September 11th as a response to the USA external policy

· THE POST SEPTEMBER 11th , 2001

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· Chapter 1 : THE U.S.A'S REACTION

· A)Unanswered questions 

September 11^th , 2001 has changed many aspects of our lives forever.

It will be remembered as one of the most horific and unbelievable days ever experienced in the U.S.A. The events of this day certainly affect every American and likely affect every person in the world in some way.

q A.1) How the U.S.A missed the clues of the attacks ?

The White House suspected that a terrorist attack was coming, but four key mistakes kept the USA from knowing what to do.

After the september 11^th attacks, everyone inside the Bush Administration as well as outside it, knew there had been massive failures of Intelligence in the period before the attacks.

What went wrong ?

In the past month, a series of disclosures have cast doubt on the most basic abilities of the national-Securities establishment , and the nation have been forced to ask whether September 11^th could have been prevented.

In August, the President was briefed by the C.I.A on the possibility that Al-Qaeda, the terrorist network headed by Ossama Bin Laden might use hijack airlines to win concession from the U.S.A. That briefing was in response to a

request by Bush for information of the kind of threat posed by Al-Qaeda to American interests at home . The C.I.A came to the conclusion that «Al-Qaeda was determined to attack US ».After the strike came, the Administration made a decision not to discuss the August briefing. That was not the only embarassing paper kept under wraps. Earlier this month, a July 2001 memo by an F.B.I agent in Arizona who noted a pattern of Arab men signing up at flighing schools. The agent recommended an investigation to determine whether Al-Qaeda operatives were training at the schools. He was ignored.One of the men the F.B.I agent had under watch, a Muslim, did indeed have Al-Qaeda links. At high level of Government, the awful possibility is dawning that things could have been different. «If we had access to the Phenix memo, could we have broken the plot ? » answer : « there is at least a distinct possibility that we may at the very least have delayed it ».

Fighting terrorism hadn't been a top priority in the early months of the Administration , cutting taxes, building a missile shield and other agenda items had crowded it out. Bush's national Security Aides had been warned during the transition that there was an Al-Qaeda presence in the U.S.A, but in the first month of the Administration a sense of emergency was lacking.

On Monday, August 6, Bush received a document , which according to Rice was an « analytic report » on Al-Qaeda. Moreover, throughout the Summer, top officials had become convinced with a growing sense of foreboding, that a major operation by Al-Qaeda was in the works.

According to Rice, there was just a sentense or two on hijacking and the passage did not address the possibility that a hijacked plane would ever be flown into building. That was the first of the four crucial mistakes made last Summer. There might have been more discussion of the risks of hijackings in the President's briefing if its writers had known about the Phenix memo.

Agent williams wrote the memo on July 5. He posited that Bin Laden's followers might be trying to infiltrate the Civil Aviation system as pilots, he recommended a national program to track suspicious flight-school students. The memo was sent to the counterterrorism division of the F.B.I. The memo was ignored. That was the second key mistake.^35(*)

In a press conference^36(*), Rice conceided that in 2001 the F.B.I was involved in a number of investigations of potential Al-Qaeda personal operating in the U.S.A. Investigators had some reasons for beeing preoccupied with attacks and threats outside the USA. Our best estimation was something in South East Asia. By July, the level of noise about terrorism from Intelligence sources around the World was deafening. By the beginning of August, the President had made his request for a briefing on domestic threats. One of them was about to be uncovered. And therein lay the fourth mistake.

On August 16, Missaoui arrest, agent visited the airman flight school in Norman (Okla.) where he studied ; two of the September hijackers had visited Norman. The F.B.I did inform the C.I.A. The counterterrorism group in the White House was not inform.

The F.B.I has a long pattern of not sharing information with others.

In Washington, information must move through strovepipes.

Bush's simple passionate argument that he would not have sat idly if he had known what was going on September 11^th . Republican pointed out that members of Central Agency get the same information the President received and yet had not made a fuss about the August 6^th briefing.

