organizing their government in a different way.

Defining the Threat

In the post-9/11 world, threats are defined more by the fault lines within societies than by the territorial boundaries between them. From terrorism to global disease or environmental degradation, the challenges have become transnational rather than international. That is the defining quality of world politics in the twenty-first century.

National security used to be considered by studying foreign frontiers, weighing opposing groups of states, and measuring industrial might. To be dangerous, an enemy had to muster large armies. Threats emerged slowly, often visibly, as weapons were forged, armies conscripted, and units trained and moved into place. Because large states were more powerful, they also had more to lose. They could be deterred.

Now threats can emerge quickly. An organization like al Qaeda, headquartered in a country on the other side of the earth, in a region so poor that electricity or telephones were scarce, could nonetheless scheme to wield weapons of unprecedented destructive power in the largest cities of the United States.

In this sense, 9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests "over there" should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America "over here." In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet.

But the enemy is not just "terrorism," some generic evil.2 This vagueness blurs the strategy.The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism-especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its ideology.3

As we mentioned in chapter 2, Usama Bin Ladin and other Islamist terrorist leaders draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam (a minority tradition), from at least Ibn Taimiyyah, through the founders of Wahhabism, through the Muslim Brotherhood, to Sayyid Qutb. That stream is motivated by religion and does not distinguish politics from religion, thus distorting both. It is further fed by grievances stressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world-against the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and support of Israel. Bin Ladin and Islamist terrorists mean exactly what they say: to them America is the font of all evil, the "head of the snake," and it must be converted or destroyed.

It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground-not even respect for life-on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated.

Because the Muslim world has fallen behind the West politically, economically, and militarily for the past three centuries, and because few tolerant or secular Muslim democracies provide alternative models for the future, Bin Ladin's message finds receptive ears. It has attracted active support from thousands of disaffected young Muslims and resonates powerfully with a far larger number who do not actively support his methods. The resentment of America and the West is deep, even among leaders of relatively successful Muslim states.4

Tolerance, the rule of law, political and economic openness, the extension of greater opportunities to women-these cures must come from within Muslim societies themselves. The United States must support such developments.

But this process is likely to be measured in decades, not years. It is a process that will be violently opposed by Islamist terrorist organizations, both inside Muslim countries and in attacks on the United States and other Western nations. The United States finds itself caught up in a clash within a civilization. That clash arises from particular conditions in the Muslim world, conditions that spill over into expatriate Muslim communities in non-Muslim countries.

Our enemy is twofold: al Qaeda, a stateless network of terrorists that struck us on 9/11; and a radical ideological movement in the Islamic world, inspired in part by al Qaeda, which has spawned terrorist groups and violence across the globe. The first enemy is weakened, but continues to pose a grave threat. The second enemy is gathering, and will menace Americans and American interests long after Usama Bin Ladin and his cohorts are killed or captured. Thus our strategy must match our means to two ends: dismantling the al Qaeda network and prevailing in the longer term over the ideology that gives rise to Islamist terrorism.

Islam is not the enemy. It is not synonymous with terror. Nor does Islam teach terror. America and its friends oppose a perversion of Islam, not the great world faith itself. Lives guided by religious faith, including literal beliefs in holy scriptures, are common to every religion, and represent no threat to us.

Other religions have experienced violent internal struggles. With so many diverse adherents, every major religion will spawn violent zealots. Yet understanding and tolerance among people of different faiths can and must prevail.

The present transnational danger is Islamist terrorism. What is needed is a broad political-military strategy that rests on a firm tripod of policies to

• attack terrorists and their organizations;
• prevent the continued growth of Islamist terrorism; and
• protect against and prepare for terrorist attacks.

More Than a War on Terrorism

Terrorism is a tactic used by individuals and organizations to kill and destroy. Our efforts should be directed at those individuals and organizations.

Calling this struggle a war accurately describes the use of American and allied armed forces to find and destroy terrorist groups and their allies in the field, notably in Afghanistan. The language of war also evokes the mobilization for a national effort. Yet the strategy should be balanced.

The first phase of our post-9/11 efforts rightly included military action to topple the Taliban and pursue al Qaeda. This work continues. But long-term success demands the use of all elements of national power: diplomacy, intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, public diplomacy, and homeland defense. If we favor one tool while neglecting others, we leave ourselves vulnerable and weaken our national effort.

Certainly the strategy should include offensive operations to counter terrorism. Terrorists should no longer find safe haven where their organizations can grow and flourish. America's strategy should be a coalition strategy, that includes Muslim nations as partners in its development and implementation.

Our effort should be accompanied by a preventive strategy that is as much, or more, political as it is military. The strategy must focus clearly on the Arab and Muslim world, in all its variety.

Our strategy should also include defenses. America can be attacked in many ways and has many vulnerabilities. No defenses are perfect. But risks must be calculated; hard choices must be made about allocating resources. Responsibilities for America's defense should be clearly defined. Planning does make a difference, identifying where a little money might have a large effect. Defenses also complicate the plans of attackers, increasing their risks of discovery and failure. Finally, the nation must prepare to deal with attacks that are not stopped.

Measuring Success

What should Americans expect from their government in the struggle against Islamist terrorism? The goals seem unlimited: Defeat terrorism anywhere in the world. But Americans have also been told to expect the worst: An attack is probably coming; it may be terrible.

With such benchmarks, the justifications for action and spending seem limitless. Goals are good. Yet effective public policies also need concrete objectives. Agencies need to be able to measure success.

These measurements do not need to be quantitative: government cannot measure success in the ways that private firms can. But the targets should be specific enough so that reasonable observers-in the White House, the Congress, the media, or the general public-can judge whether or not the objectives have been attained.

Vague goals match an amorphous picture of the enemy. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are popularly described as being all over the world, adaptable, resilient, needing little higher-level organization, and capable of anything. The American people are thus given the picture of an omnipotent, unslayable hydra of destruction. This image lowers expectations for government effectiveness.

It should not lower them too far. Our report shows a determined and capable group of plotters. Yet the group was fragile, dependent on a few key personalities, and occasionally left vulnerable by the marginal, unstable people often attracted to such causes. The enemy made mistakes-like Khalid al Mihdhar's unauthorized departure from the United States that required him to enter the country again in July 2001, or the selection of Zacarias Moussaoui as a participant and Ramzi Binalshibh's transfer of money to him. The U.S. government was not able to capitalize on those mistakes in time to prevent 9/11.

We do not believe it is possible to defeat all terrorist attacks against Americans, every time and everywhere. A president should tell the American people:

• No president can promise that a catastrophic attack like that of 9/11 will not happen again. History has shown that even the most vigilant and expert agencies cannot always prevent determined, suicidal attackers from reaching a target.
• But the American people are entitled to expect their government to do its very best. They should expect that officials will have realistic objectives, clear guidance, and effective organization. They are entitled to see some standards for performance so they can judge, with the help of their elected representatives, whether the objectives are being met.

12.2 ATTACK TERRORISTS AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS

The U.S. government, joined by other governments around the world, is working through intelligence, law enforcement, military, financial, and diplomatic channels to identify, disrupt, capture, or kill individual terrorists. This effort was going on before 9/11 and it continues on a vastly enlarged scale. But to catch terrorists, a U.S. or foreign agency needs to be able to find and reach them.

No Sanctuaries

The 9/11 attack was a complex international operation, the product of years of planning. Bombings like those in Bali in 2003 or Madrid in 2004, while able to take hundreds of lives, can be mounted locally. Their requirements are far more modest in size and complexity. They are more difficult to thwart. But the

U.S. government must build the capacities to prevent a 9/11-scale plot from succeeding, and those capabilities will help greatly to cope with lesser but still devastating attacks.

A complex international terrorist operation aimed at launching a catastrophic attack cannot be mounted by just anyone in any place. Such operations appear to require

• time, space, and ability to perform competent planning and staff work;
• a command structure able to make necessary decisions and possessing the authority and contacts to assemble needed people, money, and materials;
• opportunity and space to recruit, train, and select operatives with the needed skills and dedication, providing the time and structure required to socialize them into the terrorist cause, judge their trustworthiness, and hone their skills;
• a logistics network able to securely manage the travel of operatives, move money, and transport resources (like explosives) where they need to go;
• access, in the case of certain weapons, to the special materials needed for a nuclear, chemical, radiological, or biological attack;
• reliable communications between coordinators and operatives; and o opportunity to test the workability of the plan.

Many details in chapters 2, 5, and 7 illustrate the direct and indirect value of the Afghan sanctuary to al Qaeda in preparing the 9/11 attack and other operations. The organization cemented personal ties among veteran jihadists working together there for years. It had the operational space to gather and sift recruits, indoctrinating them in isolated, desert camps. It built up logistical networks, running through Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

Al Qaeda also exploited relatively lax internal security environments in Western countries, especially Germany. It considered the environment in the United States so hospitable that the 9/11 operatives used America as their staging area for further training and exercises-traveling into, out of, and around the country and complacently using their real names with little fear of capture.

To find sanctuary, terrorist organizations have fled to some of the least governed, most lawless places in the world. The intelligence community has prepared a world map that highlights possible terrorist havens, using no secret intelligence-just indicating areas that combine rugged terrain, weak governance, room to hide or receive supplies, and low population density with a town or city near enough to allow necessary interaction with the outside world. Large areas scattered around the world meet these criteria.5

In talking with American and foreign government officials and military officers on the front lines fighting terrorists today, we asked them: If you were a terrorist leader today, where would you locate your base? Some of the same places come up again and again on their lists:

• western Pakistan and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region
• southern or western Afghanistan
• the Arabian Peninsula, especially Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and the nearby Horn of Africa, including Somalia and extending southwest into Kenya
• Southeast Asia, from Thailand to the southern Philippines to Indonesia
• West Africa, including Nigeria and Mali
• European cities with expatriate Muslim communities, especially cities in central and eastern Europe where security forces and border controls are less effective

In the twentieth century, strategists focused on the world's great industrial heartlands. In the twenty-first, the focus is in the opposite direction, toward remote regions and failing states. The United States has had to find ways to extend its reach, straining the limits of its influence.

Every policy decision we make needs to be seen through this lens. If, for example, Iraq becomes a failed state, it will go to the top of the list of places that are breeding grounds for attacks against Americans at home. Similarly, if we are paying insufficient attention to Afghanistan, the rule of the Taliban or warlords and narcotraffickers may reemerge and its countryside could once again offer refuge to al Qaeda, or its successor.

Recommendation: The U.S. government must identify and prioritize actual or potential terrorist sanctuaries. For each, it should have a realistic strategy to keep possible terrorists insecure and on the run, using all elements of national power. We should reach out, listen to, and work with other countries that can help.

We offer three illustrations that are particularly applicable today, in 2004: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan

Pakistan's endemic poverty, widespread corruption, and often ineffective government create opportunities for Islamist recruitment. Poor education is a particular concern. Millions of families, especially those with little money, send their children to religious schools, or madrassahs. Many of these schools are the only opportunity available for an education, but some have been used as incubators for violent extremism. According to Karachi's police commander, there are 859 madrassahs teaching more than 200,000 youngsters in his city alone.6

It is hard to overstate the importance of Pakistan in the struggle against Islamist terrorism. Within Pakistan's borders are 150 million Muslims, scores of al Qaeda terrorists, many Taliban fighters, and-perhaps-Usama Bin Ladin. Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and has come frighteningly close to war with nuclear-armed India over the disputed territory of Kashmir. A political battle among anti-American Islamic fundamentalists, the Pakistani military, and more moderate mainstream political forces has already spilled over into violence, and there have been repeated recent attempts to kill Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf.

In recent years, the United States has had three basic problems in its relationship with Pakistan:

• On terrorism, Pakistan helped nurture the Taliban. The Pakistani army and intelligence services, especially below the top ranks, have long been ambivalent about confronting Islamist extremists. Many in the government have sympathized with or provided support to the extremists. Musharraf agreed that Bin Ladin was bad. But before 9/11, preserving good relations with the Taliban took precedence.
• On proliferation, Musharraf has repeatedly said that Pakistan does not barter with its nuclear technology. But proliferation concerns have been long-standing and very serious. Most recently, the Pakistani government has claimed not to have known that one of its nuclear weapons developers, a national figure, was leading the most dangerous nuclear smuggling ring ever disclosed.
• Finally, Pakistan has made little progress toward the return of democratic rule at the national level, although that turbulent process does continue to function at the provincial level and the Pakistani press remains relatively free.

Immediately after 9/11, confronted by the United States with a stark choice, Pakistan made a strategic decision. Its government stood aside and allowed the U.S.-led coalition to destroy the Taliban regime. In other ways, Pakistan actively assisted: its authorities arrested more than 500 al Qaeda operatives and Taliban members, and Pakistani forces played a leading part in tracking down KSM, Abu Zubaydah, and other key al Qaeda figures.7

In the following two years, the Pakistani government tried to walk the fence, helping against al Qaeda while seeking to avoid a larger confrontation with Taliban remnants and other Islamic extremists. When al Qaeda and its Pakistani allies repeatedly tried to assassinate Musharraf, almost succeeding, the battle came home.

The country's vast unpoliced regions make Pakistan attractive to extremists seeking refuge and recruits and also provide a base for operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan. Almost all the 9/11 attackers traveled the north-south nexus of Kandahar-Quetta-Karachi. The Baluchistan region of Pakistan (KSM's ethnic home) and the sprawling city of Karachi remain centers of Islamist extremism where the U.S. and Pakistani security and intelligence presence has been weak. The U.S. consulate in Karachi is a makeshift fortress, reflecting the gravity of the surrounding threat.8

During the winter of 2003-2004, Musharraf made another strategic decision. He ordered the Pakistani army into the frontier provinces of northwest Pakistan along the Afghan border, where Bin Ladin and Ayman al Zawahiri have reportedly taken refuge. The army is confronting groups of al Qaeda fighters and their local allies in very difficult terrain. On the other side of the frontier,

U.S. forces in Afghanistan have found it challenging to organize effective joint operations, given Pakistan's limited capabilities and reluctance to permit U.S. military operations on its soil. Yet in 2004, it is clear that the Pakistani government is trying harder than ever before in the battle against Islamist terrorists.9

Acknowledging these problems and Musharraf's own part in the story, we believe that Musharraf's government represents the best hope for stability in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

• In an extraordinary public essay asking how Muslims can "drag ourselves out of the pit we find ourselves in, to raise ourselves up," Musharraf has called for a strategy of "enlightened moderation." The Muslim world, he said, should shun militancy and extremism; the West-and the United States in particular-should seek to resolve disputes with justice and help better the Muslim world.10
• Having come close to war in 2002 and 2003, Pakistan and India have recently made significant progress in peacefully discussing their long-standing differences. The United States has been and should remain a key supporter of that process.
• The constant refrain of Pakistanis is that the United States long treated them as allies of convenience. As the United States makes fresh commitments now, it should make promises it is prepared to keep, for years to come.

Recommendation: If Musharraf stands for enlightened moderation in a fight for his life and for the life of his country, the United States should be willing to make hard choices too, and make the difficult long-term commitment to the future of Pakistan. Sustaining the current scale of aid to Pakistan, the United States should support Pakistan's government in its struggle against extremists with a comprehensive effort that extends from military aid to support for better education, so long as Pakistan's leaders remain willing to make difficult choices of their own.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan was the incubator for al Qaeda and for the 9/11 attacks. In the fall of 2001, the U.S.-led international coalition and its Afghan allies toppled the Taliban and ended the regime's protection of al Qaeda. Notable progress has been made. International cooperation has been strong, with a clear UN mandate and a NATO-led peacekeeping force (the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF). More than 10,000 American soldiers are deployed today in Afghanistan, joined by soldiers from NATO allies and Muslim states. A central government has been established in Kabul, with a democratic constitution, new currency, and a new army. Most Afghans enjoy greater freedom, women and girls are emerging from subjugation, and 3 million children have returned to school. For the first time in many years, Afghans have reason to hope.11

But grave challenges remain. Taliban and al Qaeda fighters have regrouped in the south and southeast. Warlords control much of the country beyond Kabul, and the land is awash in weapons. Economic development remains a distant hope. The narcotics trade-long a massive sector of the Afghan economy- is again booming. Even the most hardened aid workers refuse to operate in many regions, and some warn that Afghanistan is near the brink of chaos.12

Battered Afghanistan has a chance. Elections are being prepared. It is revealing that in June 2004, Taliban fighters resorted to slaughtering 16 Afghans on a bus, apparently for no reason other than their boldness in carrying an unprecedented Afghan weapon: a voter registration card.

Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, is brave and committed. He is trying to build genuinely national institutions that can overcome the tradition of allocating powers among ethnic communities. Yet even if his efforts are successful and elections bring a democratic government to Afghanistan, the United States faces some difficult choices.

After paying relatively little attention to rebuilding Afghanistan during the military campaign, U.S. policies changed noticeably during 2003. Greater consideration of the political dimension and congressional support for a substantial package of assistance signaled a longer-term commitment to Afghanistan's future. One Afghan regional official plaintively told us the country finally has a good government. He begged the United States to keep its promise and not abandon Afghanistan again, as it had in the 1990s.Another Afghan leader noted that if the United States leaves, "we will lose all that we have gained."13

Most difficult is to define the security mission in Afghanistan. There is continuing political controversy about whether military operations in Iraq have had any effect on the scale of America's commitment to the future of Afghanistan. The United States has largely stayed out of the central government's struggles with dissident warlords and it has largely avoided confronting the related problem of narcotrafficking.14

Recommendation: The President and the Congress deserve praise for their efforts in Afghanistan so far. Now the United States and the international community should make a long-term commitment to a secure and stable Afghanistan, in order to give the government a reasonable opportunity to improve the life of the Afghan people. Afghanistan must not again become a sanctuary for international crime and terrorism. The United States and the international community should help the Afghan government extend its authority over the country, with a strategy and nation-by-nation commitments to achieve their objectives.

• This is an ambitious recommendation. It would mean a redoubled effort to secure the country, disarm militias, and curtail the age of warlord rule. But the United States and NATO have already committed themselves to the future of this region-wisely, as the 9/11 story shows-and failed half-measures could be worse than useless.
• NATO in particular has made Afghanistan a test of the Alliance's ability to adapt to current security challenges of the future. NATO must pass this test. Currently, the United States and the international community envision enough support so that the central government can build a truly national army and extend essential infrastructure and minimum public services to major towns and regions. The effort relies in part on foreign civil-military teams, arranged under various national flags. The institutional commitments of NATO and the United Nations to these enterprises are weak. NATO member states are not following through; some of the other states around the world that have pledged assistance to Afghanistan are not fulfilling their pledges.
• The U.S. presence in Afghanistan is overwhelmingly oriented toward military and security work. The State Department presence is woefully understaffed, and the military mission is narrowly focused on al Qaeda and Taliban remnants in the south and southeast. The U.S. government can do its part if the international community decides on a joint effort to restore the rule of law and contain rampant crime and narcotics trafficking in this crossroads of Central Asia.15

We heard again and again that the money for assistance is allocated so rigidly that, on the ground, one U.S. agency often cannot improvise or pitch in to help another agency, even in small ways when a few thousand dollars could make a great difference.

The U.S. government should allocate money so that lower-level officials have more flexibility to get the job done across agency lines, adjusting to the circumstances they find in the field. This should include discretionary funds for expenditures by military units that often encounter opportunities to help the local population.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has been a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism. At the level of high policy, Saudi Arabia's leaders cooperated with American diplomatic initiatives aimed at the Taliban or Pakistan before 9/11. At the same time, Saudi Arabia's society was a place where al Qaeda raised money directly from individuals and through charities. It was the society that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers.

The Kingdom is one of the world's most religiously conservative societies, and its identity is closely bound to its religious links, especially its position as the guardian of Islam's two holiest sites. Charitable giving, or zakat, is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is broader and more pervasive than Western ideas of charity- functioning also as a form of income tax, educational assistance, foreign aid, and a source of political influence. The Western notion of the separation of civic and religious duty does not exist in Islamic cultures. Funding charitable works is an integral function of the governments in the Islamic world. It is so ingrained in Islamic culture that in Saudi Arabia, for example, a department within the Saudi Ministry of Finance and National Economy collects zakat directly, much as the

U.S. Internal Revenue Service collects payroll withholding tax. Closely tied to zakat is the dedication of the government to propagating the Islamic faith, particularly the Wahhabi sect that flourishes in Saudi Arabia.

Traditionally, throughout the Muslim world, there is no formal oversight mechanism for donations. As Saudi wealth increased, the amounts contributed by individuals and the state grew dramatically. Substantial sums went to finance Islamic charities of every kind.

While Saudi domestic charities are regulated by the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, charities and international relief agencies, such as the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), are currently regulated by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. This ministry uses zakat and government funds to spread Wahhabi beliefs throughout the world, including in mosques and schools. Often these schools provide the only education available; even in affluent countries, Saudi-funded Wahhabi schools are often the only Islamic schools. Some Wahhabi-funded organizations have been exploited by extremists to further their goal of violent jihad against non-Muslims. One such organization has been the al Haramain Islamic Foundation; the assets of some branch offices have been frozen by the U.S. and Saudi governments.

Until 9/11, few Saudis would have considered government oversight of charitable donations necessary; many would have perceived it as interference in the exercise of their faith. At the same time, the government's ability to finance most state expenditures with energy revenues has delayed the need for a modern income tax system. As a result, there have been strong religious, cultural, and administrative barriers to monitoring charitable spending. That appears to be changing, however, now that the goal of violent jihad also extends to overthrowing Sunni governments (such as the House of Saud) that are not living up to the ideals of the Islamist extremists.16

The leaders of the United States and the rulers of Saudi Arabia have long had friendly relations, rooted in fundamentally common interests against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, in American hopes that Saudi oil supplies would stabilize the supply and price of oil in world markets, and in Saudi hopes that America could help protect the Kingdom against foreign threats.

In 1990, the Kingdom hosted U.S. armed forces before the first U.S.-led war against Iraq. American soldiers and airmen have given their lives to help protect Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government has difficulty acknowledging this. American military bases remained there until 2003, as part of an international commitment to contain Iraq.

For many years, leaders on both sides preferred to keep their ties quiet and behind the scenes. As a result, neither the U.S. nor the Saudi people appreciated all the dimensions of the bilateral relationship, including the Saudi role in

U.S. strategies to promote the Middle East peace process. In each country, political figures find it difficult to publicly defend good relations with the other.

Today, mutual recriminations flow. Many Americans see Saudi Arabia as an enemy, not as an embattled ally. They perceive an autocratic government that oppresses women, dominated by a wealthy and indolent elite. Saudi contacts with American politicians are frequently invoked as accusations in partisan political arguments. Americans are often appalled by the intolerance, anti-Semitism, and anti-American arguments taught in schools and preached in mosques.

Saudis are angry too. Many educated Saudis who were sympathetic to America now perceive the United States as an unfriendly state. One Saudi reformer noted to us that the demonization of Saudi Arabia in the U.S. media gives ammunition to radicals, who accuse reformers of being U.S. lackeys. Tens of thousands of Saudis who once regularly traveled to (and often had homes in) the United States now go elsewhere.17

Among Saudis, the United States is seen as aligned with Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, with whom Saudis ardently sympathize. Although Saudi Arabia's cooperation against terrorism improved to some extent after the September 11 attacks, significant problems remained. Many in the Kingdom initially reacted with disbelief and denial. In the following months, as the truth became clear, some leading Saudis quietly acknowledged the problem but still did not see their own regime as threatened, and thus often did not respond promptly to U.S. requests for help. Though Saddam Hussein was widely detested, many Saudis are sympathetic to the anti-U.S. insurgents in Iraq, although majorities also condemn jihadist attacks in the Kingdom.18

As in Pakistan, Yemen, and other countries, attitudes changed when the terrorism came home. Cooperation had already become significant, but after the bombings in Riyadh on May 12, 2003, it improved much more. The Kingdom openly discussed the problem of radicalism, criticized the terrorists as religiously deviant, reduced official support for religious activity overseas, closed suspect charitable foundations, and publicized arrests-very public moves for a government that has preferred to keep internal problems quiet.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is now locked in mortal combat with al Qaeda. Saudi police are regularly being killed in shootouts with terrorists. In June 2004, the Saudi ambassador to the United States called publicly-in the Saudi press-for his government to wage a jihad of its own against the terrorists. "We must all, as a state and as a people, recognize the truth about these criminals," he declared,"[i]f we do not declare a general mobilization-we will lose this war on terrorism."19

Saudi Arabia is a troubled country. Although regarded as very wealthy, in fact per capita income has dropped from $28,000 at its height to the present level of about $8,000. Social and religious traditions complicate adjustment to modern economic activity and limit employment opportunities for young Saudis. Women find their education and employment sharply limited.

President Clinton offered us a perceptive analysis of Saudi Arabia, contending that fundamentally friendly rulers have been constrained by their desire to preserve the status quo. He, like others, made the case for pragmatic reform instead. He hopes the rulers will envision what they want their Kingdom to become in 10 or 20 years, and start a process in which their friends can help them change.20

There are signs that Saudi Arabia's royal family is trying to build a consensus for political reform, though uncertain about how fast and how far to go. Crown Prince Abdullah wants the Kingdom to join the World Trade Organization to accelerate economic liberalization. He has embraced the Arab Human Development Report, which was highly critical of the Arab world's political, economic, and social failings and called for greater economic and political reform.21

Cooperation with Saudi Arabia against Islamist terrorism is very much in the U.S. interest. Such cooperation can exist for a time largely in secret, as it does now, but it cannot grow and thrive there. Nor, on either side, can friendship be unconditional.

Recommendation: The problems in the U.S.-Saudi relationship must be confronted, openly. The United States and Saudi Arabia must determine if they can build a relationship that political leaders on both sides are prepared to publicly defend-a relationship about more than oil. It should include a shared commitment to political and economic reform, as Saudis make common cause with the outside world. It should include a shared interest in greater tolerance and cultural respect, translating into a commitment to fight the violent extremists who foment hatred.

