Current News
August 22, 2010, an interesting link
My Google Alert surfaced an article on the website TPM. The author, Josh Marshall, asked his readers to recommend the best book on the 9-11 attacks, “looking for works of serious narrative non-fiction, as free of polemical approach as is possible in such things.”
Marshall got “a lot” of responses and the overwhelming majority of respondents mentioned just two books: Wright’s The Looming Tower, and the 9-11 Commission Report.
It appears that just two other books were mentiond: 9/11: American Underground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center, by William Langeweische; and Perfect Soldiers: The Hijackers, Who They Were, Why They Did It, by Terry McDermott. The former dealt with the aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, the latter looked specifically at the 19 hijackers.
Marshall commented: “And while whole book publishing houses have been kept afloat by books about torture, the Iraq War, scary Arabs and Muslims, threats to civil liberties, terrorism and counter-terrorism, at least in relative terms there seems to be a certain eye at the center of the storm as it were. I stress ‘relative’, but there seems to be a relative paucity of books about the key event itself and what led to it, even as there are vast rivers of writing on various topics related to it and spawned by it.”
Marshall concluded: “And to a degree the Report and the Wright book are probably just so good that they’ve driven others from the field. (I know a bit about book publishing. And while there’s probably good civic purpose to there being a dozen or more big fat books on the 9/11 conspiracy, it’s much less easy for a publisher or author to get up the enthusiasm, time and resources to write what will just be yet another book about the same basic subject.) So in addition to your giving me a couple really good recommendations, it’s got me thinking of this other question: why this epochal event seems to have garnered so relatively little direct treatment.”
August 17, 2010, an interesting news day
Co-chair of the 9-11 Commission, Lee Hamilton announced that he was stepping down as president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Hamilton is widely regarded across the political spectrum and has served the nation well over the decades spanning nine administrations. He was an active, enlightened, and responsible leader of the 9-11 Commission.
Coincidentally, the Associated Press announced that video tapes of the interrogation of 9-11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh had been found under a desk at the Central Intelligence Agency. Binalshibh was interrogated at a Moroccan-run facility in 2002, according to the report. He has been imprisoned at Guantanamo since 2006, also according to the report. The discovery of these tapes will have implications for any trial of the 9-11 suspects.
August 9, 2010
The Hamburg, Germany mosque associated with some of the 9-11 hijackers has been closed by Germany authorities, according to a “U.S. Today” news article. Authorities believed that the mosque was again being used as a meeting place for Islamic radicals.
The Taiba mosque was formerly known as the al-Quds mosque when it was frequented by hijacker pilots Muhammed Atta (AA 11), Marwan al-Shehhi (UA 175), and Ziad Jarrah (UA 93).
August 7, 2010
The Obama administration announced that David Buckley is the new CIA Inspector General-designate. That is an excellent choice even though Buckley comes from outside the agency. He has lengthy experience in the investigative and oversight business, including intelligence oversight.
Buckley is a protege’ of Eleanor Hill, the second Director of the Congressional Joint Inquiry staff, and was her executive assistant while she was the Inspector General, Department of Defense.. I worked with Buckley during the 1990’s when, at Eleanor Hill’s direction, he took a direct interest in our work at the Office of Intelligence Review, Department of Defense, Inspector General.
Under his guidance we prepared Hill for her testimony about the Guatemala Review before the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Similarly, he guided us for briefings to Senator Richard Shelby on the Zona Rosa Massacre, and to Representative Dan Burton on the Cuban air force shoot down of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft. The Zona Rosa and Guatemala projects were joint efforts with office of the Inspector General, CIA.
Synopses of those projects are available in my archived resume‘ submitted to the 9-11 Commission.
July 25, 2010
Today the Post published solicited comments on “Top Secret America” in “Sunday OPINION, TOPIC A, Is the intelligence community out of control.” (free subscription required for access). Those commenting include my Team 8 colleague, John Farmer Jr.
Other notables commenting were Michael Hayden, Reuel Marc Gerecht, John McLaughlin, and Jane Harman. Harmon was a member of the Congressional Joint Inquiry that preceded the 9-11 Commission. She argues that “the intelligence community is not out of control,” but “Congress is still not a full partner.”
Farmer argues that “what hasn’t changed is bureaucractic culture: Overlapping missions and unclear lines of authority and accountability (emphasis added) still plague the intelligence mission.” Concerning the purse strings, Farmer concludes that “reposing all budgetary authority in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence remains a necessary first step.”
My assessment is unchanged. A necessary next step by the Washington Post is the same detailed investigation of the Congressional oversight process.
(Note: additional comments to the Post by John Negroponte and authors Ronald Kessler and Janice Wedel are included in TOPIC A ONLINE.)
