The vile suicide attacks last September 11 which brought down
the twin towers of the World Trade Center along with another
47 story building, stunned the United States and changed the
way it and much of the world thinks about the future course
of events. Yet it has now come to light that American
security services had pointed to the possibility many times
previously. Nothing was done; the scenarios were not even
thought about to prepare a reaction.
According to a report from the Library of Congress dated
September 1999, to the National Intelligence Council of
President Bill Clinton, a "suicide bomber belonging to Al
Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft
packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the
headquarters of the CIA or the White House."
An FBI agent in Phoenix, Kenneth Williams, in a memo dated
July 5 of last year -- barely two months before September 11
-- noted that several Islamic radicals in his area were
enrolled in flight schools and seemed unusually interested in
security arrangements at airports. Though none of the
radicals surveyed in the memo had anything to do with the
terrible hijackings, Williams urged the FBI to do a
nationwide review of all flight schools to see if Al Qaeda
was up to something.
CIA chief George Tenet, in response to a request by President
Bush about what Al Qaeda might do within the United States,
sent a report on August 6 of last year to the US President
outlining a number of possibilities, including hijacking
airliners.
All this now looks quite different than it appeared to those
who read the information at the time. Clinton and his
advisors deemed the scenarios "not actionable." The FBI, it
is known, thought that undertaking a national investigation
was too big a project. They had plenty of work already and
did not consider the speculation an immediate enough threat
to take any action right away.
Most of this information has been kept from public knowledge
in the eight months since the attacks. It is profoundly
embarrassing to the top officers of the organizations
involved, including the US President.
In retrospect it is easy to see how the hints and bits of
information could have led one to take steps that would have
headed off the tragedy. However, the failure was not a simple
one of connecting a few dots, but rather a massive blindness
that results from a preconception about the world that is
resistant to change until it is shocked by something like the
massive attacks.
It happened in Israel before the Yom Kippur War, when the
political and intelligence leadership was so convinced that
it was impossible for the Arab countries to make war with
Israel that they ignored obvious preparations. It apparently
happened in the US as well, where the authorities just seemed
to have felt that such a massive, suicidal attack is the
stuff of movies or perhaps it is believable in some far-off
corner of the world, but is far from what could happen in
real life -- and especially in the United States of
America!
We know that the proper way to look at such events is from
the perspective that there is a Divine hand that directs the
course of history. It was evident in the stunning destruction
and now it is emphasized by the apparent warnings that went
unheeded. The mightiest country that has ever existed in the
world was painfully hurt by a group of terrorists armed with
box cutters.
We must work as hard as we can to avoid such events, but no
amount of human will, determination or even money will be
successful without Help from Above.