Despite official statements, September 11^{th ,} could have been foreseen, critical warnings in the years before have been ignored :

 In 1993, terrorists set off a bomb in W.T.C's basement. Suspects in the plot have been linked to Al-Qaeda.

In June 1994, a Pentagon commissioned report concluded that religious terrorists could hijack commercial airliners and crash them into the Pentagon or the White House.

In December 1994 Algerian terrorists hijacked an Air France jetliner, intended to crash it into the Eiffel Tower.

In January 1994, police in the Philippines stumble upon a bomb factory run by Islamist terrorists. The arrested suspect reveal plans to crash a plane into the C.I.A building.

According to Eleanor Hill, Staff Director of the Joint Congressional Panel, the Intelligence community obtained information that a group of unindentified Arabs planned to fly an explosive plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center.

In September 1998, the Intelligence community obtained information that Bin Laden's next operation would involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S airport.

In September 1999, a Library of Congress report concluded that suicide bombers could crash-land an air craft... into the Pentagon , the C.I.A or the White House.

In the course of 2000, C.I.A analyst established a link between Almihdhar and the man believed to be the principal organizer of the terrorist attack on U.S destroyer COLE, which was hit by a suicide bomber in October of that year. No alert was put out for Almihdhar or his associate, Alhazmi, until August 23, 2001. Only two weeks before the September attacks, an F.B.I agent in N.Y City sent a memo to Washington pleading for authorization to deploy resources to find Alhazmi and Almihdhar, warning that otherwise  people will die.^37(*)

The most important question is not what Bush knew before September 11^th , it is what the Administration and Congress have and have not done to fix a broken system.

During the period between March and September 2001, the Intelligence Agency detected numerous indicators of a terrorist attack, some of which pointed specifically to the USA as a possible target. This information was shared with the F.B.I, I.N.S...

In the context of such reports, it is impossible to believe the Bush Administration's claims that F.B.I headquarters made an innocent mistake.

Hill's report directly contradicted the claims of top White House Aides like national Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, who hold a White House conference last May, « I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the W.T.C. »

According to Hill, the Intelligence Community was aware of the potential for this type of terrorist attack.

The Bush Administration refused to allow any testimony about what President Bush knew and when he knew it. This was clearly an attempt to protect him from political embarassement, either because, as a figurehead in his own Administration, he was told relatively little, or because he had critical information and failed to take defensive action.

Hill demonstrates that the Congressional Panel has willfully closed its eyes to the barrage of evidence suggesting that the U.S Intelligence Services played an important role in permiting, or even facilitating, the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3.000 people. It is particularly significant that the Congressional investigators have said nothing about the U.S Government surveillance of the supposed ringleader of the suicide hijackings , Mohammed Atta. The American media had largely silence the fact that Atta was a terrorist suspected before he was given an American visa and allowed to enter the U.S.A.

It is important to note that there was an active collaboration of American Intelligence Agencies with Al-Qaeda, going back some 20 years to the C.I.A's covert war in Afghanistan. William Casey, Reagan's C.I.A director pursued a policy of recruiting Islamic fundamentalists from all over the World. Bin Laden came as a C.I.A asset in Afghanistan, building roads and camps for the U.S back guerillas fighting the Soviet army.

Bush is now faced with the most difficult challenge any President could have : to lead a nation in a time of crisis unparalled since the second World War. Bush need to transform himself from a wartime leader with a steely will to win. He had no choice but to catch the criminal of the World :

« We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail » he promised the nation^38(*).

* ³⁵ All these revelations came from Eleanor Hill, staff director of the joint congressionnal panel.

* ³⁶ White House conference (May, 2002)

* ³⁷ These informations came from E.Hill

* ³⁸ On September 13, 2001, holding the shield of George Howerd, a hero cop, Bush vowed to crush terrorism before a United Congress.