9/11 hearings shed light on the attack

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States conducted hearings on Tuesday, March 23 and Wednesday, March 24 as part of its investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Witnesses testified that both the Clinton and Bush administrations share blame for the attack.

Current and former administration officials were in rare agreement when it came to their assessments of the intelligence information and military options available to the government in the months and years preceding 9/11. The notable exception was Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism official who has served both Democrats and Republicans in the Reagan, first Bush, Clinton, and second Bush administrations. Clarke was the most eagerly anticipated witness because of his unusually blunt and detailed criticism of the current Bush administration in a recently published book.

The commission, made up of former congressmen, senators, political appointees, and the chief of the Watergate Task Force in the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office, was created by congressional legislation President George Bush signed into law in late 2002. By sifting through administration documents and questioning witnesses, the panel is trying to determine what administrations knew about terrorism before the 9/11 attacks occurred and whether it knew enough to have prevented the attacks.

The hearings were also a chance for families of the 9/11 victims to seek answers for why their loved ones were lost. Many family members were in the audience during the hearings.

As of March 15, the commission had interviewed more than 1,000 people in various countries. Wednesday's hearings marked the panel's eighth public hearing.

Witnesses from both the Clinton and current Bush administrations were in general consensus that there was little they could have done to prevent the 9/11 attacks. Madeleine K. Albright and Donald H. Rumsfeld both noted that there was little support in the United States for military action against Al Qaeda and the Taliban before 9/11. "Even if bin Laden had been captured or killed in the weeks before Sept. 11," Rumsfeld said, "No one I know believes that it would necessarily have prevented Sept. 11 ... 9/11 would likely still have happened. And ironically, much of the world would likely have called the Sept. 11 attack an al Qaeda retaliation for the U.S. provocation of capturing or killing bin Laden."

Earlier, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had testified similarly, stating that he has "no reason to believe that [Osama's death] would have caused [the terrorists] to abort their plans" because the terrorists had "already had their instructions, had their plans in place, and they were in the process of infiltrating themselves into the United States."

Albright told the commission that members of the Clinton administration did all that they could possibly do to prevent a terrorist incident like 9/11. "President Clinton and his team did everything we could, everything we could think of, based on the knowledge we had, to protect our people and disrupt and defeat al Quaeda," she said.

According to Powell, the Bush administration has put in the same effort. "President Bush and his entire national security team understood that terrorism had to be among our highest priorities and it was," he testified.

But perhaps the most interesting and enlightening statements in the hearings came from former national counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, whose work for both the Clinton and Bush administrations made his bipartisan credentials difficult to attack.

In his brief opening statement, Clarke apologized for the government's failure to predict the attack, stating that he "welcomes the hearings, because it is finally a forum where I can apologize to the loved ones of the victims of 9/11. To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television, your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask -- once all the facts are out -- for your understanding and for your forgiveness."

Clarke also said that the fight against terrorists was "an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration" but that "the Bush administration saw terrorism policy as important but not urgent, prior to 9/11."

Clarke says that he became frustrated with the Bush administration because it "didn't either believe that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem" and because of a system for coordinating and discussing intelligence analyzes established by Dr. Condoleezza Rice, which "slowed [the decision-making process] down enormously, by months."

Later in the hearing, Clarke responded to allegations from some of the commissioners that he is not a credible source. In response, Clarke provided an unusually forceful critique of Bush's war on terrorism. "The reason I am strident in my criticism of the President of the United States is because ... by invading Iraq, the President of the United States has greatly undermined the war on terrorism," he said

Former Secretary of Defense Cohen warned that the country has not faced up to the continuing terrorist threat. "I believe that we have been complacent as a society. I think that we have failed to fully comprehend the gathering storm. Even now, after Sept. 11, I think it's far from clear that our society truly understands the gravity of a threat that we face or is yet willing to do what I believe is going to be necessary to counter it," said Cohen.

Cohen's sentiments were echoed by Rice's stand-in, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. "[T]he inevitable evisceration of Osama bin Laden personally will be a very good thing, but in itself it's not going to bring any satisfaction or justice. True satisfaction and true justice, in my belief, will only come ... when we've put an end to terrorism," Armitage told the commission.

All quotes were gathered from the Washingtonpost.com transcripts on their website and are available for both Tuesday's and Wednesday's hearings.