How the 9/11 Report Changed America

so yes maybe the receptions um uh is well every day someone sitting here no thanks now thank you okay all right yes [Music] um yes [Applause] somebody's hi i'm evan thomas i'm the visiting professor over at the shorenstein center here and an editor at newsweek and uh i want to welcome you to the uh forum tonight sponsored by the institute of politics and by uh newsweek magazine uh tonight's forum is how the 911 commission uh changed america and we're going to talk on lots of different levels here but uh sort of a starting point would be that lee hamilton who ran the commission said that if the lawmakers didn't enact the recommendations of this commission they would be at least partly to blame if there was another terrorist attack well it looks like the legislation is now tied up mired in on the hill and we're going to talk a little bit about what happened why that got tangled up and also what it means what it really means to to your security in the and the security of the country we have an uh talented and informed panel tonight my colleague to the left michael isakoff is our star investigative reporter he won a national magazine award for his breaking and covering of the lewinsky scandal in 1998. he's been writing about terrorism and intelligence issues for a very long time uh he's broken some big stories uh after 9 11 and writes a web column on tuesdays is it wednesdays wednesdays which you should go to at the newsweek website full of juicy tidbits uh next to mike vicki duvall was a lawyer and assistant general counsel at the central intelligence agency in the late 90s went to the hill where she became general counsel of the senate intelligence committee and the minority council she's up here at uh as a fellow at the institute of politics next to her is congressman chris chase who has been on the hill for a long time on big jobs that are relevant uh relevant to this uh he's on i also have to read my notes for this committee the house subcommittee on national security emerging threats and international affairs which sounds like a mouthful but a very important committee he's also vice chairman of the house budget committee and the house government reform committee and he's on the house select committee uh on homeland security so he is somebody who is very well versed in these uh and these matters next to him phil sharp i was a congressman from indiana for 20 years he was the head of the institute of politics here from 1995 to 1998 and is now back as the interim head over here at the iop and he understands the hill about as well as anybody let me start off with mike and get you mike to tell us a little bit about how the commission was created a little bit about the politics behind that and what they produced sure well first of all you know bottom line what they produced is one of the most remarkable government documents that's ever come out a bestseller a government report that's actually readable that is full of really juicy information so unlike you know virtually every other government report um uh i i've read um and um uh i don't know how many of you have actually sort of you know plowed your way through it but um you know uh the the report's a great read and the footnotes are a fascinating read i mean i'm i've i've spent literally weeks just buried in those footnotes um because they reference all sorts of super highly classified documents that we didn't even know existed um before although although there is a bit of a catch 22 to the whole thing because they wrote it you know these are all written by historians who are trying to write this you know in academics we're trying to write it in sort of normal historical and academic style so the footnotes read c c i a interrogation report of khalid sheikh mohammed number 572. well of course we can't see cia interrogation report number 572 because it's like about the most highly classified document there is and we're probably not going to see it for another 20 30 50 years who knows um so um there's a bit of a bait and switch to that aspect of it but still there's all sorts of nuggets in it um and uh you know this is something that uh uh the the overall document itself the idea that there would be a really full blown informative account of what went on of the 9 11 plot and of how our government agencies responded to the threat of al qaeda over the years was simply unimaginable um three or four years ago or three years ago in the wake of the 9 11 attacks right after the 9 11 attacks shortly thereafter uh there were there were you know from the beginning sort of questions about how did this happen what did the government know uh how did our government agencies who were responsible for for preventing this sort of thing dropped the ball and where and why and from the beginning there was just an absolute uh resistance from the white house and the bush administration to any sort of independent look into the events of 9 11. now part of this was understandable certainly at the beginning of the government was like the rest of the country were shell-shocked people were trying to deal with the consequences of 9 11 was there going to be another attack we had to track down as many people as we can find and the idea of diverting any sort of resources or having government counterterrorism officials spending time answering questions instead of doing their job seemed quite logically to be at that point in time a distraction but as time went on and months went on and the clamor began from members of congress and most importantly the 911 families who wanted answers themselves the uh another factor and came came into play and that is the sort of general resistance of this white house and this administration to um uh inquiries into independent inquiries into how they do business i mean this is for some in the administration and i think principally of the vice president who played a huge role in these matters uh this is a matter of theology um with him um that outside inquiries whether by congress or independent commissions are bad for government um bad for government agencies um dick cheney was a deputy chief of staff to uh gerald ford and then chief of staff during the 1970s when the church committee uh began looking into the cia and uncovering all sorts of sordid business such as assassination plots and um and related matters and um for some that was a important public uh um undertaking that uh shed light on dark doings by the government but for others like and and cheney would be chief among them um this was something that damaged the cia hurt morale hurt its ability to defend the country so uh there was really this sort of basic philosophical opposition to the idea of an inquiry um and he uh worked with uh allied members of congress to shut down uh pushes uh in those early days 2002 uh to an investigation what changed it um first and foremost i think it was the uh the lobbying uh uh and moral suasion of the 911 families um you've probably seen many of them on tv talk shows they're bright articulate they are um and they were very forceful they found a powerful uh some powerful allies principally john mccain um and uh and joe lieberman um who uh pushed this strongly uh and they found allies uh from the press people like myself who naturally uh thought that um you know i am pro investigation i like to see uh inquisitions into how government uh officials do their job uh one it makes good stories and also i believe it adds it is an important check on how government uh functions and especially uh during that year after 9 11 uh when uh we knew so little we're told so little um uh you know the fbi and cia and their best of days are not exactly um fountains of information and open to public scrutiny but in the uh in the days of the of those in that first year of the war on terror they were particularly obtuse in opaque and their refusal to answer questions not just about what was going on now but about the screw-ups that led to 911 um was only fed the work of the the the energy of people like myself uh to say there's more stories here there's more information that the public deserves to know and um you know uh over time uh the uh and in part through the work of the intelligence committees um which did establish a joint intelligence committee and did the first take first cut on what happened at 9 11 that added momentum for more answers and i can say we finally got that in a rather extraordinary report and that's the 911 commission report vicki talk to us a little bit about being on the hill uh when all this movement started and and what the politics were there and why it's so hard to get something like this going well yes i mean the i agree with almost everything that michael said it was a very very difficult process to move toward a commission the our committees the senate intelligence committee and the house intelligence committee came together and formed a joint committee to look at the intelligence failures before 9 11. the failures of our government before 9 11 were far broader than that and they worked hard and produced a pretty good report you know it's congress congress