December 9, 2004
Intelligence reforms unlikely to prevent terrorist attack, Gorton says
The Congressional response to the recommendations of the 911 Commission is unlikely to prevent future terrorist attacks in the United States, according to former Washington Senator Slade Gorton.
Gorton, speaking last week before an audience of 200 in an event sponsored by the UW Retirement Association, talked about the work of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, otherwise known as the 911 Commission, and the reception its recommendations have received in Congress. Congress passed a compromise intelligence bill this week.
The report called for unification of the foreign and domestic intelligence operations at the highest level, and the creation of the position of national intelligence director, who would coordinate the work of the 15 intelligence agencies, with significant control over the intelligence budget and influence over the appointment of agency heads.
“This has been our most controversial recommendation,” Gorton said. “There has been broad support for reform legislation in both houses of Congress, but the speaker of the House had earlier refused to bring a bill to the floor without support from a majority of the Republican caucus,” until President Bush began to apply pressure.
Gorton praised the nonpartisan spirit of the 10-member commission, led by former Republican Governor Thomas Kean and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton. “There was remarkable unity, down to the footnotes in the report,” he said. “We had no partisan votes and actually very few formal votes at all.”
The commission was struck by the absence of any sense of alarm regarding the terrorist threat prior to Sept. 11. “All the protective agencies failed us,” he said. This was especially true of the Federal Aviation Administration, which had just 16 names on its “no-fly” list, while the State Department had the names of 3,000 to 5,000 terrorists, a list the FAA didn’t even know existed.
Moreover, the agency was giving pilots and crew the hijacking rules it had developed in the 1970s, suggesting the crew cooperate with hijackers and fly them wherever they wanted to go. The rules also permitted passengers to have knives in their carry-on luggage.
Gorton said the CIA never developed intelligence that would have encouraged the two U.S. presidents to act against Al Qaida before Sept. 11. The FBI, he said, “provided no intelligence of value” on potential domestic terrorism.”
He added, “These were spectacular failures.”
The 911 Commission was established only after the families of victims from the attacks relentlessly lobbied a reluctant Congress and equally reluctant President. Its work “transcended our partisan times,” he said.
Yet, since the report was completed, Gorton has been reminded that the most powerful lobby in Washington, D.C., isn’t the National Rifle Association or any other pressure group, “It’s the status quo. Sept. 11 presented us with an opportunity for dramatic change. It altered attitudes. We have disrupted — actually, only displaced — terrorism abroad. The war against terrorism will be measured in decades. And thus far, we’ve fallen far short of what we need to do.”
