NCTAUUS

In this final episode we hear actual audio from the chairman and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission as they present their findings to the American people. We also hear an exchange between the chairman and a member of Congress. Finally, we get perspective from a well-known military analyst and we pose the question, "Are we safer today than yesterday...than 20-years ago?"

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Soon after the attacks of nine eleven, the families of
those killed demanded answers, Politicians began pointing fingers, and the
American public was wondering if this could ever happen again.
Note for the record that se of what we knew
about found out about Asama bin Laden after nine eleven.
We knew in. N of the facts that we knew

(00:30):
about Asama bin Laden we knew in but the full
story wasn't delivered until after nine eleven. It was held
in classified, compartmentalized sections. This is nine eleven, two decades later.
I'm Steve Gregory in Los Angeles. Within a year of
the attacks, Congress drafted legislation to create the National Commission

(00:53):
on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, commonly referred to
as the nine eleven Commission. On November twenty seventh, two
thousand to, President George W. Bush signed the legislation, which
mandated a full and complete accounting of the attacks of
September eleven, two thousand one, and recommendations as to how
to prevent such attacks in the future. With a budget

(01:13):
of fifteen million dollars and eighty people on staff, the
Commission would research, compile, and report on eight points of interest,
including al Qaeda and the organization of the nine eleven attack,
Intelligence collection, analysis, and management. International counter terrorism policy including
states that harbor or harbored terrorists, terrorists financing border security

(01:34):
and foreign visitors, law enforcement and intelligence collection inside the
United States, Commercial aviation and transportation security, including the investigation
into the four hijackings, and the immediate response to the
attacks at the national, state, and local levels, including issues
of continuity of government. On July twenty, two, thousand four,
the nine eleven Commission issued its final report to Congress.

(01:56):
The following month, the chair and vice chair of the
Commission would sit before the Armed Services Committee to discuss
the report and take questions. One such exchange happened between
Democratic Congresswoman Nita Lowey and Committee Chair Thomas Kane. In
your report, you say, quote, it must take into consideration
the full array of possible enemy tactics, such as the

(02:17):
use of insires. Did the Commission intend for airport workers,
cabin cleaners, maintenance crews, caterers who are currently permitted to
bypass metal detectors? Should they be given antiquated badges or
should everyone have to go through medical excuse me? Metal detectives,

(02:40):
and I've been repeatedly told by T s A it's
too inconvenient and costly to screen all airport workers, despite
the fact that a hundred percent of workers have physically
screened at airports like Heathrow, almost a hundred percent at
Child de Gall This doesn't make sense to me. If
you could can continue to weigh in on that issue,

(03:02):
because I'm sure you agree that everyone should be going
through medical detectives metal detectives, and as a New Yorker,
it disturbs me that currently we are so worried about
security in the New York area, yet thousands of people
are going through every day with antiquated badges. And if

(03:23):
we're going to carry out your recommendations, I would like
to hear your recommendations as to an adjustment. And since
my time is running out, if you can comment on
airport security, in particular the fact that thousands of people
are currently going through the metal detectors, uh that thousands

(03:44):
of people are not going through the metal detectors with
their badges, thank you very much. Well, everybody should go
through metal detectives, I believe without we have to wait
for structural change, or do you think we can implement
that now, ow can it be implemented by executive order?
We can't seem to move the f A A or

(04:05):
T s A and business keeps talking about an inconvenience.
How can we get that done? Now? Well, you could
probably an answer that, knowing probably more about government than
I do, But I don't know what the how you
can do these kind of things by executive order, or
whether you can or whether you have to have something
through the United States Congress that I just don't have

(04:26):
the expertise to answer that. But it should be done,
There's no There's no question about it. I believe that
if we're going to create less terrorists change minds in
the Arab world, we've got to change. We can't just
be viewed as a military power. We've got to get
back to some of the things we used to do
in the Cold War to try to win that cold
Cold War and change minds. And that involved not only

