CIA Docs Offer Graphic, Detailed Picture Of “Rendition”
The CIA documents released yesterday also contain a graphic and detailed description of how the agency conducted “rendition,” or the export of detainees for harsh interrogation abroad — perhaps the most extensive public description and acknowledgment the agency has offered of the process, the ACLU tells me.
The CIA’s lurid description of rendition — which hasn’t yet been reported — describes in clinical detail a process where the detainee is “securely shackled” before being “deprived of sight and sound through the use of blindfolds, earmuffs, and hoods” enroute to a “Black Site.” His “head and face are shaved” and a series of photos are taken “while nude.”
The description of rendition is contained in a document that the ACLU obtained as part of its big FOIA request and posted online late last night. It’s an 18-page fax from the CIA to the Department of Justice in December 2004, and looks like a response to a request by Justice for more info about the CIA’s treatment of “high value detainees,” or HVDs.
The document says the CIA’s rendition procedure is designed to ensure that the capture of a HVD helps create a “state of learned helplessness and dependence” that will facilitate the interrogation process.
The description of “rendition” begins on page three of the document, and describes the process this way:
a. The HVD is flown to a Black Site. A medical examination is conducted prior to the flight. During the flight, the detainee is securely shackled and is deprived of sight and sound through the use of blindfolds, earmuffs, and hoods.
There is no interaction with the HVD during this rendition movement except for periodic, discreet assessments by the on-board medical officer.
b. Upon arrival at the destination airfield, the HVD is moved to the Black Site under the same conditions and using appropriate security procedures.
The procedures, according to the memo, have a dramatic impact on the detainee. It says the process “creates significant apprehension” in the detainee “because of the enormity and suddenness of the change in environment, the uncertainty about what will happen next, and the potential dread” the detainee “might have of U.S. custody.”
“This is the most detailed description provided by the CIA of its rendition program to date,” ACLU spokesman Alexander Abdo tells me. “It confirms accounts provided by victims of rendition.”
The public release of the description of rendition is also significant because the CIA has previously taken the position that the details of its rendition program are a state secret, in order to get lawsuits around torture thrown out of court, Abdo says. He adds that the public document could make it tougher to argue this case in the future.
Nasty stuff…
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Update: The term “rendition” is what appears in the document. I’ve edited the above to reflect that.
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You want some nasty stuff?? Here you go and if this admin keeps going they way they are we will get another up close and personal and I will blame each and everyone of you libtards and will never forgive a single one of you for aiding the enemy with your show of weakness and stupid ideas that being nice somehow will make terrorists stop killing and like us!So keep it up do just like you did during the Clinton years and tie the hands of those who protect us and ignore reality, while you continue to attack your fellow americans as the enemy all the while embracing those who really want to destory America and want you as dead as me.They don’t care if you have a R or D behind your name and matter of fact they have NO tolerance for liberals. Don’t believe go run your mouth and act like a full fledged liberal in Iran or most places in the ME then tell me again how nasty our CIA is. you fools I thought sure you would learn something after 9/11 but how wrong I was about the sick mind of the liberal progressive.
classicalvalues.com/9-11_jumper.jpg
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Say, Greg, you DID see the NY Times story where they say that Obama is going to continue extraordinary rendition?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/us/politics/25rendition.html?_r=1
This is “nasty stuff” that the admin you support is going to continue!
“Human rights advocates condemned the decision, saying that continuing the practice, known as rendition, would still allow the transfer of prisoners to countries with a history of torture. They said that promises from other countries of humane treatment, called “diplomatic assurances,” were no protection against abuse.”
O god – the talking colon polyp.
Somehow, the idea of your never forgiving me for something is strangely comforting.
yeah, saw it, sbj…so? not sure what the point is.
If you think this is nasty stuff then shouldn’t you condemn Obama?
sbj, I think this site’s been pretty aggressive on the torture stuff.
“If you think this is nasty stuff then shouldn’t you condemn Obama?”
A. He closed the black sites
B. He appointed a group to oversee all intelligence gathering and it is answerable to Congress.
C. Obama ain’t perfect but Obama also ain’t Bush/Cheney
Um, Greg? And SBJ?
“Rendition” is a legal term of art meaning the surrender of a criminal suspect by one jurisdiction to another pursuant to a lawful extradition order entered by a local court and pursuant to a treaty or, if it’s from one U.S. state to another, to the constitutional.
“Extraordinary rendition” is a thoroughly illegal and immoral process by which a state kidnaps someone and smuggles him or her into a foreign country for the purpose of having the victim tortured. “Extraordinary rendition” is an Orwellian linguistic perversion invented to cloak the horrorific state-sponsored thuggery you’re describing in quasi-legal sounding language.
Journalists keep confusing them either because they’re so dumb they bought into the linguistic perversion or because they know better but it gives them another “Obama just like Bush, so There!” storyline. It would be good if blogs didn’t do that.
@tena: You approve of rendition to countries that use torture? He closed black sites (that can still be used temproarily for several days) but he continues rendition! What’s the difference?.
@greg: It is not clear at all that this site disapproves of rendition by the Obama administration. It certainly appears that your readers don’t.
Obama is taking a lot of heat for continuing certain heinous programs. But this week’s hot issue is the release of these documents and the information spilling out of them. This is a topical site. That’s how it works.
Steve is right. People are confusing rendition (which Clinton started) with extraordinary rendition (Bush/Cheney idea of a good time).
Obama is not continuing the Bush/Cheney torture version of rendition.
There is a difference.
“The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation…Human rights advocates condemned the decision, saying that continuing the practice, known as rendition, would still allow the transfer of prisoners to countries with a history of torture. They said that promises from other countries of humane treatment, called “diplomatic assurances,” were no protection against abuse.
“It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture.”
The “extraordinary” posters are extraordinarily dumb. Rendition is rendition, the adjective does not carry as much weight as you think it does. But when did the commies ever worry about lying? (A: Never)
This claim that “Clinton did rendition” but “Bush did extraordinary rendition” is an absolute lie. It is the same thing and you can find nothing except posts by some ******* like Steve that says otherwise. Sorry Steve, you aren’t a source.
when I originally put “extraordinary rendition” in quotes, I didn’t mean to imply that that’s what the documents says. but since that could be how it’s taken I’ve changed it to just “rendition.” doesn’t change overall meaning of the document, though.
@ sbj, Greg is not his readers. And there has been no one more inconsistent on any subject than you.
Baby Hugo is a Bush/Cheney apologist that thinks treaties don’t matter and torture is O.K.
They think when Reagan championed the signing of the United Nations Convention Against Torture it was just lip service.
Republicans and conservatives have gone from the party of moral high ground to the party of immorality.
The GOP – 5th Century Solutions for a 21st Century World
That should be their new motto, at least when it comes to torture.
Reagan from 1984 on the signing of the UN torture convention.
“The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.
The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called ‘universal jurisdiction.’ Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.”
Since Republicans live and die by what Reagan says, the torture apologists should just line up and place their heads on a guillotine and do us all a favor.
It is a tough call on the way Obama employs people’s trust that he can continue practices that became abuses under Bush (like signing statements, rendition, etc) without falling victim to those same abuses. That being said, it looks to me like Obama is trying employing rendition that is accountable for how prisoners are treated. Yes he is wrong to continue the practice, but that doesn’t mean he is shipping them off to be tortured.
“@tena: You approve of rendition to countries that use torture? He closed black sites (that can still be used temproarily for several days) but he continues rendition! What’s the difference?.”
I will refer you back upthread to steve’s comment and I suggest you read it until it makes an impression.
There is a difference between rendition and “extraordinary rendition.”
I acknowledge that the CIA evidently decided to cloud the issue further by dropping the “extraordinary.” All part of the normal CIA bureaucractic euphimism progression.
@Tena
“A. He closed the black sites
B. He appointed a group to oversee all intelligence gathering and it is answerable to Congress.
C. Obama ain’t perfect but Obama also ain’t Bush/Cheney”
D. The person Obama has appointed to oversee the newly created rendition program,a position that does not require Senate confirmation,is John Brennan who was interim director of the National Counterterrorism Center immediately after its creation in 2004 through 2005. He was expected to be named CIA Director but, according to Wikipedia, “Brennan withdrew his name from consideration in November 2008, however,over concerns that his nomination would be a distraction, due to his previous associations with controversial harsh CIA interrogation techniques”. And the fact that he would not have been confirmed by the Senate. So the Obama Administration puts him in a position that does not require Senate confirmation-Assistant to the President for National Security and Counterterrorisam, his present job. Last night on Keith Olbermann, Jane Mayer, author of “The Dark Side” said that in her interviews with Brennan for her book, he talked about how the CIA torture programs were necessary. THIS is the kind of person we want now overseeing a rendition program, a person that will assure us that other countries are not torturing the suspects we send to them? Please.
