NOW WOULD PRESIDENT BUSH please appoint an independent blue-ribbon commission to investigate the government's failure to anticipate or adequately prepare for the terrorist attacks on September 11? When we offered this suggestion two weeks ago, the Bush administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, was in high dudgeon. Any notion that the administration could have acted in any way that might have prevented or mitigated the attacks, Cheney suggested, was ludicrous and "irresponsible . . . in a time of war."
But now the Bush administration has openly acknowledged that, indeed yes, the September 11 attacks might conceivably have been prevented had the administration responded more effectively to information it had in its possession. This past week FBI director Robert S. Mueller III said: "I cannot say for sure that there wasn't a possibility we could have come across some lead that would have led us to the hijackers. . . ." Although there was no specific warning, Mueller admitted, "that doesn't mean that there weren't red flags out there, that there weren't dots that should have been connected to the extent possible."
Put it this way: Had the FBI examined Zacarias Moussaoui's laptop computer, as the FBI office in Minneapolis requested, it would have found the telephone number of the roommate of the September 11 attack's ringleader, Mohamed Atta. Had the FBI put this information together with a warning from an agent in Phoenix, Arizona, that members of al Qaeda were enrolled in American flight-training schools, it might have begun to piece
a difficult puzzle together, inasmuch as Atta himself had enrolled in an American flight-training school. Would this knowledge have necessarily prevented the attack from being carried out? No, not necessarily, but possibly--as Mueller now admits.
What other lapses might there have been before September 11? The simple answer is: No one knows. Robert Mueller doesn't know. Dick Cheney doesn't know. President Bush doesn't know. And, last but not least, the American people don't know.
We might not know about the FBI's lapses had it not been for a few leaks and Coleen Rowley's open letter to Mueller. A few weeks ago, after all, Mueller's position, like Cheney's, was that nothing the administration could have done before September 11 would have made a difference. At a September 14 press conference, Mueller insisted, "The fact that there were a number of individuals that happened to have received training at flight schools here is news, quite obviously. If we had understood that to be the case, we would have--perhaps one could have averted this." On September 17, asked if there were any "warning signs" at all, Mueller said no. Now we know those statements were inaccurate, mostly because Rowley did something unusual--she called her superiors to account.
Do we have to wait for more whistle-blowers to get more parts of the story? A whistle-blower to tell us what might have gone wrong at the CIA? A whistle-blower to tell us what may or may not have happened at the White House? It's not in the nation's interest, and it's not in President Bush's interest, for the truth to come out this way.
Val:Y
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