July 21, 2010
Today, the Post concluded its series, “Top Secret America.” The more interesting aspect of this series to me is its timing. Concurrently, the DNI-designate James Clapper was testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of the two intelligence oversight committees, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is the other.
Clapper testified, according to the Post, that the “[Intelligence Community] is under control,” and that ultimately “the common denominator is the money that is appropriated.” Further, Clapper testified that he believes “strongly in the need for congressional oversight.”
Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif), who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called on Clapper to be “a strong leader,” otherwise the “‘balkanization’ of the 16 agencies that make it up will continue.”
Her republican counterpart, Senator Chris Bond (R-Mo), told Clapper “we need someone who can throw some elbows and take back control of our intelligence agencies from Justice, White House ‘bureaucrats’ and the Defense Department.”
So we come full circle to my comments on the first article in the Post series. We have a designated Director of National Intelligence who will not control the purse strings engaging in a contest of words–”I’ve been there, done that, and got the T-shirt”– with the members of one of the two congressional oversight committees, neither of which can appropriate funds.
It is now on the Post’s plate to complete its investigative series and come to grips with the paralysis of the purse that stymies both the Intelligence Community and the congressional oversight committees.
July 20, 2010
Today, the Washington Post continued its series, “Top Secret America.” Two comments caught my eye, directly related to my article of yesterday.
First, Priest and Arkin mentioned their interviews with Gates and Panetta, the holders of the purse strings. The predicate important to my comments is; “whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities. ” Both Gates and Panetta, according to Priest and Arkin,” said they agreed with such concerns. Therefore, we can establish that Gates and Panetta are unsatisfied with the status quo.
Second, Priest and Arkin said they “uncovered …a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight (emphasis added) and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.” Here, Preist and Arkin do leave the door open to examine oversight in detail in a future investigation.
July 19, 2010
This morning the Washington Post unveiled “Top Secret America, A Washington Post Investigation,” by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin. Dana Priest was the lead Washington Post reporter during the Congressional Joint Inquiry into events of September 11, 2001. It was Priest who agreed during a TV analysis in the immediate aftermath of the joint statements by Eleanor Hill, Staff Director, Congressional Joint Inquiry, and Kristen Breitweiser, Co-Chair, September 11th Advocates, that the Inquiry was the “little engine that could.”
Priest’s credentials on the subjects of Top Secret America and 9-11 are impressive. However, also today, the Acting Director of National Intellligence, David Gompert, said of Priest’s work; “the reporting does not reflect the Intelligence Community we know.” Gompert’s credentials are equally as good as Priest’s. So who are we to believe?
Priest and Arkin are more right than Gompert would like and they have pushed him beyond his comfort zone. On the other hand, Priest and Arkin, viewing things from the outside, have made the situation more complicated than it really is, primarily by double counting agencies. On my part, the opportunity to view the matter using the lens of Chaos Theory is one not to miss.
Chaotic Growth
Priest and Arkin describe “A hidden world, growing beyond control,” and that is chaos, much as the nonlinear growth of the attack on 9-11 grew beyond the control of existing government processes. So, it seems logical to use what we have learned about chaos and the control of chaos to take a brief, first look at the work of Priest and Arkin.
Bifurcation
Using the lens of chaos theory the one thing that stands out in the work presented by Priest and Arkin is the cascading bifurcation of organizations, ancillary organizations, and supporting mechanisms. We saw this same bifurcation in the attack of 9-11 and the national level awareness of the attack.
We also learned that the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Herdon Center knew how to combat chaos. The actions of Ben Sliney, the FAA’s National Operations Manager on 9-11, are instructive.
Dealing With Chaos
Chaos is deterministic and can be controlled. On 9-11, Sliney and FAA used three specific tactics to control chaos: ground stop, airborne inventory, and grounding. Sliney’s tactics bounded the situation (ground stop), assessed the situation (airborne inventory) and reduced the vulnerability (grounding). If ”Top Secret America” is anywhere near what Priest and Arkin describe then the same tactics can be used.
Simply put, the sequence of actions would be the lessons learned from Sliney. First, bound the situation by stopping inventory growth (ground stop). Second, assess the situation to determine what is problematic in the inventory and what is not (airborne inventory). Third, reduce the inventory to essential components (grounding). As simple as that might sound the practicalities of doing just that have overwhelmed every Director of National Intelligence since the inception of the office and are poised to consume the heir designee, the fourth Director in five years, General James Clapper. Clapper’s charter, however, does not include holding the purse strings.
The Purse String Holders
There are just two individuals who have any real clout, at the end of the day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta. Those two individuals are intelligent, knowledgeable, and have the gravitas to effect change. They have not done so, according to Priest and Arkin, which leads to two conclusions. First, they are satisfied with the status quo, or second, they are unsatisfied, but understand that they cannot change the status quo as a first order of business.