These Glib Libs will be enjoying rendition soon as I’m sure Voodoo Cheney is monitoring their every keystroke.
@tena I am glad you are comforted that’s more than my fellow servicemember was afforded when the USS Cole was attacked.
That is more than my fellow Americans were afforded when attacked by AQ 9/11/01.
@mikeinarlington
Could you provide a link as to when AQ signed on to these convections? And while you are at it what country’s uniform and flag does AG fight under?
Since we have a US soldier being held by the Taliban could you liberals insure me that he will be treated better than the CIA you claim are mistreating terrorists?
Do you even realize that right now a US soldier is being held by the Taliban or the real question is do you even care???
@Greg
sbj has just shown what a blind partisan hack site this is. Obama has his own speical progressive version of rendition!!
oh how special but after this cowardly move by the DOJ I doubt he will find anyone that would enforce it!!!
Let’s be clear: the very fact of rendition assumes that our Constitution is fundamentally incapable of providing a legal framework that ensures our safety. If you believe that rendition is necessary & acceptable, then that is because you see our founding document as fatally flawed. Literally. And rather than amend that document in such a way that it guarantees our safety, you would prefer to outsource the work that you believe is necessary to keep us safe.
The very idea of rendition is, if not unconstitutional, then at the very least aconstitutional.
Notice how all those Right Wing wack jobs keep putting the USA on the same moral plane as the barbarians of Al-Qaeda.
Some standards those Far Right Wing Christians are holding their selves too. Their whole rational is; because the Al-Qaeda barbarians behave in such a manner, then it is OK for our side to behave in the same manner.
I wonder what stopped them from emulating their Al-Qaeda mentors, that they did not just start chopping off the heads of those who they disagree with. Who said no to the Satanic Mr. Cheney, on that one!!!
This is how I see it and agree with Ronald Reagan’s son, who was on MSNBC yesterday… George Washington didn’t torture! Abraham Lincoln didn’t torture! Ronald Reagan didn’t torture. There is no excuse for Bush/Cheney’s torture and all responsible needs to be held accountable.
If the enemy tortured (which the Germans did. which the japanese did, which al quida may be)… they were held accountable. How can we hold our current enemy accountable if we are just as guilty.
Do you think the Nuermburg trials would have happened if we were in the WWII business of torturing?
Obama stopped the torture! Rendition or Extraordinary Rendition… SO WHAT! The torturing has stopped and the enemy suspects are treated humanily! That’s all that should matter… except we need to hold violators accountable who were responsible…
Greg Sargent notes another document secured by the ACLU. (Yes, Greenwald is right that it’s bizarre the media in this country are second to the ACLU in demanding information from the government.) This document gives a detailed account of the torture techniques used by the Bush-Cheney administration in the elite CIA program. This is the most professional version of the widespread torture authorized by Bush and conducted in every theater of combat, by every branch of the armed forces, directed that all prisoners could be potential terrorists and therefore outside civilizational norms of humane treatment.
The document reads, like so much else from the Cheney years, like a document from a South American dictatorship in the 1970s or 1980s. If someone had told me a few years ago that it had popped up in the Soviet archives, I would have believed him.
…
John McCain will remember these techniques and variants of them from his time in the Hanoi Hilton. If this is not torture, then torture does not exist. And if this is America, and there is no accountability for these war crimes, then core American values have ceased to exist as well.
Has anyone made the FOIA requests to get the documents showing Obama has directed our forces to cease this torture?
Or… is that “torture-reduction process still being worked on”?
The order was one of four sweeping directives Obama signed calling for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay and revamping U.S. counterterrorism policies.
The executive orders, while expected, represented a clean break with Bush administration policies and won quick praise from human-rights groups. Still, many of the difficult details—such as what to do with Guantánamo detainees still deemed dangerous—will be left up to a special interagency panel that won’t report its recommendations to Obama for six months. The panel is to be chaired by Obama’s choice for attorney general, Eric Holder, who is still awaiting confirmation….
- Newsweek, 1/22/09
(Oh, in case you don’t know, the present rules followed by the U.S. military require interrogation methods to conform with the humane treatment standards required by the Geneva Conventions.)
so I guess the answer is NO those on this blog either don’t care about our soldier who is in the hands of the Taliban right now or are not even aware of it.
Never a mention on this blog about our troops dying in Afghan daily, we lost 4 yesterday and not one peep out of your morally bankrupt so called “do gooders”
@liam the lane brain liberal
You want to talk about morals and claim that what our CIA did is equal to what AQ has done not only to americans and our military? You want to claim moral highground when your party the champions of promoting sucking the brains out unborn children, you elected a murderer over and over instead of sending him to jail for his crimes. You cheer on Obama giving the order for a kill shot to a pirate and in the same breath claim how unmoral our CIA is for threatening a terrorists!
Yeah you got the moral high ground in hell maybe but no way on earth.
So keep your nasty moral highground you will have more blood on your hands. Your ilk will not and cannot defend or protect the citizens of this country and it is apparent you don’t even care to! All you care about is your sick agenda that is destroying America from within. Which will be first you letting our enemies destroy a few more cities or your party totally destroy this once great nation?
And your ilk are and always have been irrelevant.
Torture and fascism are what destroy democracies from within.
History shows that repeatedly.
Your ideas about what destroys a country from within?
Not so much.
So how many of you are protesting that the Red Cross has not seen our soldier, has he been given a bible? Are they preparing American meals for him? Does he have an attorney? Have his rights been read to him?
Do you even freakin care? I say you don’t all you care about is spewing your hate towards those that don’t lockstep with your sick agenda. I hope you all rot in hell with your moral highground.
I pray that all they do to this brave young man is wave a drill at his head but more than likely they will cut his head off while videotaping it for the world and his family to see. You people are sick and fully disgust me. Now bring on your lame BS attacks because that is all you have.
U.S. soldier captured by Taliban: ‘I’m afraid’
Soldier from Idaho says he’s frightened he won’t be able to see family again
U.S. military: Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, was captured June 30 from Paktika province
Taliban commander: Taliban will kill him if foreign troops keep targeting civilians
He was taken by members of the Taliban, the military says
WERE IS YOUR OUTRAGE??????
likely they will cut his head off while videotaping it for the world and his family to see
Very possibly. Nothing they have done has caused more harm to this country than that. Every time they have done that it has prodded us one more step along the road to fascism.
You do not get to be the good guys by behaving like the bad guys.
Fasism is now running this country so when will the torture begin? I’m sure the labor unions are fine tunning their techniques.
See this is how stupid and ignorant you are oddjob, everything you claim about your opponets are true about you and your party!
fascism=obama and the DNC
Fascists advocate the creation of a single-party state.[7] Fascist governments forbid and suppress criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement.[8] Fascism opposes class conflict, blames capitalist liberal democracies for its creation and communists for exploiting the concept.[9] In the economic sphere, many fascist leaders have claimed to support a “Third Way” in economic policy, which they believed superior to both the rampant individualism of unrestrained capitalism and the severe control of state communism.[10][11] This was to be achieved by establishing significant government control over business and labour (Mussolini called his nation’s system “the corporate state”).[12][13] No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition.[14]
My error – nothing else except 9/11, of course.
I am a member of no political party.
let’s see Obama has taken over the financial and car industry, put big labor before secured creditors, is trying to nationalize healthcare.
nope you can’t deny who the fascist are unless you are a denier of reality.
Fascism was to be achieved by establishing significant government control over business and labour
Your paranoia speaks for itself.
oh and let’s not forget about checkcard taking away a citizens right to a secret ballot to insure big labor takes over just like a good little fascist would do!
oddjob are you trying to tell me that Obama has not taken over the auto industry, financial industy and working on healthcare?
You would defend anything this admin does even if it’s exactly what bush had done!
Very possibly. Nothing they have done has caused more harm to this country than that. Every time they have done that it has prodded us one more step along the road to fascism.
–
Very possible oh how caring of you, NOT.How bout citing to me where they have let one of our servicemembers go without killing them?
who are you talking about those protecting this country or those who declared war on this country in 1996 then attacked this country in 2001? Killing 3,000 innocent Americans?