12.3 PREVENT THE CONTINUED GROWTH OF ISLAMIST TERRORISM

In October 2003, reflecting on progress after two years of waging the global war on terrorism, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked his advisers: "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us? Does the US need to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists? The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions."22

These are the right questions. Our answer is that we need short-term action on a long-range strategy, one that invigorates our foreign policy with the attention that the President and Congress have given to the military and intelligence parts of the conflict against Islamist terrorism.

Engage the Struggle of Ideas

The United States is heavily engaged in the Muslim world and will be for many years to come. This American engagement is resented. Polls in 2002 found that among America's friends, like Egypt-the recipient of more U.S. aid for the past 20 years than any other Muslim country-only 15 percent of the population had a favorable opinion of the United States. In Saudi Arabia the number was 12 percent. And two-thirds of those surveyed in 2003 in countries from Indonesia to Turkey (a NATO ally) were very or somewhat fearful that the United States may attack them.23

Support for the United States has plummeted. Polls taken in Islamic countries after 9/11 suggested that many or most people thought the United States was doing the right thing in its fight against terrorism; few people saw popular support for al Qaeda; half of those surveyed said that ordinary people had a favorable view of the United States. By 2003, polls showed that "the bottom has fallen out of support for America in most of the Muslim world. Negative views of the U.S. among Muslims, which had been largely limited to countries in the Middle East, have spread.. . . Since last summer, favorable ratings for the U.S. have fallen from 61% to 15% in Indonesia and from 71% to 38% among Muslims in Nigeria."24

Many of these views are at best uninformed about the United States and, at worst, informed by cartoonish stereotypes, the coarse expression of a fashionable "Occidentalism" among intellectuals who caricature U.S. values and policies. Local newspapers and the few influential satellite broadcasters-like al Jazeera-often reinforce the jihadist theme that portrays the United States as anti-Muslim.25

The small percentage of Muslims who are fully committed to Usama Bin Ladin's version of Islam are impervious to persuasion. It is among the large majority of Arabs and Muslims that we must encourage reform, freedom, democracy, and opportunity, even though our own promotion of these messages is limited in its effectiveness simply because we are its carriers. Muslims themselves will have to reflect upon such basic issues as the concept of jihad, the position of women, and the place of non-Muslim minorities. The United States can promote moderation, but cannot ensure its ascendancy. Only Muslims can do this.

The setting is difficult. The combined gross domestic product of the 22 countries in the Arab League is less than the GDP of Spain. Forty percent of adult Arabs are illiterate, two-thirds of them women. One-third of the broader Middle East lives on less than two dollars a day. Less than 2 percent of the population has access to the Internet. The majority of older Arab youths have expressed a desire to emigrate to other countries, particularly those in Europe.26

In short, the United States has to help defeat an ideology, not just a group of people, and we must do so under difficult circumstances. How can the United States and its friends help moderate Muslims combat the extremist ideas?

Recommendation: The U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors. America and Muslim friends can agree on respect for human dignity and opportunity. To Muslim parents, terrorists like Bin Ladin have nothing to offer their children but visions of violence and death. America and its friends have a crucial advantage-we can offer these parents a vision that might give their children a better future. If we heed the views of thoughtful leaders in the Arab and Muslim world, a moderate consensus can be found.

That vision of the future should stress life over death: individual educational and economic opportunity. This vision includes widespread political participation and contempt for indiscriminate violence. It includes respect for the rule of law, openness in discussing differences, and tolerance for opposing points of view.

Recommendation: Where Muslim governments, even those who are friends, do not respect these principles, the United States must stand for a better future. One of the lessons of the long Cold War was that short-term gains in cooperating with the most repressive and brutal governments were too often outweighed by long-term setbacks for America's stature and interests.

American foreign policy is part of the message. America's policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world. That does not mean U.S. choices have been wrong. It means those choices must be integrated with America's message of opportunity to the Arab and Muslim world. Neither Israel nor the new Iraq will be safer if worldwide Islamist terrorism grows stronger.

The United States must do more to communicate its message. Reflecting on Bin Ladin's success in reaching Muslim audiences, Richard Holbrooke wondered, "How can a man in a cave outcommunicate the world's leading communications society?" Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage worried to us that Americans have been "exporting our fears and our anger," not our vision of opportunity and hope.27

Recommendation: Just as we did in the Cold War, we need to defend our ideals abroad vigorously. America does stand up for its values. The United States defended, and still defends, Muslims against tyrants and criminals in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. If the United States does not act aggressively to define itself in the Islamic world, the extremists will gladly do the job for us.

• Recognizing that Arab and Muslim audiences rely on satellite television and radio, the government has begun some promising initiatives in television and radio broadcasting to the Arab world, Iran, and Afghanistan. These efforts are beginning to reach large audiences. The Broadcasting Board of Governors has asked for much larger resources. It should get them.
• The United States should rebuild the scholarship, exchange, and library programs that reach out to young people and offer them knowledge and hope. Where such assistance is provided, it should be identified as coming from the citizens of the United States.

An Agenda of Opportunity

The United States and its friends can stress educational and economic opportunity. The United Nations has rightly equated "literacy as freedom."

• The international community is moving toward setting a concrete goal-to cut the Middle East region's illiteracy rate in half by 2010, targeting women and girls and supporting programs for adult literacy.
• Unglamorous help is needed to support the basics, such as textbooks that translate more of the world's knowledge into local languages and libraries to house such materials. Education about the outside world, or other cultures, is weak.
• More vocational education is needed, too, in trades and business skills. The Middle East can also benefit from some of the programs to bridge the digital divide and increase Internet access that have already been developed for other regions of the world.

Education that teaches tolerance, the dignity and value of each individual, and respect for different beliefs is a key element in any global strategy to eliminate Islamist terrorism.

Recommendation: The U.S. government should offer to join with other nations in generously supporting a new International Youth Opportunity Fund. Funds will be spent directly for building and operating primary and secondary schools in those Muslim states that commit to sensibly investing their own money in public education.

Economic openness is essential. Terrorism is not caused by poverty. Indeed, many terrorists come from relatively well-off families. Yet when people lose hope, when societies break down, when countries fragment, the breeding grounds for terrorism are created. Backward economic policies and repressive political regimes slip into societies that are without hope, where ambition and passions have no constructive outlet.

The policies that support economic development and reform also have political implications. Economic and political liberties tend to be linked. Commerce, especially international commerce, requires ongoing cooperation and compromise, the exchange of ideas across cultures, and the peaceful resolution of differences through negotiation or the rule of law. Economic growth expands the middle class, a constituency for further reform. Successful economies rely on vibrant private sectors, which have an interest in curbing indiscriminate government power. Those who develop the practice of controlling their own economic destiny soon desire a voice in their communities and political societies.

The U.S. government has announced the goal of working toward a Middle East Free Trade Area, or MEFTA, by 2013.The United States has been seeking comprehensive free trade agreements (FTAs) with the Middle Eastern nations most firmly on the path to reform. The U.S.-Israeli FTA was enacted in 1985, and Congress implemented an FTA with Jordan in 2001. Both agreements have expanded trade and investment, thereby supporting domestic economic reform. In 2004, new FTAs were signed with Morocco and Bahrain, and are awaiting congressional approval. These models are drawing the interest of their neighbors. Muslim countries can become full participants in the rules-based global trading system, as the United States considers lowering its trade barriers with the poorest Arab nations.

Recommendation: A comprehensive U.S. strategy to counter terrorism should include economic policies that encourage development, more open societies, and opportunities for people to improve the lives of their families and to enhance prospects for their children's future.
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Re: The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission o

Postby admin » Tue Mar 22, 2016 9:09 am

Part 2 of 2

Turning a National Strategy into a Coalition Strategy

Practically every aspect of U.S. counterterrorism strategy relies on international cooperation. Since 9/11, these contacts concerning military, law enforcement, intelligence, travel and customs, and financial matters have expanded so dramatically, and often in an ad hoc way, that it is difficult to track these efforts, much less integrate them.

Recommendation: The United States should engage other nations in developing a comprehensive coalition strategy against Islamist terrorism. There are several multilateral institutions in which such issues should be addressed. But the most important policies should be discussed and coordinated in a flexible contact group of leading coalition governments. This is a good place, for example, to develop joint strategies for targeting terrorist travel, or for hammering out a common strategy for the places where terrorists may be finding sanctuary.

Presently the Muslim and Arab states meet with each other, in organizations such as the Islamic Conference and the Arab League. The Western states meet with each other in organizations such as NATO and the Group of Eight summit of leading industrial nations. A recent G-8 summit initiative to begin a dialogue about reform may be a start toward finding a place where leading Muslim states can discuss-and be seen to discuss-critical policy issues with the leading Western powers committed to the future of the Arab and Muslim world.

These new international efforts can create durable habits of visible cooperation, as states willing to step up to their responsibilities join together in constructive efforts to direct assistance and coordinate action.

Coalition warfare also requires coalition policies on what to do with enemy captives. Allegations that the United States abused prisoners in its custody make it harder to build the diplomatic, political, and military alliances the government will need. The United States should work with friends to develop mutually agreed-on principles for the detention and humane treatment of captured international terrorists who are not being held under a particular country's criminal laws. Countries such as Britain, Australia, and Muslim friends, are committed to fighting terrorists. America should be able to reconcile its views on how to balance humanity and security with our nation's commitment to these same goals.

The United States and some of its allies do not accept the application of full Geneva Convention treatment of prisoners of war to captured terrorists. Those Conventions establish a minimum set of standards for prisoners in internal conflicts. Since the international struggle against Islamist terrorism is not internal, those provisions do not formally apply, but they are commonly accepted as basic standards for humane treatment.

Recommendation: The United States should engage its friends to develop a common coalition approach toward the detention and humane treatment of captured terrorists. New principles might draw upon Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions on the law of armed conflict. That article was specifically designed for those cases in which the usual laws of war did not apply. Its minimum standards are generally accepted throughout the world as customary international law.

Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

The greatest danger of another catastrophic attack in the United States will materialize if the world's most dangerous terrorists acquire the world's most dangerous weapons. As we note in chapter 2, al Qaeda has tried to acquire or make nuclear weapons for at least ten years. In chapter 4, we mentioned officials worriedly discussing, in 1998, reports that Bin Ladin's associates thought their leader was intent on carrying out a "Hiroshima."

These ambitions continue. In the public portion of his February 2004 worldwide threat assessment to Congress, DCI Tenet noted that Bin Ladin considered the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction to be a "religious obligation." He warned that al Qaeda "continues to pursue its strategic goal of obtaining a nuclear capability." Tenet added that "more than two dozen other terrorist groups are pursuing CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear] materials."28

A nuclear bomb can be built with a relatively small amount of nuclear material. A trained nuclear engineer with an amount of highly enriched uranium or plutonium about the size of a grapefruit or an orange, together with commercially available material, could fashion a nuclear device that would fit in a van like the one Ramzi Yousef parked in the garage of the World Trade Center in 1993. Such a bomb would level Lower Manhattan.29

The coalition strategies we have discussed to combat Islamist terrorism should therefore be combined with a parallel, vital effort to prevent and counter the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).We recommend several initiatives in this area.

Strengthen Counterproliferation Efforts. While efforts to shut down Libya's illegal nuclear program have been generally successful, Pakistan's illicit trade and the nuclear smuggling networks of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan have revealed that the spread of nuclear weapons is a problem of global dimensions. Attempts to deal with Iran's nuclear program are still underway. Therefore, the United States should work with the international community to develop laws and an international legal regime with universal jurisdiction to enable the capture, interdiction, and prosecution of such smugglers by any state in the world where they do not disclose their activities.

Expand the Proliferation Security Initiative. In May 2003, the Bush administration announced the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI): nations in a willing partnership combining their national capabilities to use military, economic, and diplomatic tools to interdict threatening shipments of WMD and missile-related technology.

The PSI can be more effective if it uses intelligence and planning resources of the NATO alliance. Moreover, PSI membership should be open to non-NATO countries. Russia and China should be encouraged to participate.

Support the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Outside experts are deeply worried about the U.S. government's commitment and approach to securing the weapons and highly dangerous materials still scattered in Russia and other countries of the Soviet Union. The government's main instrument in this area, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (usually referred to as "Nunn-Lugar," after the senators who sponsored the legislation in 1991), is now in need of expansion, improvement, and resources. The U.S. government has recently redoubled its international commitments to support this program, and we recommend that the United States do all it can, if Russia and other countries will do their part. The government should weigh the value of this investment against the catastrophic cost America would face should such weapons find their way to the terrorists who are so anxious to acquire them.

Recommendation: Our report shows that al Qaeda has tried to acquire or make weapons of mass destruction for at least ten years. There is no doubt the United States would be a prime target. Preventing the proliferation of these weapons warrants a maximum effort-by strengthening counterproliferation efforts, expanding the Proliferation Security Initiative, and supporting the Cooperative Threat Reduction program.

Targeting Terrorist Money

The general public sees attacks on terrorist finance as a way to "starve the terrorists of money." So, initially, did the U.S. government. After 9/11, the United States took aggressive actions to designate terrorist financiers and freeze their money, in the United States and through resolutions of the United Nations. These actions appeared to have little effect and, when confronted by legal challenges, the United States and the United Nations were often forced to unfreeze assets.

The difficulty, understood later, was that even if the intelligence community might "link" someone to a terrorist group through acquaintances or communications, the task of tracing the money from that individual to the terrorist group, or otherwise showing complicity, was far more difficult. It was harder still to do so without disclosing secrets.

These early missteps made other countries unwilling to freeze assets or otherwise act merely on the basis of a U.S. action. Multilateral freezing mechanisms now require waiting periods before being put into effect, eliminating the element of surprise and thus virtually ensuring that little money is actually frozen. Worldwide asset freezes have not been adequately enforced and have been easily circumvented, often within weeks, by simple methods.

But trying to starve the terrorists of money is like trying to catch one kind of fish by draining the ocean. A better strategy has evolved since those early months, as the government learned more about how al Qaeda raises, moves, and spends money.

Recommendation: Vigorous efforts to track terrorist financing must remain front and center in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The government has recognized that information about terrorist money helps us to understand their networks, search them out, and disrupt their operations. Intelligence and law enforcement have targeted the relatively small number of financial facilitators-individuals al Qaeda relied on for their ability to raise and deliver money-at the core of al Qaeda's revenue stream. These efforts have worked. The death or capture of several important facilitators has decreased the amount of money available to al Qaeda and has increased its costs and difficulty in raising and moving that money. Captures have additionally provided a windfall of intelligence that can be used to continue the cycle of disruption.

The U.S. financial community and some international financial institutions have generally provided law enforcement and intelligence agencies with extraordinary cooperation, particularly in supplying information to support quickly developing investigations. Obvious vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system have been corrected. The United States has been less successful in persuading other countries to adopt financial regulations that would permit the tracing of financial transactions.

Public designation of terrorist financiers and organizations is still part of the fight, but it is not the primary weapon. Designations are instead a form of diplomacy, as governments join together to identify named individuals and groups as terrorists. They also prevent open fundraising. Some charities that have been identified as likely avenues for terrorist financing have seen their donations diminish and their activities come under more scrutiny, and others have been put out of business, although controlling overseas branches of Gulf-area charities remains a challenge. The Saudi crackdown after the May 2003 terrorist attacks in Riyadh has apparently reduced the funds available to al Qaeda-per-haps drastically-but it is too soon to know if this reduction will last.

Though progress apparently has been made, terrorists have shown considerable creativity in their methods of moving money. If al Qaeda is replaced by smaller, decentralized terrorist groups, the premise behind the government's efforts-that terrorists need a financial support network-may become outdated. Moreover, some terrorist operations do not rely on outside sources of money and may now be self-funding, either through legitimate employment or low-level criminal activity.30

12.4 PROTECT AGAINST AND PREPARE FOR TERRORIST ATTACKS

In the nearly three years since 9/11,Americans have become better protected against terrorist attack. Some of the changes are due to government action, such as new precautions to protect aircraft. A portion can be attributed to the sheer scale of spending and effort. Publicity and the vigilance of ordinary Americans also make a difference.

But the President and other officials acknowledge that although Americans may be safer, they are not safe. Our report shows that the terrorists analyze defenses. They plan accordingly.

Defenses cannot achieve perfect safety. They make targets harder to attack successfully, and they deter attacks by making capture more likely. Just increasing the attacker's odds of failure may make the difference between a plan attempted, or a plan discarded. The enemy also may have to develop more elaborate plans, thereby increasing the danger of exposure or defeat.

Protective measures also prepare for the attacks that may get through, containing the damage and saving lives.

Terrorist Travel

More than 500 million people annually cross U.S. borders at legal entry points, about 330 million of them noncitizens. Another 500,000 or more enter illegally without inspection across America's thousands of miles of land borders or remain in the country past the expiration of their permitted stay. The challenge for national security in an age of terrorism is to prevent the very few people who may pose overwhelming risks from entering or remaining in the United States undetected.31

In the decade before September 11, 2001, border security-encompassing travel, entry, and immigration-was not seen as a national security matter. Public figures voiced concern about the "war on drugs," the right level and kind of immigration, problems along the southwest border, migration crises originating in the Caribbean and elsewhere, or the growing criminal traffic in humans. The immigration system as a whole was widely viewed as increasingly dysfunctional and badly in need of reform. In national security circles, however, only smuggling of weapons of mass destruction carried weight, not the entry of terrorists who might use such weapons or the presence of associated foreign-born terrorists.

For terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons. Terrorists must travel clandestinely to meet, train, plan, case targets, and gain access to attack. To them, international travel presents great danger, because they must surface to pass through regulated channels, present themselves to border security officials, or attempt to circumvent inspection points.

In their travels, terrorists use evasive methods, such as altered and counterfeit passports and visas, specific travel methods and routes, liaisons with corrupt government officials, human smuggling networks, supportive travel agencies, and immigration and identity fraud. These can sometimes be detected.

Before 9/11, no agency of the U.S. government systematically analyzed terrorists' travel strategies. Had they done so, they could have discovered the ways in which the terrorist predecessors to al Qaeda had been systematically but detectably exploiting weaknesses in our border security since the early 1990s.

We found that as many as 15 of the 19 hijackers were potentially vulnerable to interception by border authorities. Analyzing their characteristic travel documents and travel patterns could have allowed authorities to intercept 4 to 15 hijackers and more effective use of information available in U.S. government databases could have identified up to 3 hijackers.32

Looking back, we can also see that the routine operations of our immigration laws-that is, aspects of those laws not specifically aimed at protecting against terrorism-inevitably shaped al Qaeda's planning and opportunities. Because they were deemed not to be bona fide tourists or students as they claimed, five conspirators that we know of tried to get visas and failed, and one was denied entry by an inspector. We also found that had the immigration system set a higher bar for determining whether individuals are who or what they claim to be-and ensuring routine consequences for violations-it could potentially have excluded, removed, or come into further contact with several hijackers who did not appear to meet the terms for admitting short-term visitors.33

Our investigation showed that two systemic weaknesses came together in our border system's inability to contribute to an effective defense against the 9/11 attacks: a lack of well-developed counterterrorism measures as a part of border security and an immigration system not able to deliver on its basic commitments, much less support counterterrorism. These weaknesses have been reduced but are far from being overcome.

Recommendation: Targeting travel is at least as powerful a weapon against terrorists as targeting their money. The United States should combine terrorist travel intelligence, operations, and law enforcement in a strategy to intercept terrorists, find terrorist travel facilitators, and constrain terrorist mobility.

Since 9/11, significant improvements have been made to create an integrated watchlist that makes terrorist name information available to border and law enforcement authorities. However, in the already difficult process of merging border agencies in the new Department of Homeland Security-"changing the engine while flying" as one official put it34-new insights into terrorist travel have not yet been integrated into the front lines of border security.

The small terrorist travel intelligence collection and analysis program currently in place has produced disproportionately useful results. It should be expanded. Since officials at the borders encounter travelers and their documents first and investigate travel facilitators, they must work closely with intelligence officials.

Internationally and in the United States, constraining terrorist travel should become a vital part of counterterrorism strategy. Better technology and training to detect terrorist travel documents are the most important immediate steps to reduce America's vulnerability to clandestine entry. Every stage of our border and immigration system should have as a part of its operations the detection of terrorist indicators on travel documents. Information systems able to authenticate travel documents and detect potential terrorist indicators should be used at consulates, at primary border inspection lines, in immigration services offices, and in intelligence and enforcement units. All frontline personnel should receive some training. Dedicated specialists and ongoing linkages with the intelligence community are also required. The Homeland Security Department's Directorate of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection should receive more resources to accomplish its mission as the bridge between the frontline border agencies and the rest of the government counterterrorism community.

A Biometric Screening System

When people travel internationally, they usually move through defined channels, or portals. They may seek to acquire a passport. They may apply for a visa. They stop at ticket counters, gates, and exit controls at airports and seaports. Upon arrival, they pass through inspection points. They may transit to another gate to get on an airplane. Once inside the country, they may seek another form of identification and try to enter a government or private facility. They may seek to change immigration status in order to remain.

Each of these checkpoints or portals is a screening-a chance to establish that people are who they say they are and are seeking access for their stated purpose, to intercept identifiable suspects, and to take effective action.

The job of protection is shared among these many defined checkpoints. By taking advantage of them all, we need not depend on any one point in the system to do the whole job. The challenge is to see the common problem across agencies and functions and develop a conceptual framework-an architecture-for an effective screening system.35

Throughout government, and indeed in private enterprise, agencies and firms at these portals confront recurring judgments that balance security, efficiency, and civil liberties. These problems should be addressed systemically, not in an ad hoc, fragmented way. For example:

What information is an individual required to present and in what form? A fundamental problem, now beginning to be addressed, is the lack of standardized information in "feeder" documents used in identifying individuals. Biometric identifiers that measure unique physical characteristics, such as facial features, fingerprints, or iris scans, and reduce them to digitized, numerical statements called algorithms, are just beginning to be used. Travel history, however, is still recorded in passports with entry-exit stamps called cachets, which al Qaeda has trained its operatives to forge and use to conceal their terrorist activities.

How will the individual and the information be checked? There are many databases just in the United States-for terrorist, criminal, and immigration history, as well as financial information, for instance. Each is set up for different purposes and stores different kinds of data, under varying rules of access. Nor is access always guaranteed. Acquiring information held by foreign governments may require painstaking negotiations, and records that are not yet digitized are difficult to search or analyze. The development of terrorist indicators has hardly begun, and behavioral cues remain important.

Who will screen individuals, and what will they be trained to do? A wide range of border, immigration, and law enforcement officials encounter visitors and immigrants and they are given little training in terrorist travel intelligence. Fraudulent travel documents, for instance, are usually returned to travelers who are denied entry without further examination for terrorist trademarks, investigation as to their source, or legal process.

What are the consequences of finding a suspicious indicator, and who will take action? One risk is that responses may be ineffective or produce no further information. Four of the 9/11 attackers were pulled into secondary border inspection, but then admitted. More than half of the 19 hijackers were flagged by the Federal Aviation Administration's profiling system when they arrived for their flights, but the consequence was that bags, not people, were checked. Competing risks include "false positives," or the danger that rules may be applied with insufficient training or judgment. Overreactions can impose high costs too-on individuals, our economy, and our beliefs about justice.

• A special note on the importance of trusting subjective judgment: One potential hijacker was turned back by an immigration inspector as he tried to enter the United States. The inspector relied on intuitive experience to ask questions more than he relied on any objective factor that could be detected by "scores" or a machine. Good people who have worked in such jobs for a long time understand this phenomenon well. Other evidence we obtained confirmed the importance of letting experienced gate agents or security screeners ask questions and use their judgment. This is not an invitation to arbitrary exclusions. But any effective system has to grant some scope, perhaps in a little extra inspection or one more check, to the instincts and discretion of well trained human beings.

Recommendation: The U.S. border security system should be integrated into a larger network of screening points that includes our transportation system and access to vital facilities, such as nuclear reactors. The President should direct the Department of Homeland Security to lead the effort to design a comprehensive screening system, addressing common problems and setting common standards with systemwide goals in mind. Extending those standards among other governments could dramatically strengthen America and the world's collective ability to intercept individuals who pose catastrophic threats.

We advocate a system for screening, not categorical profiling. A screening system looks for particular, identifiable suspects or indicators of risk. It does not involve guesswork about who might be dangerous. It requires frontline border officials who have the tools and resources to establish that people are who they say they are, intercept identifiable suspects, and disrupt terrorist operations.

The U.S. Border Screening System

The border and immigration system of the United States must remain a visible manifestation of our belief in freedom, democracy, global economic growth, and the rule of law, yet serve equally well as a vital element of counterterrorism. Integrating terrorist travel information in the ways we have described is the most immediate need. But the underlying system must also be sound.

Since September 11, the United States has built the first phase of a biometric screening program, called US VISIT (the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology program). It takes two biometric identifiers-digital photographs and prints of two index fingers-from travelers. False identities are used by terrorists to avoid being detected on a watchlist. These biometric identifiers make such evasions far more difficult.

