9/11 Commission Issues Report; Victims' Families Have Mixed Feelings About 9/11 Report; What Are the Political Implications of 9/11 Report?
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): After 20 months.</s>RICHARD CLARKE, FORMER COUNTERTERRORISM ADVISER: I failed you.</s>ZAHN: After 160 witnesses, after 2.5 million pages of documents, after all this, the final word from the 9/11 Commission. And those Democrats.</s>CHEVY CHASE, ACTOR: I'm frightened by Bush.</s>MICHAEL MOORE, FILMMAKER/AUTHOR: George W. Bush and his ilk, they actually despise our troops.</s>ZAHN: And their controversial friends.</s>ZAHN: Good evening. Welcome. Thanks so much for being with us tonight. If you were expecting the final report from the 9/11 Commission to name heads that should roll, you may be disappointed tonight. The commissioners, five Republicans, five Democrats, issued a unanimous report today sparing any individuals of blame. But the report does identify failures, oversights and many lost opportunities. It also makes urgent recommendations to prevent another attack as bad or worse than 9/11. On that day nearly three years ago, the report says the nation was shocked, but should not have been surprised.</s>THOMAS KEAN, CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: On that September day, we were unprepared. We did not grasp the magnitude of a threat that had been gathering over a considerable period of time. As we detail in our report, this was a failure of policy, management, capability, and, above all, a failure of imagination.</s>ZAHN (voice-over): On that day, nearly 3,000 people were killed. The 567-page report concluded that government agencies didn't share information or leads to keep pace with the enemy, that the failures to place over many years and many administrations, and that the response on 9/11 was improvised and ineffective.</s>LEE HAMILTON, VICE-CHAIRMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION: The fact of the matter is, we just didn't get it in this country. We could not comprehend that people wanted to kill us, they wanted to hijack airplanes and fly them into big buildings and important buildings.</s>ZAHN: The report provided more specifics, identifying nine points of vulnerability, more missed opportunities. In addition:</s>KEAN: Our military forces and covert action capabilities did not have the options on the table to defeat al Qaeda or kill or capture either bin Laden or his top lieutenants.</s>ZAHN: The report emphasized how successfully the 9/11 hijackers identified U.S. vulnerabilities and preyed on them.</s>KEAN: Our government did not watch-list future hijackers, Hazmi and Midhar before they arrived in the United States or take adequate steps to find them once they were here.</s>ZAHN: The CIA failed to put 9/11 hijacker Khalid al-Midhar on a watch list or notify the FBI when it learned he had obtained a U.S. visa in 2000, nor did the CIA develop plans to track hijacker al- Midhar or hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi when it learned al-Hazmi had obtained a U.S. visa and had flown to Los Angeles. The CIA did not notify the FBI when it learned in January 2001 that al-Midhar had met with a major figure in the plot to bomb the USS Cole in Yemen.</s>KEAN: They did not link the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, described as interested in flight training for the purpose of using airplanes as a terrorist act to the heightened indications of attack. Our government did not discover false statements and visa applications or recognize passports that were manipulated in a fraudulent manner. Our government did not expand no-fly lists to include names from terrorist watch lists or require airline passengers to be more thoroughly screened.</s>ZAHN: The problem of lax airport security made far more chilling yesterday when this surveillance tape was made public showing some of the hijackers passing through security checks at Dulles Airport on 9/11.</s>KEAN: Our border, immigration and aviation security agencies were not integrated into the counterterrorism effort.</s>ZAHN: Problems across the board. Yet, the report does not place blame on any one agency or individual.</s>KEAN: Our goal is to prevent future attacks. Every expert with whom we spoke told us an attack of even greater magnitude is now possible and even probable. We do not have the luxury of time. We must prepare and we must act.</s>ZAHN: Two 9/11 Commission members are with us tonight from Washington, Democrat Jamie Gorelick and former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and Republican Slade Gorton, former senator from Washington state. Welcome to you both.</s>SLADE GORTON, FORMER U.S. SENATOR: Thank you.</s>ZAHN: Thank you. Commissioner Gorelick, among the things that the commission cites is -- quote -- "the failure of imagination" as the most important reason that the U.S. was unprepared for 9/11. Are we armed with a broad enough collective sense of imagination now?