I know this you and those with your logic could NEVER defend the freedoms of this country.For one you don’t have what it takes to keep americans safe from our enemies and number two you and those with your mindset consider your fellow Americans the enemy and embrace the terrorist that will kill you and your family.
oddjob | August 26th, 2009 at 11:44 am
I am a member of no political party.
–
well finally I can say good for you and mean it! I am no member either because they both suck but atleast the repugs get it when it comes to defending this nation. Something the DNC does not get and has cost thousands of lives. What kind of person votes to send our troops off to war and then when it’s not politically favorable for them stand against those they sent off to war. I will tell you a self absorb arrogant COWARD and the DNC is full of them. I watch my fellow servicemembers since the 70’s be brutally murdered by these thugs and what was the response most of the time? Silence then 9/11 hit and for a short time America and even the DNC got it but now it’s back to the same ole same ole the DNC is in charge and once again American citizens are the enemy. Like I said before if we are attacked again I will hold every one of you screamin progressives or whatever the heck you call yourself responsible you will have blood on your hands just like you do with the killing of our unborn children. It wasn’t good enough to give women a choice to have an abortion it had to be the WAY of the left. Don’t use birth control just go get an abortion. You are some sick
S O B ’s and I will gladly wear any insult your morally bankrupt goons call me.
@Junebug: I think you’re making a salient point, which I would garnish by adding that, in simplistic terms, rendition allows the U.S. to bypass violations of its own 5th, 8th and 14th Amendments, as well as international laws, by taking its detainees to countries where torture is well-practiced and acceptable.
What’s interesting, to me, is the clear defense by Cheney/Dubyah, et. al., that because the interrogation programs are not designed to physically kill or permanently maim, that they’re really just doing the Lord’s good and necessary work.
Yet, thanks to investigative journalism by Seymour Hersh, documentary filmmakers, etc., which continues to force mainstream media to get their asses in gear, we know there have been detainee deaths at U.S. black sites, with our rendition buddies, at Gitmo, etc. We’ve seen the images — and there are many more classified images that we currently cannot see. And you know they gotta be really bad.
Are we supposed to be swayed hook, line and sinker by the Cheney Camp’s current PR campaign, which wants us to believe that nobody crossed this ambiguous line and all the waterboardings, wallings, deprivations, threats and beatings somehow do not constitute torture, but were really just harmless little tricks? Who would Jesus waterboard? (Who would Jesus bomb, for that matter … )
This is only the tip of the iceberg, BTW. I suspect much more will will soon be revealed about Blackwater and the tens of thousands of other contractor goons who are getting paid six-figure, taxpayer-funded salaries in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The U.S. military is supposed to train and deploy our specials forces as enlisted men. Instead, thousands of our special forces members are cherry-picked by private contractors, like Blackwater and many others, who make them rich with murky and mysterious “security” assignments doing God knows what.
It would, of course, be cheaper to the taxpayers for these well-trained soldiers to fight as enlisted military men.
Instead, we’ve got armies of Rambo-wannabe mercenaries — who are compensated as if they’re Fortune-500 CEOs — running amok in the New Crusades.
I am not proud to be an American.
yippie, Benjamin Franklin nailed you a long, long time ago:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
oddball what liberty did I give up? The liberty to have my government protect it’s citizens? That is being taken from me by YOU and the DNC.
Just like the liberty to choose my own healthcare or not is trying to being taken away by the DNC.
If these reports stated that fingers/ears/toes/fingernail/arms/legs were removed due to torture then I would be right there with you freaks but that is not what happened. The fact that this is all documented is telling that the CIA was doing nothing more than there job and that is to protect America. The fact that LA did not go up in smoke with thousands of liberals dying on the spot tells me that the CIA was doing their job protecting Americans. Something they will hesitate to do now. So again what liberty did I loose except the liberty to be safe and secure in my own country and that liberty has been taken by the left and DNC.
A Shock, Not a Surprise The 9/ 11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade.
(82) In February 1993, a group led by Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World Trade Center with a truck bomb. They killed six and wounded a thou-sand. Plans by Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and other New York City landmarks were frustrated when the plotters were arrested. In October 1993, Somali tribesmen shot down U. S. hel-icopters, killing 18 and wounding 73 in an incident that came to be known as “Black Hawk down.” Years later it would be learned that those Somali tribes-men had received help from al Qaeda.
(93) In early 1995, police in Manila uncovered a plot by Ramzi Yousef to blow up a dozen U. S. airliners while they were flying over the Pacific. In November 1995, a car bomb exploded outside the office of the U. S. program manager for the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two others. In June 1996, a truck bomb demolished the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U. S. servicemen and wounding hundreds. The attack was carried out primarily by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had received help from the government of Iran.
(104) Until 1997, the U. S. intelligence community viewed Bin Ladin as a fin-ancier of terrorism, not as a terrorist leader. In February 1998, Usama Bin Ladin and four others issued a self-styled fatwa, publicly declaring that it was God’s decree that every Muslim should try his utmost to kill any American, military or civilian, anywhere in the world, because of American “occupation” of Islam’s holy places and aggression against Muslims.
(113) In August 1998, Bin Ladin’s group, al Qaeda, carried out near-simultaneous truck bomb attacks on the U. S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands more.
(119) In December 1999, Jordanian police foiled a plot to bomb hotels and other sites frequented by American tourists, and a U. S. Customs agent arrested Ahmed Ressam at the U. S. Canadian border as he was smuggling in explosives intend-ed for an attack on Los Angeles International Airport.
(126) In October 2000, an al Qaeda team in Aden, Yemen, used a motorboat filled with explosives to blow a hole in the side of a destroyer, the USS Cole, almost sinking the vessel and killing 17 American sailors.
(132) The 9/ 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were far more elaborate, precise, and destructive than any of these earlier assaults. But by September 2001, the executive branch of the U. S. government, the Congress, the news media, and the American public had received clear warning that Islamist terrorists meant to kill Americans in high numbers.
kottke.org/plus/misc/911commission.html
they should not have come as a surprise
They certainly did to George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their security team.
What we can say with confidence is that none of the measures adopted by the U. S. govern-ment from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al Qaeda plot. Across the government, there were failures of imagination, pol-icy, capabilities, and management.
kottke.org/plus/misc/911commission.html
The fact that this is all documented is telling that the CIA was doing nothing more than there job and that is to protect America.
All of which only goes to show you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
You are advocating the embrace of torture, for torture is MUCH more than chopping off of limbs.
In WWII the Nazis tortured Norwegian resistors, but deliberately chose to do so in a way that left no permanent body scars. They labeled these techniques “enhanced interrogation” (“Verschaerfe Vernehmung”). In the war trials after the war the Nazi defendants argued that they had not tortured because they had left no scars.
The defendants were found guilty by the Allies and executed.
Imagination The most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe lead-ers understood the gravity of the threat. The terrorist danger from Bin Ladin and al Qaeda was not a major topic for policy debate among the public, the media, or in the Congress. Indeed, it barely came up during the 2000 pres-idential campaign.
(516) Al Qaeda’s new brand of terrorism presented challenges to U. S. governmen-tal institutions that they were not well-designed to meet. Though top officials all told us that they understood the danger, we believe there was uncertainty among them as to whether this was just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary terrorist threat the United States had lived with for decades, or it was indeed radically new, posing a threat beyond any yet experienced. As late as September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke, the White House staffer long responsible for counterterrorism policy coordination, asserted that the govern-ment had not yet made up its mind how to answer the question: “Is al Qida a big deal?”
(529) A week later came the answer. Policy Terrorism was not the overriding national security concern for the U. S. gov-ernment under either the Clinton or the pre-9/ 11 Bush administration.
(534) The policy challenges were linked to this failure of imagination. Officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations regarded a full U. S. invasion of Afghanistan as practically inconceivable before 9/ 11.
(540) Capabilities Before 9/ 11, the United States tried to solve the al Qaeda problem with the capabilities it had used in the last stages of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. These capabilities were insufficient. Little was done to expand or reform them.
(546) The CIA had minimal capacity to conduct paramilitary operations with its own personnel, and it did not seek a large-scale expansion of these capabilities before 9/ 11. The CIA also needed to improve its capability to collect intelli-gence from human agents.
(552) At no point before 9/ 11 was the Department of Defense fully engaged in the mission of countering al Qaeda, even though this was perhaps the most dan-gerous foreign enemy threatening the United States.
(557) America’s homeland defenders faced outward. NORAD itself was barely able to retain any alert bases at all. Its planning scenarios occasionally consid-ered the danger of hijacked aircraft being guided to American targets, but only aircraft that were coming from overseas.