(04:48):
education expenses, but cultural exchanges, ways in which with student exchanges,
ways in which show we allowed these people to get
to know us and that we had a better understanding
of them. I mean, we've got to get into those
with some people call soft areas we we we've got
to let these people know who we are, and we've

(05:10):
got to understand in a much better way who they are.
And I'm not talking about the small percentage you want
to kill us. I'm talking about the much lodge of
a centage now who don't really like us at all
because of what they know of us right now. But
if we were able to send a different message, might
like us a bit better. After the release of the report,
the ten commissioners held a press conference. Here's a portion

(05:31):
of that conference with opening statements by Chairman Thomas Kine.
Today we present this report and these recommendations to the
President of the United States, to the United States Congress,
and the American people. This report represents the unanimous conclusion
of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States.

(05:57):
On September eleven, two thousand and one, nineteen men armed
with knives, box cutters, mace, and pepper spray penetrated the
defenses of the most powerful nation in the world. They
inflicted unbearable trump on our people. At the same time,

(06:20):
they turned the international order upside down. Now, we recognize
as commissioners that we have the benefit of hindsight and
since the plotters were flexible and resourceful, we cannot know
whether any single step or series of steps would have
defeated them. What we can say with a good deal

(06:40):
of confidence is that none of the measures adopted by
the United States government before eleven disturbed or even delayed
the progress of the al Qaeda plot. There were several
unexploited opportunities. Our government did not watch list future hijackers

(07:02):
Osmi and Minhof before they arrived in the United States
or take adequate steps to find them once they were here.
Our government did not link the arrest of zachairas Massawi
described as interested in flight training for the purpose of
using airplane as a terrorist act to the heightened indications

(07:23):
of attack. Our government did not discover false statements and
visa applications, or recognized passports that were manipulated in a
fraudulent manner. Our government did not expand no Fly List
to include names from terrorist watchless or require airline passages

(07:44):
to be more thoroughly screened. These examples make up part
of a broader national security picture where the government failed
to protect the American people. The United States government was
simply not active enough in batting the terrorist threat before eleven,

(08:04):
diplomacy and foreign policy failed to extract Unladen from his
Afghan sanctuary. Our military forces and covert action capabilities did
not have the options on the table to defeat al
Qaeda or kill or capture either Ben Laden or his
top lieutenants. Our intelligence and law enforcement agencies did not

(08:28):
manage or share information or effectively follow leaves to keep
pace with a very nimble enemy. Our border, immigration, and
aviation security agencies were not integrated into the counter terrorism effort,
and much of a response on a day of nine

(08:49):
eleven was improvised and ineffective, even as extraordinary individual acts
of heroism saved countless lives. Our failures took place over
many years and administrations. There's no single individual who is
responsible for our failures. Yet individuals and institutions cannot be

(09:13):
absolved of responsibility. Any person in a senior position within
our government during this time bears some element of responsibility
for our government's actions. Having said that, it is not
our purse to assign blame. As we said at the outset,
we look back so that we can look forward. Our

(09:37):
goal is to prevent future attacks. Every expert with whom
we spoke toldness, an attack of even greater magnitude is
now possible and even probable. We do not have the
luxury of time. We must prepare and we must act.

(10:00):
The al Qaida network and its affiliates are sophisticated, patient, disciplined,
and lethal. Osama bin Laden built an infrastructure and organization
that was able to attract, train, and use recruits against
even more ambitious targets. He rallied New Zealots with each
demonstration of Alakaida's capability. His message and his hate filled

(10:23):
ideology have instructed and inspired untol recruits and imitators. He
in al Qaeda despise America and its policies. They exploit
political grievances and hopelessnesses within the Arab and Islamic world.
They indoctrinate to disaffect it and pervert one of the

(10:45):
great world's great religions, and they seek creative methods to
kill Americans in limitless numbers, including if they can do
it with the use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.
Put simply, the United States is faced with one of