does what congress does and it no offense but it is it is a political venue and as it should be but um i think they uh reached the conclusion at the end in a bipartisan partisan way that more needed to be done and the families wanted more to be done and our committees the chairman and vice chairman of both committees met with the families uh regularly on these issues and they really wanted a commission to look again at some of the intelligence issues but also to look at the other aspects of the problem negotiating that bill to create the commission our one of our committee's joint committee's recommendations was to create the commission was very painful um i'd been through i wasn't on the hill all that long but i've been through many legislative negotiations and they're all painful in their own way but uh this one really took the cake uh we it was an uphill battle from day one uh the administration sent their team of negotiators down and a lot of meetings a lot of painful screaming and yelling and this that and the other and every aspect of the bill was fought by the administration every aspect of the bill from the scope of the inquiry to who would be uh who would get to appoint the members of the commission to how many of them would be democrats and how many would be republicans to who would be whether the chairman would be joint or whether the republican would be the chairman and the democrat the vice chairman it went on and on and on and on and on and uh we ultimately came out with i think pretty much we got most of what we wanted and again i echo what what michael said the 9 11 families are practically well not practical they are the most effective lobbying organization um i've ever seen i think uh they have been able to take an issue that they have an emotional investment in and put the emotions aside and become knowledgeable in these issues and to push for reform uh and it's quite remarkable and it has been very successful and this is one of the examples of how it's been successful um does that answer your question or do you sure sure uh chris shays uh uh that it's a happy story of the commission getting going but now the legislation seems to be stuck uh talk to us a little bit about how things got going and your role in that and why uh things aren't going anymore yeah let me um first say to you that um i represent a part of the country where we lost 70 families and so when you talk about the 911 families i think of a of a of a beverly eckerd who spoke to her husband for almost an hour trying to on the phone as he was trapped in this building honey run up go upstairs the door is locked go downstairs and so this is a woman who has the grief of losing her husband and the reality that she spoke with him almost for an hour before his final moment or mary fetch it who saw her 25 year old son just disappears this building collapses and those are two of the very active proponents here they are a powerful force i would suggest though they have more power and influence in the east than they do in the west i i encounter people in california and others who don't really feel the same intensity that we do closer to new york um i also want to say i know it's it's popular to try to think that everyone had bad motives when they fought something the the president was correct in just making sure that instead of doing a pearl harbor investigation and then having everyone seek to protect themselves he just basically said we're not going to do that we're all going to paddle in the same direction we're all going to get ourselves in a better position than we are right now and so that's what happened but ultimately it made huge sense to have a commission but it was logical that this administration would care particularly in a presidential year how it was set up and all the things they opposed earlier would have resulted in a commission that would have failed i mean a commission at first that wouldn't have we had a vote at in the beginning where the we the the commission would only have jurisdiction to look at intelligence more than looking at the previous administration this administration in congress then there was this debate on who should have subpoena power and as this white house wrestled with it they opposed and i agreed and i also opposed the fact they were going to allow republicans or democrats to have subpoena power without getting the consent of the other side and what would have happened is democrats would have gone after bush and republicans would have gone after clinton and it would have been a hugely uh it would have been a huge failure it would have been embarrassment to the country and it would have taken away our our self-esteem about our ability to cope with this what this commission did and i agree it was sacred the work they did was sacred now when they came before our commission a committee uh af in august to talk about what they did they said there was fighting they were you know kind of making mistakes same public statements looking a little political and then they said they started to read what the staff had written about what happened on september 11th and they realized that they were being asked to do something hugely important and they all got together and made certain agreements and one of the agreements they clearly made was to blame no one uh you blame this we'll blame that i mean they did they blame no one other than groups they blame the clinton administration for eight years of failing to deal with this issue they blamed the bush administration for eight months but under his watch for dealing with this issue they blame congress and rightfully so for having basically no oversight in any real way of the intelligence community and they blame the intelligence community in a way that was i think unbelievably significant and and they they complimented no one that was basically the bottom line they chose to seek no heroes in this but the good news is we got ourselves along in this process the good news is this commission has done great work and my view was that we should pass this legislation and from a political standpoint it blows me away that this president didn't you know breathe a sigh of relief that it wasn't a political document that it was a fair document and the recommendations for the most part were very very sensible and what's happened basically is there is disagreement the house of representatives republicans now were in charge with democrats as well they don't want to reorganize there's the part that you reorganize the administration and there's the part that you reorganize congress i mean crazy to have a select committee on homeland securing 80 committees that basically interface with the secretary of homeland security one committee should have that responsibility no committee has budgetary authority over the intelligence committee and and wisely the commission said you need to you know who has oversight over the intelligence committee's budget it comes out of the subcommittee on appropriations on military and then you have this hugely interesting thing and this gets more to your question basically eighty percent of the budget is defense they they have eighty percent and it's not hard to understand what budget passes every year so easily it's the defense budget what what what committee is more likely to capture more responsibility for intelligence it's going to be the defense committee and so what you see right now is you see people on the armed services committee that don't want this to have to have a director of of intelligence to have authority over things that were in the the the armed services committee because the armed services committee and the appropriations committee that oversees defense will give up a significant amount of power the irony is and this was recorded at one point the chairman of the armed services committee in the senate said what are they talking about we do tremendous oversight of the intelligence committee and john mccain stood up in this meeting in front of the commission members and the other members and said what are you talking about john we only spent 10 minutes and no one came back there has been no oversight so i guess i'll conclude by saying to you there this is not move forward sadly because i think the administration simply didn't tell the republicans in congress to do what the senate did house senate republicans and democrats they backed off a bit i think they didn't want to offend the speaker who's done so much for this administration i think that was a significant mistake they allowed rumsfeld to come and talk privately about how it would be a huge mistake to give authority to the director and take it away from defense and yet the administration was saying this made sense and and so what you have right now is you have republicans in the house of representatives who basically have refused to do what the democrats in the house want to do the democrats in the senate the democrats the republicans in the senate and what the white house for the most part says makes sense and so we have no no final product uh phil before i turn to you i just want to let the audience know we have