After 9/11: Where Do We Stand?

Thursday, April 20, 2006

An Interview With Tim Roemer, CNP Online

Question: What did the 9/11 Commission set out to accomplish and what were the key findings?

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States is the formal name. It was created to document the U.S. government’s mistakes and failures leading up to the attacks of September 11th, 2001, and to make this country’s government more responsive to the new terrorist threat – to deal specifically with radical 'Jihadist' terrorism as we now recognize it. As we looked back, we found the key failures came in four general areas:

1. What our report called 'a failure of imagination'. Most fundamentally, we pointed to the government's inability as a whole to really analyze and understand the threat that we were facing at the time – to collectively imagine the worst, if you will. The government failed to move effectively from working on the Cold War threat to imagining and comprehending the growing danger of al-Qaeda. We focused in particular on this "failure of imagination" at the CIA and in the Bush and Clinton administrations. Even novelist Tom Clancy wrote about terrorists hijacking a plane and crashing it into the U.S. Capitol in 1995. Yet, while there were many concrete clues indicating the possibility of “planes as weapons” before September 11, 2001, CIA analysts failed to take them seriously – this was "beyond imagination."

2. A failure of management. In the summer of 2001, when George Tenet at the CIA was warning that something big was about to happen, he said: 'we should not spare any resources in this fight against terrorism.' But nothing changed. We found that in some of the agencies under his direction they did not even remember the memo. In the event, managers did not move money to the appropriate accounts, and in doing so failed to respond seriously to Director Tenet’s warnings.

3. A failure of capabilities. There was a failure of capabilities across the board and throughout government. The FBI’s antiquated computer system made it difficult for agents to communicate with one another. The Department of Defense could not offer policymakers any viable options beyond an all-out invasion of Afghanistan. And the CIA could not penetrate these new jihadist-type terror cells. So, there was an across-the-board failure in our fundamental governmental capacity to provide new options, technologies, and integrated computer systems to meet the new enemy.

4. A failure of policy. We dug extensively into details that showed numerous failures to develop the right policies, in both the Bush and Clinton administrations – especially, not putting a high enough priority on combatting terror. For example, there was no action by either administration to respond forcefully and visibly to the terrorist attack on the USS Cole. Richard Clarke, a national security advisor to four U.S. presidents, said that the Bush administration did not make al-Qaeda a priority until eight months into its first term.

To address these central problems, the Commission recommended an extensive reorganization of government, and the development of a new global strategy to respond to the failures that led to 9/11 and also to confront the realities of the new situation of Islamic radicalism that we face today.

Question: How have Congress and the Administration done in following the Commission's recommendations? Which provisions were adopted with the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act of 2004?

With significant bipartisan support in Congress and extraordinary efforts by the 9/11 families, the president signed into law on December 17th, 2004, a significant set of government reforms and new strategies to fight this new global war on radical Islamist terror. Yet, while these reforms and new strategies are important, the job is not completed. Perhaps eight of the Commission's recommendations have been addressed fully. There are another 26 recommendations that have been partially carried out and five or six that were totally ignored and not implemented. While the bill signed by the president late last year is an important step, there are still significant areas that we need to improve and address.

Even so, those that were signed into law constitute by far the most comprehensive reform of the national security infrastructure of this country since the National Security Act of 1947. Two of the most significant changes that will organize the government to move resources and personnel more fluidly are the creation of a Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and a new National Counterterrorism Center. These initiatives, both of which were fundamental recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, are designed to ensure that one person, a quarterback, is accountable for implementing the government's comprehensive national security intelligence program, and to integrate an organization that can coordinate overseas and domestic counterterrorism efforts.

A number of other important reforms were passed – to meet technology needs, to create a civil liberties protection board, to expedite the use of biometrics, to improve our border protection, and to rebuild our human intelligence capabilities.

It is also important that the White House and Congress implement and administer these new laws effectively, making sure these laws work as intended. The right people need to be appointed to key positions. The right legislative improvements and modifications need to be made as we detect imperfections in the law. And appropriate oversight should be exercised to make sure that the agencies do what they are statutorily obligated to do. That is one of the most important parts of this process of reform and improvement.

Question: What recommendations have the president and Congress failed to address as of yet?

There are four essential areas that the White House and Congress still need to act on.