(563) The most serious weaknesses in agency capabilities were in the domestic arena. The FBI did not have the capability to link the collective knowledge of agents in the field to national priorities. Other domestic agencies deferred to the FBI.
(569) FAA capabilities were weak. Any serious examination of the possibility of a suicide hijacking could have suggested changes to fix glaring vulnera-bilities– expanding no-fly lists, searching passengers identified by the CAPPS screening system, deploying federal air marshals domestically, hard-ening cockpit doors, alerting air crews to a different kind of hijacking pos-sibility than they had been trained to expect. Yet the FAA did not adjust either its own training or training with NORAD to take account of threats other than those experienced in the past.
(580) Management The missed opportunities to thwart the 9/ 11 plot were also symptoms of a broader inability to adapt the way government manages problems to the new challenges of the twenty-first century. Action officers should have been able to draw on all available knowledge about al Qaeda in the government. Management should have ensured that information was shared and duties were clearly assigned across agencies, and across the foreign-domestic divide. There were also broader management issues with respect to how top leaders set priorities and allocated resources. For instance, on December 4, 1998, DCI Tenet issued a directive to several CIA officials and the DDCI for Community Management, stating: “We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the Community.” The memorandum had little overall effect on mobilizing the CIA or the intelligence community. This episode indicates the limitations of the DCI’s authority over the direction of the intelligence community, including agencies within the Department of Defense. The U. S. government did not find a way of pooling intelligence and using it to guide the planning and assignment of responsibilities for joint operations involving entities as disparate as the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, the military, and the agencies involved in homeland security.
kottke.org/plus/misc/911commission.html
As I implied before by quoting Franklin, in the name of being safe you are embracing the adoption of torture as a tool of the state.
You deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Washington deliberately chose not to torture. Lincoln did not torture.
We tortured in the Philppines in the Spanish American War, and then we prosecuted the waterboarders.
Now?
The 9/11 Commission Report
Note: I have moved the list of the commission members and staff to the bottom of the document. A PDF version of this document is available courtesy of the Washington Post.
(11) Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
(15) Executive Summary
(18) We present the narrative of this report and the recommendations that flow from it to the President of the United States, the United States Congress, and the American people for their consideration. Ten Commissioners– five Republicans and five Democrats chosen by elected leaders from our nation’s capital at a time of great partisan division– have come together to present this report without dissent.
(26) We have come together with a unity of purpose because our nation demands it. September 11, 2001, was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United States. The nation was unprepared.
(32) A NATION TRANSFORMED
(35) At 8: 46 on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States became a nation transformed.
(39) An airliner traveling at hundreds of miles per hour and carrying some 10,000 gallons of jet fuel plowed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. At 9: 03, a second airliner hit the South Tower. Fire and smoke billowed upward. Steel, glass, ash, and bodies fell below. The Twin Towers, where up to 50,000 people worked each day, both collapsed less than 90 min-utes later.
(47) At 9: 37 that same morning, a third airliner slammed into the western face of the Pentagon. At 10: 03, a fourth airliner crashed in a field in southern Pennsylvania. It had been aimed at the United States Capitol or the White House, and was forced down by heroic passengers armed with the knowledge that America was under attack.
(54) More than 2,600 people died at the World Trade Center; 125 died at the Pentagon; 256 died on the four planes. The death toll surpassed that at Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
(59) This immeasurable pain was inflicted by 19 young Arabs acting at the behest of Islamist extremists headquartered in distant Afghanistan. Some had been in the United States for more than a year, mixing with the rest of the population. Though four had training as pilots, most were not well-educated. Most spoke English poorly, some hardly at all. In groups of four or five, carrying with them only small knives, box cutters, and cans of Mace or pepper spray, they had hijacked the four planes and turned them into deadly guided missiles.
(69) Why did they do this? How was the attack planned and conceived? How did the U. S. government fail to anticipate and prevent it? What can we do in the future to prevent similar acts of terrorism?
(74) A Shock, Not a Surprise The 9/ 11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade.
(82) In February 1993, a group led by Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World Trade Center with a truck bomb. They killed six and wounded a thou-sand. Plans by Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and other New York City landmarks were frustrated when the plotters were arrested. In October 1993, Somali tribesmen shot down U. S. hel-icopters, killing 18 and wounding 73 in an incident that came to be known as “Black Hawk down.” Years later it would be learned that those Somali tribes-men had received help from al Qaeda.
(93) In early 1995, police in Manila uncovered a plot by Ramzi Yousef to blow up a dozen U. S. airliners while they were flying over the Pacific. In November 1995, a car bomb exploded outside the office of the U. S. program manager for the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two others. In June 1996, a truck bomb demolished the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U. S. servicemen and wounding hundreds. The attack was carried out primarily by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had received help from the government of Iran.
(104) Until 1997, the U. S. intelligence community viewed Bin Ladin as a fin-ancier of terrorism, not as a terrorist leader. In February 1998, Usama Bin Ladin and four others issued a self-styled fatwa, publicly declaring that it was God’s decree that every Muslim should try his utmost to kill any American, military or civilian, anywhere in the world, because of American “occupation” of Islam’s holy places and aggression against Muslims.
(113) In August 1998, Bin Ladin’s group, al Qaeda, carried out near-simultaneous truck bomb attacks on the U. S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands more.
(119) In December 1999, Jordanian police foiled a plot to bomb hotels and other sites frequented by American tourists, and a U. S. Customs agent arrested Ahmed Ressam at the U. S. Canadian border as he was smuggling in explosives intend-ed for an attack on Los Angeles International Airport.
(126) In October 2000, an al Qaeda team in Aden, Yemen, used a motorboat filled with explosives to blow a hole in the side of a destroyer, the USS Cole, almost sinking the vessel and killing 17 American sailors.
(132) The 9/ 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were far more elaborate, precise, and destructive than any of these earlier assaults. But by September 2001, the executive branch of the U. S. government, the Congress, the news media, and the American public had received clear warning that Islamist terrorists meant to kill Americans in high numbers.
(140) Who Is the Enemy? Who is this enemy that created an organization capable of inflicting such hor-rific damage on the United States? We now know that these attacks were car-ried out by various groups of Islamist extremists. The 9/ 11 attack was driven by Usama Bin Ladin.
(147) In the 1980s, young Muslims from around the world went to Afghanistan to join as volunteers in a jihad (or holy struggle) against the Soviet Union. A wealthy Saudi, Usama Bin Ladin, was one of them. Following the defeat of the Soviets in the late 1980s, Bin Ladin and others formed al Qaeda to mobilize jihads elsewhere.
(154) The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin shapes and spreads his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on sym-bols of Islam’s past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who con-sider themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and religious allusions to the holy Qur’an and some of its interpreters. He appeals to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and glob-alization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources– Islam, history, and the region’s political and economic malaise.
(165) Bin Ladin also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U. S. troops in Saudi Arabia, which is the home of Islam’s holiest sites, and against other U. S. policies in the Middle East. Upon this political and ideological foundation, Bin Ladin built over the course of a decade a dynamic and lethal organization. He built an infrastructure and organization in Afghanistan that could attract, train, and use recruits against ever more ambitious targets. He rallied new zealots and new money with each demonstration of al Qaeda’s capability. He had forged a close alliance with the Taliban, a regime providing sanctuary for al Qaeda.
(178) By September 11, 2001, al Qaeda possessed
(181)
•(184) leaders able to evaluate, approve, and supervise the planning and direc-tion of a major operation;
•(188) a personnel system that could recruit candidates, indoctrinate them, vet them, and give them the necessary training;
•(192) communications sufficient to enable planning and direction of opera-tives and those who would be helping them;
•(196) an intelligence effort to gather required information and form assess-ments of enemy strengths and weaknesses;
•(200) the ability to move people great distances; and
•(203) the ability to raise and move the money necessary to finance an attack.
(208) 1998 to September 11, 2001 The August 1998 bombings of U. S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania established al Qaeda as a potent adversary of the United States.
(213) After launching cruise missile strikes against al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the embassy bombings, the Clinton administration applied diplomatic pressure to try to persuade the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to expel Bin Ladin. The administration also devised covert operations to use CIA-paid foreign agents to capture or kill Bin Ladin and his chief lieutenants. These actions did not stop Bin Ladin or dislodge al Qaeda from its sanctuary. By late 1998 or early 1999, Bin Ladin and his advisers had agreed on an idea brought to them by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) called the “planes oper-ation.” It would eventually culminate in the 9/ 11 attacks. Bin Ladin and his chief of operations, Mohammed Atef, occupied undisputed leadership positions atop al Qaeda. Within al Qaeda, they relied heavily on the ideas and enterprise of strong-willed field commanders, such as KSM, to carry out worldwide ter-rorist operations.