copies of this very excellent report that newsweek is providing over here anybody who wants it's unbelievable reading this is this is the first government report that may actually win a national book award or a pulitzer prize it's a gripping read and newsweek is providing them free they're sitting over there on that table over there so after we're done just go pick one up and uh i think you'll be amazed phil let's take a step back here it's hard for american people to hear one month that this their lives in effect are at risk if if uh if these recommendations are not enacted by congress and yet a couple of months later to get the sense that never mind you know i mean it's just hard to make sense of that can you you've been around capitol hill a long time can you explain how that could happen and and and beyond that should we be totally discouraged about this or is this just one iteration that's going to go someplace well first of all it's not over until it's over and even though it looks like the legislation cannot be adopted before next tuesday the fact is that we are going to probably hear a lot about this in the next three or four days in a number of congressional races in a number of places around the country and the statement of the families was very harsh and very stern about the failure that they see coming on this and if it continues as was the past their capacity to capture uh news attention and whatnot i think that will be an ongoing proposition i i just like to step back and say one thing it's hard to underestimate the power of this report and how unusual it is in american politics we simply look around today or almost at any time it's hard to find any agency any document that has the authority that people look to and respect and will acknowledge as sort of a baseline of information on the issue that chris raised this election bitter as it is could be rife with recrimination about you were responsible or they were responsible uh and caused this or failed the country instead it did manage on a bipartisan basis to remove that issue by as you say it spread around the the concern about everybody's behavior and frankly eliminated the capacity for anybody to point out to the other the other aspect of its authoritativeness is again and again we've seen in this campaign we see in news stories where the testing of what happened cheney argues that there is a greater connection between 911 and sodom is saying what is the first answer of the critics or the news media it is look to the report the report is the answer the report does not say that and and so this has gotten a stature that is absolutely rare in american politics but it's not just a statue about what happened in the description but it's also on the recommendations many of these recommendations i think are not new they come out of a variety of commissions that have been articulated for four or five years this is what we should do but these people bringing them together in the way they did have now moved the congress in ways the american people never paying attention they don't have any reason to to how you arrange the boxes and the authorities in the cia and the defense department they expect the experts to do that they don't expect to make that judgment themselves the judgment they're making is are you or members of congress when myself when i was there are you doing the job and i think some of them are going to get hit pretty hard in the next few days over not getting this job done so that it'll be interesting to see whether or not they feel compelled in the session afterward to do it uh let's talk for a second about the substance the core of this uh the most uh the sort of the main recommendation i would say would be to have a a super cia director not really a director of intelligence who would oversee this vast empire how important is that to our security to to keeping us safe is that really as critical as as the as the commission has made it made it sound mike um you know uh i i differ a little bit from um uh uh congressman sharp and congressman shays on this in the sense that while having praised the report as a remarkable document of of fact-gathering um there is a bit of a disconnect between the narrative of what happened and what went and and how government agencies screwed up and didn't handle the problem and the recommendations in the sense that the commission was looking at the world as it looked on september 11 2001. they based their recommendations on how the the world looked how the enemy looked al qaeda looked in september 11 2001 and how the government looked 2001. the fact is a lot has changed since 2000 uh since uh september 11th uh the government has been reorganized in large ways the orientation of government agencies has changed dramatically uh in the fbi and the justice department and the cia we have this new department of homeland security um and there can't be any question that uh because of the attacks of 9 11. uh terrorism and the terror threat is uh first and foremost on the agenda of uh every government bureaucrat who has any remotely tangential responsibility for um for dealing with it um so i you know the the purpose the you know the thinking behind creating this supernational intelligence director intelligence czar is he would mobilize the forces of the government to deal with the pressing national threat that the country was facing um you can argue and i don't have any strong views on this that i'm just saying that you can certainly argue that in you know in the sense that this ultimately everything in government is political what what the political leadership wants the bureaucrats do um that's generally the way the thing works and uh there's no question with terrorism first and foremost as a political issue uh the bureaucracy has been mobilized the question is what happens when that political uh leadership lags uh and other uh matters come up um i'm not discounting the uh the proposal for a national intelligence director i think some of the other you know a couple of the other proposals uh uh you know creating the counterterrorism center uh as part of the uh executive office of the president does raise questions about politicization of intelligence and we certainly if you took another intelligence fiasco the iraq war and how we got it all wrong and was intelligence politicized because there was a political agenda to do something that the intelligence didn't support that would argue for perhaps less of a politicized intelligence bureaucracy and yet the thrust of the 9 11 commission recommendations is to make them more political in the sense that more accountable to what the white house says so i think that there's legitimate arguments on both sides i i you know you know is the country in more danger because the 9 11 commission recommendations have not been enacted um i think that's an open question vicky do you have a opinion about that yes i do i think that the national intelligence director is is critical reform um i think a lot of people have it's not a new idea it's been around a long time it was in legislation proposed by senator feinstein after september 11th it's been languishing um i think that we shouldn't have to need it i think that the whole point of creating the central intelligence agency and having a director of central intelligence you know the dci george tenet and his predecessors have two jobs they have to be the head of the cia but they also are supposed to be the head and the coordinator of all the 15 agencies of the community including those that are part of the department of defense and some of the most important ones where most of our money goes are part of the department of defense but the dci nevertheless is supposed to have control over them as a practical matter over the years and it's not the fault of one dci or another because most of them had this problem uh they didn't have effective control and uh that's always been a problem it was a problem long before 9 11 it was a problem right before 9 11 and it is still a problem um i disagree with michael on one point i don't think the 911 commission report expects the new national intelligence director to be more political um he will be a political appointee but so is the dci and so are all the other most of the other heads of the of the various agencies but intelligence is not political um intelligence officers at cia where i worked hate politics uh they're more likely to be able to tell you the hat size of the deputy defense minister in the country of atlantis than who their own congressman is they distrust politics and they're supposed to they are not policy makers they do not make policy they provide information and analysis for policy makers to do their jobs at any time the administration and i think we're going to talk later about whether this administration has done that anytime the administration tries to politicize the intelligence process the american people are going to lose you spend a lot of money a whole lot of money to have this function in government and if it's politicized you're losing your money so your tax dollars are wasted and i think that this new intel