(11:05):
the greatest security challenges in our long history. Because al
Qaeda represents an ideology, not a finite group of people.
We should not expect the danger to receive greatly as
years to come. No matter whom we kill a capture,
including Osama bin Laden himself, there will be still those

(11:26):
who plot against us. And Laden has inspired affiliates and imitates.
The societies they prey on are vulnerable. The terrorist ideology
is potent, and the means for a conflicting harm are
readily available. We cannot let our God down. Congressman Hamilton's

(11:49):
I begin with the recommendations. This commission, of course does
not have all of the answers, but we have thought
about to do a global strategy and how to do
it a different way of organizing our government. But based
on our third review of the government's performance and our

(12:13):
examination of the enemy, we recommend the following elements for
a counter terrorism strategy. The strategy must be balanced. It
must integrate all the elements of national power, diplomacy, intelligence,
covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid, homeland defense,

(12:35):
and military strength. There is no silver bullet or decisive
blow that can defeat Islamic terrorism. It will take unity
of effort and sustained an effective use of every tool
at our disposal. We need to play offense to kill

(12:57):
or to capture the terrorists, deny them sanctuaries, and disrupt
their ability to move money and people around the globe.
We need to ensure that the key countries like Afghanistan
and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are stable, capable, and resolute

(13:19):
in opposing terrorism. We need to sustain a coalition of
nations that cooperates bilaterally and multilaterally with US in the
counter terrorism mission. We need a better dialogue between the
West and the Islamic world. We also highlight the need

(13:41):
to restrict and roll back the proliferation of the world's
most dangerous weapons. We need to put forth an agenda
of opportunity, economic, educational, political, so that young people in
the Arab and Islamic world have peaceful and productive avenues
for expression and hope. We need to join the battle

(14:07):
of ideas within the Islamic world, communicating hope instead of despair,
progress in place of persecution, life instead of death. This
message should be matched by policies that encourage and support
the majority of Muslims who share these goals. At home,

(14:33):
we need to set clear priorities for the protection of
our infrastructure and the security of our transportation resources. Should
be allocated based upon those priorities, and standards of preparedness
should be set. The private sector and local governments should

(14:53):
play an important part in this process. We need secure
borders with heightened and uniform standards of identification for those
entering and exiting the country, and an immigration system able
to be efficient allowing good people in while keeping the

(15:14):
terrorists out. If God forbid there is another attack, we
must be ready to respond. We must educate the public,
train and equip our first responders, and anticipate countless scenarios.

(15:36):
We recommend significant changes in the organization of government. We
know that the quality of the people is more important
than the quality of the wiring diagrams. Good people can
overcome bad structures. They should not have to day and night.

(16:02):
Dedicated public servants are waging the struggle to combat terrorists
and protect the homeland. We need to ensure that our
government maximizes their efforts through information sharing, coordinated effort, and
clear authority. A critical theme that emerged throughout our inquiry

(16:26):
was the difficulty of answering the question who is in charge?
Who ensures that agencies pool resources, avoid duplication, and plan jointly.
Who oversees the massive integration and unity of effort necessary
to keep America safe. Too often the answer is no one.

(16:52):
Thus we are recommending a National counter Terrorism Center. We
need effective unity of effort on counter terrorism. We should
create a National counter Terrorism Center to unify all counter
terrorism intelligence and operations across the foreign and the domestic

(17:14):
divide in one organization. Right now, these efforts are too
diffuse across the government. They need to be unified. We
recommend a National Intelligence Director. We need unity of effort
in the intelligence community. We need a much stronger head

(17:35):
of the intelligence community and an intelligence community that organizes
itself to do joint work in national mission centers. We
need reforms of the kind the military had two decades ago.
We need a Goldwater Nichols reform for the intelligence community.