</s>JAMIE GORELICK, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: Yes and no. We are clearly more aware of the terrorist threat. We are more cognizant of the things that we should be looking at and collecting, but we are not collectively organized. I mean, one salient fact comes out of our report, which is that we do not have unity of effort. And that is why we've made the recommendations we have to bring people together, to cross-pollinate, to cross-fertilize and to make sure we are thinking as agilely and creatively as the enemy is.</s>ZAHN: What about that enemy, Commissioner Gorton, that you, in listening to the commission and hearing today, would be led to believe that perhaps al Qaeda is smarter than us, more fleet-footed than we are?</s>GORTON: Al Qaeda certainly was smarter and more fleet-footed than we were before 9/11. For less than $500,000, they defeated every American defense mechanism. And nothing that any of our intelligence or armed forces entities did in dealing with terrorism pre-9/11 even so much as slowed down that attack. Al Qaeda as an individual organization is far more decentralized today because much of it has been destroyed. Probably its ability to plan long term is lessened, but, at the same time, there are more organizations, more organizations copying the kind of activities al Qaeda engaged in, which spreads the danger more broadly. And while we have made many positive changes and while we must reflect on the fact that there have not been any successful attacks in the United States for well over two years, the danger is still very much there. And unless we take the measures that we've recommended in this report, those dangers will probably increase.</s>ZAHN: And Commissioner Gorelick, of all the failures cited, including intelligence gathering, aviation security and emergency response and poor congressional oversight, which of these has really been fixed in a satisfactory way?</s>GORELICK: We've begun to fix most of them. I'm not sure we've made much progress on what is one of the most important, which is congressional oversight. We have certainly become more alert. The FBI has certainly taken steps to turn itself from a law enforcement agency principally to one that also cares very deeply and is skilled at intelligence. But we, I think unanimously, believe that we need to have a much higher level of effort and we need to take down the obstacles to people cooperating with each other and coordinating with each other across spectrum, which they're not doing today.</s>ZAHN: Senator Gorton, finally tonight, we know that a lot of the 9/11 families we have interviewed over the last several years were really hoping that in this report you would see a concrete target for their anger and their blame. The report does not do that. Do you understand why some of those folks might be disappointed tonight?</s>GORTON: Well, of course we understand that, but we had to look to the statutory duties that were set out for us. And they were fundamentally two in nature. One was to write a factual report that gave the history of all of the important facts that led up to al Qaeda, all of the decisions, all of the decisional failures that led up to 9/11 in a fashion that it would be as relevant 50 years from today as it is today and to use those facts to look forward and to recommend steps in the future. We were appointed in a partisan city by partisans in the Congress and in the White House. We have managed to come together unanimously on every single word in our report and on every single footnote, largely because we did not engage in the blame game. But there are plenty of facts in this book and in this report that allow other people to make whatever conclusions they reach. We've set out those facts for the people of the United States. We've recommended how we can be safer in the future. Those were our two charges. Conclusions of other natures are for other people to make.</s>ZAHN: Slade Gorton, Jamie Gorelick, please stand by. We are going to be coming back to you in a few moments. But, nearly, as we mentioned, 3,000 people died on 9/11. Many victims' families have been watching the commission's work from the very beginning. Joining us now, Debra Burlingame, whose brother Charles F. Burlingame III was the captain of American Flight 77, which slammed into the Pentagon, and Robert McIlvaine, whose son Bobby died at the World Trade Center. Good to see both of you.</s>DEBRA BURLINGAME, SISTER OF SEPTEMBER 11 VICTIM: Hi, Paula.</s>ZAHN: Were you satisfied with the findings of this report?</s>BURLINGAME: Well, of course, I haven't read the entire report. It's 500 pages long. But we did get an overview today from the commissioners, the families, and they hit the high points. And I am satisfied, because I believe after the joint inquiry that the main focus in our first line of defense is intelligence and domestic security.