national intelligence director there are disagreements uh uh george tenet has been quoted many times and there's something to be said for what he said that that if you create another level and then the director of everything does not have his own constituency does not have his own troops as it were then he won't have enough power when he walks into the oval office and talks to the president if the briefer of the president has to be briefed before he can brief the president is he really going to be able to to sell to him what needs to be can he to speak the truth to power if he doesn't have his own constituency and i think that remains to be seen but frankly we don't have any choice because this system is not working and uh we need to try something else i think the most stunning point that was made by the commission and really one of the bravest was they said that this isn't a war against terrorism like some incorporeal being it's a war against islamist terrorists and they're real people trying to do pretty terrible things and it has been the reality for the last 30 years so i first want to say that i view 9 11 as a wake-up call and i don't think our country is awake i mean i'm pretty convinced it's not i mean the the threat is there we had three commissions before september 11th come before my committee their brambler commission the heart revenue commission the gilmore commission they all said there is a serious terrorist threat we need an assessment of the threat we need a strategy to implement it we need a strategy to deal with it and to reorganize our government to implement the strategy and when i had conversations with people before 9 11 they said what are we great britain i mean it was like foreign to them this is a a strategy that is no longer containment reaction and mutually assured destruction this is a strategy that has to be detection prevention it may have to be preemptive and sometimes it may have to be unilateral that's the reality whether it is senator kerry becoming president he will still be faced with a decision on whether it needs to be preempted if when we had a group of scientists come before my committee before september 11th and say their biggest fear was he was a noted medical editor of a major medical magazine and he said his biggest threat was that a small group of dedicated scientists will create an altered biological agent that will wipe out humanity as we know it that speaks volumes for what we need to do and so when i'm hearing folks question whether we need to have a a director a nid who has some authority it's like saying to me well let's let's have a department of defense but we'll only have him have responsibility for 20 percent of his budget and personnel for 20 percent of his budget but win the war you know one of the biggest outrages i think in this whole process has been we blame the intelligence committee for not having the proper information they need to now detect and prevent and yet we haven't as a nation come to grips with whether we want to give them the power to detect and prevent i believe ultimately that the key in this is to make sure that we have a director who can bring all of this together has a full picture of it both with personnel and budget and anything short of that i do think truly endangers our nation vicky i mean i agree with everything the congressman said the problem is the congress who has this before them right now there are four parts of congress the republicans on the house side the democrats on the house side the republicans on the senate side and the democrats on the senate side three out of four of those want exactly what this congressman just said the one that doesn't are the republicans on the house side and i don't understand why a republican president he says out loud that he wants this to happen i don't understand why he can't make it happen maybe i don't understand politics very well but phil you understand politics pretty good oh yeah sure [Laughter] listen there's another shot at congress too that people want to be sure they take especially the families and that is when the organizing caucuses happen after this election is when there's the opportunity to make transformation within the congress itself as to how it does oversight and that should be a high focus point to see that they can get the majority party it was presumed to be it will be after the election the republicans in the house there's some that still know what should happen and this is what the press doesn't do and it's a no-brainer they should ask every member of congress how they will vote on the organization of congress and i've said publicly that i will vote against any rule if the republicans are in charge i will vote against my own house rules if it doesn't set aside these two basic principles a separate committee on homeland security and a separate budget and appropriations committee that has oversight of intelligence now to me this is a no-brainer for the press and they're not even talking about it you should go to everyone who's running for congress and say you've been saying this should happen in the administration how will you vote on the rule it's not a debate may say one other thing that i think is my biggest disappointment we really haven't had a debate in our country about what is the threat why we need to do what we need to do the talking heads talk about everything else wouldn't it be refreshing to have a debate where the american people become a part of it where we describe to you what we think the threat is why we think it has to be detect prevent preempt and sometimes unilateral and let's have a debate as a as citizens about this issue we're not even talking about why aren't we um i don't know but i do know this that if the press started to talk about it we would see this happen if i can just add why it's so important about this congressional reform is it's hard to imagine what multiple congressional committees do to the leadership of an agency and how they detract them from their work the congress can do very effective and positive things about helping to keep them on point but not if 18 committees are insisting that the secretary or the assistant secretary testify and you can't imagine what it takes to develop testimony and go through this the numbers of people that get engaged it's very destructive to i think doing this so the congress has both a very positive thing that it can and does do but also can be very destructive and it's why this organizational issue is not the only one but it is one that needs to be addressed is again just a general question is it going to take another attack to make congress do something let's see what the election does i think it's getting their attention all bets are off but uh i mean there is i mean there is a debate it's sort of an incoherent debate um i mean i i'm much amused by the you know the president you know the level of debate in the presidential election uh you have um one uh one side the bush side that says we're winning the war on terror um but but we're not really safe and we all ought to be scared uh and the other side the kerry uh side that says we're losing the war on terror uh but the uh but but the white house and the bush camp is spreading needless fears by talking about how we're going to get whacked we might get whacked any time um there's sort of a fundamental contradiction i think on on on on both sides there um and it's in part because the bottom line is nobody really knows uh nobody knows if we're winning losing there's no yeah the commission said is we're safer today than we were before but we're still not safe well and that's very logical we're less safe today than we were before it's crystal clear that everything that's happened in the iraq war in the abu ghraib scandal everything that's happened in the middle east in the last two years has exacerbated the problem in the middle east the the heart of the problem that gives rise to the creation of new terrace there's no way we're safer we're far less safe well we have a disagreement on that cheerful note uh i want to open up the uh questions to questions from the audience we have four mics uh two up front and and two back there and i ask you to i would ask you as usual to uh make your questions brief if you would and make them actual questions uh for the panelists yeah student of mine i don't think we're picking up the mic yeah dan could you sp is that mike on greg is that mike on hello is it working now okay um my question for the panel is given that we are one week or hopefully one week away from electing a president to what degree are you concerned about transitional uh vulnerabilities and uh and what can be done uh to mitigate uh some of these vulnerabilities given kind of the ongoing climate in which we live everybody that's a good question what we're about to we may be about to have a transition if carrie wins uh what are we going to do to assure that that during that always complex transition we don't let our guard down in some way and make ourselves more vulnerable to attack uh this is an issue of course in the last transition and one of the reasons why bush may