So far, however, only visitors who acquire visas to travel to the United States are covered. While visitors from "visa waiver" countries will be added to the program, beginning this year, covered travelers will still constitute only about 12 percent of all noncitizens crossing U.S. borders. Moreover, exit data are not uniformly collected and entry data are not fully automated. It is not clear the system can be installed before 2010, but even this timetable may be too slow, given the possible security dangers.36

• Americans should not be exempt from carrying biometric passports or otherwise enabling their identities to be securely verified when they enter the United States; nor should Canadians or Mexicans. Currently U.S. persons are exempt from carrying passports when returning from Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. The current system enables non-U.S. citizens to gain entry by showing minimal identification. The 9/11 experience shows that terrorists study and exploit America's vulnerabilities.
• To balance this measure, programs to speed known travelers should be a higher priority, permitting inspectors to focus on greater risks. The daily commuter should not be subject to the same measures as first-time travelers. An individual should be able to preenroll, with his or her identity verified in passage. Updates of database information and other checks can ensure ongoing reliability. The solution, requiring more research and development, is likely to combine radio frequency technology with biometric identifiers.37
• The current patchwork of border screening systems, including several frequent traveler programs, should be consolidated with the US VISIT system to enable the development of an integrated system, which in turn can become part of the wider screening plan we suggest.
• The program allowing individuals to travel from foreign countries through the United States to a third country, without having to obtain a U.S. visa, has been suspended. Because "transit without visa" can be exploited by terrorists to enter the United States, the program should not be reinstated unless and until transit passage areas can be fully secured to prevent passengers from illegally exiting the airport.

Inspectors adjudicating entries of the 9/11 hijackers lacked adequate information and knowledge of the rules. All points in the border system-from consular offices to immigration services offices-will need appropriate electronic access to an individual's file. Scattered units at Homeland Security and the State Department perform screening and data mining: instead, a government-wide team of border and transportation officials should be working together. A modern border and immigration system should combine a biometric entry-exit system with accessible files on visitors and immigrants, along with intelligence on indicators of terrorist travel.

Our border screening system should check people efficiently and welcome friends. Admitting large numbers of students, scholars, businesspeople, and tourists fuels our economy, cultural vitality, and political reach. There is evidence that the present system is disrupting travel to the United States. Overall, visa applications in 2003 were down over 32 percent since 2001. In the Middle East, they declined about 46 percent. Training and the design of security measures should be continuously adjusted.38

Recommendation: The Department of Homeland Security, properly supported by the Congress, should complete, as quickly as possible, a biometric entry-exit screening system, including a single system for speeding qualified travelers. It should be integrated with the system that provides benefits to foreigners seeking to stay in the United States. Linking biometric passports to good data systems and decisionmaking is a fundamental goal. No one can hide his or her debt by acquiring a credit card with a slightly different name. Yet today, a terrorist can defeat the link to electronic records by tossing away an old passport and slightly altering the name in the new one.

Completion of the entry-exit system is a major and expensive challenge. Biometrics have been introduced into an antiquated computer environment. Replacement of these systems and improved biometric systems will be required. Nonetheless, funding and completing a biometrics-based entry-exit system is an essential investment in our national security.

Exchanging terrorist information with other countries, consistent with privacy requirements, along with listings of lost and stolen passports, will have immediate security benefits. We should move toward real-time verification of passports with issuing authorities. The further away from our borders that screening occurs, the more security benefits we gain. At least some screening should occur before a passenger departs on a flight destined for the United States. We should also work with other countries to ensure effective inspection regimes at all airports.39

The international community arrives at international standards for the design of passports through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The global standard for identification is a digital photograph; fingerprints are optional. We must work with others to improve passport standards and provide foreign assistance to countries that need help in making the transition.40

Recommendation: The U.S. government cannot meet its own obligations to the American people to prevent the entry of terrorists without a major effort to collaborate with other governments. We should do more to exchange terrorist information with trusted allies, and raise U.S. and global border security standards for travel and border crossing over the medium and long term through extensive international cooperation.

Immigration Law and Enforcement

Our borders and immigration system, including law enforcement, ought to send a message of welcome, tolerance, and justice to members of immigrant communities in the United States and in their countries of origin. We should reach out to immigrant communities. Good immigration services are one way of doing so that is valuable in every way-including intelligence.

It is elemental to border security to know who is coming into the country. Today more than 9 million people are in the United States outside the legal immigration system. We must also be able to monitor and respond to entrances between our ports of entry, working with Canada and Mexico as much as possible.

There is a growing role for state and local law enforcement agencies. They need more training and work with federal agencies so that they can cooperate more effectively with those federal authorities in identifying terrorist suspects.

All but one of the 9/11 hijackers acquired some form of U.S. identification document, some by fraud. Acquisition of these forms of identification would have assisted them in boarding commercial flights, renting cars, and other necessary activities.

Recommendation: Secure identification should begin in the United States. The federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as drivers licenses. Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft. At many entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding aircraft, sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists.41

Strategies for Aviation and Transportation Security

The U.S. transportation system is vast and, in an open society, impossible to secure completely against terrorist attacks. There are hundreds of commercial airports, thousands of planes, and tens of thousands of daily flights carrying more than half a billion passengers a year. Millions of containers are imported annually through more than 300 sea and river ports served by more than 3,700 cargo and passenger terminals. About 6,000 agencies provide transit services through buses, subways, ferries, and light-rail service to about 14 million Americans each weekday.42

In November 2001, Congress passed and the President signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. This act created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is now part of the Homeland Security Department. In November 2002, both the Homeland Security Act and the Maritime Transportation Security Act followed. These laws required the development of strategic plans to describe how the new department and TSA would provide security for critical parts of the U.S. transportation sector.

Over 90 percent of the nation's $5.3 billion annual investment in the TSA goes to aviation-to fight the last war. The money has been spent mainly to meet congressional mandates to federalize the security checkpoint screeners and to deploy existing security methods and technologies at airports. The current efforts do not yet reflect a forward-looking strategic plan systematically analyzing assets, risks, costs, and benefits. Lacking such a plan, we are not convinced that our transportation security resources are being allocated to the greatest risks in a cost-effective way.

• Major vulnerabilities still exist in cargo and general aviation security. These, together with inadequate screening and access controls, continue to present aviation security challenges.
• While commercial aviation remains a possible target, terrorists may turn their attention to other modes. Opportunities to do harm are as great, or greater, in maritime or surface transportation. Initiatives to secure shipping containers have just begun. Surface transportation systems such as railroads and mass transit remain hard to protect because they are so accessible and extensive.

Despite congressional deadlines, the TSA has developed neither an integrated strategic plan for the transportation sector nor specific plans for the various modes-air, sea, and ground.

Recommendation: Hard choices must be made in allocating limited resources. The U.S. government should identify and evaluate the transportation assets that need to be protected, set risk-based priorities for defending them, select the most practical and cost-effective ways of doing so, and then develop a plan, budget, and funding to implement the effort. The plan should assign roles and missions to the relevant authorities (federal, state, regional, and local) and to private stakeholders. In measuring effectiveness, perfection is unattainable. But terrorists should perceive that potential targets are defended. They may be deterred by a significant chance of failure.

Congress should set a specific date for the completion of these plans and hold the Department of Homeland Security and TSA accountable for achieving them.

The most powerful investments may be for improvements in technologies with applications across the transportation modes, such as scanning technologies designed to screen containers that can be transported by plane, ship, truck, or rail. Though such technologies are becoming available now, widespread deployment is still years away.

In the meantime, the best protective measures may be to combine improved methods of identifying and tracking the high-risk containers, operators, and facilities that require added scrutiny with further efforts to integrate intelligence analysis, effective procedures for transmitting threat information to transportation authorities, and vigilance by transportation authorities and the public.

A Layered Security System

No single security measure is foolproof. Accordingly, the TSA must have multiple layers of security in place to defeat the more plausible and dangerous forms of attack against public transportation.

• The plan must take into consideration the full array of possible enemy tactics, such as use of insiders, suicide terrorism, or standoff attack. Each layer must be effective in its own right. Each must be supported by other layers that are redundant and coordinated.
• The TSA should be able to identify for Congress the array of potential terrorist attacks, the layers of security in place, and the reliability provided by each layer. TSA must develop a plan as described above to improve weak individual layers and the effectiveness of the layered systems it deploys.

On 9/11, the 19 hijackers were screened by a computer-assisted screening system called CAPPS. More than half were identified for further inspection, which applied only to their checked luggage.

Under current practices, air carriers enforce government orders to stop certain known and suspected terrorists from boarding commercial flights and to apply secondary screening procedures to others. The "no-fly" and "automatic selectee" lists include only those individuals who the U.S. government believes pose a direct threat of attacking aviation.

Because air carriers implement the program, concerns about sharing intelligence information with private firms and foreign countries keep the U.S. government from listing all terrorist and terrorist suspects who should be included. The TSA has planned to take over this function when it deploys a new screening system to take the place of CAPPS. The deployment of this system has been delayed because of claims it may violate civil liberties.

Recommendation: Improved use of "no-fly" and "automatic selectee" lists should not be delayed while the argument about a successor to CAPPS continues. This screening function should be performed by the TSA, and it should utilize the larger set of watchlists maintained by the federal government. Air carriers should be required to supply the information needed to test and implement this new system.

CAPPS is still part of the screening process, still profiling passengers, with the consequences of selection now including personal searches of the individual and carry-on bags. The TSA is dealing with the kind of screening issues that are being encountered by other agencies. As we mentioned earlier, these screening issues need to be elevated for high-level attention and addressed promptly by the government. Working through these problems can help clear the way for the TSA's screening improvements and would help many other agencies too.

The next layer is the screening checkpoint itself. As the screening system tries to stop dangerous people, the checkpoint needs to be able to find dangerous items. Two reforms are needed soon: (1) screening people for explosives, not just their carry-on bags, and (2) improving screener performance.

Recommendation: The TSA and the Congress must give priority attention to improving the ability of screening checkpoints to detect explosives on passengers. As a start, each individual selected for special screening should be screened for explosives. Further, the TSA should conduct a human factors study, a method often used in the private sector, to understand problems in screener performance and set attainable objectives for individual screeners and for the checkpoints where screening takes place.

Concerns also remain regarding the screening and transport of checked bags and cargo. More attention and resources should be directed to reducing or mitigating the threat posed by explosives in vessels' cargo holds. The TSA should expedite the installation of advanced (in-line) baggage-screening equipment. Because the aviation industry will derive substantial benefits from this deployment, it should pay a fair share of the costs. The TSA should require that every passenger aircraft carrying cargo must deploy at least one hardened container to carry any suspect cargo. TSA also needs to intensify its efforts to identify, track, and appropriately screen potentially dangerous cargo in both the aviation and maritime sectors.

The Protection of Civil Liberties

Many of our recommendations call for the government to increase its presence in our lives-for example, by creating standards for the issuance of forms of identification, by better securing our borders, by sharing information gathered by many different agencies. We also recommend the consolidation of authority over the now far-flung entities constituting the intelligence community. The Patriot Act vests substantial powers in our federal government. We have seen the government use the immigration laws as a tool in its counterterrorism effort. Even without the changes we recommend, the American public has vested enormous authority in the U.S. government.

At our first public hearing on March 31, 2003, we noted the need for balance as our government responds to the real and ongoing threat of terrorist attacks. The terrorists have used our open society against us. In wartime, government calls for greater powers, and then the need for those powers recedes after the war ends. This struggle will go on. Therefore, while protecting our homeland, Americans should be mindful of threats to vital personal and civil liberties. This balancing is no easy task, but we must constantly strive to keep it right.

This shift of power and authority to the government calls for an enhanced system of checks and balances to protect the precious liberties that are vital to our way of life. We therefore make three recommendations.

First, as we will discuss in chapter 13, to open up the sharing of information across so many agencies and with the private sector, the President should take responsibility for determining what information can be shared by which agencies and under what conditions. Protection of privacy rights should be one key element of this determination.

Recommendation: As the President determines the guidelines for information sharing among government agencies and by those agencies with the private sector, he should safeguard the privacy of individuals about whom information is shared.

Second, Congress responded, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, with the Patriot Act, which vested substantial new powers in the investigative agencies of the government. Some of the most controversial provisions of the Patriot Act are to "sunset" at the end of 2005. Many of the act's provisions are relatively noncontroversial, updating America's surveillance laws to reflect technological developments in a digital age. Some executive actions that have been criticized are unrelated to the Patriot Act. The provisions in the act that facilitate the sharing of information among intelligence agencies and between law enforcement and intelligence appear, on balance, to be beneficial. Because of concerns regarding the shifting balance of power to the government, we think that a full and informed debate on the Patriot Act would be healthy.

Recommendation: The burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially enhances security and (b) that there is adequate supervision of the executive's use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties. If the power is granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine its use.

Third, during the course of our inquiry, we were told that there is no office within the government whose job it is to look across the government at the actions we are taking to protect ourselves to ensure that liberty concerns are appropriately considered. If, as we recommend, there is substantial change in the way we collect and share intelligence, there should be a voice within the executive branch for those concerns. Many agencies have privacy offices, albeit of limited scope. The Intelligence Oversight Board of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board has, in the past, had the job of overseeing certain activities of the intelligence community.

Recommendation: At this time of increased and consolidated government authority, there should be a board within the executive branch to oversee adherence to the guidelines we recommend and the commitment the government makes to defend our civil liberties.

We must find ways of reconciling security with liberty, since the success of one helps protect the other. The choice between security and liberty is a false choice, as nothing is more likely to endanger America's liberties than the success of a terrorist attack at home. Our history has shown us that insecurity threatens liberty. Yet, if our liberties are curtailed, we lose the values that we are struggling to defend.

Setting Priorities for National Preparedness

Before 9/11, no executive department had, as its first priority, the job of defending America from domestic attack. That changed with the 2002 creation of the Department of Homeland Security. This department now has the lead responsibility for problems that feature so prominently in the 9/11 story, such as protecting borders, securing transportation and other parts of our critical infrastructure, organizing emergency assistance, and working with the private sector to assess vulnerabilities.

Throughout the government, nothing has been harder for officials-executive or legislative-than to set priorities, making hard choices in allocating limited resources. These difficulties have certainly afflicted the Department of Homeland Security, hamstrung by its many congressional overseers. In delivering assistance to state and local governments, we heard-especially in New York-about imbalances in the allocation of money. The argument concentrates on two questions.

First, how much money should be set aside for criteria not directly related to risk? Currently a major portion of the billions of dollars appropriated for state and local assistance is allocated so that each state gets a certain amount, or an allocation based on its population-wherever they live.

Recommendation: Homeland security assistance should be based strictly on an assessment of risks and vulnerabilities. Now, in 2004, Washington, D.C., and New York City are certainly at the top of any such list. We understand the contention that every state and city needs to have some minimum infrastructure for emergency response. But federal homeland security assistance should not remain a program for general revenue sharing. It should supplement state and local resources based on the risks or vulnerabilities that merit additional support. Congress should not use this money as a pork barrel.

The second question is, Can useful criteria to measure risk and vulnerability be developed that assess all the many variables? The allocation of funds should be based on an assessment of threats and vulnerabilities. That assessment should consider such factors as population, population density, vulnerability, and the presence of critical infrastructure within each state. In addition, the federal government should require each state receiving federal emergency preparedness funds to provide an analysis based on the same criteria to justify the distribution of funds in that state.

In a free-for-all over money, it is understandable that representatives will work to protect the interests of their home states or districts. But this issue is too important for politics as usual to prevail. Resources must be allocated according to vulnerabilities. We recommend that a panel of security experts be convened to develop written benchmarks for evaluating community needs. We further recommend that federal homeland security funds be allocated in accordance with those benchmarks, and that states be required to abide by those benchmarks in disbursing the federal funds. The benchmarks will be imperfect and subjective; they will continually evolve. But hard choices must be made. Those who would allocate money on a different basis should then defend their view of the national interest.

Command, Control, and Communications The attacks on 9/11 demonstrated that even the most robust emergency response capabilities can be overwhelmed if an attack is large enough. Team-work, collaboration, and cooperation at an incident site are critical to a successful response. Key decisionmakers who are represented at the incident command level help to ensure an effective response, the efficient use of resources, and responder safety. Regular joint training at all levels is, moreover, essential to ensuring close coordination during an actual incident.

Recommendation: Emergency response agencies nationwide should adopt the Incident Command System (ICS).When multiple agencies or multiple jurisdictions are involved, they should adopt a unified command. Both are proven frameworks for emergency response. We strongly support the decision that federal homeland security funding will be contingent, as of October 1, 2004, upon the adoption and regular use of ICS and unified command procedures. In the future, the Department of Homeland Security should consider making funding contingent on aggressive and realistic training in accordance with ICS and unified command procedures.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 overwhelmed the response capacity of most of the local jurisdictions where the hijacked airliners crashed. While many jurisdictions have established mutual aid compacts, a serious obstacle to multi-jurisdictional response has been the lack of indemnification for mutual-aid responders in areas such as the National Capital Region.

Public safety organizations, chief administrative officers, state emergency management agencies, and the Department of Homeland Security should develop a regional focus within the emergency responder community and promote multi-jurisdictional mutual assistance compacts. Where such compacts already exist, training in accordance with their terms should be required. Congress should pass legislation to remedy the long-standing indemnification and liability impediments to the provision of public safety mutual aid in the National Capital Region and where applicable throughout the nation.

The inability to communicate was a critical element at the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Somerset County, Pennsylvania, crash sites, where multiple agencies and multiple jurisdictions responded. The occurrence of this problem at three very different sites is strong evidence that compatible and adequate communications among public safety organizations at the local, state, and federal levels remains an important problem.

Recommendation: Congress should support pending legislation which provides for the expedited and increased assignment of radio spectrum for public safety purposes. Furthermore, high-risk urban areas such as New York City and Washington, D.C., should establish signal corps units to ensure communications connectivity between and among civilian authorities, local first responders, and the National Guard. Federal funding of such units should be given high priority by Congress.

Private-Sector Preparedness

The mandate of the Department of Homeland Security does not end with government; the department is also responsible for working with the private sector to ensure preparedness. This is entirely appropriate, for the private sector controls 85 percent of the critical infrastructure in the nation. Indeed, unless a terrorist's target is a military or other secure government facility, the "first" first responders will almost certainly be civilians. Homeland security and national preparedness therefore often begins with the private sector.

Preparedness in the private sector and public sector for rescue, restart, and recovery of operations should include (1) a plan for evacuation, (2) adequate communications capabilities, and (3) a plan for continuity of operations. As we examined the emergency response to 9/11, witness after witness told us that despite 9/11, the private sector remains largely unprepared for a terrorist attack. We were also advised that the lack of a widely embraced private-sector preparedness standard was a principal contributing factor to this lack of preparedness.

We responded by asking the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to develop a consensus on a "National Standard for Preparedness" for the private sector. ANSI convened safety, security, and business continuity experts from a wide range of industries and associations, as well as from federal, state, and local government stakeholders, to consider the need for standards for private sector emergency preparedness and business continuity.

The result of these sessions was ANSI's recommendation that the Commission endorse a voluntary National Preparedness Standard. Based on the existing American National Standard on Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs (NFPA 1600), the proposed National Preparedness Standard establishes a common set of criteria and terminology for preparedness, disaster management, emergency management, and business continuity programs. The experience of the private sector in the World Trade Center emergency demonstrated the need for these standards.

Recommendation: We endorse the American National Standards Institute's recommended standard for private preparedness. We were encouraged by Secretary Tom Ridge's praise of the standard, and urge the Department of Homeland Security to promote its adoption. We also encourage the insurance and credit-rating industries to look closely at a company's compliance with the ANSI standard in assessing its insurability and creditworthiness. We believe that compliance with the standard should define the standard of care owed by a company to its employees and the public for legal purposes. Private-sector preparedness is not a luxury; it is a cost of doing business in the post-9/11 world. It is ignored at a tremendous potential cost in lives, money, and national security.
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Re: The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission o

Postby admin » Tue Mar 22, 2016 9:18 am

Part 1 of 2

13. HOW TO DO IT? A DIFFERENT WAY OF ORGANIZING THE GOVERNMENT

As presently configured, the national security institutions of the U.S. government are still the institutions constructed to win the Cold War. The United States confronts a very different world today. Instead of facing a few very dangerous adversaries, the United States confronts a number of less visible challenges that surpass the boundaries of traditional nation-states and call for quick, imaginative, and agile responses.

The men and women of the World War II generation rose to the challenges of the 1940s and 1950s. They restructured the government so that it could protect the country. That is now the job of the generation that experienced 9/11. Those attacks showed, emphatically, that ways of doing business rooted in a different era are just not good enough. Americans should not settle for incremental, ad hoc adjustments to a system designed generations ago for a world that no longer exists.

We recommend significant changes in the organization of the government. We know that the quality of the people is more important than the quality of the wiring diagrams. Some of the saddest aspects of the 9/11 story are the outstanding efforts of so many individual officials straining, often without success, against the boundaries of the possible. Good people can overcome bad structures. They should not have to.

The United States has the resources and the people. The government should combine them more effectively, achieving unity of effort. We offer five major recommendations to do that:

• unifying strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamist terrorists across the foreign-domestic divide with a National Counterterrorism Center;
• unifying the intelligence community with a new National Intelligence Director;
• unifying the many participants in the counterterrorism effort and their knowledge in a network-based information-sharing system that transcends traditional governmental boundaries;
• unifying and strengthening congressional oversight to improve quality and accountability; and
• strengthening the FBI and homeland defenders.

13.1 UNITY OF EFFORT ACROSS THE FOREIGN-DOMESTIC DIVIDE

Image
[Hitler] We want to be one people ...
-- Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl


Joint Action

Much of the public commentary about the 9/11 attacks has dealt with "lost opportunities," some of which we reviewed in chapter 11.These are often characterized as problems of "watchlisting," of "information sharing," or of "connecting the dots." In chapter 11 we explained that these labels are too narrow. They describe the symptoms, not the disease.

In each of our examples, no one was firmly in charge of managing the case and able to draw relevant intelligence from anywhere in the government, assign responsibilities across the agencies (foreign or domestic), track progress, and quickly bring obstacles up to the level where they could be resolved. Responsibility and accountability were diffuse.

The agencies cooperated, some of the time. But even such cooperation as there was is not the same thing as joint action. When agencies cooperate, one defines the problem and seeks help with it. When they act jointly, the problem and options for action are defined differently from the start. Individuals from different backgrounds come together in analyzing a case and planning how to manage it.

In our hearings we regularly asked witnesses: Who is the quarterback? The other players are in their positions, doing their jobs. But who is calling the play that assigns roles to help them execute as a team?

Since 9/11, those issues have not been resolved. In some ways joint work has gotten better, and in some ways worse. The effort of fighting terrorism has flooded over many of the usual agency boundaries because of its sheer quantity and energy. Attitudes have changed. Officials are keenly conscious of trying to avoid the mistakes of 9/11. They try to share information. They circulate-even to the President-practically every reported threat, however dubious.

Partly because of all this effort, the challenge of coordinating it has multiplied. Before 9/11, the CIA was plainly the lead agency confronting al Qaeda. The FBI played a very secondary role. The engagement of the departments of Defense and State was more episodic.

• Today the CIA is still central. But the FBI is much more active, along with other parts of the Justice Department.
• The Defense Department effort is now enormous. Three of its unified commands, each headed by a four-star general, have counterterrorism as a primary mission: Special Operations Command, Central Command (both headquartered in Florida), and Northern Command (headquartered in Colorado).
• A new Department of Homeland Security combines formidable resources in border and transportation security, along with analysis of domestic vulnerability and other tasks.
• The State Department has the lead on many of the foreign policy tasks we described in chapter 12.
• At the White House, the National Security Council (NSC) now is joined by a parallel presidential advisory structure, the Homeland Security Council.

So far we have mentioned two reasons for joint action-the virtue of joint planning and the advantage of having someone in charge to ensure a unified effort. There is a third: the simple shortage of experts with sufficient skills. The limited pool of critical experts-for example, skilled counterterrorism analysts and linguists-is being depleted. Expanding these capabilities will require not just money, but time.

Primary responsibility for terrorism analysis has been assigned to the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), created in 2003, based at the CIA headquarters but staffed with representatives of many agencies, reporting directly to the Director of Central Intelligence. Yet the CIA houses another intelligence "fusion" center: the Counterterrorist Center that played such a key role before 9/11. A third major analytic unit is at Defense, in the Defense Intelligence Agency. A fourth, concentrating more on homeland vulnerabilities, is at the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI is in the process of building the analytic capability it has long lacked, and it also has the Terrorist Screening Center.1

The U.S. government cannot afford so much duplication of effort. There are not enough experienced experts to go around. The duplication also places extra demands on already hard-pressed single-source national technical intelligence collectors like the National Security Agency.

Combining Joint Intelligence and Joint Action

A "smart" government would integrate all sources of information to see the enemy as a whole. Integrated all-source analysis should also inform and shape strategies to collect more intelligence. Yet the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, while it has primary responsibility for terrorism analysis, is formally proscribed from having any oversight or operational authority and is not part of any operational entity, other than reporting to the director of central intelligence.2

The government now tries to handle the problem of joint management, informed by analysis of intelligence from all sources, in two ways.

• First, agencies with lead responsibility for certain problems have constructed their own interagency entities and task forces in order to get cooperation. The Counterterrorist Center at CIA, for example, recruits liaison officers from throughout the intelligence community. The military's Central Command has its own interagency center, recruiting liaison officers from all the agencies from which it might need help. The FBI has Joint Terrorism Task Forces in 84 locations to coordinate the activities of other agencies when action may be required.
• Second, the problem of joint operational planning is often passed to the White House, where the NSC staff tries to play this role. The national security staff at the White House (both NSC and new Homeland Security Council staff) has already become 50 percent larger since 9/11. But our impression, after talking to serving officials, is that even this enlarged staff is consumed by meetings on day-to-day issues, sifting each day's threat information and trying to coordinate everyday operations.

Even as it crowds into every square inch of available office space, the NSC staff is still not sized or funded to be an executive agency. In chapter 3 we described some of the problems that arose in the 1980s when a White House staff, constitutionally insulated from the usual mechanisms of oversight, became involved in direct operations. During the 1990s Richard Clarke occasionally tried to exercise such authority, sometimes successfully, but often causing friction.

Yet a subtler and more serious danger is that as the NSC staff is consumed by these day-to-day tasks, it has less capacity to find the time and detachment needed to advise a president on larger policy issues. That means less time to work on major new initiatives, help with legislative management to steer needed bills through Congress, and track the design and implementation of the strategic plans for regions, countries, and issues that we discuss in chapter 12.