</s>ZAHN: Bob, I know that some family members I've spoken with today were disappointed that the indictments in these reports were so broad, that there were no individuals really single out in this report. Do you feel that way?</s>ROBERT MCILVAINE, FATHER OF SEPTEMBER 11 VICTIM: Well, I'm very upset and I'm very angry, because I don't know why we can't have accountability, you know? It's supposed to be a democracy. A lot of people messed up horribly, and my son suffered a horrible death. And we gloss over this -- failure of imagination. I have no clue what that means, imagination. It didn't take a lot of imagination. The threat is there. I want to know why couldn't someone during the summer of 2001 just put out a report to the FAA, the FAA get information. I want to put blame. I'm angry at George Bush. I'm angry at the CIA. I'm angry at the FBI. But no one is held accountable. I don't care what they say about the report. They still could have held people accountable. Some heads should be rolling.</s>ZAHN: Debra?</s>BURLINGAME: Well, I think one of the things that the commissioners made clear today is that it wasn't people who failed us. It was institutions that failed us. It was the systemic problems with the intelligence gathering analysis and sharing. At the FBI, it wasn't need to share. It was need to know. And it was a culture. It was a cultural problem. So even in the snippets of tape that you heard, for instance, at the air traffic control centers, they sound disorganized. But they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. They were following protocol and they were faced with something that they hadn't been faced with ever before. They thought they had a conventional hijacking. There was nothing in any of the threat reporting that summer that suggested it would be anything but a conventional hijacking. They didn't know when and where and they certainly didn't know four airplanes.</s>ZAHN: Bob, based on your briefings and everything you have read over the last several years, in your mind, if you have such a problem with this failure of imagination concept, do you believe that someone in the government should have been able to figure it out that jets, commercial jets could ultimately be used as bombs?</s>MCILVAINE: There's no question on my mind. I made all the commission hearings. I remember Tenet saying -- my hair was on fire. And I specifically remember the one time he said to the panel, there's just so much information I could have given the administration, but I can't make policy. And talking to -- I mean, hearing the FBI, hearing the CIA, hearing the State Department, I don't think those barriers were as high as everyone talks about. The millennium threat, it seems like everybody was working together. I mean, to me, the warnings, like Debra said, they had no warnings about hijacked planes. There was plenty of warnings about hijacked planes. In July, Richard Clarke was there. He warned that there was an imminent attack coming. Ashcroft was warned. They did not make terrorism a priority in the summer. They met once in the entire summer. And this is what's mindboggling to me. Yet, they say, intelligence failures. But to me, the failures starts right at the top.</s>ZAHN: Debra, last night, we saw for the first time the dramatic video of the five high hijackers who seemed to effortlessly get on board that flight from Dulles Airport that your brother piloted. When you saw this video, which we're going to see here shortly, what went through your mind?</s>BURLINGAME: You know, the families knew that this video existed and it was very hard to see. It is still very, very hard for me to look at that video, because knowing that four of those five hijackers were put through secondary screening, seeing the guys, we are fairly certain which ones of the five actually carried out the murders in the cockpit. So that's very hard to look at. But, you know, it's easy in hindsight to see what we all should have done, what could have been done. But the fact of the matter is that those five hijackers, they hadn't committed any crimes until they stormed the cockpit. They were carrying box cutters. Box cutters were permissible. We didn't have a proper passenger screening in place. We still, by the way, don't have a proper passenger screening in place. So another thing that went through my mind, aside from the fact that looking at it, knowing that my brother had probably two hours left to live at that point, is that we still are not -- we still need to task our leaders to demand of the airlines that they do what they have to do and to stop taking airline lobby money, because we're talking about national security and that should not be for sale.</s>ZAHN: And the issue of security is something we will address with you two in a couple of minutes, if you wouldn't mind staying with us, Bob and Debra. We're going to take a short break here. When we come back, preventing another September 11, what the report says we should do to protect ourselves against future terror. We'll be right back.