The Hindu Business Line : Failure to prevent 9/11: Condoleezza Rice's unconvincing script

The three-hour long evidence tendered by the US National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleezza Rice, would have provided no reassurance to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the US about the diligence and vigilance exercised by departments and agencies in the period prior to 9/11. They would have in fact been disturbed to be told that many loose ends still remained to be tied up. On the whole, the more things change, the more they are the same.

ON APRIL 8, millions round the world must have watched the US National Security Adviser, Dr Condoleezza Rice, making her appearance before the 10-member National Commission set up by the US Government to go into the factors leading to the barbaric terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001.

Public interest in her testimony was at a fever pitch because she is widely believed to be a confidant of the US President, Mr George W. Bush, as an important member of his campaign team in the run up to his election and in her present capacity.

No other functionary in the Bush Administration is said to enjoy as much access to him as she does. People everywhere were, therefore, keyed up to hear her explanation of the penetration of rabid Islamic fundamentalists into very heart of what was believed to be the world's most secure nation.

Clues to unprecedented threat in the making

The peep her listeners had into the working of the American federal government right up to the highest reaches must have given them a jolt they would have hardly bargained for.

From her opening statement as well as her replies to questions, it turns out that those very agencies and departments such as the Departments of State, Defence, Treasury, Transportation and Justice, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) responsible for the country's defences against internal and external enemies let pass bits and blobs of intelligence which, if watchfully pieced together, could have alerted everyone at every level to an unprecedented threat in the making.

For instance, the policy-makers as well as heads of agencies had in their possession from the days of Clinton presidency information that Al Qaeda cells were operating within the US, and that suspicious groups, apparently keen to acquire a novel kind of expertise that should have excited curiosity because it was obviously of no use to them in their daily avocations, had been undergoing training in avionics at different flight training centres.

In early 2001, a vigilant Customs officer at an airport had caught hold of a terrorist suspect flying from Canada carrying in his baggage materials for fabricating a bomb and duly intimated the security agencies. That Osama bin Laden, ensconced in Afghanistan, had given a call for what was termed in an intelligence report "a big, big, big, BIG" attack on the US within its own territory was also known.

So was the fact of the ardent support of Pakistan to, and its collusion with, the Islamic fanatics of Al Qaeda and Taliban swarming all over Afghanistan bent on causing widespread destruction of anything connected with American interests.

Greatest weakness

Mr Richard Clarke, chief of the Counter-Terrorism Centre, functioning under the National Security Adviser, had been sending memo after memo for over two years (the most definitive one to Dr Rice just a month before Mr Bush took charge and made her the National Security Adviser) demanding the applying of squeeze on Pakistan, and if necessary, mounting a pre-emptive military offensive against Afghanistan to clean up the terrorist swamps.

And yet, in spite of these warnings, nothing effective was done to develop the range, reach and depth of intelligence pertaining to these clues and to undertake timely and purposeful probes of the designs of the conspirators.

The FBI had not even asked the personnel in its 56 field offices to intensify surveillance on individuals and outfits indulging in preparations and activities of an unusual nature and likely to pose a threat to security. The greatest weakness of the both the FBI and the CIA was their lack of the needed capability in gathering human intelligence as distinguished from technical intelligence. No wonder such of those members of the National Commission as have had hands on experience of public institutions, notably Messrs Bob Kerrey, Richard Ben-Vineste and Timothy J. Roemer, were aghast at the failure of the American security stalwarts to see a pattern in all the sinister goings-on brought to the Administration's notice and were testy and sharp in some of their comments directed at Dr Rice.

It was hard for them to believe that not one of 33 meetings of the National Security Council specifically discussed terrorism prior to 9/11 and not once did the principals at the highest levels sit together to brainstorm the issues, analyse the information floating around on the ominous character of Al Qaeda and draw up a plan to eliminate its threat.

They found her long and rambling answers particularly irksome, and at one point, Mr Kerrey even lost his temper and asked her to stop "filibustering" and stick to the focus of the questions.

Four-pronged defence

Dr Rice's defence was essentially four-pronged. First, despite all the ferocious attacks on the US facilities all over the world at short intervals for more than 20 years showing that terrorists considered themselves to be at war with the US, "structural problems" and "legal and cultural impediments" had come in the way of proper coordination among domestic and foreign intelligence agencies with the result there was little pooling of data, sharing of information and joint assessment of their significance.

She repeatedly, and pathetically, harped on the point that within the limited period of "only 233 days" that the Bush Administration had before 9/11, it was not possible to bring about an integrated approach among different departments and agencies.

Second, she again repeatedly made the untenable excuse that the threat perceptions conveyed by the agencies were "vague" and there was no paper before her or the President listing the specific threats with reference to where, when, who or how. This kind of statement ill-becomes a person at such a highly sensitive position so close to the President himself as his adviser.

If intelligence comes neatly laid out with every `t' crossed and every `i' dotted, indicating the time, place, modality and the mastermind in specific details, well, there is no need for a National Security Council (NSC), or an Adviser like Dr Condoleezza Rice.

The role of the big shots in establishments such as the NSC, the CIA or the FBI precisely is to bring their collective percipience, prescience and insight buttressed by experience to bear on vague and nebulous indicators and crystallise them into a coherent and tangible blueprint for action.

Third, while Al Qaeda was recognised from early on as a threat, the President, Dr Rice said, did not want to be "swatting at flies" here and there. Instead, he was from the beginning for a strategic masterplan incorporating policies tailored to suit different countries and regions taking account of their capabilities, strengths and weaknesses in combating terrorism on a global scale.

The Administration was in the process of putting together such a strategy and forging alliances in tune with the global and regional context when it was overtaken by 9/11.

The fourth line of Dr Rice's defence was that it was necessary to bring the US Congress into the big picture and hammer out a bipartisan consensus for combating terrorism and this too could not be accomplished within the 233 days the Administration had.

Systemic malaise

Of these four arguments, the one on systemic malaise afflicting the various agencies concerned with security is the real key to the understanding of the lackadaisical nature of their performance prior to 9/11.

The most surprising part is that anyone following the evolution of security doctrines in the US and elsewhere since the end of the Second World War knows that the disjointed, uncooperative and, indeed, mutually hostile, ways of their functioning have been the concern of a number of studies within both the Government and the Congress.

The plain fact is that Administrations of all parties having control of the White House have been turning a blind eye to the number of recommendations made from time to time to maximise the synergy among them.

The result was that inter-agency coordination and cooperation had been allowed to become a casualty and evolving a holistic and collective approach to national security became secondary to waging turf wars.

It must have been deeply disturbing for the members of the National Commission to be told by Dr Rice that even now things had not improved to the desired extent and many loose ends still remained to be tied up.

All in all, Dr Rice's deposition is one more corroboration of the old adage that the more things change, the more they remain the same.