(17:56):
The intelligence community needs a shift in mindset and organization
so that intelligence agencies operate under the principle of joint
command with information sharing as the norm. We need to
reform in the United States Congress. We need unity of

(18:17):
effort in the Congress. Right now, authority and responsibility are
too diffuse. The Intelligence Committees do not have enough power
to perform effectively their oversight work oversight for homeland security

(18:38):
is splintered among too many committees. We need much stronger
committees performing oversight of intelligence, and we need a single
committee in each chamber providing oversight of the Department of
Homeland Security. We need reform in the FBI. We need

(18:59):
us stronger national security workforce within the FBI. We do
not support the creation of a new domestic intelligence agency.
What the f FBI needs is a specialized and integrated
national security workforce consisting of agents, analysts, linguists, and surveillance specialists.

(19:26):
These specialists need to be recruited, trained, rewarded, and retained
to ensure the development of an institutional culture with deep
expertise and intelligence and national security. We need changes in
information sharing. We need unity of effort in that task.

(19:52):
United States government has access to vast amounts of information,
but it has a weak process, a weak system of
processing and using that information. Need to share must replace
need to know, and we need a better process for

(20:16):
transitions between one administration and another for national security officials
so that this nation does not lower its guard every
four or eight years. These and other recommendations are spelled
out in great detail in our report. We've made a

(20:39):
limited number of recommendations, focusing on the areas we believe
most critical. We are acutely sensitive to the need to
vigorously protect our liberties as we secure and guard our security.
We endorse many of the actions taken in the week

(21:00):
in the wake of nine eleven to facilitate government action
and information shared, but we stress that these measures need
to be accompanied by commitment to our open society and
the principle of review safeguards that are built into the
process and accompanied by vigorous oversight. We must, after all

(21:26):
is said and done, preserve the liberties that we are
fighting for. It wasn't long after the release of the
report that controversy would seep into the narrative. Critics claimed
the report was rife with inaccuracies, lacked factual basis, and
claims of conflicts of interest. Some of those claims were
actually leveled by members of the commission. Other members of

(21:47):
the Commission claimed the recommendations were being ignored, and even
went on a nationwide tour to convince people and agencies
to adopt the recommendations. Chairman Kane and Vice Chairman Hamilton's
would go on to write a book about their experiences
and the frustrations over lack of cooperation from intelligence agencies
and misstatements by the f a A and the Pentagon.
Both men said the commission was set up to fail.

(22:17):
Captain Dale die as a retired Marine, a military consultant
and author, and one of the most sought after technical
advisors from motion pictures and television. He's also very well
informed and connected. I asked him if there was even
a need for the Department of Homeland Security. I don't
think so. Um. Look, we're one of one of the
other things about Americans, as well as being blamers, Um,

(22:40):
we're we're bureaucracy builders. I mean, part part of our
I don't know, national character, I guess, is to say, well,
you know what we need here the greatest minds in
the world. So let's go find them and we'll build
some sort of bureaucracy and they'll study the question and

(23:01):
they'll tell us what to do. Um. The problem with that,
as is a problem with all bureaucracies, is it's become
self perpetuating. And what happens is they grasp for power. Okay,
we're the we're the Department of Homeland Security. We will
rule your lives. This is the way this is going
to go. And that's that's entirely anti American. UM. I

(23:24):
didn't see the need for it. I still don't see
the need for it, frankly. But it is one of
those self perpetuating bureaucracies, and here we go, so we
need I think at this point we don't. We might
have needed an increased level of training and security and
that sort of thing for the for the normal security

(23:45):
people and at airlines and major travel hubs and that
sort of thing. I think I think we should have
taken a lesson from the Israelites. Frankly, they're very good
at this, UM. And and if it were me, rather
than say, okay, let's build a bureaucracy full of eggheads
and experts who can study this problem, I would have said,

