The 5 Unanswered Questions About 911 by James Ridgeway

Author:James Ridgeway [Ridgeway, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60980-123-6
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2011-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

WHAT THE FBI DID—AND DIDN’T DO

The year prior to the 9/11 attacks found a number of future hijackers, as well as the mastermind of the attacks, on American soil, on the turf of the FBI. While the Bureau was handicapped, in a few cases, by a lack of information flow from the CIA, the FBI showed itself more than capable of missing, ignoring, or burying vital clues that might have thwarted the attacks.

The problems began at the top, in the priorities set by FBI leadership and especially by Attorney General John Ashcroft. Several accounts show Ashcroft as remarkably uninterested in terrorism in the months leading up to the 9/11 attacks. A harsh view of Ashcroft’s priorities was contained in the 9/11 Commission testimony of Thomas Pickard, who served as acting director of the FBI from June 25 to September 4, 2001, in the critical months between the resignation of Louis Freeh and the appointment of Robert Mueller. Pickard (who had been considered a strong Bush ally) testified that after he brought the rising threat of Al Qaeda to Ashcroft’s attention several times, the attorney general rejected any further briefings on the subject. Ashcroft also denied an August 2001 plea for an additional $58 million to combat Al Qaeda; the rejection came through on September 10.

On May 10, 2001, Ashcroft issued a memo outlining the strategic goals of the Justice Department; it made no mention of counterterrorism. Dale Watson, then the FBI’s assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence, told the 9/11 Commission that he “almost fell out of [his] chair” when he read Ashcroft’s memo.

In his own testimony, Ashcroft insisted he believed any attacks would take place abroad, outside of his purview. In the words of the Washington Post, he also “sought to blame the Clinton administration for many of the shortcomings in counterterrorism strategies before the attacks, taking the unusual step of publicly citing the work of a Democratic member of the commission, Jamie S. Gorelick, who served as a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. Ashcroft announced the declassification and release of a 1995 memo she wrote that outlined legal rules on sharing intelligence information, characterizing the guidelines as ‘the single greatest structural cause for the September 11th problem.’ ”36

Ashcroft may have prepared this line of defense in response to what he knew was coming. According to the New York Times, the Justice Department had seen a draft report, prepared by the 9/11 Commission staff, in the days immediately prior to the set of public hearings where Ashcroft, Pickard, and others would testify. “Commission officials” told the Times that the Justice Department had “mounted an aggressive effort to persuade the commission to rewrite parts of report dealing with Ashcroft.” The final 9/11 Commission Report contains just over one page on Ashcroft’s leadership. It does mention the May memo, but omits many other issues raised in the draft—including the fact that Ashcroft had made the decision, in the summer of 2001, to begin traveling exclusively by government jet, rather than on commercial airliners.

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