not have dealt as well with 911 or foreseen 911 is that they were too busy um creating a new government and figuring out their policy they were just beginning to figure it out on 9 11. very quickly i mean one thing that you do need to recognize is because most of the establishment government goes forward and because most of that government just like mike said has been shaken to the core and is refocused they will be intent on this question this is not an un uh this will not be a surprise to people this could be a risk and the issue will be the skill if kerry is elected the the skill with which uh they are willing to be sensible about this and to understand that their role has got to be very clear they're not in charge till january 20th and we have one president at a time it is something that he has articulated a number of times so one has hope they recognize it um but it's there's there are clear risks in the transition of power the tragedy in our country is that the legislative process shuts down basically a year before a presidential election because neither side wants the other to have an advantage and then after you have an election the administration takes at least six months to a year before they have in place the people they need to do the job and it is a miracle that we do as well as we do given just what i said i just want to add that i think it's i think it's an excellent question and i think it's something to be concerned about i think this administration has gone a little deeper into each of the agencies in terms of political appointments than is traditional normally the just the very top couple of uh positions few positions in each agency are political appointments and um they've gone a little deeper so there'll be more senior people moving out of those positions than normal and i think that's a problem carrie good point i'm carrie lamack i'm a student here i'm also one of the victims family members who's been fighting for this legislation for what seems like a very long time now and i'd actually like to go back to what professor thomas said earlier and ask all of you both mr isakoff from the media side and obviously to congressman from the congress side what is it going to take we've been fighting for a very long time we listened through all those hearings of how george tenet said his hair was on fire in the summer of 2001 and nothing was done and right now we've been told time and time again that we are not safe we are likely to see a terrorist attack if not before the election very soon afterwards and yet we still have speaker hastert president bush saying they support something but not getting anything done what is it going to take why is the press not reporting on this why don't we have people talking about this legislation floundering and why isn't congress able to get their act together and get it done um well um not to be too tough on you but we're frustrated no well you know first of all there's nothing more boring than covering the legislative process i mean you know a proposal in the house and a conference committee and you know amendment i mean it just doesn't make very good copy but that said i want to come back to what i said before that speaks volumes because that's important stuff but it's not news right you know and that's why you're not hearing this information at night because it doesn't attract your attention we had a press conference i'm sorry but yeah just to express our frustration and and we're told again it's the same story there's the conferees are still in conference there is no story well it's right it's a story to us right right but but i i just want to come back to what i said before it's still you know i don't think it's it's it's graphically apparent that a that the that that the the senate proposals which clearly reflect the 911 commission more closely than the house do uh are going to instantly make the country more safe um you know the the the fundamental problem you know prior to 911 was people weren't paying attention yeah there were some people who were talking i mean you know the cia would issue warnings and tenet would you know say things you know but but the bureaucracy wasn't gripped because the political leadership wasn't grip because the country wasn't gripped that's what moves things in washington it's not how you arrange the bureaucratic boxes or you know where the national intelligence director is located or even what you know the exact parameters of his authority are um you know we had i remember uh 15 years ago the number one problem facing the country that was the you know really had you know grips was that really grip people uh was and this was during the first bush administration was the drug problem you know the crack onslaught and you know we were the cocaine epidemic and you know the a office of national drug control policy was created in in the white house to make sure that everybody was focused on the drug problem well guess what that office still exists there's still a director there he's in the white house nobody pays any attention to him because the public isn't gripped with that problem because the bureaucrat because the because the political leadership isn't focused on the problem so merely having the box in the right place doesn't get you government action that's not what moves things in washington and that's why i think perhaps a little too much attention is being paid to what the nature of the legislative proposals for reform are uh look like because i don't think that's what gets results but what about paying attention to the fact that it's not getting done well but what's not getting done the question is is what's getting done going to make a difference if the question is getting the pub the bureaucracy's attention to the threat of al qaeda i would say we got that now now you know what we really need what we really need is smart thinking and also you know not fighting the battles of the last war looking over the horizon at the next threat and um and there are lots of other threats out there um and um uh you know i i would just say you know we need smart thinking in government and smart thinking at the political leadership i'm not discounting the legislation you know some of it i think does make a lot of sense but i just am a little bit skeptical of the idea that there's a direct connection between that legislation and making the country safer don't give up now you people have had a powerful impact you're going to have one in the next few days you can have one in the session that follows you can have one next year don't stop well we won't thank you i can assure you she won't i can speak from personal experience yes my name is debbie cook i'm a member of the huntington beach california city council and as a local first responder in our county i i and my constituents don't see any evidence that we are safer and we haven't seen any resort resources directed to local government that will help provide that first response that we need and i'm wondering if you can give me any evidence that that we're a better able to detect terrorists or um or or better able to respond to emergencies i would love to jump in on that uh first i i just want to this may seem like a small point michael but you called uh the threat al qaeda the 911 commission called it islamist terrorists and if you think it's al-qaeda you come to one conclusion if you recognize what it is it's islamist terrorism it we've been dealing with it for 30 years excuse me we have not been dealing with it for 30 years 9 11 didn't happen in a void 9 11 happened because we were leaving ourselves defenseless you have every part of government focused on working to defend ourselves to start with members of congress know so much more you have much better integration between at one time the fba was not allowed to disclose information from its criminal side to its intelligence side the fbi didn't even share information with the ins and state department about people who wanted to come into this country i mean i could go on there have been hundreds of arrests and there have been some amazing stories of real threats that you don't even know about what about 10 planes that didn't fly from europe in december why don't you think they flew i mean i could go on it's a continuum but the problem is it just takes one and they've had a number of successes and we haven't even begun to talk about the patriot act but if you don't have the patriot act you are not going to have the ability to detect and prevent we're going to review it and that's good so what my comment to you is you had an extraordinary fault sense of security before 9 11. you were totally you were totally basically vulnerable and now you have a government and agencies that are working you know 24 hours a day to protect you but the threat is real and it just takes one i mean if i go and i go to los alamos and i see how a scientist built a nuclear weapon basically explosive device basically with material you could buy except for the weapon grade material and you know what a terrorist can do with that you know when you have to put something in a missile you have together