1. Nuclear Material. We made three specific recommendations in the 9/11 bill to strengthen the Proliferation Security Initiative. We recommended the creation of a legal framework for going after weapons of mass destruction and proliferators. Programs need to be funded and bureaucratic obstacles need to be removed. The importance of these types of programs has to be emphasized with members of Congress and their staffs. This is a critically important area of concern, since bin Laden has stated he wants to create a "Hiroshima-type" of event on U.S. soil.

2. Congressional Reform. The Congressional oversight process is broken, outdated, and splintered. The Director of Homeland Security may have to appear before some 90 or so full committees or sub-committees. It is a ridiculous waste of time and taxpayer money. This must be addressed. We also need to make sure that both the House and Senate have concentrated oversight over the intelligence community with a streamlined appropriations and authorizing process. We recommended the combination of an Appropriations/Authorization Intelligence Committee or a Joint Intelligence Committee. Congress has failed to act on almost all of the Commission’s reforms for its own institutional organization.

3. Threat-based Homeland Security Formula. We need to make sure that the formula we use to allocate homeland security funds to first responders and potential terrorism targets are based on threat and vulnerability assessments, and not on pork-barrel politics. Cities like Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco are likely terrorist targets, yet money is sent to states such as Vermont and Wyoming on a per capita basis rather than on a risk and intelligence-based formula. That needs to be changed so that we are better preparing our emergency services, better securing our ports, and better protecting our chemical and nuclear power plants from the prospects of a terrorist attack. We should also insist that the Department of Homeland Security develop a plan to measure (through metrics) what standards have been adopted to protect our nuclear power plants and how many have achieved those objectives.

4. Foreign Policy. The Commission made a comprehensive set of recommendations with respect to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. These relationships must be improved and changed over time. Educational alternatives to the madrassas are part of a longer term solution.

Question: Do you have any other concerns about 9/11 recommendations that have or have not been addressed by Congress?

The 9/11 Commission was able to successfully pass a great deal of reform and change in government at large. We were not successful in changing Congress. Even as Congress has worked in a bipartisan manner to legislate necessary change in the CIA, some parts of the FBI, parts of the White House and Defense Department, it has failed to reform itself. Business as usual just won't do. One of our strongest warnings to Congress was that should you create a strong Director of National Intelligence with budgetary and fire and hire authority, it is absolutely imperative to have strong oversight of this powerful director embedded in Congress. Congress has not produced this oversight capacity. The DNI is an incredibly powerful post, someone overseeing clandestine and covert operations around the world. Without strong Congressional oversight, those powers can be manipulated and potentially abused. Congress must act to reorganize its own respective chambers in the House and Senate, if we are going to prevent a possible crisis sometime down the road.

Question: What should be the new Director of National Intelligence’s short and long-term goals?

The new DNI will have one of the most demanding, important and difficult jobs ever, certainly in recent memory. As for the short-term, he will need to determine such practical priorities, as where his office will be located. Will it be at the CIA in Langley, VA, in Washington, or associated somehow to the new National Counter Terrorist Center? The Commission recommended and Congress approved a staff of up to about 800 people. Hiring some of the best people in the government will be and should be a very high priority for him. Weighing in with Congress and the Office of Management Budget on budgetary issues for 2006 and 2007 will be vital for personnel and resources for the DNI. Finally and most importantly, getting the full confidence and the full authority of the president of the United States will be absolutely critical to his success or failure. The new director will be briefing the President on current intelligence every single day; he will be working out his style with the president in a personal way; he will be engaging Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on reorganization issues; he will be establishing a working relationship with CIA director Porter Goss; and he will be maintaining his independence as a producer of intelligence.

In the longer term, the Director of National Intelligence needs to be focused on the management challenge of organizing 15 disparate agencies, including such vital centers as the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He must be able to coordinate these agencies and attain a unity of effort. Other long-term goals will include working on the politics of his job: winning necessary and inevitable budgetary fights with Congress, the Department of Defense and other agencies. He also will need to establish personal relationships with the heads of intelligence agencies in other countries, so we get cooperation in law enforcement and intelligence where we need it. Finally, one of the most important things is changing the culture at both the CIA and the FBI. These organizations have resisted change over the last several decades and have some very difficult institutional and management issues to overcome. The FBI vitally needs a computer network that will integrate their systems and allow them to communicate across their entire bureau. The CIA needs to rebuild and reform the human intelligence capability to penetrate terrorist groups around the world.

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