(230) KSM claims that his original plot was even grander than those carried out on 9/ 11– ten planes would attack targets on both the East and West coasts of the United States. This plan was modified by Bin Ladin, KSM said, owing to its scale and complexity. Bin Ladin provided KSM with four initial operatives for suicide plane attacks within the United States, and in the fall of 1999 training for the attacks began. New recruits included four from a cell of expatriate Muslim extremists who had clustered together in Hamburg, Germany. One became the tactical commander of the operation in the United States: Mohamed Atta.
(242) U. S. intelligence frequently picked up reports of attacks planned by al Qaeda. Working with foreign security services, the CIA broke up some al Qaeda cells. The core of Bin Ladin’s organization nevertheless remained intact. In December 1999, news about the arrests of the terrorist cell in Jordan and the arrest of a terrorist at the U. S.-Canadian border became part of a “millennium alert.” The government was galvanized, and the public was on alert for any possible attack. In January 2000, the intense intelligence effort glimpsed and then lost sight of two operatives destined for the “planes operation.” Spotted in Kuala Lumpur, the pair were lost passing through Bangkok. On January 15, 2000, they arrived in Los Angeles.
(256) Because these two al Qaeda operatives had spent little time in the West and spoke little, if any, English, it is plausible that they or KSM would have tried to identify, in advance, a friendly contact in the United States. We explored suspi-cions about whether these two operatives had a support network of accomplices in the United States. The evidence is thin– simply not there for some cases, more worrisome in others.
(265) We do know that soon after arriving in California, the two al Qaeda oper-atives sought out and found a group of ideologically like-minded Muslims with roots in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, individuals mainly associated with a young Yemeni and others who attended a mosque in San Diego. After a brief stay in Los Angeles about which we know little, the al Qaeda operatives lived openly in San Diego under their true names. They managed to avoid attracting much attention.
(274) By the summer of 2000, three of the four Hamburg cell members had arrived on the East Coast of the United States and had begun pilot training. In early 2001, a fourth future hijacker pilot, Hani Hanjour, journeyed to Arizona with another operative, Nawaf al Hazmi, and conducted his refresher pilot train-ing there. A number of al Qaeda operatives had spent time in Arizona during the 1980s and early 1990s.
(282) During 2000, President Bill Clinton and his advisers renewed diplomatic efforts to get Bin Ladin expelled from Afghanistan. They also renewed secret efforts with some of the Taliban’s opponents– the Northern Alliance– to get enough intelligence to attack Bin Ladin directly. Diplomatic efforts centered on the new military government in Pakistan, and they did not succeed. The efforts with the Northern Alliance revived an inconclusive and secret debate about whether the United States should take sides in Afghanistan’s civil war and support the Taliban’s enemies. The CIA also produced a plan to improve intelli-gence collection on al Qaeda, including the use of a small, unmanned airplane with a video camera, known as the Predator.
(295) After the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, evidence accumulated that it had been launched by al Qaeda operatives, but without confirmation that Bin Ladin had given the order. The Taliban had earlier been warned that it would be held responsible for another Bin Ladin attack on the United States. The CIA described its findings as a “preliminary judgment”; President Clinton and his chief advisers told us they were waiting for a conclusion before deciding whether to take military action. The military alternatives remained unappealing to them.
(306) The transition to the new Bush administration in late 2000 and early 2001 took place with the Cole issue still pending. President George W. Bush and his chief advisers accepted that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the Cole, but did not like the options available for a response.
(313) Bin Ladin’s inference may well have been that attacks, at least at the level of the Cole, were risk free.
(317) The Bush administration began developing a new strategy with the stated goal of eliminating the al Qaeda threat within three to five years. During the spring and summer of 2001, U. S. intelligence agencies received a stream of warnings that al Qaeda planned, as one report put it, “something very, very, very big.” Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told us,” The system was blinking red.”
(326) Although Bin Ladin was determined to strike in the United States, as President Clinton had been told and President Bush was reminded in a Presidential Daily Brief article briefed to him in August 2001, the specific threat information pointed overseas. Numerous precautions were taken overseas.
(333) Domestic agencies were not effectively mobilized. The threat did not receive national media attention comparable to the millennium alert.
(337) While the United States continued disruption efforts around the world, its emerging strategy to eliminate the al Qaeda threat was to include an enlarged covert action program in Afghanistan, as well as diplomatic strategies for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The process culminated during the summer of 2001 in a draft presidential directive and arguments about the Predator aircraft, which was soon to be deployed with a missile of its own, so that it might be used to attempt to kill Bin Ladin or his chief lieutenants. At a September 4 meeting, President Bush’s chief advisers approved the draft directive of the strategy and endorsed the concept of arming the Predator. This directive on the al Qaeda strategy was awaiting President Bush’s signature on September 11, 2001.
(351) Though the “planes operation” was progressing, the plotters had problems of their own in 2001. Several possible participants dropped out; others could not gain entry into the United States (including one denial at a port of entry and visa denials not related to terrorism). One of the eventual pilots may have considered abandoning the planes operation. Zacarias Moussaoui, who showed up at a flight training school in Minnesota, may have been a candidate to replace him.
(361) Some of the vulnerabilities of the plotters become clear in retrospect.
(365) Moussaoui aroused suspicion for seeking fast-track training on how to pilot large jet airliners. He was arrested on August 16, 2001, for violations of immi-gration regulations. In late August, officials in the intelligence community real-ized that the terrorists spotted in Southeast Asia in January 2000 had arrived in the United States.
(372) These cases did not prompt urgent action. No one working on these late leads in the summer of 2001 connected them to the high level of threat report-ing. In the words of one official, no analytic work foresaw the lightning that could connect the thundercloud to the ground.
(378) As final preparations were under way during the summer of 2001, dissent emerged among al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan over whether to proceed. The Taliban’s chief, Mullah Omar, opposed attacking the United States. Although facing opposition from many of his senior lieutenants, Bin Ladin effectively overruled their objections, and the attacks went forward.
(386) September 11, 2001 The day began with the 19 hijackers getting through a security checkpoint sys-tem that they had evidently analyzed and knew how to defeat. Their success rate in penetrating the system was 19 for 19.They took over the four flights, taking advantage of air crews and cockpits that were not prepared for the contingency of a suicide hijacking.
(394) On 9/ 11, the defense of U. S. air space depended on close interaction between two federal agencies: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Existing protocols on 9/ 11 were unsuited in every respect for an attack in which hijacked planes were used as weapons.
(401) What ensued was a hurried attempt to improvise a defense by civilians who had never handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disappear, and by a mil-itary unprepared for the transformation of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction.
(407) A shootdown authorization was not communicated to the NORAD air defense sector until 28 minutes after United 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania.
(412) Planes were scrambled, but ineffectively, as they did not know where to go or what targets they were to intercept. And once the shootdown order was given, it was not communicated to the pilots. In short, while leaders in Washington believed that the fighters circling above them had been instructed to “take out” hostile aircraft, the only orders actually conveyed to the pilots were to “ID type and tail.”
(421) Like the national defense, the emergency response on 9/ 11 was necessarily improvised.
(425) In New York City, the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the building employees, and the occupants of the buildings did their best to cope with the effects of almost unimaginable events– unfolding furiously over 102 minutes. Casualties were nearly 100 percent at and above the impact zones and were very high among first responders who stayed in dan-ger as they tried to save lives. Despite weaknesses in preparations for disas-ter, failure to achieve unified incident command, and inadequate communi-cations among responding agencies, all but approximately one hundred of the thousands of civilians who worked below the impact zone escaped, often with help from the emergency responders.
(439) At the Pentagon, while there were also problems of command and control, the emergency response was generally effective. The Incident Command System, a formalized management structure for emergency response in place in the National Capital Region, overcame the inherent complications of a response across local, state, and federal jurisdictions.