be very finely tuned it takes just the the best precision you care about a fraction of an ounce but if you have a terrorist who doesn't care he could basically use the force of water to bring these two things together these half spears together and he will stand there and try it three or four times before it blows up but he doesn't care because he doesn't care if he blows up with it that's the reality of the world you live in and it existed before 9 11. vicky i want to respond to that do you want to respond to her homeland homeland is a challenge there thank you the challenge with homeland is that every elected official wants to satisfy you that you got what you needed in your community and your community may not need it it needs to go to new york it needs to go to boston it needs to go to washington dc it needs to go to every urban area it needs to go to the areas we think are the most likely where the threat is that's where the money should go and regretfully congress has refused to do that republicans and democrats alike they want to be able to tell their constituents that they did something to make them theoretically safer when there is practically no likelihood that their community is threatened so we just need to make sure it goes where the threat is i just want to speak to the point the congressman made about law enforcement about the fact that there was no sharing between the law enforcement and the intelligence communities before 9 11 and that was a problem and there has been progress partly because of the patriot act and partly because of other measures that have been taken but in my mind the more significant problem before 9 11 in terms of sharing was that the fbi intelligence arm not only didn't share with its criminal arm it didn't share with the intelligence community so not only did intelligence not share with criminal intelligence didn't share with intelligence the world is divided up into two parts the united states and every place else the cia collects foreign intelligence every place else it's the fbi's job to collect it inside the united states they didn't do that job before they're not doing that job now they care about law enforcement and that's all they care about you don't think they're doing it now no okay not even a little bit [Laughter] i have several questions but i'll limit it to one my name name's gary markoff and i'll just call myself concerned citizen at the moment um i'm quite curious as to and i support your interpretation congressman that we are up against islamic fundamentalists that want to cause serious damage as terrorists there's a demographic trend that is going to dwarf us in increasing quantities over the years going forward the ability to gen generate excuses for the hate are numerous but to look at the issue as saying it's going to disappear even if there's a change in the presidential election on tuesday is extremely naive and heavily risky one could almost assume as if the financial markets when they challenged alan greenspan when he took over from from volcker to see how strong he was in his response that terrorists may actually attack if kerry were to win to see what his response would be given how we've advertised his flip-floppiness or it could be if even if there would be bush you could end up having a further population that is increasingly incited here my question is given the trends that are in place in terms of the demographics of the problem uh the quantity uh of places where we could be attacked how is it that we've left so many different parts of the country vulnerable at the borders through the containers through ports bridges tunnels parking garages major events how is it that we do not have technology in place right now that covers 100 of these things including the detection of plastic explosives that can be worn under garment as it was in russia just 45 days ago and we've got the issue here about well how do you reconcile that versus the civil liberties of the person that may be wearing a large draped outfit that can walk right past a metal detector how are we going to deal with this when it is if you come from the mindset that it will happen again it's just a matter of time and it may be three days or three years or 30 years but it's coming for sure why aren't we even more ready more alert immediately like it's uh you know game on anybody want to take down that yeah you're talking about a very expensive intrusive government action and a lot of it we need to do and we need to invest in but if you are talking about every bridge and everything like that have you noticed around town here when we were on high alert when they tried to put police at the various places on the main highways just the additional numbers and the issue is whether we are willing to sustain that kind of uh of expenditure and energy and devotion of our resources to that and i guess i think that is a question that is quite up in the air and we will debate intensively i think we ought to in part of what the commission talks about goes well beyond these reforms and how to move the boxes and authorities and it talks about our foreign policy and our approach to the rest of the world and part of what we've got to do is not make the assumption that the islamists are all terrorists obviously but is to focus on how we reduce the likelihood that they're going to continue to recruit and that's a place where we need to devote some resources as well i just seized up your question but i think it's unrealistic to think that this government is going to have the wherewithal and the public support because that's what it takes to spend all of its money on all of those kind of operations and that's why and that's why we need to be able to detect and prevent where we think it's most likely because we can't do all the things you're talking about particularly in the span of time that we have the transaction costs would basically shut us down it's not not talking profits we're talking basically we couldn't do anything else and so i'm no i'm being serious about this so give you an example right we we we check baggage on an aircraft but we don't check cargo on a passenger aircraft 20 of the cargo on a passenger aircraft twenty percent of what's in the belly of an aircraft is cargo not baggage and we have what we call we we check it because they say it's a known shipper well that's we just know who shipped it and it's not checked and so i want us to do that now when someone complains to me isn't it horrible that someone was body searched with a big coat i don't want to get on a plane unless that person is searched that's my view or i'm not going to ride on an airplane and if i think that the our because we haven't had a dialogue about the threat and people complain that someone was body searched um and then don't want it i'll stop riding the airplanes thank you uh so but excuse me i don't think while we do have a serious civil liberties our argument in the country i don't think that is what is inhibiting a much greater investment it is a deep costly proposition as to where to choose to make those investments and who's going to pay for them and we aren't kind of fessing up to that problem i would argue that if the next attack involves cargo in the belly of an airplane then we're going to spend the money to make that happen the fact of the matter is i don't think any of us like to take our shoes off every time we get on a plane because that was a methodology that was shown to be possibly used or was tried to be used that we all take our shoes off i mean who could have imagined in the year 2000 that we would get on a plane and take our shoes off i mean pretty soon we're going to be in a hospital gown when we go through the the whole thing and all of our clothes will be in the little plastic containers i think that we need to anticipate as you've yours question suggests what will happen next one of the things the 911 commission has said was that the failure was a failure of imagination and i think we should use our imagination and put the resources where we need them rather than spending them on lots of other distractions which i have been partisan enough tonight so i won't call the iraq war a distraction but you get my drift you know pretty soon i'll jump into that because i hear the laughter but it is partisan in my judgment um and i and i and i would like to sometimes just address that but why don't we take some other points please hi i'm um i'm chris hughes i'm an undergraduate here at the college and earlier representative chase you said that 9 11 happened because the united states was defenseless which to some degree i think everyone agrees with but i also think that there are significant underlying causes for the event most prominently the fact that at least in my experience and my travels the united states is hated around the world and i'm wondering how much people in congress on the hill or even media organizations are talking about the underlying causes of this event not just why security was bad on that day or what security can be done now but how you shift world opinion and and find a new way to to lead and if they're not