Much of the job of operational coordination remains with the agencies, especially the CIA. There DCI Tenet and his chief aides ran interagency meetings nearly every day to coordinate much of the government's day-to-day work. The DCI insisted he did not make policy and only oversaw its implementation. In the struggle against terrorism these distinctions seem increasingly artificial. Also, as the DCI becomes a lead coordinator of the government's operations, it becomes harder to play all the position's other roles, including that of analyst in chief.

The problem is nearly intractable because of the way the government is currently structured. Lines of operational authority run to the expanding executive departments, and they are guarded for understandable reasons: the DCI commands the CIA's personnel overseas; the secretary of defense will not yield to others in conveying commands to military forces; the Justice Department will not give up the responsibility of deciding whether to seek arrest warrants. But the result is that each agency or department needs its own intelligence apparatus to support the performance of its duties. It is hard to "break down stovepipes" when there are so many stoves that are legally and politically entitled to have cast-iron pipes of their own.

Recalling the Goldwater-Nichols legislation of 1986, Secretary Rumsfeld reminded us that to achieve better joint capability, each of the armed services had to "give up some of their turf and authorities and prerogatives." Today, he said, the executive branch is "stove-piped much like the four services were nearly 20 years ago." He wondered if it might be appropriate to ask agencies to "give up some of their existing turf and authority in exchange for a stronger, faster, more efficient government wide joint effort."3 Privately, other key officials have made the same point to us.

We therefore propose a new institution: a civilian-led unified joint command for counterterrorism. It should combine strategic intelligence and joint operational planning.

In the Pentagon's Joint Staff, which serves the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, intelligence is handled by the J-2 directorate, operational planning by J-3, and overall policy by J-5. Our concept combines the J-2 and J-3 functions (intelligence and operational planning) in one agency, keeping overall policy coordination where it belongs, in the National Security Council.

Recommendation: We recommend the establishment of a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), built on the foundation of the existing Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC). Breaking the older mold of national government organization, this NCTC should be a center for joint operational planning and joint intelligence, staffed by personnel from the various agencies. The head of the NCTC should have authority to evaluate the performance of the people assigned to the Center.

• Such a joint center should be developed in the same spirit that guided the military's creation of unified joint commands, or the shaping of earlier national agencies like the National Reconnaissance Office, which was formed to organize the work of the CIA and several defense agencies in space.
NCTC-Intelligence. The NCTC should lead strategic analysis, pooling all-source intelligence, foreign and domestic, about transnational terrorist organizations with global reach. It should develop net assessments (comparing enemy capabilities and intentions against U.S. defenses and countermeasures). It should also provide warning. It should do this work by drawing on the efforts of the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and other departments and agencies. It should task collection requirements both inside and outside the United States.
• The intelligence function (J-2) should build on the existing TTIC structure and remain distinct, as a national intelligence center, within the NCTC. As the government's principal knowledge bank on Islamist terrorism, with the main responsibility for strategic analysis and net assessment, it should absorb a significant portion of the analytical talent now residing in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center and the DIA's Joint Intelligence Task Force-Combatting Terrorism (JITF-CT).
NCTC-Operations. The NCTC should perform joint planning. The plans would assign operational responsibilities to lead agencies, such as State, the CIA, the FBI, Defense and its combatant commands, Homeland Security, and other agencies. The NCTC shouldnot direct the actual execution of these operations, leaving that job to the agencies. The NCTC would then track implementation; it would look across the foreign-domestic divide and across agency boundaries, updating plans to follow through on cases.4
• The joint operational planning function (J-3) will be new to the TTIC structure. The NCTC can draw on analogous work now being done in the CIA and every other involved department of the government, as well as reaching out to knowledgeable officials in state and local agencies throughout the United States.
• The NCTC should not be a policymaking body. Its operations and planning should follow the policy direction of the president and the National Security Council.

Consider this hypothetical case. The NSA discovers that a suspected terrorist is traveling to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. The NCTC should draw on joint intelligence resources, including its own NSA counterterrorism experts, to analyze the identities and possible destinations of these individuals. Informed by this analysis, the NCTC would then organize and plan the management of the case, drawing on the talents and differing kinds of experience among the several agency representatives assigned to it-assigning tasks to the CIA overseas, to Homeland Security watching entry points into the United States, and to the FBI. If military assistance might be needed, the Special Operations Command could be asked to develop an appropriate concept for such an operation. The NCTC would be accountable for tracking the progress of the case, ensuring that the plan evolved with it, and integrating the information into a warning. The NCTC would be responsible for being sure that intelligence gathered from the activities in the field became part of the government's institutional memory about Islamist terrorist personalities, organizations, and possible means of attack.

In each case the involved agency would make its own senior managers aware of what it was being asked to do. If those agency heads objected, and the issue could not easily be resolved, then the disagreement about roles and missions could be brought before the National Security Council and the president.


NCTC-Authorities. The head of the NCTC should be appointed by the president, and should be equivalent in rank to a deputy head of a cabinet department. The head of the NCTC would report to the national intelligence director, an office whose creation we recommend below, placed in the Executive Office of the President. The head of the NCTC would thus also report indirectly to the president. This official's nomination should be confirmed by the Senate and he or she should testify to the Congress, as is the case now with other statutory presidential offices, like the U.S. trade representative.

• To avoid the fate of other entities with great nominal authority and little real power, the head of the NCTC must have the right to concur in the choices of personnel to lead the operating entities of the departments and agencies focused on counterterrorism, specifically including the head of the Counterterrorist Center, the head of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, the commanders of the Defense Department's Special Operations Command and Northern Command, and the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism.5 The head of the NCTC should also work with the director of the Office of Management and Budget in developing the president's counterterrorism budget.
• There are precedents for surrendering authority for joint planning while preserving an agency's operational control. In the international context, NATO commanders may get line authority over forces assigned by other nations. In U.S. unified commands, commanders plan operations that may involve units belonging to one of the services. In each case, procedures are worked out, formal and informal, to define the limits of the joint commander's authority.

The most serious disadvantage of the NCTC is the reverse of its greatest virtue. The struggle against Islamist terrorism is so important that any clear-cut centralization of authority to manage and be accountable for it may concentrate too much power in one place. The proposed NCTC would be given the authority of planning the activities of other agencies. Law or executive order must define the scope of such line authority.

The NCTC would not eliminate interagency policy disputes. These would still go to the National Security Council. To improve coordination at the White House, we believe the existing Homeland Security Council should soon be merged into a single National Security Council. The creation of the NCTC should help the NSC staff concentrate on its core duties of assisting the president and supporting interdepartmental policymaking.

We recognize that this is a new and difficult idea precisely because the authorities we recommend for the NCTC really would, as Secretary Rumsfeld foresaw, ask strong agencies to "give up some of their turf and authority in exchange for a stronger, faster, more efficient government wide joint effort." Countering transnational Islamist terrorism will test whether the U.S. government can fashion more flexible models of management needed to deal with the twenty-first-century world.

An argument against change is that the nation is at war, and cannot afford to reorganize in midstream. But some of the main innovations of the 1940s and 1950s, including the creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and even the construction of the Pentagon itself, were undertaken in the midst of war. Surely the country cannot wait until the struggle against Islamist terrorism is over.

"Surprise, when it happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing. It includes neglect of responsibility, but also responsibility so poorly defined or so ambiguously delegated that action gets lost."6 That comment was made more than 40 years ago, about Pearl Harbor. We hope another commission, writing in the future about another attack, does not again find this quotation to be so apt.

13.2 UNITY OF EFFORT IN THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

In our first section, we concentrated on counterterrorism, discussing how to combine the analysis of information from all sources of intelligence with the joint planning of operations that draw on that analysis. In this section, we step back from looking just at the counterterrorism problem. We reflect on whether the government is organized adequately to direct resources and build the intelligence capabilities it will need not just for countering terrorism, but for the broader range of national security challenges in the decades ahead.

The Need for a Change

During the Cold War, intelligence agencies did not depend on seamless integration to track and count the thousands of military targets-such as tanks and missiles-fielded by the Soviet Union and other adversary states. Each agency concentrated on its specialized mission, acquiring its own information and then sharing it via formal, finished reports. The Department of Defense had given birth to and dominated the main agencies for technical collection of intelligence. Resources were shifted at an incremental pace, coping with challenges that arose over years, even decades.

We summarized the resulting organization of the intelligence community in chapter 3. It is outlined below.

Members of the U.S. Intelligence Community

Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, which includes the Office of the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management, the Community Management Staff, the Terrorism Threat Integration Center, the National Intelligence Council, and other community offices

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which performs human source collection, all-source analysis, and advanced science and technology

National intelligence agencies:

Members of the U.S. Intelligence Community

Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, which includes the Office of the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management, the Community Management Staff, the Terrorism Threat Integration Center, the National Intelligence Council, and other community offices

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which performs human source collection, all-source analysis, and advanced science and technology

National intelligence agencies:

• To avoid the fate of other entities with great nominal authority and little real power, the head of the NCTC must have the right to concur in the choices of personnel to lead the operating entities of the departments and agencies focused on counterterrorism, specifically including the head of the Counterterrorist Center, the head of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division, the commanders of the Defense Department's Special Operations Command and Northern Command, and the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism.5 The head of the NCTC should also work with the director of the Office of Management and Budget in developing the president's counterterrorism budget.
• There are precedents for surrendering authority for joint planning while preserving an agency's operational control. In the international context, NATO commanders may get line authority over forces assigned by other nations. In U.S. unified commands, commanders plan operations that may involve units belonging to one of the services. In each case, procedures are worked out, formal and informal, to define the limits of the joint commander's authority.


The need to restructure the intelligence community grows out of six problems that have become apparent before and after 9/11:

• Structural barriers to performing joint intelligence work. National intelligence is still organized around the collection disciplines of the home agencies, not the joint mission. The importance of integrated, all-source analysis cannot be overstated. Without it, it is not possible to "connect the dots." No one component holds all the relevant information.
By contrast, in organizing national defense, the Goldwater-Nichols legislation of 1986 created joint commands for operations in the field, the Unified Command Plan. The services-the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps-organize, train, and equip their people and units to perform their missions. Then they assign personnel and units to the joint combatant commander, like the commanding general of the Central Command (CENTCOM). The Goldwater-Nichols Act required officers to serve tours outside their service in order to win promotion. The culture of the Defense Department was transformed, its collective mind-set moved from service-specific to "joint," and its operations became more integrated.7
• Lack of common standards and practices across the foreign-domestic divide.The leadership of the intelligence community should be able to pool information gathered overseas with information gathered in the United States, holding the work-wherever it is done-to a common standard of quality in how it is collected, processed (e.g., translated), reported, shared, and analyzed. A common set of personnel standards for intelligence can create a group of professionals better able to operate in joint activities, transcending their own service-specific mind-sets.
• Divided management of national intelligence capabilities. While the CIA was once "central" to our national intelligence capabilities, following the end of the Cold War it has been less able to influence the use of the nation's imagery and signals intelligence capabilities in three national agencies housed within the Department of Defense: the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. One of the lessons learned from the 1991 Gulf War was the value of national intelligence systems (satellites in particular) in precision warfare. Since that war, the department has appropriately drawn these agencies into its transformation of the military. Helping to orchestrate this transformation is the under secretary of defense for intelligence, a position established by Congress after 9/11. An unintended consequence of these developments has been the far greater demand made by Defense on technical systems, leaving the DCI less able to influence how these technical resources are allocated and used.
• Weak capacity to set priorities and move resources. The agencies are mainly organized around what they collect or the way they collect it. But the priorities for collection are national. As the DCI makes hard choices about moving resources, he or she must have the power to reach across agencies and reallocate effort.
• Too many jobs. The DCI now has at least three jobs. He is expected to run a particular agency, the CIA. He is expected to manage the loose confederation of agencies that is the intelligence community. He is expected to be the analyst in chief for the government, sifting evidence and directly briefing the President as his principal intelligence adviser. No recent DCI has been able to do all three effectively. Usually what loses out is management of the intelligence community, a difficult task even in the best case because the DCI's current authorities are weak. With so much to do, the DCI often has not used even the authority he has.
• Too complex and secret. Over the decades, the agencies and the rules surrounding the intelligence community have accumulated to a depth that practically defies public comprehension. There are now 15 agencies or parts of agencies in the intelligence community. The community and the DCI's authorities have become arcane matters, understood only by initiates after long study. Even the most basic information about how much money is actually allocated to or within the intelligence community and most of its key components is shrouded from public view.

The current DCI is responsible for community performance but lacks the three authorities critical for any agency head or chief executive officer: (1) control over purse strings, (2) the ability to hire or fire senior managers, and (3) the ability to set standards for the information infrastructure and personnel.8

The only budget power of the DCI over agencies other than the CIA lies in coordinating the budget requests of the various intelligence agencies into a single program for submission to Congress. The overall funding request of the 15 intelligence entities in this program is then presented to the president and Congress in 15 separate volumes.

When Congress passes an appropriations bill to allocate money to intelligence agencies, most of their funding is hidden in the Defense Department in order to keep intelligence spending secret. Therefore, although the House and Senate Intelligence committees are the authorizing committees for funding of the intelligence community, the final budget review is handled in the Defense Subcommittee of the Appropriations committees. Those committees have no subcommittees just for intelligence, and only a few members and staff review the requests.

The appropriations for the CIA and the national intelligence agencies- NSA, NGA, and NRO-are then given to the secretary of defense. The secretary transfers the CIA's money to the DCI but disburses the national agencies' money directly. Money for the FBI's national security components falls within the appropriations for Commerce, Justice, and State and goes to the attorney general.9

In addition, the DCI lacks hire-and-fire authority over most of the intelligence community's senior managers. For the national intelligence agencies housed in the Defense Department, the secretary of defense must seek the DCI's concurrence regarding the nomination of these directors, who are presidentially appointed. But the secretary may submit recommendations to the president without receiving this concurrence. The DCI cannot fire these officials. The DCI has even less influence over the head of the FBI's national security component, who is appointed by the attorney general in consultation with the DCI.10
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Re: The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission o

Postby admin » Tue Mar 22, 2016 9:18 am

Part 2 of 2

Combining Joint Work with Stronger Management

We have received recommendations on the topic of intelligence reform from many sources. Other commissions have been over this same ground. Thoughtful bills have been introduced, most recently a bill by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Porter Goss (R-Fla.), and another by the ranking minority member, Jane Harman (D-Calif.). In the Senate, Senators Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) have introduced reform proposals as well. Past efforts have foundered, because the president did not support them; because the DCI, the secretary of defense, or both opposed them; and because some proposals lacked merit. We have tried to take stock of these experiences, and borrow from strong elements in many of the ideas that have already been developed by others.

Recommendation: The current position of Director of Central Intelligence should be replaced by a National Intelligence Director with two main areas of responsibility: (1) to oversee national intelligence centers on specific subjects of interest across the U.S. government and (2) to manage the national intelligence program and oversee the agencies that contribute to it.

First, the National Intelligence Director should oversee national intelligence centers to provide all-source analysis and plan intelligence operations for the whole government on major problems.

• One such problem is counterterrorism. In this case, we believe that the center should be the intelligence entity (formerly TTIC) inside the National Counterterrorism Center we have proposed. It would sit there alongside the operations management unit we described earlier, with both making up the NCTC, in the Executive Office of the President. Other national intelligence centers-for instance, on counterproliferation, crime and narcotics, and China-would be housed in whatever department or agency is best suited for them.
• The National Intelligence Director would retain the present DCI's role as the principal intelligence adviser to the president. We hope the president will come to look directly to the directors of the national intelligence centers to provide all-source analysis in their areas of responsibility, balancing the advice of these intelligence chiefs against the contrasting viewpoints that may be offered by department heads at State, Defense, Homeland Security, Justice, and other agencies.

Second, the National Intelligence Director should manage the national intelligence program and oversee the component agencies of the intelligence community. (See diagram.)11

• The National Intelligence Director would submit a unified budget for national intelligence that reflects priorities chosen by the National Security Council, an appropriate balance among the varieties of technical and human intelligence collection, and analysis. He or she would receive an appropriation for national intelligence and apportion the funds to the appropriate agencies, in line with that budget, and with authority to reprogram funds among the national intelligence agencies to meet any new priority (as counterterrorism was in the 1990s). The National Intelligence Director should approve and submit nominations to the president of the individuals who would lead the CIA, DIA, FBI Intelligence Office, NSA, NGA, NRO, Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security, and other national intelligence capabilities.12
• The National Intelligence Director would manage this national effort with the help of three deputies, each of whom would also hold a key position in one of the component agencies.13
o foreign intelligence (the head of the CIA)
o defense intelligence (the under secretary of defense for intelligence)14
• The National Intelligence Director would manage this national effort with the help of three deputies, each of whom would also hold a key position in one of the component agencies.13
o foreign intelligence (the head of the CIA)
o defense intelligence (the under secretary of defense for intelligence)14
o homeland intelligence (the FBI's executive assistant director for intelligence or the under secretary of homeland security for information analysis and infrastructure protection)

Other agencies in the intelligence community would coordinate their work within each of these three areas, largely staying housed in the same departments or agencies that support them now.

Returning to the analogy of the Defense Department's organization, these three deputies-like the leaders of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines-would have the job of acquiring the systems, training the people, and executing the operations planned by the national intelligence centers.

And, just as the combatant commanders also report to the secretary of defense, the directors of the national intelligence centers-e.g., for counterproliferation, crime and narcotics, and the rest-also would report to the National Intelligence Director.

• The Defense Department's military intelligence programs-the joint military intelligence program (JMIP) and the tactical intelligence and related activities program (TIARA)-would remain part of that department's responsibility.

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• The National Intelligence Director would set personnel policies to establish standards for education and training and facilitate assignments at the national intelligence centers and across agency lines. The National Intelligence Director also would set information sharing and information technology policies to maximize data sharing, as well as policies to protect the security of information.
• Too many agencies now have an opportunity to say no to change. The National Intelligence Director should participate in an NSC executive committee that can resolve differences in priorities among the agencies and bring the major disputes to the president for decision.

The National Intelligence Director should be located in the Executive Office of the President. This official, who would be confirmed by the Senate and would testify before Congress, would have a relatively small staff of several hundred people, taking the place of the existing community management offices housed at the CIA.

In managing the whole community, the National Intelligence Director is still providing a service function. With the partial exception of his or her responsibilities for overseeing the NCTC, the National Intelligence Director should support the consumers of national intelligence-the president and policymaking advisers such as the secretaries of state, defense, and homeland security and the attorney general.

We are wary of too easily equating government management problems with those of the private sector. But we have noticed that some very large private firms rely on a powerful CEO who has significant control over how money is spent and can hire or fire leaders of the major divisions, assisted by a relatively modest staff, while leaving responsibility for execution in the operating divisions.

There are disadvantages to separating the position of National Intelligence Director from the job of heading the CIA. For example, the National Intelligence Director will not head a major agency of his or her own and may have a weaker base of support. But we believe that these disadvantages are outweighed by several other considerations:

• The National Intelligence Director must be able to directly oversee intelligence collection inside the United States. Yet law and custom has counseled against giving such a plain domestic role to the head of the CIA.
• The CIA will be one among several claimants for funds in setting national priorities. The National Intelligence Director should not be both one of the advocates and the judge of them all.
• Covert operations tend to be highly tactical, requiring close attention. The National Intelligence Director should rely on the relevant joint mission center to oversee these details, helping to coordinate closely with the White House. The CIA will be able to concentrate on building the capabilities to carry out such operations and on providing the personnel who will be directing and executing such operations in the field.
• Rebuilding the analytic and human intelligence collection capabilities of the CIA should be a full-time effort, and the director of the CIA should focus on extending its comparative advantages.

Recommendation: The CIA Director should emphasize (a) rebuilding the CIA's analytic capabilities; (b) transforming the clandestine service by building its human intelligence capabilities; (c) developing a stronger language program, with high standards and sufficient financial incentives; (d) renewing emphasis on recruiting diversity among operations officers so they can blend more easily in foreign cities; (e) ensuring a seamless relationship between human source collection and signals collection at the operational level; and (f) stressing a better balance between unilateral and liaison operations.

The CIA should retain responsibility for the direction and execution of clandestine and covert operations, as assigned by the relevant national intelligence center and authorized by the National Intelligence Director and the president. This would include propaganda, renditions, and nonmilitary disruption. We believe, however, that one important area of responsibility should change.

Recommendation: Lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert, should shift to the Defense Department. There it should be consolidated with the capabilities for training, direction, and execution of such operations already being developed in the Special Operations Command.

• Before 9/11, the CIA did not invest in developing a robust capability to conduct paramilitary operations with U.S. personnel. It relied on proxies instead, organized by CIA operatives without the requisite military training. The results were unsatisfactory.
• Whether the price is measured in either money or people, the United States cannot afford to build two separate capabilities for carrying out secret military operations, secretly operating standoff missiles, and secretly training foreign military or paramilitary forces. The United States should concentrate responsibility and necessary legal authorities in one entity.
• The post-9/11 Afghanistan precedent of using joint CIA-military teams for covert and clandestine operations was a good one. We believe this proposal to be consistent with it. Each agency would concentrate on its comparative advantages in building capabilities for joint missions. The operation itself would be planned in common.
• The CIA has a reputation for agility in operations. The military has a reputation for being methodical and cumbersome. We do not know if these stereotypes match current reality; they may also be one more symptom of the civil-military misunderstandings we described in chapter 4. It is a problem to be resolved in policy guidance and agency management, not in the creation of redundant, overlapping capabilities and authorities in such sensitive work. The CIA's experts should be integrated into the military's training, exercises, and planning. To quote a CIA official now serving in the field: "One fight, one team."

Recommendation: Finally, to combat the secrecy and complexity we have described, the overall amounts of money being appropriated for national intelligence and to its component agencies should no longer be kept secret. Congress should pass a separate appropriations act for intelligence, defending the broad allocation of how these tens of billions of dollars have been assigned among the varieties of intelligence work.

The specifics of the intelligence appropriation would remain classified, as they are today. Opponents of declassification argue that America's enemies could learn about intelligence capabilities by tracking the top-line appropriations figure. Yet the top-line figure by itself provides little insight into U.S. intelligence sources and methods. The U.S. government readily provides copious information about spending on its military forces, including military intelligence. The intelligence community should not be subject to that much disclosure. But when even aggregate categorical numbers remain hidden, it is hard to judge priorities and foster accountability.

13.3 UNITY OF EFFORT IN SHARING INFORMATION

Information Sharing


We have already stressed the importance of intelligence analysis that can draw on all relevant sources of information. The biggest impediment to all-source analysis-to a greater likelihood of connecting the dots-is the human or systemic resistance to sharing information.

The U.S. government has access to a vast amount of information. When databases not usually thought of as "intelligence," such as customs or immigration information, are included, the storehouse is immense. But the U.S. government has a weak system for processing and using what it has. In interviews around the government, official after official urged us to call attention to frustrations with the unglamorous "back office" side of government operations.

In the 9/11 story, for example, we sometimes see examples of information that could be accessed-like the undistributed NSA information that would have helped identify Nawaf al Hazmi in January 2000. But someone had to ask for it. In that case, no one did. Or, as in the episodes we describe in chapter 8, the information is distributed, but in a compartmented channel. Or the information is available, and someone does ask, but it cannot be shared.

What all these stories have in common is a system that requires a demonstrated "need to know" before sharing. This approach assumes it is possible to know, in advance, who will need to use the information. Such a system implicitly assumes that the risk of inadvertent disclosure outweighs the benefits of wider sharing. Those Cold War assumptions are no longer appropriate. The culture of agencies feeling they own the information they gathered at taxpayer expense must be replaced by a culture in which the agencies instead feel they have a duty to the information-to repay the taxpayers' investment by making that information available.

Each intelligence agency has its own security practices, outgrowths of the Cold War. We certainly understand the reason for these practices. Counterintelligence concerns are still real, even if the old Soviet enemy has been replaced by other spies.

But the security concerns need to be weighed against the costs. Current security requirements nurture overclassification and excessive compartmentation of information among agencies. Each agency's incentive structure opposes sharing, with risks (criminal, civil, and internal administrative sanctions) but few rewards for sharing information. No one has to pay the long-term costs of over-classifying information, though these costs-even in literal financial terms- are substantial. There are no punishments for not sharing information. Agencies uphold a "need-to-know" culture of information protection rather than promoting a "need-to-share" culture of integration.15

Recommendation: Information procedures should provide incentives for sharing, to restore a better balance between security and shared knowledge.

Intelligence gathered about transnational terrorism should be processed, turned into reports, and distributed according to the same quality standards, whether it is collected in Pakistan or in Texas.

The logical objection is that sources and methods may vary greatly in different locations. We therefore propose that when a report is first created, its data be separated from the sources and methods by which they are obtained. The report should begin with the information in its most shareable, but still meaningful, form. Therefore the maximum number of recipients can access some form of that information. If knowledge of further details becomes important, any user can query further, with access granted or denied according to the rules set for the network-and with queries leaving an audit trail in order to determine who accessed the information. But the questions may not come at all unless experts at the "edge" of the network can readily discover the clues that prompt to them.16

We propose that information be shared horizontally, across new networks that transcend individual agencies.

• The current system is structured on an old mainframe, or hub-and-spoke, concept. In this older approach, each agency has its own database. Agency users send information to the database and then can retrieve it from the database.
• A decentralized network model, the concept behind much of the information revolution, shares data horizontally too. Agencies would still have their own databases, but those databases would be searchable across agency lines. In this system, secrets are protected through the design of the network and an "information rights management" approach that controls access to the data, not access to the whole net-work. An outstanding conceptual framework for this kind of "trusted information network" has been developed by a task force of leading professionals in national security, information technology, and law assembled by the Markle Foundation. Its report has been widely discussed throughout the U.S. government, but has not yet been converted into action.17

Recommendation: The president should lead the government-wide effort to bring the major national security institutions into the information revolution. He should coordinate the resolution of the legal, policy, and technical issues across agencies to create a "trusted information network."