(24:06):
wait a minute, what are you guys doing over there
in Israel? You seem to do really well with this
sort of thing. And I would have either copied or
mimicked that and let it go. But that's not that's
not in our American nature. UM. We liked to build
stuff and then okay, problem solved, And of course it

(24:27):
never is. It just creates other problems. UM. So UM
Homeland Security t s AN I don't think so. We
could have done it better. In the last few years,
there's been a lot of controversy surrounding our intelligence services,
lack of trust, failures in communication, failures to work together.
How is our intelligence infrastructure? Do you think? Look, we

(24:50):
we needed a central collating an analysis point. We created one.
But in the process of doing that, I think we
ignored the old bureaucratic in fighting. Well, I know something
you don't know, and that gives me a certain edge,

(25:10):
that gives me a certain power. And that's rife, rife
throughout the American intelligence community, whether it's civilian intelligence or
military intelligen there's something like thirteen fourteen or fifteen separate agencies.
I think we finally understood that that the material, the
product that is produced out of those intelligence agencies needs

(25:35):
to come under one umbrella. But look, intelligence gathering is
a dirty business. Even with all of the electronic gizmos
and satellites and surveillance techniques that we have, it's still
a dirty business. It's still about secrets. It's still about

(25:58):
I know something you don't know, and and because I
know that, and now I have access to power and
so on, and and that is the sort of thing
that that defeats a lot of our our intelligence efforts.
And you know, it's so simple. In many cases, it's
a matter of picking up a phone and saying, hey,

(26:19):
I got some stuff, what do you got? But we
don't want to do that because that's giving away. Um.
We're so clandestinely oriented about this sort of thing that
in many cases we defeat ourselves. The information that we've
gathered through extraordinary effort never gets shared because we're afraid

(26:41):
of it being compromised. Well, look, a little compromise is
better than no information at all. Are we safer today
than we were twenty years ago? You know, I was
afraid you were going to ask me that, Steve. And
I don't know the answer, my friend, I really don't. Um,
I think so, UM, I hope so. I hope we've

(27:03):
learned some things through this agony that we've been over
in uh in, in this century. I really do. UM.
I think it's important for us to understand that America
is vulnerable and can be vulnerable. And the more we
screw up internationally, the more we allow China to do

(27:25):
what China is trying to do become the world power
that the United States once was. The more we do that, UM,
I'm afraid our safety, which has improved certainly since nine eleven,
the safety of the individual on the street, living in
l A or living in kia Kuk or wherever it is.

(27:47):
I think I think they are indeed safer right now.
But if we continue to chase these sort of overseas involvements, Uh,
we're gonna sack pfies a great deal of that safety.
We're inviting higher, we're inviting spite. And the more we

(28:07):
do that, the more the people who are threatening our
safety are going to attempt to get to us. Look,
it's a great coup to be able to kick the
great Satan in the butt. America is a powerful country,
and anybody who can take a shot and that shot lands,

(28:29):
that's a great deal of prestige for those people. Um,
and we are vulnerable. But I think in direct answer,
we're a bit safer for mr and mrs on the
street than we were before nine eleven. Once again, Thomas Caine,
the chairman of the nine eleven Commission, his final words
on the day the Commission's report was released. We have

(28:50):
struck blows against the terrorists nine eleven. We have we believe,
prevented attacks on the homeland. We do believe we are
safer today than we were in nine eleven, but we
are not safe. Thank you all. We do believe that
in this volume, our recommendations will make the American table safe.

(29:15):
So maybe the answer isn't with government officials, experts and politicians.
Maybe the answer hits a little closer to home. Do
you feel safer today than yesterday, than twenty years ago?
I'm Steve Gregory in Los Angeles, nine eleven, Two decades

(29:38):
Later is produced by Steve Gregory and Jacob Gonzalez and
is a production of the k FI News department for
I Heart Media Los Angeles and the iHeart podcast Network.
The views expressed are strictly those of the guests and
not necessarily the hosts or employees of I Heart Media.