The 9/11 Commission’s report on July 22, 2004, gave insights into assigning blame for 9/11: “The story of 9/11 is not a story of how a handful of government employees made mistakes; it is the story of how an entire government–across two administrations [Clinton and Bush] and many bureaucracies–failed to understand and adjust to the […]
Category: quotes
7/22/2004
The 9/11 Commission report of July 22, 2004, said, regarding the potential to prevent the attacks of September 11, 2001: “We identified ten ‘operational opportunities’ when we missed a chance to disrupt the 9/11 plot. Among those opportunities were: the failure to share information about the two hijackers [Nawaf al-] Hazmi and [Khalid al-] Midhar, […]
7/22/2004
In their July 22, 2004, report, the 9/11 Commission agreed upon four overarching failures regarding the prevention of 9/11: “A ‘failure of imagination’ characterized our inability, at all levels of government and society, to appreciate the magnitude of the threat from al Qaeda and Islamist terrorism. A ‘failure of capabilities’ was a failure that limited […]
7/22/2004
Lee Hamilton, Co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, said on July 22, 2004: ” ‘There is no silver bullet or decisive blow that can defeat Islamist terrorism.’ Instead, it would take every tool of counterterrorism that the government possessed.” These included the ability to “prevent terrorist sanctuaries; work with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia; sustain a […]
7/22/2004
Regarding the 9/11 Commission’s final report on July 22, 2004, Commission co-chairs Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton wrote: “We discovered real defects within the United States government. Our recommendations arose out of serious concern. We found national security institutions built to fight and win the cold war, yet poorly designed to combat the stateless and […]
7/22/2004
According to information in the 9/11 Commission’s final report, which was issued on July 22, 2004: “The commissioners went on to report that in spite of all the [terrorism] warnings to different parts of the [Bush] administration, the nation’s ‘domestic agencies never mobilized in response to the threat. They did not have direction and did […]
7/22/2004
On July 22, 2004, “The 9/11 Commission let loose with a…sweeping indictment of a breakdown in the federal government–the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the Federal Aviation Administration, Congress–that left the nation vulnerable to attacks that were a shock but ‘should not have come as a surprise.’ The executive summary of […]
7/20/2004
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice “testified to the Sept. 11 panel [9/11 Commission] that she did not recall being briefed on the [15 page intelligence] report [written by the Clinton Administration] during the transition period to the Bush administration, and she said she did not read it until after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Vice […]
7/18/2004
According to a deposition on July 18, 2004, when Brigadier General Janis Karpinski mentioned that there were innocent people being held at a detention center in Iraq, “Maj. Gen. [Walter] Wojdakowski, the second most senior general in Iraq at the time [replied]: ‘I don’t care if we have 15,000 innocent civilians, we are winning the […]
7/15/2004
Shortly after CIA Director George Tenet declared his resignation on July 11, 2004, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage turned down the job. “Armitage concluded that the penalty for disagreement in the Bush White House was an implied or explicitly stated accusation that you were not on the team. …’Their idea of diplomacy,’ Armitage said […]