• No one agency can do it alone. Well-meaning agency officials are under tremendous pressure to update their systems. Alone, they may only be able to modernize the stovepipes, not replace them.
• Only presidential leadership can develop government-wide concepts and standards. Currently, no one is doing this job. Backed by the Office of Management and Budget, a new National Intelligence Director empowered to set common standards for information use throughout the community, and a secretary of homeland security who helps extend the system to public agencies and relevant private-sector databases, a government-wide initiative can succeed.
• White House leadership is also needed because the policy and legal issues are harder than the technical ones. The necessary technology already exists. What does not are the rules for acquiring, accessing, sharing, and using the vast stores of public and private data that may be available. When information sharing works, it is a powerful tool. Therefore the sharing and uses of information must be guided by a set of practical policy guidelines that simultaneously empower and constrain officials, telling them clearly what is and is not permitted.

"This is government acting in new ways, to face new threats," the most recent Markle report explains. "And while such change is necessary, it must be accomplished while engendering the people's trust that privacy and other civil liberties are being protected, that businesses are not being unduly burdened with requests for extraneous or useless information, that taxpayer money is being well spent, and that, ultimately, the network will be effective in protecting our security." The authors add: "Leadership is emerging from all levels of government and from many places in the private sector. What is needed now is a plan to accelerate these efforts, and public debate and consensus on the goals."18

13.4 UNITY OF EFFORT IN THE CONGRESS

Strengthen Congressional Oversight of Intelligence and Homeland Security


Of all our recommendations, strengthening congressional oversight may be among the most difficult and important. So long as oversight is governed by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need. The United States needs a strong, stable, and capable congressional committee structure to give America's national intelligence agencies oversight, support, and leadership.

Few things are more difficult to change in Washington than congressional committee jurisdiction and prerogatives. To a member, these assignments are almost as important as the map of his or her congressional district. The American people may have to insist that these changes occur, or they may well not happen. Having interviewed numerous members of Congress from both parties, as well as congressional staff members, we found that dissatisfaction with congressional oversight remains widespread.

The future challenges of America's intelligence agencies are daunting. They include the need to develop leading-edge technologies that give our policymakers and warfighters a decisive edge in any conflict where the interests of the United States are vital. Not only does good intelligence win wars, but the best intelligence enables us to prevent them from happening altogether.

Under the terms of existing rules and resolutions the House and Senate intelligence committees lack the power, influence, and sustained capability to meet this challenge. While few members of Congress have the broad knowledge of intelligence activities or the know-how about the technologies employed, all members need to feel assured that good oversight is happening. When their unfamiliarity with the subject is combined with the need to preserve security, a mandate emerges for substantial change.

Tinkering with the existing structure is not sufficient. Either Congress should create a joint committee for intelligence, using the Joint Atomic Energy Committee as its model, or it should create House and Senate committees with combined authorizing and appropriations powers.

Whichever of these two forms are chosen, the goal should be a structure- codified by resolution with powers expressly granted and carefully limited- allowing a relatively small group of members of Congress, given time and reason to master the subject and the agencies, to conduct oversight of the intelligence establishment and be clearly accountable for their work. The staff of this committee should be nonpartisan and work for the entire committee and not for individual members.

The other reforms we have suggested-for a National Counterterrorism Center and a National Intelligence Director-will not work if congressional oversight does not change too. Unity of effort in executive management can be lost if it is fractured by divided congressional oversight.

Recommendation: Congressional oversight for intelligence-and counterterrorism-is now dysfunctional. Congress should address this problem. We have considered various alternatives: A joint committee on the old model of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy is one. A single committee in each house of Congress, combining authorizing and appropriating authorities, is another.

• The new committee or committees should conduct continuing studies of the activities of the intelligence agencies and report problems relating to the development and use of intelligence to all members of the House and Senate.
• We have already recommended that the total level of funding for intelligence be made public, and that the national intelligence program be appropriated to the National Intelligence Director, not to the secretary of defense.19
• We also recommend that the intelligence committee should have a subcommittee specifically dedicated to oversight, freed from the consuming responsibility of working on the budget.
• The resolution creating the new intelligence committee structure should grant subpoena authority to the committee or committees. The majority party's representation on this committee should never exceed the minority's representation by more than one.
• Four of the members appointed to this committee or committees should be a member who also serves on each of the following additional committees: Armed Services, Judiciary, Foreign Affairs, and the Defense Appropriations subcommittee. In this way the other major congressional interests can be brought together in the new commit-tee's work.
• Members should serve indefinitely on the intelligence committees, without set terms, thereby letting them accumulate expertise.
• The committees should be smaller-perhaps seven or nine members in each house-so that each member feels a greater sense of responsibility, and accountability, for the quality of the committee's work.

The leaders of the Department of Homeland Security now appear before 88 committees and subcommittees of Congress. One expert witness (not a member of the administration) told us that this is perhaps the single largest obstacle impeding the department's successful development. The one attempt to consolidate such committee authority, the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, may be eliminated. The Senate does not have even this.

Congress needs to establish for the Department of Homeland Security the kind of clear authority and responsibility that exist to enable the Justice Department to deal with crime and the Defense Department to deal with threats to national security. Through not more than one authorizing committee and one appropriating subcommittee in each house, Congress should be able to ask the secretary of homeland security whether he or she has the resources to provide reasonable security against major terrorist acts within the United States and to hold the secretary accountable for the department's performance.

Recommendation: Congress should create a single, principal point of oversight and review for homeland security. Congressional leaders are best able to judge what committee should have jurisdiction over this department and its duties. But we believe that Congress does have the obligation to choose one in the House and one in the Senate, and that this committee should be a permanent standing committee with a nonpartisan staff.

Improve the Transitions between Administrations

In chapter 6, we described the transition of 2000-2001. Beyond the policy issues we described, the new administration did not have its deputy cabinet officers in place until the spring of 2001, and the critical subcabinet officials were not confirmed until the summer-if then. In other words, the new administration-like others before it-did not have its team on the job until at least six months after it took office.

Recommendation: Since a catastrophic attack could occur with little or no notice, we should minimize as much as possible the disruption of national security policymaking during the change of administrations by accelerating the process for national security appointments. We think the process could be improved significantly so transitions can work more effectively and allow new officials to assume their new responsibilities as quickly as possible.

• Before the election, candidates should submit the names of selected members of their prospective transition teams to the FBI so that, if necessary, those team members can obtain security clearances immediately after the election is over.
• A president-elect should submit lists of possible candidates for national security positions to begin obtaining security clearances immediately after the election, so that their background investigations can be complete before January 20.
• A single federal agency should be responsible for providing and maintaining security clearances, ensuring uniform standards-including uniform security questionnaires and financial report requirements, and maintaining a single database. This agency can also be responsible for administering polygraph tests on behalf of organizations that require them.
• A president-elect should submit the nominations of the entire new national security team, through the level of under secretary of cabinet departments, not later than January 20. The Senate, in return, should adopt special rules requiring hearings and votes to confirm or reject national security nominees within 30 days of their submission. The Senate should not require confirmation of such executive appointees below Executive Level 3.
• The outgoing administration should provide the president-elect, as soon as possible after election day, with a classified, compartmented list that catalogues specific, operational threats to national security; major military or covert operations; and pending decisions on the possible use of force. Such a document could provide both notice and a checklist, inviting a president-elect to inquire and learn more.

13.5 ORGANIZING AMERICA'S DEFENSES IN THE UNITED STATES

The Future Role of the FBI

We have considered proposals for a new agency dedicated to intelligence collection in the United States. Some call this a proposal for an "American MI5," although the analogy is weak-the actual British Security Service is a relatively small worldwide agency that combines duties assigned in the U.S. government to the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security.

The concern about the FBI is that it has long favored its criminal justice mission over its national security mission. Part of the reason for this is the demand around the country for FBI help on criminal matters. The FBI was criticized, rightly, for the overzealous domestic intelligence investigations disclosed during the 1970s.The pendulum swung away from those types of investigations during the 1980s and 1990s, though the FBI maintained an active counterintelligence function and was the lead agency for the investigation of foreign terrorist groups operating inside the United States.

We do not recommend the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency. It is not needed if our other recommendations are adopted-to establish a strong national intelligence center, part of the NCTC, that will oversee counterterrorism intelligence work, foreign and domestic, and to create a National Intelligence Director who can set and enforce standards for the collection, processing, and reporting of information.

Under the structures we recommend, the FBI's role is focused, but still vital. The FBI does need to be able to direct its thousands of agents and other employees to collect intelligence in America's cities and towns-interviewing informants, conducting surveillance and searches, tracking individuals, working collaboratively with local authorities, and doing so with meticulous attention to detail and compliance with the law. The FBI's job in the streets of the United States would thus be a domestic equivalent, operating under the U.S. Constitution and quite different laws and rules, to the job of the CIA's operations officers abroad.

Creating a new domestic intelligence agency has other drawbacks.

• The FBI is accustomed to carrying out sensitive intelligence collection operations in compliance with the law. If a new domestic intelligence agency were outside of the Department of Justice, the process of legal oversight-never easy-could become even more difficult. Abuses of civil liberties could create a backlash that would impair the collection of needed intelligence.
• Creating a new domestic intelligence agency would divert attention of the officials most responsible for current counterterrorism efforts while the threat remains high. Putting a new player into the mix of federal agencies with counterterrorism responsibilities would exacerbate existing information-sharing problems.
• A new domestic intelligence agency would need to acquire assets and personnel. The FBI already has 28,000 employees; 56 field offices, 400 satellite offices, and 47 legal attaché offices; a laboratory, operations center, and training facility; an existing network of informants, cooperating defendants, and other sources; and relationships with state and local law enforcement, the CIA, and foreign intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
• Counterterrorism investigations in the United States very quickly become matters that involve violations of criminal law and possible law enforcement action. Because the FBI can have agents working criminal matters and agents working intelligence investigations concerning the same international terrorism target, the full range of investigative tools against a suspected terrorist can be considered within one agency. The removal of "the wall" that existed before 9/11 between intelligence and law enforcement has opened up new opportunities for cooperative action within the FBI.
• Counterterrorism investigations often overlap or are cued by other criminal investigations, such as money laundering or the smuggling of contraband. In the field, the close connection to criminal work has many benefits.

Our recommendation to leave counterterrorism intelligence collection in the United States with the FBI still depends on an assessment that the FBI-if it makes an all-out effort to institutionalize change-can do the job. As we mentioned in chapter 3, we have been impressed by the determination that agents display in tracking down details, patiently going the extra mile and working the extra month, to put facts in the place of speculation. In our report we have shown how agents in Phoenix, Minneapolis, and New York displayed initiative in pressing their investigations.

FBI agents and analysts in the field need to have sustained support and dedicated resources to become stronger intelligence officers. They need to be rewarded for acquiring informants and for gathering and disseminating information differently and more broadly than usual in a traditional criminal investigation. FBI employees need to report and analyze what they have learned in ways the Bureau has never done before.

Under Director Robert Mueller, the Bureau has made significant progress in improving its intelligence capabilities. It now has an Office of Intelligence, overseen by the top tier of FBI management. Field intelligence groups have been created in all field offices to put FBI priorities and the emphasis on intelligence into practice. Advances have been made in improving the Bureau's information technology systems and in increasing connectivity and information sharing with intelligence community agencies.

Director Mueller has also recognized that the FBI's reforms are far from complete. He has outlined a number of areas where added measures may be necessary. Specifically, he has recognized that the FBI needs to recruit from a broader pool of candidates, that agents and analysts working on national security matters require specialized training, and that agents should specialize within programs after obtaining a generalist foundation. The FBI is developing career tracks for agents to specialize in counterterrorism/counterintelligence, cyber crimes, criminal investigations, or intelligence. It is establishing a program for certifying agents as intelligence officers, a certification that will be a prerequisite for promotion to the senior ranks of the Bureau. New training programs have been instituted for intelligence-related subjects.

The Director of the FBI has proposed creating an Intelligence Directorate as a further refinement of the FBI intelligence program. This directorate would include units for intelligence planning and policy and for the direction of analysts and linguists.

We want to ensure that the Bureau's shift to a preventive counterterrorism posture is more fully institutionalized so that it survives beyond Director Mueller's tenure. We have found that in the past the Bureau has announced its willingness to reform and restructure itself to address transnational security threats, but has fallen short-failing to effect the necessary institutional and cultural changes organization-wide. We want to ensure that this does not happen again. Despite having found acceptance of the Director's clear message that counterterrorism is now the FBI's top priority, two years after 9/11 we also found gaps between some of the announced reforms and the reality in the field. We are concerned that management in the field offices still can allocate people and resources to local concerns that diverge from the national security mission. This system could revert to a focus on lower-priority criminal justice cases over national security requirements.

Recommendation: A specialized and integrated national security workforce should be established 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.

• The president, by executive order or directive, should direct the FBI to develop this intelligence cadre.
• Recognizing that cross-fertilization between the criminal justice and national security disciplines is vital to the success of both missions, all new agents should receive basic training in both areas. Furthermore, new agents should begin their careers with meaningful assignments in both areas.
• Agents and analysts should then specialize in one of these disciplines and have the option to work such matters for their entire career with the Bureau. Certain advanced training courses and assignments to other intelligence agencies should be required to advance within the national security discipline.
• In the interest of cross-fertilization, all senior FBI managers, including those working on law enforcement matters, should be certified intelligence officers.
• The FBI should fully implement a recruiting, hiring, and selection process for agents and analysts that enhances its ability to target and attract individuals with educational and professional backgrounds in intelligence, international relations, language, technology, and other relevant skills.
• The FBI should institute the integration of analysts, agents, linguists, and surveillance personnel in the field so that a dedicated team approach is brought to bear on national security intelligence operations.
• Each field office should have an official at the field office's deputy level for national security matters. This individual would have management oversight and ensure that the national priorities are carried out in the field.
• The FBI should align its budget structure according to its four main programs-intelligence, counterterrorism and counterintelligence, criminal, and criminal justice services-to ensure better transparency on program costs, management of resources, and protection of the intelligence program.20
• The FBI should report regularly to Congress in its semiannual program reviews designed to identify whether each field office is appropriately addressing FBI and national program priorities.
• The FBI should report regularly to Congress in detail on the qualifications, status, and roles of analysts in the field and at headquarters. Congress should ensure that analysts are afforded training and career opportunities on a par with those offered analysts in other intelligence community agencies.
• The Congress should make sure funding is available to accelerate the expansion of secure facilities in FBI field offices so as to increase their ability to use secure email systems and classified intelligence product exchanges. The Congress should monitor whether the FBI's information-sharing principles are implemented in practice.

The FBI is just a small fraction of the national law enforcement community in the United States, a community comprised mainly of state and local agencies. The network designed for sharing information, and the work of the FBI through local Joint Terrorism Task Forces, should build a reciprocal relationship, in which state and local agents understand what information they are looking for and, in return, receive some of the information being developed about what is happening, or may happen, in their communities. In this relationship, the Department of Homeland Security also will play an important part.

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 gave the under secretary for information analysis and infrastructure protection broad responsibilities. In practice, this directorate has the job to map "terrorist threats to the homeland against our assessed vulnerabilities in order to drive our efforts to protect against terrorist threats."21 These capabilities are still embryonic. The directorate has not yet developed the capacity to perform one of its assigned jobs, which is to assimilate and analyze information from Homeland Security's own component agencies, such as the Coast Guard, Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection. The secretary of homeland security must ensure that these components work with the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate so that this office can perform its mission.22

Homeland Defense

At several points in our inquiry, we asked, "Who is responsible for defending us at home?" Our national defense at home is the responsibility, first, of the Department of Defense and, second, of the Department of Homeland Security. They must have clear delineations of responsibility and authority.

We found that NORAD, which had been given the responsibility for defending U.S. airspace, had construed that mission to focus on threats coming from outside America's borders. It did not adjust its focus even though the intelligence community had gathered intelligence on the possibility that terrorists might turn to hijacking and even use of planes as missiles. We have been assured that NORAD has now embraced the full mission. Northern Command has been established to assume responsibility for the defense of the domestic United States.

Recommendation: The Department of Defense and its oversight committees should regularly assess the adequacy of Northern Command's strategies and planning to defend the United States against military threats to the homeland.

The Department of Homeland Security was established to consolidate all of the domestic agencies responsible for securing America's borders and national infrastructure, most of which is in private hands. It should identify those elements of our transportation, energy, communications, financial, and other institutions that need to be protected, develop plans to protect that infrastructure, and exercise the mechanisms to enhance preparedness. This means going well beyond the preexisting jobs of the agencies that have been brought together inside the department.

Recommendation: The Department of Homeland Security and its oversight committees should regularly assess the types of threats the country faces to determine (a) the adequacy of the government's plans-and the progress against those plans-to protect America's critical infrastructure and (b) the readiness of the government to respond to the threats that the United States might face. . . .

We look forward to a national debate on the merits of what we have recommended, and we will participate vigorously in that debate.
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COMMON ABBREVIATIONS

CAP combat air patrol
CAPPS Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System
CENTCOM Central Command
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CONR Continental U.S. NORAD Region
CSG Counterterrorism Security Group
CTC Counterterrorist Center
DIA Defense Intelligence Agency
DCI Director of Central Intelligence
ESU Emergency Service Unit (NYPD)
FAA Federal Aviation Administration
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FDNY Fire Department of New York
FFTC Florida Flight Training Center
FISA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
FISC Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
INS Immigration and Naturalization Service
ISID Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (Pakistan)
JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff
JI Jemaah Islamiah
JTTF Joint Terrorism Task Force
KSM Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Legat legal attaché
MAK Mektab al Khidmat
MON memorandum of notification
NEADS Northeast Air Defense Sector
NCTC National Counterterrorism Center
NGO nongovernmental organization
NMCC National Military Command Center
NORAD North American Aerospace Defense Command
NTSB National Transportation Safety Board
NSA National Security Agency
NSC National Security Council
NSPD national security policy directive
NYPD New York Police Department
OEM Office of Emergency Management (New York City)
OFAC Office of Foreign Assets Control
OIPR Office of Intelligence Policy and Review
OMB Office of Management and Budget
PAPD Port Authority Police Department
PDD presidential decision directive
PEOC Presidential Emergency Operations Center
SEC Securities and Exchange Commission
TSA Transportation Security Administration
TTIC Terrorist Threat Integration Center
UBL Usama Bin Ladin
WMD weapons of mass destruction
WTC World Trade Center
WTO World Trade Organization
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APPENDIX B: TABLE OF NAMES

U.S. OFFICIALS


Madeleine Albright Secretary of State, 1997-2001
Charles Allen Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Collection, 1998-
Richard Armitage Deputy Secretary of State, 2001-
Larry Arnold Commander, First Air Force and Commander of the Continental U.S. North American Aero space Defense Command (NORAD) Region, 1997-2002
John Ashcroft Attorney General, 2001-
Monte Belger Acting Deputy Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration 1997-2002
Samuel "Sandy" Berger National Security Advisor, 1997-2001; Deputy National Security Advisor 1993-1997
J. Cofer Black Director, DCI Counterterrorist Center, 1999-2002
Joshua Bolten White House Deputy Chief of Staff, 2001-2003
Robert "Bear" Bryant Deputy Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1997-1999
George H.W. Bush 41st President of the United States, 1989-1993; Vice President, 1981-1989
George W. Bush 43rd President of the United States, 2001-
Andrew Card, Jr. White House Chief of Staff, 2001-
Richard B. Cheney Vice President of the United States, 2001-
Richard Clarke National Counterterrorism Coordinator, NSC, 1997-2001
William J. Clinton 42nd President of the United States, 1993-2001
William Cohen Secretary of Defense, 1997-2001
Roger Cressey NSC counterterrorism official, 1999-2001
Ralph Eberhart Commander in Chief, NORAD and U.S. Space Command, 2000-
Tommy Franks Commander, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), 2001-2003
Louis Freeh Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1993-2001
Scott Fry Director of Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1998-2000
Jane Garvey Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration, 1997-2002
Newt Gingrich Speaker of the House, 1995-1999
Rudolph Giuliani Mayor, City of New York, 1994-2001
John Gordon Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, 1997-2000
Al Gore, Jr. Vice President of the United States,1993-2001
Scott Gration Fry's Chief Information Operations Officer, 2000-2001
Stephen Hadley Deputy National Security Advisor, 2001-
Dennis Hastert Speaker of the House, 1999-
Karl Inderfurth Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, 1997-2001
Donald Kerrick Deputy National Security Advisor, 2000-2001
Zalmay Khalilzad NSC Senior Director for Near East and South Asia and Special Envoy to Afghanistan, 2001-2003
Anthony Lake National Security Advisor, 1993-1997
Trent Lott Senate Majority Leader, 1996-2001
Mary McCarthy NSC senior director for intelligence, 1998-2001
John McLaughlin Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, 2000-2004
William Milam U.S.Ambassador to Pakistan, 1998-2001
Norman Mineta Secretary of Transportation, 2001-
Robert Mueller Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2001-
Richard Myers Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, September 2001- ; Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman, 2000-2001
John O'Neill FBI Special Agent in Charge for National Security, New York Field Office, 1997-2001; Chief of Security of the World Trade Center, killed on 9/11
Paul O'Neill Secretary of the Treasury, 2001-2002
James Pavitt Deputy Director of Operations, CIA, 1999-2004
Thomas Pickard Acting Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, June 25, 2001-September 4, 2001
Thomas Pickering Under Secretary of State, 1997-2000
Colin Powell Secretary of State, 2001-
Ronald Reagan 40th President of the United States, 1981-1989
Janet Reno Attorney General, 1993-2001
Condoleezza Rice National Security Advisor, 2001-
Bill Richardson Ambassador to the United Nations, 1997-1998
Thomas Ridge First Secretary of Homeland Security, 2003- ; Homeland Security Advisor, 2001-2003
Bruce Riedel Senior Director for Near East and South Asia, NSC, 1997-2001
Christina Rocca Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, 2001-
Michael Rolince FBI Section Chief, International Terrorism Operations Section, 1998-2002
Donald Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense, 2001-
Peter Schoomaker Commander, Special Operations Command, 1997-2000
Gary Schroen CIA Station Chief, Islamabad, 1996-1999
Michael Sheehan Counterterrorism Coordinator, U.S. Department of State, 1998-2000
Hugh Shelton Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1997-2001
Walter Slocombe Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, 1994-2001
James Steinberg Deputy National Security Advisor, 1996-2000
Strobe Talbott Deputy Secretary of State, 1994-2001
George Tenet Director of Central Intelligence, 1997-2004
Larry Thompson Deputy Attorney General, 2001-2003
Dale Watson Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, FBI, 2001-2002
Paul Wolfowitz Deputy Secretary of Defense, 2001-
Anthony Zinni Commander, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), 1997-2000