(447) Operational Opportunities We write with the benefit and handicap of hindsight. We are mindful of the danger of being unjust to men and women who made choices in conditions of uncertainty and in circumstances over which they often had little control. Nonetheless, there were specific points of vulnerability in the plot and opportunities to disrupt it. Operational failures– opportunities that were not or could not be exploited by the organizations and systems of that time– included
(457)
•(460) not watchlisting future hijackers Hazmi and Mihdhar, not trailing them after they traveled to Bangkok, and not informing the FBI about one future hijacker’s U. S. visa or his companion’s travel to the United States;
•(466) not sharing information linking individuals in the Cole attack to Mihdhar;
•(470) not taking adequate steps in time to find Mihdhar or Hazmi in the United States;
•(474) not linking the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, described as interested in flight training for the purpose of using an airplane in a terrorist act, to the heightened indications of attack;
•(479) not discovering false statements on visa applications;
•(482) not recognizing passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner;
•(485) not expanding no-fly lists to include names from terrorist watchlists;
•(489) not searching airline passengers identified by the computer-based CAPPS screening system; and
•(493) not hardening aircraft cockpit doors or taking other measures to pre-pare for the possibility of suicide hijackings.
(498) GENERAL FINDINGS
(501) Since the plotters were flexible and resourceful, we cannot know whether any single step or series of steps would have defeated them. What we can say with confidence is that none of the measures adopted by the U. S. govern-ment from 1998 to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al Qaeda plot. Across the government, there were failures of imagination, pol-icy, capabilities, and management.
(509) Imagination The most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe lead-ers understood the gravity of the threat. The terrorist danger from Bin Ladin and al Qaeda was not a major topic for policy debate among the public, the media, or in the Congress. Indeed, it barely came up during the 2000 pres-idential campaign.
(516) Al Qaeda’s new brand of terrorism presented challenges to U. S. governmen-tal institutions that they were not well-designed to meet. Though top officials all told us that they understood the danger, we believe there was uncertainty among them as to whether this was just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary terrorist threat the United States had lived with for decades, or it was indeed radically new, posing a threat beyond any yet experienced. As late as September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke, the White House staffer long responsible for counterterrorism policy coordination, asserted that the govern-ment had not yet made up its mind how to answer the question: “Is al Qida a big deal?”
(529) A week later came the answer. Policy Terrorism was not the overriding national security concern for the U. S. gov-ernment under either the Clinton or the pre-9/ 11 Bush administration.
(534) The policy challenges were linked to this failure of imagination. Officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations regarded a full U. S. invasion of Afghanistan as practically inconceivable before 9/ 11.
(540) Capabilities Before 9/ 11, the United States tried to solve the al Qaeda problem with the capabilities it had used in the last stages of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. These capabilities were insufficient. Little was done to expand or reform them.
(546) The CIA had minimal capacity to conduct paramilitary operations with its own personnel, and it did not seek a large-scale expansion of these capabilities before 9/ 11. The CIA also needed to improve its capability to collect intelli-gence from human agents.
(552) At no point before 9/ 11 was the Department of Defense fully engaged in the mission of countering al Qaeda, even though this was perhaps the most dan-gerous foreign enemy threatening the United States.
(557) America’s homeland defenders faced outward. NORAD itself was barely able to retain any alert bases at all. Its planning scenarios occasionally consid-ered the danger of hijacked aircraft being guided to American targets, but only aircraft that were coming from overseas.
(563) The most serious weaknesses in agency capabilities were in the domestic arena. The FBI did not have the capability to link the collective knowledge of agents in the field to national priorities. Other domestic agencies deferred to the FBI.
(569) FAA capabilities were weak. Any serious examination of the possibility of a suicide hijacking could have suggested changes to fix glaring vulnera-bilities– expanding no-fly lists, searching passengers identified by the CAPPS screening system, deploying federal air marshals domestically, hard-ening cockpit doors, alerting air crews to a different kind of hijacking pos-sibility than they had been trained to expect. Yet the FAA did not adjust either its own training or training with NORAD to take account of threats other than those experienced in the past.
(580) Management The missed opportunities to thwart the 9/ 11 plot were also symptoms of a broader inability to adapt the way government manages problems to the new challenges of the twenty-first century. Action officers should have been able to draw on all available knowledge about al Qaeda in the government. Management should have ensured that information was shared and duties were clearly assigned across agencies, and across the foreign-domestic divide. There were also broader management issues with respect to how top leaders set priorities and allocated resources. For instance, on December 4, 1998, DCI Tenet issued a directive to several CIA officials and the DDCI for Community Management, stating: “We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the Community.” The memorandum had little overall effect on mobilizing the CIA or the intelligence community. This episode indicates the limitations of the DCI’s authority over the direction of the intelligence community, including agencies within the Department of Defense. The U. S. government did not find a way of pooling intelligence and using it to guide the planning and assignment of responsibilities for joint operations involving entities as disparate as the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, the military, and the agencies involved in homeland security.
(603) SPECIFIC FINDINGS
(606) Unsuccessful Diplomacy Beginning in February 1997, and through September 11, 2001, the U. S. gov-ernment tried to use diplomatic pressure to persuade the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to stop being a sanctuary for al Qaeda, and to expel Bin Ladin to a country where he could face justice. These efforts included warnings and sanctions, but they all failed.
(614) The U. S. government also pressed two successive Pakistani governments to demand that the Taliban cease providing a sanctuary for Bin Ladin and his organ-ization and, failing that, to cut off their support for the Taliban. Before 9/ 11, the United States could not find a mix of incentives and pressure that would per-suade Pakistan to reconsider its fundamental relationship with the Taliban.
(622) From 1999 through early 2001, the United States pressed the United Arab Emirates, one of the Taliban’s only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off ties and enforce sanctions, especially those related to air trav-el to Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/ 11.
(629) Saudi Arabia has been a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism. Before 9/ 11, the Saudi and U. S. governments did not fully share intelligence information or develop an adequate joint effort to track and disrupt the finances of the al Qaeda organization. On the other hand, government officials of Saudi Arabia at the highest levels worked closely with top U. S. officials in major ini-tiatives to solve the Bin Ladin problem with diplomacy. Lack of Military Options In response to the request of policymakers, the military prepared an array of limited strike options for attacking Bin Ladin and his organization from May 1998 onward. When they briefed policymakers, the military presented both the pros and cons of those strike options and the associated risks. Policymakers expressed frustration with the range of options presented.
(644) Following the August 20, 1998, missile strikes on al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, both senior military officials and policymakers placed great emphasis on actionable intelligence as the key factor in recom-mending or deciding to launch military action against Bin Ladin and his organization. They did not want to risk significant collateral damage, and they did not want to miss Bin Ladin and thus make the United States look weak while making Bin Ladin look strong. On three specific occasions in 1998Ð 1999, intelligence was deemed credible enough to warrant planning for possible strikes to kill Bin Ladin. But in each case the strikes did not go forward, because senior policymakers did not regard the intelligence as suf-ficiently actionable to offset their assessment of the risks.
(658) The Director of Central Intelligence, policymakers, and military officials expressed frustration with the lack of actionable intelligence. Some officials inside the Pentagon, including those in the special forces and the counterterror-ism policy office, also expressed frustration with the lack of military action. The Bush administration began to develop new policies toward al Qaeda in 2001, but military plans did not change until after 9/ 11.
kottke.org/plus/misc/911commission.html
(667) Problems within the Intelligence Community The intelligence community struggled throughout the 1990s and up to 9/ 11 to collect intelligence on and analyze the phenomenon of transnational terrorism. The combination of an overwhelming number of priorities, flat budgets, an outmoded structure, and bureaucratic rivalries resulted in an insufficient response to this new challenge.
(675) Many dedicated officers worked day and night for years to piece together the growing body of evidence on al Qaeda and to understand the threats. Yet, while there were many reports on Bin Laden and his growing al Qaeda organization, there was no comprehensive review of what the intelligence community knew and what it did not know, and what that meant. There was no National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism between 1995 and 9/ 11.
(684) Before 9/ 11, no agency did more to attack al Qaeda than the CIA. But there were limits to what the CIA was able to achieve by disrupting terrorist activi-ties abroad and by using proxies to try to capture Bin Ladin and his lieutenants in Afghanistan. CIA officers were aware of those limitations. To put it simply, covert action was not a silver bullet. It was important to engage proxies in Afghanistan and to build various capabilities so that if an opportunity presented itself, the CIA could act on it. But for more than three years, through both the late Clinton and early Bush administrations, the CIA relied on proxy forces, and there was growing frustration within the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and in the National Security Council staff with the lack of results. The development of the Predator and the push to aid the Northern Alliance were products of this frustration.