talking about it enough how do you make that shift and i know you have that rhetoric the 911 commission talks about public diplomacy and and it is a very important part i'm i'm a former peace corps volunteer and and uh i care deeply about what people think of our country but to assume that they hated us after 9 11 but loved us before would obviously be not what you're saying but there's the implication in that in your question that all of a sudden we are hated with all due respect europe has never had an away game if if we're talking about europe loving us i have a problem with that and i'll explain it this way first to you we've they've had the umbrella of the united states for 60 plus years they've been able not to have to spend money on defense they've never been involved in other areas of the world and and what has happened is when germany and france talk with each other they call that multilateralism this is an economic force the european union to me that's like saying when california and new york talk to each other that's multilateralism i don't buy it i don't agree that that's it i know how we can be loved we can be like neville chamberlain the belgians love them the french love and the germans loved the french and and his own country loved him and there was one man churchill who said this is crazy and everybody acted like he was a buffoon he was a backbencher he was right and what i'm suggesting to you is that maybe your precious country which you may be critical of is showing tremendous leadership in the world that we needed to do and haven't done for 30 years and when osama bin laden talked about the problem he cited our relationship with israel and the fact that we were in saudi arabia now it calls the hell out of me to think that a saudi can come to this country do whatever they want but if i went there with my wife she'd have to be in the back seat and i couldn't live in a certain part of the country and i couldn't travel in a certain part of the country there are incredible double standards it calls the heck out of me to think that when people are killed with their heads chopped off nobody in europe speaks out nobody when when when you had carter say i'm going to negotiate the freedom of our hostages what were our hostage they were diplomats that was an act of war what did europe say congratulations mr carter thank you instead of saying this is an act of war give the americans back their diplomats and then you had a president who was elected who said a very simple thing president reagan said this is his act of war to have diplomats and they would return the same day i'll just end by this point saddam never believed we would use force to get him out of kuwait or he never would have gone in if you're if people don't think you use your military they're not a deterrent he never thought we would remove him in his regime i knew it my wife knew it when when the president said you know we're going to come in if you don't cooperate my wife would say why is president bush saying that i was saying sweetie he's not speaking to you he wants saddam to get it and when you saw gaddafi turn 180 degrees i would argue strongly as i can that qaddafi said i don't want that to be me i don't want to be found in a hole like a rat with my kids exiles to jordan and my sons killed qaddafi got it i think president bush is getting it i think he's going to probably lose this election because he's handled the war badly which i would agree but he's right on the basic part which is obviously another disagreement um your your question i think one of the points of your question was you know just basically our foreign policy with respect to education and poverty and other issues in the middle east and i think that is a very good question and the 9 11 commission report does speak to that in broad terms and i hope our policy makers will be looking at those issues but in fact there was one day um in our history where america was loved like it's never been loved before and will never be loved again and that's september 12 2001 and to go from that moment in time where everyone was our friend and and felt our pain to where we are today is frankly quite shocking okay illustrator can you grab that just very quickly the yemen leader goes to the president united states after september 12th and he says mr president we weep for you i mean however he said it we we express our deep sorrow for you and the president asked him bluntly he said if that's the case how come al-qaeda is in your country how come you were responsible for the coal i mean with all due respect the yemen leader loved the president united states at that moment but what was he doing behind the scenes and what did the president do to respond to it that's what i think is the more important question let me ask you can i say one more thing um gaddafi did suspend hit whatever nuclear or chem bio program that he had i suspect he didn't have much of one the fact of the matter is that uh our country uh our intelligence community knew more about wmd in iraq than it did about wmd and the rest of the axis of evil uh north korea iran and and other countries that's a pretty frightening concept we knew more well you saw how much we knew except that everything they knew was wrong well exactly that's my point that's a yardstick i mean everything they knew was right i want to know the question the intelligence community no no the the us intelligence community um i mean you know if you compare the national intelligence estimate of october 2002 with the findings of the dolphur report released a couple of weeks ago everything that was concluded was completely wrong it wasn't just even a little bit off it was totally and give this administration some credit because what happened was they were invited into into um libya they saw the signature of their nuclear program they identified it with pakistan it matched the program in iraq they went with the pakistanis and they then were able to out iran think about it under the previous administration iran didn't have a nuclear program europe said iran didn't have a nuclear program this administration outed the iranian program they also outed the fact that pakistan had been developing this program in iran iraq and libya and in the process they then went and pushed forward into north korea because look at this the plutonium program had ended remember they signed an agreement with the united states the clinton administration gave north korea a the program had ended and while they ended the plutonium program they did their enriched uranium who found out about it the past administration or this administration and then who did they do what did they do to confront it they went to china because china has more ability to have influence over north korea than the united states and the irony of president of senator kerry saying it should be unilateral or multi uh bilateral when we knew it was better to confront north korea with china the united states japan and so on ganging up against them that had to happen so i know you fought this administration but with all due respect give it some credit you're not going to find that here my name is scott kaufman i'm a second year student in the master of public policy program uh my general question is about the interagency process and that's something that's brought to light with this commission report you can have things before during and after it but representative shays what is being done in congress right now i know you've worked on things such as the coordinator for stabilization and reconstruction at state but what needs to be done is this a matter of political leadership as far as president bush setting a standard or is it legislation the reorganization of what i'm sorry i'm missing it well i just read today about the uh some statement you had maybe ten eight months back about the uh stabilization and reconstruction act uh that was passed in the senate and i believe you were supporting it in the house yeah it's not you know i'm in the midst of a campaign about whether it's a legislative matter to promote enter the interagency process or if it's a matter of political will and frankly it doesn't exist in this current administration and uh what can be done which which interagency one are you talking about intelligence state dod okay right okay you want to jump in and give me a rest the question is whose responsibility is it to improve state defense all that getting along is it is this something that congress can do or is it purely for the executive branch well my first reaction is it's clearly the administration to have better coordination about among the administrative agency and [Music] that and if he doesn't get caught if the president doesn't get cooperation in this process just find new people to get the job done it's a good question i'm so sorry it took me a while to get that point poorly phrased hi my name is alexander slater and i was on in downtown new york on 911 um and i actually spent the last two years working in the senate as an la on foreign policy issues so i worked on a lot of the issues relating to the commission and i guess my question