OTHERS

Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Crown Prince and de facto regent of Saudi Arabia, 1995-
Mohdar Abdullah Yemeni; student in San Diego who assisted two 9/11 hijackers
Sayf al Adl Egyptian; high-ranking member of al Qaeda military committee
Mahmud Ahmed Director General of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, 1999-2001
Mohammed Farrah Aidid Somali warlord who challenged U.S. presence in Somalia in the early 1990s (deceased)
Ali Abdul Aziz Ali a.k.a.Ammar al Baluchi) Pakistani; KSM's nephew; financial and travel facilitator for 9/11 plot
Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani Iraqi intelligence officer who allegedly met with Atta in Prague, Czech Republic; currently in U.S. custody
Mohamed Atta Egyptian; tactical leader of 9/11 plot; pilot/hijacker (AA 11) (deceased)
Mohammed Atef (a.k.a.Abu Hafs al Masri) Egyptian; al Qaeda military commander (deceased)
Tawfiq bin Attash (a.k.a. Khallad,Waleed bin Attash) Yemeni; senior al Qaeda operative connected to the U.S. embassy bombings, the USS Cole attack, and the 9/11 attacks; currently in U.S. custody
Anwar Aulaqi U.S. citizen; Imam at Rabat mosque (San Diego, CA) and later at Dar al Hijra mosque (Falls Church,VA), who associated with two 9/11 hijackers
Abdullah Azzam Palestinian; founder of the Maktab al Khidmat, which provided logistical support to mujahideen in Afghanistan (deceased)
Jamal al Badawi Yemeni; co-conspirator arrested in Yemen for the USS Cole attack
Said Bahaji German son of Moroccan immigrant; Hamburg cell associate
Saeed al Baluchi Saudi; candidate 9/11 hijacker
Fayez Banihammad Emirati; 9/11 hijacker (UA 175) (deceased)
Abu Ubaidah al Banshiri Egyptian; al Qaeda military commander until 1996 (deceased)
Abu Bara al Yemeni (a.k.a.Abu al Bara al Ta'izi, Suhail Shurabi, and Barakat) Yemeni; potential suicide bomber in original 9/11 plot
Ramzi Binalshibh Yemeni; Hamburg cell member; coordinator for 9/11 plot; currently in U.S. custody
Omar Hassan Ahmed al Bashir President of Sudan, 1989-
Abu Bakar Bashir Indonesian; spiritual leader and founder of Jemaah Islamiya, al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group in Southeast Asia
Omar al Bayoumi Saudi; assisted two 9/11 hijackers in San Diego, CA
Khalil Deek U.S. citizen; created electronic version of Encyclopedia of Jihad; believed to be involved in millennium plot to destroy tourist landmarks in Jordan
Caysan Bin Don (a.k.a Isamu Dyson, a.k.a Clayton Morgan) U.S. citizen; met two 9/11 hijackers in Los Angeles and San Diego, CA
Zakariya Essabar Moroccan; Hamburg cell associate
Jamal Ahmed Mohamed al Fadl Sudanese; al Qaeda member who defected to the United States in 1996
Ahmed al Ghamdi Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (UA 175) (deceased)
Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqasi al Ghamdi (a.k.a.Abu Bakr al Azdi) Saudi; candidate 9/11 hijacker; currently in U.S. custody
Hamza al Ghamdi Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (UA 175) (deceased)
Saeed al Ghamdi Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (UA 93) (deceased)
Saeed ("Jihad") al Ghamdi Saudi; candidate 9/11 hijacker
Hassan Ghul Pakistani; al Qaeda facilitator; currently in U.S. custody
Abu Hafs al Masri see Mohammed Atef
Abu Hafs al Mauritani Mauritanian; senior al Qaeda theologian
Wadi al Hage U.S. citizen; al Qaeda operative; Bin Ladin's personal assistant; convicted in embassy bombings trial
Mushabib al Hamlan Saudi; candidate 9/11 hijacker
Hani Hanjour Saudi; 9/11 pilot/hijacker (AA 77) (deceased)
Mustafa al Hawsawi Saudi; al Qaeda media committee member; financial and travel facilitator for 9/11 plot
Nawaf al Hazmi Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (AA 77) (deceased)
Salem al Hazmi Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (AA 77) (deceased)
Ahmad al Haznawi Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (UA 93) (deceased)
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar Afghani; founder and leader of the Hizb-e-Islami, a Taliban opposition group; Prime Minister of Afghanistan, 1993-1994; 1996
Saddam Hussein President of Iraq, 1979-2003
Zein al Abideen Mohamed Hussein (a.k.a. Abu Zubaydah) Palestinian; al Qaeda associate; currently in U.S. custody
Abu Hajer al Iraqi see Mamdouh Mahmud Salim
Riduan Isamuddin (a.k.a. Hambali) Indonesian; operational leader of Jemaah Islamiya; currently in U.S. custody
Ziad Jarrah Lebanese; 9/11 pilot/hijacker (UA 93) (deceased)
Abderraouf Jdey (a.k.a. Faruq al Tunisi) Tunisian/Canadian; candidate 9/11 hijacker
Mohamed al Kahtani Saudi; candidate 9/11 hijacker; currently in U.S. custody
Mir Amal Kansi Pakistani; extremist who killed two CIA employees at CIA headquarters in Virginia in 1993 (executed)
Hamid Karzai Interim Leader and later President of Afghanistan, Dec. 2001-
Younis Khalis Afghani; leader of Hizb-e-Islami; hosted UBL upon his return to Afghanistan in 1996
Khallad see Tawfiq bin Attash
Wali Khan Amin Shah (a.k.a. Osama Asmurai) Turkmen; early associate of Usama Bin Ladin; convicted in Manila air (Bojinka) plot
Ibn al Khattab Saudi; mujahid leader in Chechnya
L'Houssaine Kherchtou (a.k.a. Joe the Moroccan,Abu Talal) Moroccan; former al Qaeda member who broke with Bin Ladin and became a U.S. government informant
Usama Bin Ladin (UBL) Saudi; head of al Qaeda
Ibn al Shaykh al Libi Libyan; head of jihadist training camp in Afghanistan
Ahmed al Nami Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (UA 93) (deceased)
Sheikh Saeed al Masri Egyptian; head of al Qaeda finance committee
Ahmed Shah Massoud Leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, a Taliban opposition group (assassinated Sept. 9, 2001)
Khalid al Mihdhar Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (AA 77) (deceased)
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) (a.k.a. Mukhtar) Pakistani; mastermind of 9/11 attacks; currently in U.S. custody
Majed Moqed Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (AA 77) (deceased)
Mounir el Motassadeq Moroccan; Hamburg cell associate
Zacarias Moussaoui French; arrested in the U.S. in connection with the 9/11 attacks
Hosni Mubarak President of Egypt, 1981-
Pervez Musharraf Leader of Pakistan, 1999-
Abdelghani Mzoudi Moroccan; Hamburg cell associate
Qutaybah al Najdi Saudi; candidate 9/11 hijacker
Abd al Rahim al Nashiri (a.k.a. Mullah Bilal) Saudi; mastermind of USS Cole attack; currently in U.S. custody
Mullah Mohammed Omar Leader of Afghanistan's Taliban, which ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001
Abdul Aziz al Omari Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (AA 11) (deceased)
Muammar Qadhafi Leader of Libya, 1970-
Fahd al Quso Yemeni; al Qaeda co-conspirator arrested in Yemen for the USS Cole attack
Sayyid Qutb Egyptian writer; member of Muslim Brotherhood (deceased)
Eyad al Rababah Jordanian; Virginia resident who helped Hazmi and Hanjour
Abd al Rahim Ghulum Rabbani (a.k.a.Abu Rahmah) Saudi; al Qaeda member who worked closely with KSM in Karachi and assisted many of the 9/11 hijackers
Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (a.k.a. the Blind Sheikh) Egyptian cleric; convicted for crimes related to 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 1995 plots against other NY landmarks
Saud al Rashid Saudi; candidate 9/11 hijacker
Ahmed Ressam (a.k.a. Benni Antoine Noris) Algerian; convicted in millennium plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a.Abu Hajer al Iraqi) Iraqi; chief procurement officer for al Qaeda in Sudan; arrested in connection with 1998 embassy bombings
Yazeed al Salmi Saudi; briefly a housemate of a 9/11 hijacker in San Diego
Abdul Rasul Sayyaf Afghani; head of the Hizbul-Ittihad El-Islami, and KSM's mentor
Aysel Senguen German; fiancée of 9/11 hijacker Jarrah
Nawaz Sharif Pakistani Prime Minister, 1990-1993, 1997-1999
Marwan al Shehhi Emirati; 9/11 pilot/hijacker (UA 175) (deceased)
Mohand al Shehri Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (UA 175) (deceased)
Wail al Shehri Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (AA 11) (deceased)
Waleed al Shehri Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (AA 11) (deceased)
Mohamedou Ould Slahi (a.k.a.Abu Musab) Mauritanian; recruited 9/11 hijackers in Germany
Yazid Sufaat Malaysian; member of Jemaah Islamiya
Satam al Suqami Saudi; 9/11 hijacker (AA 11) (deceased)
Madani al Tayyib Saudi; former head of al Qaeda finance committee
Zuhair al Thubaiti Saudi; candidate 9/11 hijacker
Fahad al Thumairy Saudi; Imam of King Fahd mosque in Los Angeles; accredited diplomat at Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles
Hassan al Turabi Sudan's longtime hard-line ideological leader and Speaker of the country's National Assembly during the 1990s
Prince Turki bin Faisal Ramzi Yousef Saudi intelligence chief prior to 9/11 (a.k.a.Abdul Basit) Pakistani; convicted mastermind of and co-conspirator in 1993 WTC bombing and Manila air (Bojinka) plots
Khalid Saeed Ahmad al Zahrani Saudi; candidate 9/11 hijacker
Mohammed Haydar Zammar German citizen from Syria; jihadist; possible recruiter of Hamburg cell members
Ayman al Zawahiri Egyptian; UBL's deputy and leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad terrorist group
Hamdan Bin Zayid Emirati; Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates
Abu Zubaydah see Zein al Abideen Mohamed Hussein
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Re: The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission o

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APPENDIX C: COMMISSION HEARINGS

The Commission held 12 public hearings during the course of its investigation, convening for a total of 19 days and receiving testimony from 160 witnesses. The following is a list of hearings and witnesses in order of their appearance. All witnesses appearing during the 2004 calendar year testified under oath.

FIRST PUBLIC HEARING

Alexander Hamilton Customs House, New York, N.Y.
March 31-April 1, 2003

The Honorable George Pataki, Governor, State of New York
The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor, City of New York

The Experience of the Attack
Harry Waizer, survivor, Cantor Fitzgerald, LP
David Lim, Police Department, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Lee Ielpi, Fire Department of New York (retired)
Lieutenant Colonel Brian Birdwell, United States Army
Craig Sincock, United States Army (retired)

Representatives of the Victims
Stephen Push, Families of September 11
Mary Fetchet,Voices of September 11
Mindy Kleinberg, September 11 Advocates
Allison Vadhan, Families of Flight 93

The Attackers, Intelligence, and Counterterrorism Policy
Daniel Byman, Georgetown University
Abraham D. Sofaer, Hoover Institution
Brian Jenkins, RAND Corporation
Magnus Ranstorp, University of St.Andrews

Borders, Money, and Transportation Security
Glenn Fine, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice
Lee Wolosky, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP
Gerald Dillingham, Director, Civil Aviation Issues, General Accounting Office

Law Enforcement, Domestic Intelligence, and Homeland Security
Michael Wermuth, RAND Corporation
Steven Brill,Author, After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era
Zoë Baird, Markle Foundation
Randy Larsen,ANSER Institute for Homeland Security

Immediate Response to the Attacks
Shawn Kelley,Assistant Chief,Arlington County Fire Department
William Baker,American Society of Civil Engineers
Ken Holden, Commissioner, New York City Department of Design and Construction

SECOND PUBLIC HEARING

Congress and Civil Aviation Security
Hart Senate Office Building,Washington, D.C.
May 22-23, 2003

Congressional Oversight
Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
Senator John McCain (R-Az.)
Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.)

Intelligence Oversight and the Joint Inquiry
Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.)
Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)
Representative Porter Goss (R-Fla.)
Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.)

Affected Constituencies
Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)
Senator Jon Corzine (D-N.J.)
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)
Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)
Representative Christopher Shays (R-Conn.)

State of the System: Civil Aviation Security on September 11
Jane Garvey, former Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration
Kenneth Mead, Inspector General, Department of Transportation
James May, Air Transport Association of America
Bogdan Dzakovic, Civil Aviation Security Inspector, Transportation Security Agency

September 11, 2001:The Attacks and the Response
The Honorable Norman Mineta, Secretary of Transportation
Major General Craig McKinley, Commander, 1st Air Force and the Continental United States NORAD Region (CONR)
Lieutenant General Mike Canavan (retired), former Associate Administrator for Civil Aviation Security, Federal Aviation Administrator

Reforming Civil Aviation Security: Next Steps
Stephen McHale, Deputy Administrator,Transportation Security Agency
Major General O.K. Steele (retired), former Associate Administrator for Civil Aviation Security, Federal Aviation Administration
Mary Schiavo, former Inspector General, Department of Transportation

THIRD PUBLIC HEARING

Terrorism, al Qaeda, and the Muslim World
Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.
July 9, 2003

Al Qaeda
Rohan Gunaratna, Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies
Mamoun Fandy, United States Institute of Peace
Marc Sageman, University of Pennsylvania

States and Terrorism
Laurie Mylroie,American Enterprise Institute
Judith Yaphe, National Defense University
Murhaf Jouejati, Middle East Institute and George Washington University
Mark Gasiorowski, Louisiana State University

The Challenge within the Muslim World
Rachel Bronson, Council on Foreign Relations
Steven Emerson,The Investigative Project
Gilles Kepel, Institute of Political Studies, Paris
Dennis Ross,Washington Institute for Near East Policy

FOURTH PUBLIC HEARING

Intelligence and the War on Terrorism
Russell Senate Office Building,Washington, D.C.
October 14, 2003

Leadership of U.S. Intelligence
James R. Schlesinger, former Director of Central Intelligence and Secretary of Defense
John M. Deutch, former Director of Central Intelligence and Deputy Secretary of Defense

Intelligence and National Security Policy
James B. Steinberg,The Brookings Institution and former Deputy National Security Advisor

Warning of Transnational Threats
Richard Kerr, former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
Mary O. McCarthy, former National Intelligence Officer for Warning, Central Intelligence Agency
John Gannon, Staff Director, House Select Committee on Homeland Security

FIFTH PUBLIC HEARING

Private/Public Sector Partnerships for Emergency Preparedness
Drew University, Madison, N.J.
November 19, 2003

Highlights of New Jersey's Public/Private Sector Partnerships
The Honorable James E. McGreevey, Governor, State of New Jersey

The Challenge of Private Sector Preparedness
John Degnan,The Chubb Corporation

Skyscraper Safety Issues from 9/11 Family Members
Monica Gabrielle, Skyscraper Safety Campaign Sally Regenhard, Skyscraper Safety Campaign

Public/Private Initiatives Since 9/11
Michael F. Byrne, Director, Office of National Capital Region Coordination, Department of Homeland Security
Dennis J. Reimer, Oklahoma National Memorial Institute for Prevention of Terrorism
Richard A.Andrews, National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination

Private Sector Experience on 9/11
William Y.Yun, Fiduciary Trust Company International

Standards for Emergency Management and Business Continuity
Glenn Corbett, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Randall Yim, Director, National Preparedness Team, General Accounting Office

Future Strategies for Private Sector Preparedness
William G. Raisch, Greater New York Safety Council
Peter R. Orszag,The Brookings Institution
James Haviaris, Rockefeller Group Development Corporation
Thomas Susman, Ropes & Gray

SIXTH PUBLIC HEARING

Security and Liberty
Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.
December 8, 2003

Intelligence Collection within the United States
Larry D.Thompson, former Deputy Attorney General of the United States
Philip B. Heymann, former Deputy Attorney General of the United States
Stephen J. Schulhofer, New York University, School of Law

Protecting Privacy, Preventing Terrorism
Judith A. Miller, former General Counsel, Department of Defense
Stewart A. Baker, former General Counsel, National Security Agency
Marc Rotenberg, Electronic Privacy Information Center

Preventive Detention: Use of Immigration Laws and Enemy Combatant Designations to Combat Terrorism
Jan Ting,Temple University
Khaled Medhat Abou El Fadl, UCLA School of Law
David Martin, University of Virginia School of Law and former General Counsel, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Department of Justice

Government Organization and Domestic Intelligence
The Honorable William P. Barr, former Attorney General of the United States
John J. Hamre, former Deputy Secretary of Defense
John MacGaffin, former Associate Deputy Director for Operations, Central Intelligence Agency

SEVENTH PUBLIC HEARING

Borders, Transportation, and Managing Risk
Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.
January 26-27, 2004

The Border Security System Prior to September 11
Mary A. Ryan, former Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs, Department of State
Doris Meissner, former Commissioner, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Department of Justice

An Incident in Florida
Jose E. Melendez-Perez, Inspector, Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security

Visas and Watchlisting Today
Maura Harty,Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs, Department of State
Russell E.Travers, Deputy Director, Information Sharing and Knowledge Management Department,Terrorist Threat Integration Center, Central Intelligence Agency
Donna A. Bucella, Director,Terrorist Screening Center, Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Response to September 11 on the Borders
James Ziglar, former Commissioner, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Department of Justice
Robert C. Bonner, Commissioner, Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security
Peter F.Verga, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense, Department of Defense

Aviation Security on 9/11:The Regulators
Jane F. Garvey, former Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration
Cathal L."Irish" Flynn, former Associate Administrator of Civil Aviation Security, Federal Aviation Administration
Claudio Manno,Assistant Administrator for Intelligence,Transportation Security Administration

Aviation Security on 9/11:The Airlines
Edmond L. Soliday, former Vice President of Safety, Quality Assurance, and Security, United Airlines
Andrew P. Studdert, former Chief Operating Officer, United Airlines
Gerard J.Arpey, Chief Executive Officer,American Airlines
Timothy J. Ahern,Vice President-DFW Hub, and former Vice President of Safety, Security, and Environmental, American Airlines

Acts of Courage in the Sky
Nydia Gonzalez, Manager, Southeast Reservations Center, American Airlines

Risk Management after September 11
James M. Loy, Deputy Secretary, Department of Homeland Security

EIGHTH PUBLIC HEARING

Counterterrorism Policy
Hart Senate Office Building,Washington, D.C.
March 23-24, 2004

Diplomacy
The Honorable Madeleine K.Albright, former Secretary of State
The Honorable Colin L. Powell, Secretary of State

The Military
The Honorable William S. Cohen, former Secretary of Defense
The Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense

Intelligence Policy
The Honorable George J.Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence

National Policy Coordination
The Honorable Samuel R. Berger, former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Richard A. Clarke, former National Coordinator for Counterterrorism, National Security Council
Richard L. Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State

NINTH PUBLIC HEARING

Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.
April 8, 2004

The Honorable Condoleezza Rice,Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

TENTH PUBLIC HEARING

Law Enforcement and Intelligence
Hart Senate Office Building,Washington, D.C.
April 13-14, 2004

Law Enforcement, Counterterrorism, and Intelligence Collection in the United States Prior to 9/11
The Honorable Louis J. Freeh, former Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Honorable Janet Reno, former Attorney General of the United States

Threats and Responses in 2001
Thomas J. Pickard, former Acting Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Ambassador J. Cofer Black, former Director, Counterterrorism Center, Central Intelligence Agency
The Honorable John Ashcroft, Attorney General of the United States

The Performance of the Intelligence Community The Honorable George J.Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence

Preventing Future Attacks Inside the United States
John O. Brennan, Director, Terrorist Threat Integration Center, Central Intelligence Agency
Lieutenant General Patrick M. Hughes, Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis, Department of Homeland Security
John S. Pistole, Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation
James L. Pavitt, Deputy Director of Operations, Central Intelligence Agency

FBI Leadership and Initiatives Post-9/11
The Honorable Robert S. Mueller III, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Maureen Baginski, Executive Assistant Director for Intelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation

ELEVENTH PUBLIC HEARING

Emergency Response
New School University, New York, N.Y.
May 18-19, 2004

Alan Reiss, former Director,World Trade Center, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Joseph Morris, former Chief, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department
Bernard B. Kerik, former Commissioner, New York Police Department
Thomas Von Essen, former Commissioner, Fire Department of New York
Richard Sheirer, former Director, NewYork City Office of Emergency Management
Raymond W. Kelly, Commissioner, New York Police Department
Nicholas Scoppetta, Commissioner, Fire Department of New York
Joseph F. Bruno, Director, New York City Office of Emergency Management
The Honorable Rudolph W. Giuliani, former Mayor, City of New York
Dennis Smith,Author, Report from Ground Zero
Jerome M. Hauer, former Commissioner, NewYork City Office of Emergency Management
Edward P. Plaugher, Chief, Arlington County Fire Department
The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor, City of New York
The Honorable Thomas J. Ridge, Secretary of Homeland Security

TWELFTH PUBLIC HEARING

The 9/11 Plot and National Crisis Management
National Transportation Safety Board Conference Center, Washington, D.C.
June 16-17, 2004

Al Qaeda
Mary Deborah Doran, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, U.S.Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois CIA Officials

Outline of the 9/11 Plot
Jacqueline Maguire, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation
James N. Fitzgerald, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Adam B. Drucker, Supervisory Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation CIA Officials

Military Response on 9/11
General Richard B. Myers, United States Air Force, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Admiral (select) Charles Joseph Leidig, United States Navy, Deputy Director for Operations, National Military Command Center
General Ralph E. Eberhart, United States Air Force, Commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command
Major General Larry Arnold, United States Air Force (retired), former Commander, Continental United States NORAD Region (CONR)

FAA Response on 9/11
Monte R. Belger, former Acting Deputy Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration
Jeff Griffith, former Deputy Director, Air Traffic Control, Federal Aviation Administration
John S.White, former Facility Manager, Air Traffic Control Systems Command Center, Federal Aviation Administration
Benedict Sliney, Operations Manager, New York Terminal Radar Approach Control, Federal Aviation Administration
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Re: The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission o

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Part 1 of 22

NOTES

For simplicity, we have adopted the following citation conventions in these endnotes.

Dozens of government agencies and other entities provided the Commission with more than 2.5 million pages of documents and other materials, including more than 1,000 hours of audiotapes. In general, we cite documents and other materials by providing the agency or entity of origin, the type of document (e.g., memo, email, report, or record), the author and recipient, the title (in quotes) or a description of the subject, and the date. We use the following abbreviations for the agencies and entities that produced the bulk of these documents: AAL-American Airlines; CIA-Central Intelligence Agency; DCI-Director of Central Intelligence; DHS-Department of Homeland Security; DOD-Department of Defense; DOJ-Department of Justice; DOS-Department of State; DOT-Department of Transportation; EPA-Environmental Protection Agency; FAA-Federal Aviation Administration; FBI-Federal Bureau of Investigation; FDNY-Fire Department of New York; GAO-General Accounting Office; INS-Immigration and Naturalization Service; NEADS-Northeast Air Defense Sector; NSA-National Security Agency; NSC-National Security Council; NTSB-National Transportation Safety Board; NYPD-New York Police Department; OEM-Office of Emergency Management, City of New York; PANYNJ or Port Authority-Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; PAPD-Port Authority Police Department; SEC-Securities and Exchange Commission; Treasury-Department of Treasury; TSA-Transportation Security Administration; UAL-United Air Lines; USSS-United States Secret Service.

Interviews, meetings, briefings, and site visits conducted by Commissioners or by members of the Commission staff are cited, for example, as "George Tenet interview (Jan. 22, 2004)." Testimony by witnesses at one of the Commission's 12 public hearings is cited as "Condoleezza Rice testimony, Apr. 8, 2004."Written statements for the record provided by witnesses at one of our public hearings are cited as "Thomas Ridge prepared statement, May 19, 2004."

At the request of intelligence community agencies (including the FBI), we use the first name and last initial, only the first name, or in a few instances an alias or title when referring to working-level employees in those agencies. At the request of several intelligence agencies, we cite most reports from the CIA and other intelligence agencies generically as "Intelligence report," followed by a description of the subject and date. In a few instances in which we were given access to highly sensitive documents or information, we cite generically to documents or information provided to the Commission.

Our investigation built on the work of many others, including the Joint Inquiry of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, which we refer to as the "Joint Inquiry." We cite as "Joint Inquiry report, Dec. 2002" the Report of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, S. Rep. No. 107-351,

H.R. Rep. No. 107-792, 107th Cong., 2d sess. (2002), indicating "classified version" where appropriate. Testimony presented during hearings conducted by the Joint Inquiry is cited as "Joint Inquiry testimony of George Tenet, Oct. 17, 2002," indicating "closed hearing" where appropriate. We cite interviews conducted by the Joint Inquiry staff as "Joint Inquiry interview of Cofer Black," with the date of the interview.

Another major source for our investigation were the thousands of interviews conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its investigation of the 9/11 attacks, which it refers to as "Penttbom." FBI agents write up their interviews on forms called 302s, which we cite as "FBI report of investigation, interview of John Smith, Oct. 4, 2001," using the date of the interview. We cite interviews conducted by other agencies by agency name and date of the interview; for example, an interview conducted by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General is cited as "DOJ Inspector General interview of Mary Jones, July 9, 2002."

1 "We Have Some Planes"

1. No physical, documentary, or analytical evidence provides a convincing explanation of why Atta and Omari drove to Portland, Maine, from Boston on the morning of September 10, only to return to Logan on Flight 5930 on the morning of September 11. However, Atta reacted negatively when informed in Portland that he would have to check in again in Boston. Michael Touhey interview (May 27, 2004).Whatever their reason, the Portland Jetport was the nearest airport to Boston with a 9/11 flight that would have arrived at Logan in time for the passengers to transfer to American Airlines Flight 11, which had a scheduled departure time of 7:45 A.M. See Tom Kinton interview (Nov. 6, 2003); Portland International Jetport site visit (Aug. 18, 2003).

Like the other two airports used by the 9/11 hijackers (Newark Liberty International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport), Boston's Logan International Airport was a "Category X" airport: i.e., among the largest facilities liable to highest threat, and generally subject to greater security requirements. See FAA report, "Civil Aviation Security Reference Handbook," May 1999, pp. 117-118.Though Logan was selected for two of the hijackings (as were both American and United Airlines), we found no evidence that the terrorists targeted particular airports or airlines. Nothing stands out about any of them with respect to the only security layer that was relevant to the actual hijackings: checkpoint screening. See FAA briefing materials, "Assessment and Testing Data for BOS, EWR, and IAD," Oct. 24, 2001. Despite security problems at Logan (see, e.g., two local Fox 25 television investigative reports in February and April 2001, and an email in August 2001 from a former FAA special agent to the agency's leadership regarding his concerns about lax security at the airport), no evidence suggests that such issues entered into the terrorists' targeting: they simply booked heavily fueled east-to-west transcontinental flights of the large Boeing aircraft they trained to fly that were scheduled to take off at nearly the same time. See Matt Carroll, "Fighting Terror Sense of Alarm; Airlines Foiled Police Logan Probe," Boston Globe, Oct. 17, 2001, p. B1.

2. CAPPS was an FAA-approved automated system run by the airlines that scored each passenger's profile to identify those who might pose a threat to civil aviation. The system also chose passengers at random to receive additional security scrutiny. Ten out of the 19 hijackers (including 9 out of 10 on the two American Airlines flights) were identified via the CAPPS system. According to the procedures in place on 9/11, in addition to those flagged by the CAPPS algorithm, American's ticket agents were to mark as "selectees" those passengers who did not provide correct responses to the required security questions, failed to show proper identification, or met other criteria. See FAA report, "Air Carrier Standard Security Program," May 2001, pp. 75-76; FAA record of interview, Donna Thompson, Sept. 23, 2001; Chuck Severance interview (Apr. 15, 2004); Jim Dillon interview (Apr. 15, 2004); Diane Graney interview (Apr. 16, 2004). It appears that Atta was selected at random. See Al Hickson briefing (June 8, 2004).

3.The call was placed from a pay phone in Terminal C (between the screening checkpoint and United 175's boarding gate). We presume Shehhi made the call, but we cannot be sure. Logan International Airport site visit (Aug. 15, 2003); see also FBI response to Commission briefing request no. 6, undated (topic 11).

4. Flight 11 pushed back from Gate 32 in Terminal B at 7:40. See AAL response to the Commission's February 3, 2004, requests, Mar. 15, 2004.

