Constructing Cassandra by Jones Milo; Silberzahn Philippe;

Author:Jones, Milo; Silberzahn, Philippe; [Jones, Milo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2013-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

6

THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

EVIDENCE OF THE FAILURE

The final case study of surprise addresses the greatest debacle in the history of the CIA: the suicide attacks carried out by al-Qa’ida on September 11, 2001, in the United States.1 We will not explore in detail the tactical aspects of the attacks or their aftermath. Here, we simply remind ourselves of the consequences by noting that a leading authority on strategic surprise called 9/11 “a second Pearl Harbor for the United States.”2 Their human cost actually exceeded that of the Japanese attack by a factor of two, and their economic cost was a huge multiple of it.3 To make matters worse, as CIA veteran Melvin Goodman pointed out, in 1941 the United States did not have a “Director of Central Intelligence” and a CIA charged to provide early warning of an enemy attack, thirteen other intelligence agencies, or a combined intelligence budget of more than $30 billion.4 We should also recall that the damage would have been far worse had heroic airline passengers not stopped one of the planes—at the cost of their lives.

As in the three preceding chapters, we set out to establish the relationship between the strategic surprise of 9/11, specific malfunctions in each stage of the intelligence cycle prior to the attacks, and aspects of Langley’s identity and culture. It links these aspects to an across-the-board failure in the analysis stage of the intelligence cycle. As we have seen in previous chapters, elements of the agency’s identity and culture also feed into failures through the entire intelligence cycle and exert an especially powerful influence during the tasking and collection stages.

Two things must be noted for this chapter with regards to sources. First, much material related to the 9/11 attacks remains classified by the CIA and many other branches of the U.S. government. This case draws heavily on what is popularly known as The 9/11 Commission Report, but even for the ten commissioners the process of declassification was apparently neither complete nor (allegedly) balanced. The members of the commission, for example, were not permitted to interview any detainees in U.S. custody who may have participated in the attacks.5 In addition, a large body of material related to the attacks was discovered by the NSA too late for the 9/11 Commission to consider, all of which remains classified.6 The CIA’s internal report by its inspector general—the June 2005 OIG Report on CIA Accountability with Respect to the 9/11 Attacks, totaling several hundred pages—also remains classified. Fortunately, at the insistence of Congress, its summary pages, lightly redacted, have been released.7 The earliest official report on the attacks by the U.S. government—The Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 20018—was conducted by a bipartisan group of politicians and released in the run-up to the November 2002 midterm elections. It is a sprawling, 858-page, heavily redacted muddle, and it is drawn on only lightly here.

Even those most critical of the 9/11 Commission Report concede

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