The Failure to Prevent 9-11

Failue to Prevent 9/11

When a giant explosion ripped through Alfred P. Murrah federal building April 19,1995, killing 168 and wounding hundreds, the United States of America jumped to a conclusion we would all learn to regret. The initial response to the devastation was all focused of middle-eastern terrorists. "The West is under attack,"(Posner 89), reported the USA Today. Every news and television station had the latest expert on the middle east telling the nation that we were victims of jihad, holy war. It only took a few quick days to realize that we were wrong and the problem, the terrorist, was strictly domestic. But it was too late. The damage had been done. Because America jumped to conclusions then, America was later blind to see the impending attack of 9/11. The responsibility, however, is not to be placed on the America people. The public couldn't stand to hear any talk of terrorism, so in turn the White House irresponsibly took a similar attitude. They concentrated on high public opinion and issues that were relevant to Americans everyday. The government didn't want to deal with another public blunder like the one in Oklahoma City. A former FBI analyst recalls, "when I went to headquarters (Washington, D.C.) later that year no one was interested in hearing anything about Arab money connections unless it had something to do with funding domestic groups. We stumbled so badly on pinpointing the Middle East right off the bat on the Murrah bombing. No one wanted to get caught like that again,"(Posner 90). The result saw changes in the counter terrorism efforts; under funding, under manning, poor cooperation between agencies, half-hearted and incompetent agency official appointees and the list goes on. All of these decisions, made at the hands of the faint-hearted, opened the doors wide open, and practically begged for a terrorist attack. So who's fault is it? The public's for being

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unaware, uninterested, and inadvertently the driving force behind American Democracy? No, of course not, that would be a completely ridiculous idea. In the events of September 11, 2001, the United States Government, by ignoring signs of a terrorist attack and continuous blunders in American intelligence, failed to accomplish one of their basic responsibilities as a governing body: keeping us safe.

September 4, 2001, just a week before the attack on the World Trade Centers. A teletype regarding known facts about a suspected Islamic extremist, Zacarias Moussaoui, was sent to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Customs Service, the State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Services, and the Secret Service. The teletype sent by the FBI summarized suspicious activities Moussaoui had been conducting since his arrival in America. It did not report the FBI's case agent's personal assessment that Moussaoui was planning to hijack an airplane. And although the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been conducting surveillance on Moussaoui for some of time now and had notified the intelligence community of the probable threat, no severe or immediate action was ever taken by anyone. Moussaoui had entered the United States in February of 2001, as a French National. He began learning how to fly an airplane at Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma where he stood out to instructors because, "Moussaoui wanted to learn to fly a 747, paid for his training in cash, was interested to learn the doors do not open in flight and wanted to fly a simulator from London to New York,"(National Commission 275). After receiving very basic knowledge of controlling an aircraft Moussaoui stopped attending classes and moved to Eagan, Minnesota. There he enrolled in Pam Am's International Flight Academy and opened a bank account with $32,000 and no plausible explanation as to where the money had come from. In addition, Moussaoui planned to receive martial arts training and purchase a Global Positioning System. Yet despite all of this information, his cited beliefs in Islamic Extremism and connections to extremist groups, the United States Government let Moussaoui slip through the cracks. The

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INS arrested him on an immigration violation, overstaying his visa, and he was set to be deported. No anti-terrorist action was ever taken against him by any agency, no search was ever warranted, no more intelligence ever gathered, no follow-up investigation ever initiated, he was simply sent home. Had the FBI, the CIA, or any government agency realized the need, or took the initiative to search Moussaoui's laptop or personal belongings they might have discovered the elaborate attack

plans and been able to take actions to stop it before it began(Hirsh 27). September 11, didn't have to happen. Zacarias Moussaoui is just another example of an opportunity that was let slip through the hands of investigators and agencies who were already on full alert from all of the terror threats the summer of 2001 had yielded. This was definitely not the first sign of a specific terrorist attack that the United States Government failed to capitalize on.

The FBI and CIA have a long history of miscommunication, and internal squabbles that have led to missed opportunities and failed lines of communication that could have, and should have been utilized in preventing 9/11. Over their turbulent history together their coexistence was punctuated with clashes, disagreements, and heavy competition that seemed to be at a all time high in the early 90's. After the FBI had blown the cover of a CIA operation fifteen years in the making, in what the press dubbed "Iraq-Gate", both agencies were at each others necks. The FBI and the CIA accused the other on similar charges of with holding information and acting independently. As Gerald Posner describes the situation, "By the beginning of the Clinton Administration, January 1993, there was deep-seated animosity between officials at both agencies. The timing for such disharmony could no have been worse,"(47). This malice between agencies has kept both from executing their jobs to the fullest extent. Some would say, that's their problem, right? Wrong. Not when the result happens to be 3000 innocent American citizens dead and two towers that stood tall for freedom, collapsed into a heap of rubble(Cloud 15). But in order to find a solution to this problem and prevent future attacks of this nature, one must first understand and recognize the problem itself.

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