5. See UAL letter, "Flight 175-11Sep01 Passenger ACI Check-in History," July 11, 2002. Customer service representative Gail Jawahir recalled that her encounter with the Ghamdis occurred at "shortly before 7 A.M.," and when shown photos of the hijackers, she indicated that Mohand al Shehri resembled one of the two she checked in (suggesting they were Banihammad and Shehri). However, she also recalled that the men had the same last name and had assigned seats on row 9 (i.e., the Ghamdis), and that account has been adopted here. In either case, she almost certainly was dealing with one set of the Flight 175 hijackers. See FBI reports of investigation, interviews of Gail Jawahir, Sept. 21, 2001; Sept. 28, 2001. Even had the hijackers been unable to understand and answer the two standard security questions, the only consequence would have been the screening of their carry-on and checked bags for explosives. See FAA report, "Air Carrier Standard Security Program," May 2001, p. 76.

6. For Flight 11, two checkpoints provided access to the gate. The second was opened at 7:15 A.M. The FAA conducted many screener evaluations between September 11, 1999, and September 11, 2001.At the primary checkpoints, in aggregate, screeners met or exceeded the average for overall, physical search, and X-ray detection, while falling below the norm for metal detection. No FAA Special Assessments (by "red teams") were done at Logan security checkpoints during the two years prior to September 11, 2001. See FAA briefing materials, "Assessment and Testing Data for BOS, EWR, and IAD," Oct. 24, 2001.

7. See Air Transport Association/Regional Airlines Association (ATA/RAA) report, "Air Carriers Checkpoint Operations Guide," Aug. 1999; FAA report, "Air Carrier Standard Security Program, "May 2001, appendix VI.

8. Mary Carol Turano interview (Mar. 11, 2004); FBI reports of investigation, interview of Nilda Cora, Oct. 4, 2001; interview of William Thomas, Sept. 14, 2001; interview of Jennifer Gore, Sept. 12, 2001; interview of Claudia Richey, Sept. 15, 2001; interview of Rosarito Rivera, Sept. 25, 2001.

9. See TSA report, "Selectee Status of September 11th Hijackers," undated. For boarding and seating information, see AAL record, SABRE information on Flight 11, Sept. 11, 2001.These boarding times from the American system are approximate only; for Flight 11, they indicated that some passengers "boarded" after the aircraft had pushed back from the gate. See AAL response to the Commission's February 3, 2004, requests, Mar. 15, 2004.

10. See TSA report, "Selectee Status of September 11th Hijackers, "undated; see also UAL letter, "Flight 175- 11 Sep01 Passenger ACI Check-in History," July 11, 2002.

11.The Hazmis checked in at 7:29; the airline has not yet been able to confirm the time of Hanjour's check-in. However, it had to have taken place by 7:35, when he appears on the checkpoint videotape. See AAL record, SABRE information for Flight 77, Sept. 11, 2001; AAL response to the Commission's February 3, 2004, requests, Mar. 15, 2004; Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority videotape, Dulles main terminal checkpoints, Sept. 11, 2001.

12. See TSA report, "Selectee Status of September 11th Hijackers, "undated; see also FAA report, "Selectee List AALA #77," undated; FBI report of investigation, interview of Vaughn Allex, Sept. 12, 2001;Vaughn Allex interview (July 13, 2004).

13.The FAA conducted many screener evaluations at Dulles between September 11, 1999, and September 11, 2001.While the test results for physical search exceeded the national average, both the metal detector and X-ray results were below average. See FAA briefing materials, "Assessment and Testing Data for BOS, EWR, and IAD," Oct. 24, 2001.

14. Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority videotape, Dulles main terminal checkpoints, Sept. 11, 2001; see also Tim Jackson interview (Apr. 12, 2004).

15. Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority videotape, Dulles main terminal checkpoints, Sept. 11, 2001; see also Tim Jackson interview (Apr. 12, 2004).

16. For investigation findings, see FAA report, "American Airlines Flight #77: Hijacking and Crash into the Pentagon, Sept. 11, 2001," undated. For screener evaluations, see Tim Jackson interview (Apr. 12, 2004).

17. See AAL record, SABRE information for Flight 77, Sept. 11, 2001;AAL response to the Commission's February 3, 2004, requests, Mar. 15, 2004.

18. UAL record, Flight 93 EWR bag loading status, Sept. 11, 2001; UAL record, Flight 93 EWR ACI passenger history, Sept. 11, 2001; UAL record, Flight 93 EWR full bag history, Sept. 11, 2001;TSA report, "Selectee Status of September 11th Hijackers," undated; FBI report, "The Final 24 Hours," Dec. 8, 2003.

19.The FAA conducted many screener evaluations at Newark between September 11, 1999, and September 11, 2001. Detection rates for metal detection, physical searches, and X-rays all met or exceeded the national averages. See FAA briefing materials, "Assessment and Testing Data for BOS, EWR, and IAD," Oct. 24, 2001; see also FAA report, "United Airlines Flight 93, September 11, 2001, Executive Report," Jan. 30, 2002.

20. UAL record, Flight 93 EWR ACI passenger history, Sept. 11, 2001; see also FBI report, "The Final 24 Hours," Dec. 8, 2003.

21.While Flights 11 and 77 were at or slightly above the average number of passengers for the respective flights that summer, Flights 175 and 93 were well below their averages. We found no evidence to indicate that the hijackers manipulated the passenger loads on the aircraft they hijacked. Financial records did not reveal the purchase of any tickets beyond those the hijackers used for themselves. See FBI response to Commission briefing request no. 6, undated (topic 8);AAL report, "Average Load Factor by Day-of-Week," undated (for Flights 11 and 77 from June 11, 2001, to Sept. 9, 2001);AAL response to the Commission's supplemental document requests, Jan. 20, 2004; UAL report, Flight 175 BOS-LAX Load Factors, undated (from June 1, 2001, to Sept. 11, 2001); UAL report, "Explanation of Load Factors," undated.

22. See AAL response to the Commission's February 3, 2004, requests, Mar. 15, 2004; AAL record, Dispatch Environmental Control/Weekly Flight Summary for Flight 11, Sept. 11, 2001;AAL report, "Flight Attendant Jump Seat Locations During Takeoff And Flight Attendant Typical Cabin Positions During Start of Cabin Service," undated; AAL report, "Passenger Name List, Flight 11/September 11," undated.

23. Commission analysis of NTSB and FAA air traffic control and radar data. See AAL record, Dispatch Environmental Control/Weekly Flight Summary for Flight 11, Sept. 11, 2001; NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 11," Feb. 19, 2002; Bill Halleck and Peggy Houck interview (Jan. 8, 2004).The initial service assignments for flight attendants on American 11 would have placed Karen Martin and Bobbi Arestegui in first class; Sara Low and Jean Roger in business class; Dianne Snyder in the midcabin galley; Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney in coach; and Karen Nicosia in the aft galley. Jeffrey Collman would have been assigned to work in coach, but to assist in first class if needed. See AAL report, "Flight Attendant Jump Seat Locations During Takeoff And Flight Attendant Typical Cabin Positions During Start of Cabin Service," undated; Bob Jordan briefing (Nov. 20, 2003).

24. NTSB report, Air Traffic Control Recording-American Airlines Flight 11, Dec. 21, 2001; NTSB report, Air Traffic Control Recording-United Airlines Flight 175, Dec. 21, 2001. Given that the cockpit crew of American 11 had been acknowledging all previous instructions from air traffic control that morning within a matter of seconds, and that when the first reporting of the hijacking was received a short time later (the 8:19 call from Betty Ong) a number of actions had already been taken by the hijackers, it is most likely that the hijacking occurred at 8:14 A.M.

25.An early draft of an executive summary prepared by FAA security staff for the agency's leadership referred to an alleged report of a shooting aboard Flight 11.We believe this report was erroneous for a number of reasons- there is no evidence that the hijackers purchased firearms, use of a gun would be inconsistent with the otherwise common tactics employed by the hijackers, the alleged shooting victim was seated where witness accounts place the stabbing victim (9B), and, most important, neither Betty Ong nor Amy Sweeney, the only two people who communicated to the ground from aboard the aircraft, reported the presence of a gun or a shooting. Both reported knives and stabbings. AAL transcript, telephone call from Betty Ong to Nydia Gonzalez, Sept. 11, 2001;AAL transcript, telephone call from Nydia Gonzalez to Craig Marquis, Sept. 11, 2001; AAL transcript, telephone call from Nancy Wyatt to Ray Howland, Sept. 11, 2001; Michael Woodward interview (Jan. 25, 2004).The General Accounting Office looked into the gun story and was unable to corroborate it. GAO report, summary of briefing re investigation, Aug. 30, 2002.

26. Craig Marquis interview (Nov. 19, 2003); Michael Woodward interview (Jan. 25, 2004); Jim Dillon interview (Apr. 15, 2004). See also AAL transcript, telephone call from Betty Ong to Nydia Gonzalez, Sept. 11, 2001. At the time of the hijacking, American Airlines flight attendants all carried cockpit keys on their person. See Craig Marquis, Craig Parfitt, Joe Bertapelle, and Mike Mulcahy interview (Nov. 19, 2003).

27. AAL transcript, telephone call from Nydia Gonzalez to Craig Marquis, Sept. 11, 2001; Obituary, "Daniel Lewin," Washington Post, Sept. 22, 2001, p. B7.

28. AAL transcript, telephone call from Betty Ong to Nydia Gonzalez, Sept. 11, 2001; AAL transcript, telephone call from Nydia Gonzalez to Craig Marquis, Sept. 11, 2001. Regarding the claim of a bomb, see Michael Woodward interview (Jan. 25, 2004).

29. Calls to American's reservations office are routed to the first open line at one of several facilities, among them the center in Cary, N.C. See Nydia Gonzalez interview (Nov. 19, 2003). On standard emergency training, see FAA report, "Air Carrier Standard Security Program," May 2001, pp. 139j-139o; Don Dillman briefing (Nov. 18, 2003); Bob Jordan briefing (Nov. 20, 2003).The call from Ong was received initially by Vanessa Minter and then taken over by Winston Sadler; realizing the urgency of the situation, he pushed an emergency button that simultaneously initiated a tape recording of the call and sent an alarm notifying Nydia Gonzalez, a supervisor, to pick up on the line. Gonzalez was paged to respond to the alarm and joined the call a short time later. Only the first four minutes of the phone call between Ong and the reservations center (Minter, Sadler, and Gonzalez) was recorded because of the time limit on the recently installed system. See Nydia Gonzalez interview (Nov. 19, 2003); Nydia Gonzalez testimony, Jan. 27, 2004.

30. AAL transcript, telephone call from Betty Ong to Nydia Gonzalez, Sept. 11, 2001.

31. See Nydia Gonzalez interview (Nov. 19, 2003); Craig Marquis interviews (Nov. 19, 2003; Apr. 26, 2004); AAL record, Dispatch Environmental Control/Weekly Flight Summary for Flight 11, Sept. 11, 2001; AAL transcript, telephone call from Bill Halleck to BOS ATC, Sept. 11, 2001.The Air Carrier Standard Security Program required airlines to immediately notify the FAA and FBI upon receiving information that an act or suspected act of airplane piracy was being committed.

32. See FAA recording, Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center, position 46R, at 8:25 A.M.; Air Traffic Control Recording-American Airlines Flight 11, Dec. 21, 2001. Starting at 8:22,Amy Sweeney attempted by airphone to contact the American Airlines flight services office at Logan, which managed the scheduling and operation of flight attendants. Sweeney's first attempt failed, as did a second at 8:24.When she got through to Nunez, the latter thought she had reported her flight number as 12. Michael Woodward, supervisor at the Boston office, hearing that a problem had been reported aboard an American airplane, went to American's gate area at Logan with his colleague Beth Williams. Woodward noted that the morning bank of flights had all departed Boston and the gate area was quiet. He further realized that Flight 12 had not even departed yet, so he and Williams returned to the office to try to clarify the situation. See FBI report, "American Airlines Airphone Usage," Sept. 20, 2001; Michael Woodward interview (Jan. 25, 2004).The phone call between Sweeney and Woodward lasted about 12 minutes (8:32-8:44) and was not taped. See AAL email, Woodward to Schmidt, "Flight 11 Account of events," Sept. 19, 2001;AAL notes, Michael Woodward handwritten notes, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Michael Woodward, Sept. 13, 2001; AAL report, interview of Michael Woodward, Sept. 11, 2001; AAL transcript, telephone call from Nancy Wyatt to Ray Howland, Sept. 11, 2001.

33. See AAL transcript, telephone call from Nydia Gonzalez to Craig Marquis, Sept. 11, 2001; NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 11," Feb. 19, 2002.AAL transcript, telephone call from Nydia Gonzalez to Craig Marquis, Sept. 11, 2001; AAL transcript, telephone call from Nancy Wyatt to Ray Howland, Sept. 11, 2001.

34. Michael Woodward interview (Jan. 25, 2004).

35.AAL transcript, telephone call from Nydia Gonzalez to Craig Marquis, Sept. 11, 2001; Michael Woodward interview (Jan. 25, 2004);AAL, Michael Woodward notes, Sept. 11, 2001.Also at this time American Airlines completed its "lockout" procedure for Flight 11, which restricted access to information about a hijacked flight in accordance with the Air Carrier Standard Security program. See FAA report,"Air Carrier Standard Security Program," May 2001, p. 110.

36.AAL transcript, telephone call from Nancy Wyatt to Ray Howland, Sept. 11, 2001; Michael Woodward interview (Jan. 25, 2004).

37. AAL transcript, telephone call from Nydia Gonzalez to Craig Marquis, Sept. 11, 2001.

38. Ibid.; Michael Woodward interview (Jan. 25, 2004).

39. NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 11," Feb. 19, 2002.

40.The 56 passengers represented a load factor of 33.33 percent of the airplane's seating capacity of 168, below the 49.22 percent for Flight 175 on Tuesdays in the three-month period prior to September 11, 2001. See UAL report, Flight 175 BOS-LAX Load Factors, undated (from June 1, 2001, to Sept. 11, 2001). Nine passengers holding reservations for Flight 175 did not show for the flight. They were interviewed and cleared by the FBI. FAA report, "Executive Summary," Sept. 12, 2001; FAA report, "Executive Summary, Chronology of a Multiple Hijacking Crisis, September 11, 2001," Sept. 17, 2001; UAL record, Flight 175 ACARS report, Sept. 11, 2001; UAL record, Flight 175 Flight Data Recap, Sept. 11, 2001.

41. FAA report, "Executive Summary," Sept. 12, 2001; FAA report, "Executive Summary, Chronology of a Multiple Hijacking Crisis, September 11, 2001," Sept. 17, 2001; NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-United Airlines 175," Feb. 19, 2002; NTSB report, Air Traffic Control Recording-United Airlines Flight 175, Dec. 21, 2001. At or around this time, flight attendants Kathryn Laborie and Alfred Marchand would have begun cabin service in first class; with Amy King and Robert Fangman in business class; and with Michael Tarrou, Amy Jarret, and Alicia Titus in economy class. See UAL report, "Flight 175 Flight Attendant Positions/Jumpseats," undated. United flight attendants, unlike those at American, did not carry cockpit keys. Instead, such keys were stowed in the cabin-on Flight 175, in the overhead bin above seats 1A and 1B in first class. See Don Dillman briefing (Nov. 18, 2003); Bob Jordan briefing (Nov. 20, 2003).

42.Asked by air traffic controllers at 8:37 to look for an American Airlines 767 (Flight 11), United 175 reported spotting the aircraft at 8:38. At 8:41, the flight crew reported having "heard a suspicious transmission" from another aircraft shortly after takeoff, "like someone keyed the mike and said everyone stay in your seats." See NTSB report, Air Traffic Control Recording-United Airlines Flight 175, Dec. 21, 2001.

43. See Marc Policastro interview (Nov. 21, 2003); FBI reports of investigation, interview of Lee Hanson, Sept. 11, 2001; interview of Marc Policastro, Sept. 11, 2001; interview of Louise Sweeney, Sept. 28, 2001; interview of Ronald May, Sept. 11, 2001. On both American 11 and United 175, Boeing 767 double-aisled aircraft, the hijackers arrayed themselves similarly: two seated in first class close to the cockpit door, the pilot hijacker seated close behind them, and at least one other hijacker seated close behind the pilot hijacker. Hijackers were seated next to both the left and right aisles. On American 77 and United 93, Boeing 757 single-aisle aircraft, the pilot hijacker sat in the first row, closest to the cockpit door. See FBI report, "Summary of Penttbom Investigation," Feb. 29, 2004, pp. 67-69; AAL schematics for Flight 11 and Flight 77; UAL schematics for Flight 175 and Flight 93.

44. NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-United Airlines 175," Feb. 19, 2002; NTSB report, Air Traffic Control Recording-United Airlines Flight 175, Dec. 21, 2001.

45. See FBI report of investigation, interview of Lee Hanson, Sept. 11, 2001.

46. Flight crew on board UAL aircraft could contact the United office in San Francisco (SAMC) simply by dialing *349 on an airphone. See FBI report of investigation, interview of David Price, Jan. 24, 2002.At some point before 9:00, SAMC notified United's headquarters of the emergency call from the flight attendant. See Marc Policastro interview (Nov. 21, 2003); FBI report of investigation, interview of Marc Policastro, Sept.11, 2001; Rich Miles interiew (Nov. 21, 2003).

47. NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-United Airlines 175," Feb. 19, 2002.

48. See FBI reports of investigation, interview of Julie Sweeney, Oct. 2, 2001; interview of Louise Sweeney, Sept. 28, 2001.

49. See FBI report of investigation, interview of Lee Hanson, Sept. 11, 2001.

50. See ibid.; interview of Louise Sweeney, Sept. 28, 2001.

51. NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-United Airlines 175," Feb. 19, 2002.

52. AAL report, "Flight Attendant Jump Seat Locations During Takeoff And Flight Attendant Typical Cabin Positions During Start of Cabin Service," undated;AAL email,Young to Clark, "Flight Crews," Sept. 12, 2001;AAL record, Dispatch Environmental Control/Weekly Flight Summary for Flight 11, Sept. 11, 2001.

53.AAL record, System Operations Command Center (SOCC) log, Sept. 11, 2001, p. 2; NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 77," Feb. 19, 2002. Flight attendant Renee May would likely have started working in the first-class galley; Michele Heidenberger would have been in the aft galley; Jennifer Lewis would have been in first class; and Kenneth Lewis would have been in the main cabin. On cabin service, see AAL report, "Flight Attendant Jump Seat Locations During Takeoff And Flight Attendant Typical Cabin Positions During Start of Cabin Service," undated. For cruising altitude, see NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 77," Feb. 19, 2002. On events in the cabin, see FAA recording, Indianapolis Air Traffic Control Center, position HNN R, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Ronald and Nancy May, Sept. 12, 2001; AAL record, Dispatch Environmental Control/Weekly Flight Summary for Flight 11, Sept. 11, 2001.

54.Air traffic control notified American's headquarters of the problem, and the airline began attempts to contact the flight by 8:59 via ACARS. See NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 77," Feb. 19, 2002. On American 11, the transponder signal was turned off at 8:21; on United 175, the code was changed at 8:47; on American 77, the signal was turned off at 8:56; and on United 93, the signal was turned off at 9:41. See FAA report, "Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events: September 11, 2001," Sept. 17, 2001; Richard Byard interview (Sept.

24, 2003); Linda Povinelli interview (Sept. 24, 2003); see also NTSB report, Air Traffic Control Recording-American Airlines Flight 77, Dec. 21, 2001; AAL record, Dispatch Environmental Control/Weekly Flight Summary for Flight 11, Sept. 11, 2001.

55. Gerard Arpey interview (Jan. 8, 2004); Larry Wansley interview (Jan. 8, 2004);AAL record, System Operations Command Center (SOCC) log, Sept. 11, 2001.

56. FBI report, "American Airlines Airphone Usage," Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Ronald and Nancy May, Sept. 12, 2001.

57.The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of four "connected calls to unknown numbers" represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband's office (all family members of the Flight 77 passengers and crew were canvassed to see if they had received any phone calls from the hijacked flight, and only Renee May's parents and Ted Olson indicated that they had received such calls).The four calls were at 9:15:34 for 1 minute, 42 seconds; 9:20:15 for 4 minutes, 34 seconds; 9:25:48 for 2 minutes, 34 seconds; and 9:30:56 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds. FBI report, "American Airlines Airphone Usage," Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Helen Voss, Sept. 14, 2001;AAL response to the Commission's supplemental document request, Jan. 20, 2004.

58. FBI report, "American Airlines Airphone Usage," Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001.

59. See FAA report, "Report of Aircraft Accident," Nov. 13, 2001; John Hendershot interview (Dec. 22, 2003); FAA report, "Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events: September 11, 2001," Sept. 17, 2001; NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 77," Feb. 19, 2002; Commission analysis of radar data.

60. See FAA report, "Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events: September 11, 2001," Sept. 17, 2001; NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 77," Feb. 19, 2002; FAA report, "Report of Aircraft Accident," Nov. 13, 2001.

61. See NTSB report, "Flight Path Study-American Airlines Flight 77," Feb. 19, 2002;TSA report, "Criminal Acts Against Civil Aviation for 2001," Aug. 20, 2002, p. 41.

62. The flight attendant assignments and seating included Chief Flight Attendant Deborah Welsh (first class, seat J1 at takeoff); Sandra Bradshaw (coach, seat J5);Wanda Green (first class, seat J4); Lorraine Bay (coach, seat J3); and CeeCee Lyles (coach, seat J6). See UAL response to Commission questions for the record, Apr. 5, 2004; FAA report, "Chronology of the September 11 Attacks and Subsequent Events Through October 24, 2001," undated; UAL records, copies of electronic boarding passes for Flight 93, Sept. 11, 2001; Bob Varcadipane interview (May 4, 2004); Newark Tower briefing (May 4, 2004).

63. Although the flight schedule indicates an 8:00 A.M. "departure," this was the time the plane left the gate area. Taxiing from the gate to the runway normally took about 15 minutes. Bob Varcadipane interview (May 4, 2004); Newark Tower briefing (May 4, 2004).

64. Commission analysis of FAA air traffic control data. On the FAA's awareness of multiple hijackings, see AAL transcript, telephone call from Nydia Gonzalez to Craig Marquis, Sept. 11, 2001; Craig Marquis interview (Nov. 19, 2003);AAL record, System Operations Command Center (SOCC) log, Sept. 11, 2001; UAL System Operations Control briefing (Nov. 20, 2003); Rich Miles interview (Nov. 21, 2003); UAL report, "Timeline: Dispatch/SMFDO Activities-Terrorist Crisis," undated.

65. FAA audio file, Boston Center, position 46R, 8:24:38 and 8:24:56; Peter Zalewski interview (Sept. 23, 2003).
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Re: The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission o

Postby admin » Wed Mar 23, 2016 3:49 am

Part 2 of 22

66. On September 6, 1970, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked a Pan American Boeing 747, a TWA Boeing 707, and a Swissair DC-8. On September 9, a British airliner was hijacked as well. An attempt to hijack an Israeli airliner was thwarted. The Pan American plane landed in Cairo and was blown up after its passengers were released. The other three aircraft were flown to Dawson Field, near Amman, Jordan; the passengers were held captive, and the planes were destroyed. The international hijacking crisis turned into a civil war, as the Jordanian government used force to restore its control of the country. See FAA report, Civil Aviation Reference Handbook, May 1999, appendix D.

The FAA knew or strongly suspected that Flight 11 was a hijacking 11 minutes after it was taken over; Flight 175, 9 minutes after it was taken over. There is no evidence to indicate that the FAA recognized Flight 77 as a hijacking until it crashed into the Pentagon.

67. FAA audio file, Herndon Command Center, line 5114, 9:07:13; FAA audio file, Herndon Command Center, position 15, 9:19. At 9:07, Boston Air Traffic Control Center recommended to the FAA Command Center that a cockpit warning be sent to the pilots of all commercial aircraft to secure their cockpits. While Boston Center sent out such warnings to the commercial flights in its sector, we could find no evidence that a nationwide warning was issued by the ATC system.

68. Ellen King interview (Apr. 5, 2004). FAA air traffic control tapes indicate that at 9:19 the FAA Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Herndon ordered controllers to send a cockpit warning to Delta 1989 because, like American 11 and United 175, it was a transcontinental flight departing Boston's Logan Airport.

69. For American Airlines' response, see AAL briefing (Apr. 26, 2004). For Ballinger's warnings, see Ed Ballinger interview (Apr. 14, 2004). A companywide order for dispatchers to warn cockpits was not issued until 9:21. See UAL report, "Timeline: Dispatch/SMFDO Activities-Terrorist Crisis," undated. While one of Ballinger's colleagues assisted him, Ballinger remained responsible for multiple flights. See Ed Ballinger interview (Apr. 14, 2004). American Airlines' policy called for the flight dispatcher to manage only the hijacked flight, relieving him of responsibilities for all other flights. On American Airlines' policy, see Craig Marquis, Craig Parfitt, Joe Bertapelle, and Mike Mulcahy interview (Nov. 19, 2003). United Airlines had no such "isolation" policy. UAL System Operations Control briefing (Nov. 20, 2003).

70. On FDR, see NTSB report, "Specialist's Factual Report of Investigation-Digital Flight Data Recorder" for United Airlines Flight 93, Feb. 15, 2002; on CVR, see FBI report, "CVR from UA Flight #93," Dec. 4, 2003; Commission review of Aircraft Communication and Reporting System (ACARS) messages sent to and from Flight 93 (which indicate time of message transmission and receipt); see UAL record, Ed Ballinger ACARS log, Sept. 11, 2001. At 9:22, after learning of the events at the World Trade Center, Melody Homer, the wife of co-pilot Leroy Homer, had an ACARS message sent to her husband in the cockpit asking if he was okay. See UAL record, ACARS message, Sept. 11, 2001.