Problems in the FBI From the time of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, FBI and Department of Justice leadership in Washington and New York became increas-ingly concerned about the terrorist threat from Islamist extremists to U. S. inter-ests, both at home and abroad. Throughout the 1990s, the FBI’s counterterror-ism efforts against international terrorist organizations included both intelli-gence and criminal investigations. The FBI’s approach to investigations was case-specific, decentralized, and geared toward prosecution. Significant FBI resources were devoted to after-the-fact investigations of major terrorist attacks, resulting in several prosecutions.
(712) The FBI attempted several reform efforts aimed at strengthening its ability to prevent such attacks, but these reform efforts failed to implement organiza-tion- wide institutional change. On September 11, 2001, the FBI was limited in several areas critical to an effective preventive counterterrorism strategy. Those working counterterrorism matters did so despite limited intelligence collection and strategic analysis capabilities, a limited capacity to share information both internally and externally, insufficient training, perceived legal barriers to sharing information, and inadequate resources.
(723) Permeable Borders and Immigration Controls There were opportunities for intelligence and law enforcement to exploit al Qaeda’s travel vulnerabilities. Considered collectively, the 9/ 11 hijackers
•(730) included known al Qaeda operatives who could have been watchlisted;
•(733) presented passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner;
•(736) presented passports with suspicious indicators of extremism;
•(739) made detectable false statements on visa applications;
•(742) made false statements to border officials to gain entry into the United States; and
•(746) violated immigration laws while in the United States. Neither the State Department’s consular officers nor the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s inspectors and agents were ever considered full partners in a national counterterrorism effort. Protecting borders was not a national security issue before 9/ 11.
(754) Permeable Aviation Security Hijackers studied publicly available materials on the aviation security system and used items that had less metal content than a handgun and were most like-ly permissible. Though two of the hijackers were on the U. S. TIPOFF terrorist watchlist, the FAA did not use TIPOFF data. The hijackers had to beat only one layer of security– the security checkpoint process. Even though several hijack-ers were selected for extra screening by the CAPPS system, this led only to greater scrutiny of their checked baggage. Once on board, the hijackers were faced with aircraft personnel who were trained to be nonconfrontational in the event of a hijacking.
(767) Financing The 9/ 11 attacks cost somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute. The operatives spent more than $270,000 in the United States. Additional expenses included travel to obtain passports and visas, travel to the United States, expenses incurred by the plot leader and facilitators outside the United States, and expenses incurred by the people selected to be hijackers who ulti-mately did not participate.
(776) The conspiracy made extensive use of banks in the United States. The hijackers opened accounts in their own names, using passports and other iden-tification documents. Their transactions were unremarkable and essentially invisible amid the billions of dollars flowing around the world every day. To date, we have not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/ 11 attacks. Al Qaeda had many sources of funding and a pre-9/ 11 annual budget estimated at $30 million. If a particular source of funds had dried up, al Qaeda could easily have found enough money elsewhere to fund the attack.
(787) An Improvised Homeland Defense The civilian and military defenders of the nation’s airspace– FAA and NORAD– were unprepared for the attacks launched against them. Given that lack of preparedness, they attempted and failed to improvise an effective home-land defense against an unprecedented challenge.
(794) The events of that morning do not reflect discredit on operational person-nel. NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector personnel reached out for information and made the best judgments they could based on the information they received. Individual FAA controllers, facility managers, and command center managers were creative and agile in recommending a nationwide alert, ground-stopping local traffic, ordering all aircraft nationwide to land, and executing that unprecedented order flawlessly.
(804) At more senior levels, communication was poor. Senior military and FAA leaders had no effective communication with each other. The chain of com-mand did not function well. The President could not reach some senior offi-cials. The Secretary of Defense did not enter the chain of command until the morning’s key events were over. Air National Guard units with different rules of engagement were scrambled without the knowledge of the President, NORAD, or the National Military Command Center.
(840) Congress The Congress, like the executive branch, responded slowly to the rise of transnational terrorism as a threat to national security. The legislative branch adjusted little and did not restructure itself to address changing threats. Its atten-tion to terrorism was episodic and splintered across several committees. The Congress gave little guidance to executive branch agencies on terrorism, did not reform them in any significant way to meet the threat, and did not systemati-cally perform robust oversight to identify, address, and attempt to resolve the many problems in national security and domestic agencies that became appar-ent in the aftermath of 9/ 11.
(853) So long as oversight is undermined by current congressional rules and reso-lutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need. The United States needs a strong, stable, and capable congressional com-mittee structure to give America’s national intelligence agencies oversight, sup-port, and leadership.
Thank you progressives and the DNC for once again putting us into a pre 9/11 state but this time you have gone even further to ensure we cannot be protect with your witchhunt of those in the CIA who put their lives on the line everyday to keep you safe and free to force your agenda’s down America’s throat and treating any American that does not follow your agenda as the enemy.
Oh you are the morally superior creatures on this earth or so you think! I have proven that not to be so people with morals don’t kill unborn children just because it’s an inconvience to their lifestyle.
(853) So long as oversight is undermined by current congressional rules and reso-lutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need. The United States needs a strong, stable, and capable congressional com-mittee structure to give America’s national intelligence agencies oversight, sup-port, and leadership.
@ yippie…
Dude… STOP posting and STFU! No one is reading your spew anymore! Torture is torture and is NOT the American way. PERIOD! Anyone involved should be held accountable. now STFU!
You deserve neither liberty nor safety.
oddjob | August 26th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Washington deliberately chose not to torture. Lincoln did not torture.
—
oh it’s obvious by this admins agenda that Americans are not going to have liberty nor provided national security. so you are correct about that you just got the context wrong. LOL torture I pray that the tatics the CIA used on these scumbag terrorists is ALL that will happen to Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl the 23yo American now in the hands of the enemy. He will unlike you learn the true definition of torture.The technique of waterboarding used by the military to train their soldiers is the same technique used on the terrorists and NOT the same technique of those prosecuted that you are refering to. But facts don’t seem to matter to you.
OH what a freakin joke Lincoln did not torture, get freakin real. damn you people would claim it’s raining outside when the sun is clearly beating down on your pointed little heads. I’m sure this well hidden little piece of history has escaped you! And of course it happened in Chicago! screw you buddy it is you that does not deserve the defense of our fine military and CIA.
Thousands of Confederate soldiers died in Chicago during the Civil War, not from battle wounds, but from disease, starvation, and torture as POWs in a military prison three miles from the Chicago Loop. Initially treated as a curiosity, attitudes changed when newspapers reported the deaths of Union soldiers on southern battlefields. As the prison population swelled, deadly diseases—smallpox, dysentery, and pneumonia—quickly spread through Camp Douglas. Starving prisoners caught stealing from garbage dumps were tortured or shot. Fearing a prisoner revolt, a military official declared martial law in Chicago, and civilians, including a Chicago mayor and his family, were arrested, tried, and sentenced by a military court. At the end of the Civil War, Camp Douglas closed, its buildings were demolished, and records were lost or destroyed. The exact number of dead is unknown; however, 6,000 Confederate soldiers incarcerated at Camp Douglas are buried among mayors and gangsters in a South Side cemetery.
you stfu ed and I know you are to chicken**it to read the 9/11 commission report! typical coward you have no clue what tortue is!
lol typical liberal ed only response is stfu. can’t even face the facts of the 9/11 report has to hide his head up his *ss to avoid reality and tell others to stfu. hey ed you really should read this
853) So long as oversight is undermined by current congressional rules and reso-lutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need. The United States needs a strong, stable, and capable congressional com-mittee structure to give America’s national intelligence agencies oversight, sup-port, and leadership.
Thousands of Confederate soldiers died in Chicago during the Civil War, not from battle wounds, but from disease, starvation, and torture as POWs in a military prison three miles from the Chicago Loop. Initially treated as a curiosity, attitudes changed when newspapers reported the deaths of Union soldiers on southern battlefields. As the prison population swelled, deadly diseases—smallpox, dysentery, and pneumonia—quickly spread through Camp Douglas. Starving prisoners caught stealing from garbage dumps were tortured or shot. Fearing a prisoner revolt, a military official declared martial law in Chicago, and civilians, including a Chicago mayor and his family, were arrested, tried, and sentenced by a military court. At the end of the Civil War, Camp Douglas closed, its buildings were demolished, and records were lost or destroyed. The exact number of dead is unknown; however, 6,000 Confederate soldiers incarcerated at Camp Douglas are buried among mayors and gangsters in a South Side cemetery.
I’m not surprised to learn the union had a prisoner of war camp as bad as Andersonville.
Yippie, “treating any American that doesn’t follow your agenda as the enemy.”
Are you really that stupid to make that accusation after your constant dumb-**** insults? Moron troll.