sort of follows on this question and what representative shays was saying about leadership because i think actually if we look at the election now what's happening is um the american people don't like the leadership they're getting from president bush and they're suspect that senator kerry can provide leadership that uh i think they need what they think they need and one of the prime examples of this and i think mr sukhov you may be skeptical about the recommendations of the report but i actually think that they're pretty good um is how can uh an administration or a white house it's called the white house lead if it says on the one hand that it wants this legislation to pass and has spoken to various members of congress for the legislation to pass and yet at the same time allows as you said representative chase donald rumsfeld to go to congress and tell house members that is a very bad bill as it is in the senate and shouldn't pass and allows richard myers to write a letter to the house of the chairman joint chiefs to write a letter to members of the house saying this is a really bad bill it should pass i don't understand how that's leadership if the white house can't get everybody in the administration on board speaking with one voice speaking with the voice of the president and listening to the president how is that leadership that's a failure of leadership to me if you can't get your administration united behind the effort you've seen the plans are so strong yeah and you know it's going to be i hope what i hope all my answers have been very honest there there is not only a question for you i don't know but no but but let me just say this to you you don't you want people in who work in the administration to say the truth so if if a general disagrees with the basic point i mean someone in his capacity and thinks it's going to be destructive then they should say it that's one part of my emotion and then i understand the other part is that that clearly you want the administration to speak with one voice and so i guess what i think should happen is there should be consensus developed a dialogue within the administration and then once a decision is made always say the truth uh but at least emphasize where you're in agreement and but if this if any general is asked a question by a member of congress and they think in their heart of hearts that the answer is different than what the president wants they i think they still have an obligation to tell us they still have an obligation to tell us but what i objected to rumsfeld doing was behind closed doors he was wait saying one thing and publicly he was saying another and frankly it should be the same thing public or private looks to me like the administration was pushed every step of the way to get behind these proposals which means that the level of commitment and it may be through honest disagreement not through some political machinations they just didn't honestly agree but it looks to me like they had to be drawn to it continually by pressures from the outside and therefore you didn't have to be very savvy within the administration to know that it's not the highest priority that's my one of the reasons why i have this ambivalence in my answer we had the administration come before the budget committee and i had a sense that some of the people who were going to testify would have said it's going to cost us more than the administration's line frankly i wish i had pursued that question and really got a handle on it because if i fought myself on anything it was not getting a handle on what this war would cost and for the administration to come before us and say it's going to only cost this when it clearly cost us so much more i think was wrong um and so i don't know if he should have the party line then they should tell us the truth whatever the truth is last question vicki please make me feel better about something you said you said that the cia hates politics and yet if i read things correctly the current director of the cia was a former very conservative republican in an article i recently read as he's shuffling things up and putting republicans in positions um therefore is in fact the head of the cia a political political a political and if that being the case since he serves at the pleasure of the president should there be a change in administration do you foresee a change in the director of the cia yes i do i think that congressman goss was the chairman of the house intelligence committee when i was working on the senate committee he's very knowledgeable about intelligence matters and that's i think critical for someone in that position sometimes people come in who aren't and they struggle but i think that he has made a political statement through his committee reports in the last few months that was highly critical of the agency and people in the building perceived that as a bad omen for them they didn't think the criticisms were fair they thought the criticisms were made for political purposes in order to distance himself from the agency so that he would be a more palatable choice as the director but i can tell you they're they're at defcon 5 whatever the highest defcon is in that building right now because they're very worried partly about whether he can take the leadership i mean it's a very tight culture i mean it's a very insular culture and when you can't talk to your friends or family or anybody else about what you do the only people you can't talk to about are the people you work with and so they are morale is very important and it's not high right now so they're very concerned can he succeed i don't know he he he he probably can but it's going to be harder than if they perceived him as as not partisan on this michael yeah i just want to jump in uh first of all i think if kerry is elected porter goss is absolutely history as director of the cia but you know it's not as simple as you know a simple partisan thing george tenet was a clinton appointee but very quickly he bonded with uh with president bush when he took office they clearly enjoyed each other's company they liked smoking cigars and talking baseball and very quickly tenet was absolutely on the bush team and you can't look at the record of what happened in the run-up to the war in iraq and see how ardently tenet manipulated intelligence to support the what the administration wanted uh the cia to say uh and um and pushed arguments uh as forcefully as they could be pushed uh even when there were deep doubts within the intelligence community writ large particularly on the nuclear issue which there was deep doubts about yet the cia was was vigorously and forcefully pushing that which we now know to be completely wrong and say that the cia wasn't in a broad sense politicized george on the hill before he came into the clinton white house i do not think anybody in that building thought of him as a republican or a democrat right in fact he was viewed as he had his faults but he was a very strong supporter of the clandestine service and of the troops and and uh uh stood up for them in the face of political attacks and and in in addition in particular in the face of porter goss's attacks right i mean look he was deeply popular within the building there's no question about that he was a a deeply popular on capitol hill people liked him but you know it's inescapable that a principal part of his legacy is that he was really grievously wrong about uh about the intelligence that led this country to go to war and he has to live with that and um he will and that will be a major part of his legacy i have to speak to that um the the intelligence that led us into war was compiled and i i don't want to get too down in the weeds here but i think you've all read about it an nie a national intelligence estimate that was rep prepared and provide provided to congress and to the policy makers in the executive branch just days or a couple of weeks before the congress had to vote on whether to give the authorization to the president the president didn't ask for it normally when a policymaker and the chief policy maker obviously is the president wants to make a very big decision like going to war they want to know what the consensus view of their intelligence community is not just what george tenet says or whatever they want a document and they would normally ask for that they he did not the congress asked for it uh my boss uh senator bob graham asked for it and not only had to ask what had to beg for it and finally when they got it it as it turns out was far less than satisfactory but it was better than nothing and they would have gone to war without any any consensus document we should spend another hour and a half on the failings of the intelligence community but we won't thank you very much for coming you remember that right you

Channel: Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics

Views: 116

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Keywords: National Security, Media & Journalism, Terrorism, Congress, Middle East & Africa

Id: Cm-tMzZdxOE

Length: 89min 50sec (5390 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021