71. On FDR, see NTSB report, "Specialist's Factual Report of Investigation-Digital Flight Data Recorder" for United Airlines Flight 93, Feb. 15, 2002; on CVR, see FBI report, "CVR from UA Flight #93," Dec. 4, 2003; FAA report, "Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events: September 11, 2001," Sept. 17, 2001; NTSB report, Air Traffic Control Recording-United Airlines Flight 93, Dec. 21, 2001.

72.The 37 passengers represented a load factor of 20.33 percent of the plane's seating capacity of 182, considerably below the 52.09 percent for Flight 93 on Tuesdays in the three-month period prior to September 11 (June 11-September 4, 2001). See UAL report, Flight 93 EWR-SFO load factors, undated. Five passengers holding reservations for Flight 93 did not show for the flight. All five were interviewed and cleared by the FBI. FBI report, "Flight #93 'No Show' Passengers from 9/11/01," Sept. 18, 2001.

73. INS record, Withdrawal of Application for Admission for Mohamed al Kahtani, Aug. 4, 2001.

74. See FAA regulations, Admission to flight deck, 14 C.F.R. § 121.547 (2001); UAL records, copies of boarding passes for United 93, Sept. 11, 2001. One passenger reported that ten first-class passengers were aboard the flight. If that number is accurate, it would include the four hijackers. FBI report of investigation, interview of Lisa Jefferson, Sept. 11, 2001; UAL record, Flight 93 passenger manifest, Sept. 11, 2001.All but one of the six passengers seated in the first-class cabin communicated with the ground during the flight, and none mentioned anyone from their cabin having gone into the cockpit before the hijacking. Moreover, it is unlikely that the highly regarded and experienced pilot and co-pilot of Flight 93 would have allowed an observer into the cockpit before or after takeoff who had not obtained the proper permission. See UAL records, personnel files of Flight 93 pilots. For jumpseat information, see UAL record, Weight and Balance Information for Flight 93 and Flight 175, Sept. 11, 2001;AAL records, Dispatch Environmental Control/Weekly Flight Summary for Flight 11 and Flight 77, Sept. 11, 2001.

75. Like Atta on Flight 11, Jarrah apparently did not know how to operate the communication radios; thus his attempts to communicate with the passengers were broadcast on the ATC channel. See FBI report, "CVR from UA Flight #93," Dec. 4, 2003.Also, by 9:32 FAA notified United's headquarters that the flight was not responding to radio calls. According to United, the flight's nonresponse and its turn to the east led the airline to believe by 9:36 that the plane was hijacked. See Rich Miles interview (Nov. 21, 2003); UAL report, "United dispatch SMFDO activities-terrorist crisis," Sept. 11, 2001.

76. In accordance with FAA regulations, United 93's cockpit voice recorder recorded the last 31 minutes of sounds from the cockpit via microphones in the pilots' headsets, as well as in the overhead panel of the flight deck. This is the only recorder from the four hijacked airplanes to survive the impact and ensuing fire. The CVRs and FDRs from American 11 and United 175 were not found, and the CVR from American Flight 77 was badly burned and not recoverable. See FBI report, "CVR from UA Flight #93,"Dec. 4, 2003; see also FAA regulations, 14 C.F.R. §§ 25.1457, 91.609, 91.1045, 121.359; Flight 93 CVR data. A transcript of the CVR recording was prepared by the NTSB and the FBI.

77. All calls placed on airphones were from the rear of the aircraft. There was one airphone installed in each row of seats on both sides of the aisle. The airphone system was capable of transmitting only eight calls at any one time. See FBI report of investigation, airphone records for flights UAL 93 and UAL 175 on Sept. 11, 2001, Sept. 18, 2001.

78. FAA audio file, Cleveland Center, position Lorain Radar; Flight 93 CVR data; FBI report, "CVR from UA Flight #93," Dec. 4, 2003.

79. FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Todd Beamer, Sept. 11, 2001, through June 11, 2002; FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Sandy Bradshaw, Sept. 11, 2001, through Oct. 4, 2001.Text messages warning the cockpit of Flight 93 were sent to the aircraft by Ed Ballinger at 9:24. See UAL record, Ed Ballinger's ACARS log, Sept. 11, 2001.

80.We have relied mainly on the record of FBI interviews with the people who received calls. The FBI interviews were conducted while memories were still fresh and were less likely to have been affected by reading the accounts of others or hearing stories in the media. In some cases we have conducted our own interviews to supplement or verify the record. See FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Sandy Bradshaw, Marion Britton, Thomas Burnett, Joseph DeLuca, Edward Felt, Jeremy Glick, Lauren Grandcolas, Linda Gronlund, CeeCee Lyles, Honor Wainio.

81. FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Thomas Burnett, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Marion Britton, Sept. 14, 2001, through Nov. 8, 2001; Lisa Jefferson interview (May 11, 2004); FBI report of investigation, interview of Lisa Jefferson, Sept. 11, 2001; Richard Belme interview (Nov. 21, 2003).

82. See Jere Longman, Among the Heroes-United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back (Harper-Collins, 2002), p. 107; Deena Burnett interview (Apr. 26, 2004); FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Jeremy Glick, Sept. 11, 2001, through Sept. 12, 2001; Lyzbeth Glick interview (Apr. 22, 2004). Experts told us that a gunshot would definitely be audible on the CVR. The FBI found no evidence of a firearm at the crash site of Flight 93. See FBI response to Commission briefing request no. 6, undated (topic 11).The FBI collected 14 knives or portions of knives at the Flight 93 crash site. FBI report, "Knives Found at the UA Flight 93 Crash Site," undated.

83. FBI response to Commission briefing request no. 6, undated (topic 11); FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Jeremy Glick, Sept. 11, 2001, through Sept. 12, 2001.

84. See FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from United 93.

85. FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from United 93. For quote, see FBI report of investigation, interview of Philip Bradshaw, Sept. 11, 2001; Philip Bradshaw interview (June 15, 2004); Flight 93 FDR and CVR data. At 9:55:11 Jarrah dialed in the VHF Omni-directional Range (VOR) frequency for the VOR navigational aid at Washington Reagan National Airport, further indicating that the attack was planned for the nation's capital.

86. Flight 93 FDR and CVR data.

87. Ibid.

88. Ibid.

89. Ibid. The CVR clearly captured the words of the hijackers, including words in Arabic from the microphone in the pilot headset up to the end of the flight. The hijackers' statements, the clarity of the recording, the position of the microphone in the pilot headset, and the corresponding manipulations of flight controls provide the evidence. The quotes are taken from our listening to the CVR, aided by an Arabic speaker.

90. In 1993, a Lufthansa aircraft was hijacked from its Frankfurt to Cairo route and diverted to JFK Airport in New York. The event lasted for 11 hours and was resolved without incident. Tamara Jones and John J. Goldman, "11-Hour Hijack Ends Without Injury in N.Y.,"Los Angeles Times, Feb. 12, 1993, p. A1.

91.The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a tremendous growth of the air transport industry, and the FAA's corresponding responsibilities grew enormously from the 1960s through 2001.Throughout that time, the FAA focused on setting and maintaining safety and efficiency standards. Since no plane had been hijacked inside the United States since 1991, sabotage was perceived as the most significant threat to civil aviation. For a broader discussion of the perception of the threat, see section 3.3.

92. FAA report, "Administrator's Fact Book," July 2001; Benedict Sliney interview (May 21, 2004); John McCartney interview (Dec. 17, 2003).

93. FAA regulations, Air Traffic Control transponder and altitude reporting equipment and use, 14 CFR § 91.215 (2001).

94. DOD radar files, 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron, "9/11 Autoplay," undated; Charles Thomas interview (May 4, 2004); John Thomas interview (May 4, 2004); Joseph Cooper interview (Sept. 22, 2003);Tim Spence interview (Sept. 30, 2003). For general information on approaching terminals, see FAA report, "Aeronautical Information Manual," Feb. 19, 2004. Times assigned to audio transmissions were derived by the Commission from files provided by the FAA and the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) based on audio time stamps contained within the files provided by the sender. FAA tapes are certified accurate to Universal Coordinated Time by quality assurance specialists at FAA air traffic facilities. NEADS files are time-stamped as accurate to the Naval Observatory clock. We also compared audio times to certified transcripts when available.

95. FAA Boston Center site visit (Sept. 22-24, 2003).

96. NORAD's mission is set forth in a series of renewable agreements between the United States and Canada. According to the agreement in effect on 9/11, the "primary missions" of NORAD were "aerospace warning" and "aerospace control" for North America. Aerospace warning was defined as "the monitoring of man-made objects in space and the detection, validation, and warning of attack against North America whether by aircraft, missiles, or space vehicles." Aerospace control was defined as "providing surveillance and control of the airspace of Canada and the United States." See DOS memo, Exchange of Notes Between Canada and the United States Regarding Extension of the NORAD Agreement, Mar. 28, 1996; see also DOS press release,"Extension of NORAD Agreement," June 16, 2000 (regarding the extension of the 1996 Agreement unchanged). For NORAD's defining its job as defending against external attacks, see Ralph Eberhart interview (Mar. 1, 2004).

97. DOD report,"NORAD Strategy Review: Final Report," July 1992, p. 55.

98. For assumptions of exercise planners, see Paul Goddard and Ken Merchant interview (Mar. 4, 2004). For the authority to shoot down a commercial aircraft prior to 9/11, granted to NORAD but not used against Payne Stewart's plane in 1999 after the pilot and passengers lost consciousness, see Richard Myers interview (Feb. 17, 2004). A 1998 White House tabletop exercise chaired by Richard Clarke included a scenario in which a terrorist group loaded a Learjet with explosives and took off for a suicide mission to Washington. Military officials said they could scramble fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base to chase the aircraft, but they would need "executive" orders to shoot it down. Chuck Green interview (Apr. 21, 2004). For no recognition of this threat, see Ralph Eberhart interview (Mar. 1, 2004).

99. Richard Myers interview (Feb. 17, 2004). 100. Donald Quenneville interview (Jan. 7, 2004); Langley Air Force Base 119th Fighter Wing briefing (Oct. 6-7, 2003).

101. Collin Scoggins interviews (Sept. 22, 2003; Jan. 8, 2004); FAA report,"Crisis Management Handbook for Significant Events," Feb. 15, 2000; DOD memo, CJCS instruction,"Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects," June 1, 2001.

102. See FAA regulations, Hijacked Aircraft, Order 7110.65M, para.10-2-6 (2001); David Bottiglia interview (Oct. 1, 2003); FAA report,"Crisis Management Handbook for Significant Events," Feb. 15, 2000. From interviews of controllers at various FAA centers, we learned that an air traffic controller's first response to an aircraft incident is to notify a supervisor, who then notifies the traffic management unit and the operations manager in charge.The FAA center next notifies the appropriate regional operations center (ROC), which in turn contacts FAA headquarters. Biggio stated that for American 11, the combination of three factors-loss of radio contact, loss of transponder signal, and course deviation-was serious enough for him to contact the ROC in Burlington, Mass. However, without hearing the threatening communication from the cockpit, he doubts Boston Center would have recognized or labeled American 11 "a hijack." Terry Biggio interview (Sept. 22, 2003); see also Shirley Miller interview (Mar. 30, 2004); Monte Belger interview (Apr. 20, 2004).

103. FAA regulations, Special Military Operations, Requests for Service, Order 7610.4J, paras. 7-1-1, 7-1-2 (2001); DOD memo, CJCS instruction, "Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects," June 1, 2001.

104. Ralph Eberhart interview (Mar. 1, 2004);Alan Scott interview (Feb. 4, 2004); Robert Marr interview (Jan. 23, 2004); FAA regulations, Position Reports within NORAD Radar Coverage, Order 7610.4J, para. 7-4-2 (2001); DOD memo, CJCS instruction,"Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects," June 1, 2001.

105. FAA regulations,Air/Ground Communications Security, Order 7610.4J, para. 7-1-6 (2001); FAA regula-tions,Vectors, Order 7610.4J, para. 7-2-3 (2001).

106. Peter Zalewski interview (Sept. 22, 2003); Terry Biggio interviews (Sept. 22, 2003; Jan. 8, 2004); Collin Scoggins interview (Sept. 22, 2003); Daniel Bueno interview (Sept. 22, 2003). For evidence of the numerous attempts by air traffic control to raise American 11, see FAA memo,"Full Transcript;Aircraft Accident;AAL11; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," Feb. 15, 2002, p. 7.

107. DOD radar files, 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron, "9/11 Autoplay," undated; Peter Zalewski interview (Sept. 22, 2003); John Schippani interview (Sept. 22, 2003). 108. Peter Zalewski interview (Sept. 22, 2003); John Schippani interview (Sept. 22, 2003). 109. FAA memo,"Full Transcript;Aircraft Accident;AAL11; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," Feb. 15, 2002, p. 11; Peter Zalewski interview (Sept. 23, 2003). 110. Peter Zalewski interview (Sept. 23, 2003); John Schippani interview (Sept. 22, 2003);Terry Biggio interviews (Sept. 22, 2003; Jan. 8, 2004); Robert Jones interview (Sept. 22, 2003). 111. FAA memo,"Full Transcript;Aircraft Accident;AAL11; New York, NY; September 11, 2001,"Apr. 19, 2002, p. 2; FAA record, Boston Center daily record of facility operation, Sept. 11, 2001;Terry Biggio interviews (Sept. 22, 2003; Jan. 8, 2004); Daniel Bueno interview (Sept. 22, 2004). See also FAA memo,"Transcription of 9/11 Tapes," Oct. 2, 2003, p. 2; FAA audio file, Herndon Command Center, line 4525, 8:32-8:33.

112. See FAA memo,"Transcription of 9/11 Tapes," Oct. 2, 2003, pp. 2-3; FAA record, New England Region Daily Log, Sept. 11, 2001; Daniel Bueno interview (Sept. 22, 2003);Terry Biggio interviews (Sept. 22, 2003; Jan. 8, 2004).

113. FAA memo,"Full Transcript;Aircraft Accident;AAL11; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," Feb. 15, 2002, p. 12. 114. FAA memo,"Full Transcript;Aircraft Accident;AAL11; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," Jan. 28, 2002, p. 5. 115. FAA memo,"Full Transcript;Aircraft Accident;AAL11; New York, NY; September 11, 2001,"Apr. 19, 2002, p. 5;Terry Biggio interview (Sept. 22, 2003); Collin Scoggins interviews (Sept. 22, 2003; Jan. 8, 2004); Daniel Bueno interview (Sept. 22, 2003).

116. On 9/11, NORAD was scheduled to conduct a military exercise,Vigilant Guardian, which postulated a bomber attack from the former Soviet Union. We investigated whether military preparations for the large-scale exercise compromised the military's response to the real-world terrorist attack on 9/11. According to General Eberhart, "it took about 30 seconds" to make the adjustment to the real-world situation. Ralph Eberhart testimony, June 17, 2004.We found that the response was, if anything, expedited by the increased number of staff at the sectors and at NORAD because of the scheduled exercise. See Robert Marr interview (Jan. 23, 2004).

117. For the distance between Otis Air Force Base and New York City, see William Scott testimony, May 23, 2003. For the order from NEADS to Otis to place F-15s at battle stations, see NEADS audio file,Weapons Director Technician position, channel 14, 8:37:15. See also interviews with Otis and NEADS personnel: Jeremy Powell interview (Oct. 27, 2003); Michael Kelly interview (Oct. 14, 2003); Donald Quenneville interview (Jan. 7, 2004), and interviews with Otis fighter pilots: Daniel Nash interview (Oct. 14, 2003); Timothy Duffy interview (Jan. 7, 2004). According to Joseph Cooper from Boston Center,"I coordinated with Huntress ["Huntress" is the call sign for NEADS]. I advised Huntress we had a hijacked aircraft. I requested some assistance. Huntress requested and I supplied pertinent information. I was advised aircraft might be sent from Otis." FAA record, Personnel Statement of Joseph Cooper, Oct. 30, 2001.

118. Robert Marr interview (Jan. 23, 2004); Leslie Filson, Air War Over America (First Air Force, 2003), p. 56; Larry Arnold interview (Feb. 3, 2004).

119. NEADS audio file, Weapons Director Technician position, channel 14; 8:45:54; Daniel Nash interview (Oct. 14, 2003); Michael Kelly interview (Oct. 14, 2003); Donald Quenneville interview (Jan. 7, 2004); Timothy Duffy interview (Jan. 7, 2004); NEADS audio file, Mission Crew Commander position, channel 2, 8:44:58; NEADS audio file, Identification Technician position, channel 5, 8:51:13.

120. FAA audio file, Boston Center, position 31R; NEADS audio file, Mission Crew Commander position, channel 2, 8:58:00; NEADS audio file, Mission Crew Commander position, channel 2, 8:54:55. Because of a technical issue, there are no NEADS recordings available of the NEADS senior weapons director and weapons director technician position responsible for controlling the Otis scramble.We found a single communication from the weapons director or his technician on the Guard frequency at approximately 9:11, cautioning the Otis fighters: "remain at current position [holding pattern] until FAA requests assistance." See NEADS audio file, channel 24. That corresponds to the time after the Otis fighters entered the holding pattern and before they headed for New York. NEADS controllers were simultaneously working with a tanker to relocate close to the Otis fighters.At 9:10, the senior director on the NEADS floor told the weapons director,"I want those fighters closer in." NEADS audio file, Identification Technician position, channel 5. At 9:10:22, the Otis fighters were told by Boston Center that the second tower had been struck. At 9:12:54, the Otis fighters told their Boston Center controller that they needed to establish a combat air patrol over New York, and they immediately headed for New York City. See FAA audio files, Boston Center, position 31R. This series of communications explains why the Otis fighters briefly entered and then soon departed the holding pattern, as the radar reconstruction of their flight shows. DOD radar files, 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron,"9/11 Autoplay," undated.

121. In response to allegations that NORAD responded more quickly to the October 25, 1999, plane crash that killed Payne Stewart than it did to the hijacking of American 11, we compared NORAD's response time for each incident.The last normal transmission from the Stewart flight was at 9:27:10 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time. The Southeast Air Defense Sector was notified of the event at 9:55, 28 minutes later. In the case of American 11, the last normal communication from the plane was at 8:13 A.M. EDT. NEADS was notified at 8:38, 25 minutes later. We have concluded there is no significant difference in NORAD's reaction to the two incidents. See NTSB memo, Aircraft Accident Brief for Payne Stewart incident, Oct. 25, 1999; FAA email, Gahris to Myers,"ZJX Timeline for N47BA accident," Feb. 17, 2004.

122. FAA memo, "Full Transcript; Aircraft Accident; UAL175; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," May 8, 2002, pp. 5-6.

123. FAA audio file, New York Center, position R42, 8:42-8:45; FAA memo, "Full Transcript; Aircraft Accident; UAL175; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," May 8, 2002, pp. 6-8; DOD radar files, 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron,"9/11 Autoplay," undated.The FAA-produced timeline notes,"Based on coordination received from [Boston Center] indicating a possible hijack, most of the controller's attention is focused on AAL 11." See FAA report,"Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events September 11, 2001," Sept. 17, 2001; see also David Bottiglia interview (Oct. 1, 2003); FAA memo,"Full Transcript;Aircraft Accident; UAL175; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," May 8, 2002, p. 9.

124. FAA audio file, Herndon Command Center, New York Center position, line 5114, 8:48.

125. FAA memo, "Full Transcript; Aircraft Accident; UAL175; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," May 8, 2002, pp. 12, 14.

126. Ibid., p. 15.At 8:57, the following exchange between controllers occurred:"I got some handoffs for you. We got some incidents going over here. Is Delta 2433 going to be okay at thirty-three? I had to climb him for traffic. I let you United 175 just took off out of think we might have a hijack over here.Two of them." See FAA memo, "Full Transcript;Aircraft Accident; UAL175; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," May 8, 2002.

127. See FAA report,"Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events September 11, 2001," Sept. 17, 2001; Evanna Dowis interview (Sept. 30, 2004); Michael McCormick interview (Dec. 15, 2003); FAA record, Personnel Statement of Michael McCormick, Oct. 17, 2001. See also FAA memo,"Full Transcript;Aircraft Accident; UAL175; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," May 8, 2002, p. 17.

128. FAA memo,"Full Transcript; Command Center; NOM Operational Position; September 11, 2001," Oct. 14, 2003, pp. 15-17.

129. FAA memo, "Full Transcript; Aircraft Accident; UAL175; New York, NY; September 11, 2001," Jan. 17, 2002, p. 3.

130."N90 [New York Terminal Radar Approach] controller stated 'at approximately 9:00 a.m., I observed an unknown aircraft south of the Newark, New Jersey Airport, northeast bound and descending out of twelve thousand nine hundred feet in a rapid rate of descent, the radar target terminated at the World Trade Center.'" FAA report,"Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events September 11, 2001,"Sept. 17, 2001. Former NORAD official Alan Scott testified that the time of impact of United 175 was 9:02. William Scott testimony, May 23, 2003. We have determined that the impact time was 9:03:11 based on our analysis of FAA radar data and air traffic control software logic.

131. FAA audio file, Herndon Command Center, New York Center position, line 5114, 9:02:34.

132. Ibid., 9:03; FAA audio file, Herndon Command Center, Cleveland/Boston position, line 5115, 9:05; Michael McCormick interview (Oct. 1, 2003); David LaCates interview (Oct. 2, 2003).

133. FAA Audio File, Herndon Command Center, Boston Center position, line 5115, 9:05-9:07.

134. Joseph McCain interview (Oct. 28, 2003); Robert Marr (Jan. 23, 2004); James Fox interview (Oct. 29, 2003); Dawne Deskins interview (Oct. 30, 2003).

135. NEADS audio file, Mission Crew Commander position, channel 2, 9:07:32.

136. Daniel Nash interview (Oct. 14, 2003);Timothy Duffy interview (Jan. 7, 2004).

137. Because the Otis fighters had expended a great deal of fuel in flying first to military airspace and then to New York, the battle commanders were concerned about refueling. As NEADS personnel looked for refueling tankers in the vicinity of New York, the mission crew commander considered scrambling the Langley fighters to New York to provide backup for the Otis fighters until the NEADS Battle Cab (the command area that overlooks the operations floor) ordered "battle stations only at Langley." The alert fighters at Langley Air Force Base were ordered to battle stations at 9:09. Colonel Marr, the battle commander at NEADS, and General Arnold, the CONR commander, both recall that the planes were held on battle stations, as opposed to scrambling, because they might be called on to relieve the Otis fighters over New York City if a refueling tanker was not located, and also because of the general uncertainty of the situation in the sky.According to William Scott at the Commission's May 23, 2003, hearing,"At 9:09, Langley F-16s are directed to battle stations, just based on the general situation and the breaking news, and the general developing feeling about what's going on." See NEADS audio file, Mission Crew Commander, channel 2, 9:08:36; Robert Marr interview (Oct. 27, 2003); Larry Arnold interview (Feb. 3, 2004). See also Colonel Marr's statement that "[t]he plan was to protect New York City." Filson, Air War Over America,p.60.

138. Commission analysis of FAA radar data and air traffic control transmissions.

139.The Indianapolis Center controller advised other Indianapolis Center personnel of the developing situa-tion.They agreed to "sterilize" the airspace along the flight's westerly route so the safety of other planes would not be affected. John Thomas interview (May 4, 2004).

140. John Thomas interview (Sept. 24, 2003). According to the FAA-produced timeline, at 9:09 Indianapolis Center "notified Great Lakes Regional Operations Center a possible aircraft accident of AMERICAN 77 due to the simultaneous loss of radio communications and radar identification." FAA report,"Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events September 11, 2001," Sept. 17, 2001.

141. FAA audio file, Herndon Command Center, National Operations Manager position, line 4525; FAA audio file, Herndon Command Center, National Traffic Management Officer east position, line 4530; FAA memo,"Full Transcription; Air Traffic Control System Command Center, National Traffic Management Officer, East Position; September 11, 2001," Oct. 21, 2003, p. 13.

142. Primary radar contact for Flight 77 was lost because the "preferred" radar in this geographic area had no primary radar system, the "supplemental" radar had poor primary coverage, and the FAA ATC software did not allow the display of primary radar data from the "tertiary" and "quadrary" radars.

143. David Boone interview (May 4, 2004); Charles Thomas interview (May 4, 2004); John Thomas interview (May 4, 2004); Commission analysis of FAA radar data and air traffic control software logic.

144. John Thomas interview (May 4, 2004); Charles Thomas interview (May 4, 2004). We have reviewed all FAA documents, transcripts, and tape recordings related to American 77 and have found no evidence that FAA headquarters issued a directive to surrounding centers to search for primary radar targets. Review of the same materials also indicates that no one within FAA located American 77 until the aircraft was identified by Dulles controllers at 9:32. For much of that time, American 77 was traveling through Washington Center's airspace. The Washington Center's controllers were looking for the flight, but they were not told to look for primary radar returns.

145. John White interview (May 7, 2004); Ellen King interview (Apr. 5, 2004); Linda Schuessler interview (Apr. 6, 2004); Benedict Sliney interview (May 21, 2004); FAA memo, "Full Transcription; Air Traffic Control System Command Center, National Traffic Management Officer, East Position; September 11, 2001," Oct. 21, 2003, pp. 14, 27.

146. John Hendershot interview (Dec. 22, 2003).

147. FAA memo, "Partial Transcript; Aircraft Accident; AAL77; Washington, DC; September 11, 2001," Sept. 20, 2001, p. 7.

148. NEADS audio file, Identification Technician position, channel 7, 9:21:10.

149. NEADS audio file, Mission Crew Commander, channel 2, 9:21:50; Kevin Nasypany interview (Jan. 22-23, 2004).

150. NEADS audio file, Mission Crew Commander, Channel 2, 9:22:34.The mission commander thought to put the Langley scramble over Baltimore and place a "barrier cap" between the hijack and Washington, D.C. Kevin Nasypany interview (Jan. 22-23, 2004).
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