Yippie, I am overtaken with a darkly comic sense that your posts here symbolically represent all that is afoul with the sublimely oxymoronic “War on Terror.” (And America, in general, actually …)
I can only assume your ambitious past-and-text endeavor of the 9/11 Commission Report is meant to provide some kind of inexplicable justification for torture.
I would humbly suggest that others whose minds are unclouded by jingoistic propaganda and hatred consider the fact that the United States played a massive role in creating the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the overall contagion of radical Islamic fundamentalism.
If anyone hasn’t already read it, Ahmed Rashid’s excellent book, “Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and the Fundamentalism in Central Asia,” will give you plenty to gag on — U.S. sponsored poppy harvests, radical Islam schools and recruitment campaigns, terrorist training assistance, etc.
There’s a lot of great information out there about about Osama bin Laden’s U.S.-assisted rise to power and America’s intentional fomenting of Radical Islam in order to defeat the Soviet occupation of Afghanisatan in the ’80s. The largely substantiated whistleblower revelations of Sibel Edmonds are also interesting.
@al
are you really that stupid or do you just ignore facts and comments from those leading this country and their followers even on this blog?You can deny my comments all you want but the FACTS speak for themselves.
Pelosi-They’re Carrying Swastikas
Reid- Protesters are ‘evil-mongers’
Baird- What we’re seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics. I mean that very seriously
oddjob | August 26th, 2009 at 01:12 pm
I’m not surprised to learn the union had a prisoner of war camp as bad as Andersonville.
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ROTFLMAO just ignore the FACT that you claimed Lincoln did not torture after being proven wrong that he did infact torture and cover it up!What are you going to tell me next that this was not under his watch? I just proved you WRONG you claimed it’s the American way I proved with FACTS that you are indeed WRONG and grasping at straws. Lincoln did what it took to win the Civil War and that included torture of not only soldiers but women and children in the South. So make up another one or be a man and admit you are wrong.
@PMMF I am very familiar with how AQ became who they are and that does not excuse the 9/11 attack. First off torture is not saying you are going to rape someone’s mother or putting a drill near their head, so no I am not posting the 9/11 report to justify what you and your ilk claim is torture while in the same breath claiming killing an unborn child is a right and a moral one at that.
I posted the report in hopes that one of you dimwits would have a light ding in your head that the DNC and their witch hunt with the CIA will once again bring this nation to it’s knees while we watch on our 24 hour news more cities being destoryed by our enemies. But I see it is of no concern to you people. All you care about is some sick type of revenge at the cost of American lives wasn’t once enough?
Does it matter now that the US supported Bin Laden in Afghan against the Soviets? Nope it sure doesn’t all that matter or should matter is that we keep America safe from those that will give their lives to kill as many americans as they can and that include YOU and your family. I am sorry I cannot be like you folks and just pretend there is no threat and that America will not be hole again until someone anyone is tried and convicted for screaming at a terrorists. It’s beyond reproach and once again shows that the DNC and their followers do not put America first. It’s party first come hell or high water regardless if thousands of innocent Americans loose their lives. You can play that game I refuse.
So long as oversight is undermined by current congressional rules and reso-lutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need. The United States needs a strong, stable, and capable congressional com-mittee structure to give America’s national intelligence agencies oversight, sup-port, and leadership
@Yippie: You’re right! It is indeed a MIRACLE — I just got your “ding!” I am “hole” now.
I can only hope the others who don’t agree with you also come to understand how they are evil.
Let the Tree of Liberty be watered with the Ensure Plus-generated piss and **** of our enemies.
Hallelujah.
Thank goodness, Yippie, that your impassioned insults,
… and vitriol have shown me the light.
So long as oversight is undermined by current congressional rules and reso-lutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want and need.
So long as a measurable minority agitates for this the rest of us are in danger.
– Andrew Sullivan
@PMMF resorting to typo’s for your argument wow you sure got the right stuff! I hardly doubt you see any light even if it hit you dead square in the eyes.
oddball the only facists are the one in power now, you know the ones that have nationalized the financial and car industry and are working on nationilizing healthcare oh and don’t forget cap n tax!
But I can understand why you think defending Americans lives with harsh interogations is fascists most that have no clue think like you.
Here’s to hoping that each and every one of your family members is safe and well protected by those you are on a witchhunt to prosecute. Even though you don’t deserve it!
Yippie you ask for permission for assault when other methods work much better. You just want to inflict pain. Just admit it.
You are a complete coward.
@james I will proudly wear your badge of coward I would not let one American die even if it meant waterboarding a terrorists, can you say the same coward? And it would not be just one American dying it would be more like a city or two full of Americans. You on the other hand would let not only one American die but cities full of Americans die because your tickle feather did not cause the terrorist to give up the information.
So who is the coward?
Those in the CIA protecting America are trying to stop pain from being inflicted on Americans, but leave it to you and others to turn it around and make the CIA the enemy! We are talking about top AQ terrorists and the planner of 9/11 not frat boys.
so go blow smoke out your ears!
opps that is now considered torture and deserves life behind bars! snort!
Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the 9-11 commission report, was the mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.
Nashiri was also the target of an “unauthorized” CIA interrogation technique (that had not been legally vetted by the Justice Department) that is described in a May 7, 2004, CIA inspector general’s report that was partially declassified by the Obama administration this week.
CIA officers blew smoke in Nashiri’s face, according to the report, and they used cigars.
The IG’s office described this smoke-blowing as one of several “unauthorized or undocumented techniques” it discovered had been used in isolated incidents by CIA employees interrogating high-level al-Qaida terrorists
oh btw James could you provide some proof of the other methods that work so well? Seems like the only way to stop the Nazi’s was to bomb them to pieces. Talking sure did not do a dang thing.
Look around the globe and show me where other methods have worked and if they work so well why right now are there so many conflicts in this world? Why is most of africa a war zone? You better get to talking and using those other methods the world is exploding with violence.
Double jeopardy?
Holder a liar to get confirmed?
oh surely not! but then again this is the same man that drop legitimate charges of the black panthers in their jack boots giving some cracker voter intimindation. caught on tape no less!
also the same holder that pardoned Marc Rich, a FLAN terrorists
The FALN terrorist’s were behind more than 120 bomb attacks on United States targets between 1974 and 1983:
Thank you Panetta for being a stand up guy and a democrat to boot. Don’t let your agents down you are all they have left to fight for them beside many Americans like myself. I guess reality is thicker than party when it comes to national security and bullhockey witch hunts to appease some political hacks. Nancy is slick once she realized her botoass was on the line they changed the game from cheney/bush to the lowest man on the totem pole. what an embarrassment that women is let alone a hypocrite she knew and was briefed along with many other D’s including Rockefellar. no moral compass at all when it comes to the dumbos.
Panetta loses battle over CIA abuse probes
However, in a memo to CIA employees Monday that was shared with the press, Mr. Panetta hinted at his disagreement with the administration’s decisions, which some analysts and members of Congress have said could further demoralize the agency and chill future intelligence collection from terrorist suspects.
He wrote that “career prosecutors have [already] examined” the 2004 findings. He added, “They worked carefully and thoroughly, sometimes taking years to decide if prosecution was warranted or not.”
“My primary interest – when it comes to a program that no longer exists – is to stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given,” Mr. Panetta wrote.
Sen. Christopher S. Bond, Missouri Republican and vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, criticized the administration decisions and said that Mr. Holder went back on a promise not to prosecute CIA officers made in private conversation before the Senate voted to confirm him.
“I think Holder has certainly not honored the statements he made to me and other senators during the confirmation process. I supported him because I understood he would not do this,” Mr. Bond said.
A former senior U.S. intelligence official told The Washington Times that the decision raised the prospect of double jeopardy for the individuals cited in the Inspector General’s report. The names of the interrogators were not released to the public.
“All the significant cases were referred to the Department of Justice [under the George W. Bush administration] and career prosecutors decided not to indict them,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“Many were disciplined, reprimanded [or] … their careers severely damaged or ended. … Now this administration comes along and says they are going to look at it again.”
Mr. Panetta wrote that the CIA had been “aggressive over the years in seeking new opinions from the Department of Justice as the legal landscape changed. The Agency sought and received multiple written assurances that its methods were lawful. The CIA has a strong record in terms of following legal guidance and informing the Department of Justice of potentially illegal conduct.”
washtimes.com/news/2009/aug/25/cia-director-leon-e-panetta-argued-within-the-obam/?feat=home_headlines
Thanks for the awesome post, This was exactly the thing I needed to see