Managers such as Gates and Panetta do not rise to the level of their current positions without learning and practicing the “art of the possible.” That art includes the practicality of playing the hand they have been dealt and the vision to understand that there is a better hand to be played. Getting to that better hand, however, is not a first order of business at their level of executive responsibility. Oversight is required to help managers such as Gates and Panetta get to that better hand; that oversight is as chaotic as the system which Priest and Arkin describe.
The Overseers
If there is anything more chaotic than the situation Priest and Arkin describe it is the Congressional oversight of that system. Both the 9-11 Commission and the Congressional Joint Inquiry before it recognized that Congressional oversight was diffuse, convoluted, and ineffective. Given that the “hidden world, growing beyond control” means jobs and spending in a multitude of states and Congressional districts, it is highly unlikely that Congress will get itself organized anytime soon.
Priest and Arkin would do us a service as a next order of business to describe Congressional oversight to the same level of specificity as they have described “Top Secret America.” That effort is not part of their current three-part series. It is the next logical step to inform the public that elects the overseers. If that public expects its elected representation to effect change then it needs to know how dysfunctional that representation is.
I, for one, look forward to future Priest and Arkin work on the oversight of “Top Secret America.”
July 11, 2010
I took my grandson to see the Spy Museum and noted a couple of things of interest concerning 9-11.
First, 9-11 is addressed in the section on terror and counter-terror. It is logically treated, in sequence, as one of a series of terrorist attacks against American interests around the world. Video footage of the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center and the collapse of the towers is included.
Second, the ASCE Report Card for America’s Infrastructure is displayed. The report card for 2009 lists 15 infrastructure systems. The typology is a useful discrete list of national systems that need protected. In an earlier article I considered the terrorist attack on 9-11 to be an attack against one infrastructure system, the national airspace system.
July 7, 2010
While at the bookstore with my Grandson I picked up a copy of Karl Rove’s Courage and Consequence to see how he described the events of 9/11. Rove’s individual facts are reasonable enough, but his narrative is a mess. As with most writers–Richard Clarke and Lynn Spencer come to mind–Rove compresses time and conflates events in a way that subtracts from not adds to our understanding of the events of the day.
And that is unfortunate. Rove’s inability to keep his narrative on track and consistent spatially in time and sequence denies us a clear narrative of the critical exchanges between the President and the Vice President concerning shootdown authority.
On the plus side, Rove clearly demarcates the line that separates the duties of the President and Vice President and those of the Secret Service. The Service prevailed.
On the negative side, the one fact that I found immediately wrong was Rove’s description of the route of Air Force One. According to Rove, Air Force One flew North and only turned West when it was over the Atlantic. According to the 84th RADES radar files, Air Force One hugged the Western coast of the Florida Peninsula and turned West at 10:10 to fly the length of the Florida Panhandle.
The confusion about the route is understandable given that Air Force One flew hurriedly to altitude. The pilot, himself, is on the public record that he flew the President out to the Gulf of Mexico. That is likely what he saw out the window from his altitude. The ground trace (contained in slide set at this link) depicts the actual track.
June 6, 2010
It is not new news, but is new to me. I just read the statement of Penny Elgas for the first time. Hers is an eloquent recounting of the events she witnessed on the morning of 9-11, an excellent summation of all the eye witness accounts of that morning concerning the Pentagon.
The statement is an accurate, first-hand account of the impact of AA 77 with the Pentagon. Her description of the immediate aftermath dovetails with what I witnessed. The thick black smoke she describes is what I saw when I looked out the 7th floor window of my office at 400 Army-Navy Drive in Arlington, overlooking the Pentagon.
I wish I had read her statement long ago.
May 13, 2010
Here is a link to Susan Ginsburg’s book Securing Human Mobility in the Age of Risk; New Challenges for Travel, Migration and Borders. Susan was a colleague on the 9-11 Commission Staff; she is an expert, and her book is a valuable addition to the bookshelf of researchers and historians interested in 9-11 and its aftermath.
February 8, 2010
Here is the link to a February 7, 2010, Wall Street Journal article, “The Intel Committees Need the Power of the Purse,” content preview, by Russ Feingold and Lee Hamilton. The full article requires subscription; the preview is sufficient to get the gist. Both the Congressional Joint Inquiry and the 9-11 Commission recognized the need for Congressional Reform. Congress has proven itself incapable of reforming itself. The Feingold/Hamilton argument is that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are powerless as long as they remain authorizing committees, not appropriating committees.
Here is a link to the New York Times article concerning a review of the current CONUS air defense posture.