9-11 Report What will you do?

[Sparrowhawk]

With the new 9-11 Report out today, what is our role?
What can you do?


What will you do?

Will you read the report?

How can we hold our elected officials responsible, other then at election time?






The panel investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks concludes in its final report that terrorists exploited "deep institutional failings" within the U.S. government, but does not place blame on the Clinton or Bush administrations, according to administration officials familiar with the report. Congressional sources told CNN the report outlines 10 "missed opportunities" by both administrations to derail the plot.

[Sparrowhawk]

9/11 report blames 'institutional failings'
Commission to release final report





WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The panel investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks concluded in its final report that terrorists exploited "deep institutional failings" within the U.S. government, but does not place blame on the Clinton or Bush administrations, according to administration officials familiar with the report.

The independent 9/11 commission -- formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- is scheduled to release the final report Thursday.

Administration officials familiar with the contents of the report said those failings include:


That the FBI was not set up to collect intelligence domestically;

The failure of the intelligence agencies to share information;

Missed opportunities catalogued in the press;

The failure in "connecting the dots" in the intelligence community.
These officials said the plot "fell into the void" between foreign and domestic threats and was timed when the nation was still in transition from one administration to the next.

The final report is 575 pages in length, with another 1,500 footnotes. The officials said the administration provided the commission with 2.5 million pages of documents, 500 information requests and 900 interviews, including those with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The White House said Wednesday it will take "a close look" at the report, but President Bush disputed any suggestion that his administration could have done more to prevent the al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, which killed almost 3,000 people.

"I told the commissioners, right here in the Oval Office, that had we had any inkling whatsoever that terrorists were about to attack our country, we would have moved heaven and earth to protect America," he said.

"And I'm confident President Clinton would have done the same thing. Any president would."

Congressional sources told CNN the report outlines 10 "missed opportunities" by both the Clinton and Bush administrations to derail the suicide hijacking plot.

One source said, however, that it would take a "huge stretch of the imagination that any of these opportunities would have really happened."

Congressional leaders were briefed on the report by the commission's leaders Tuesday and Wednesday. Top White House officials were briefed Wednesday afternoon.

Six of the missed opportunities mentioned in the report occurred during the Bush administration and four under the Clinton administration, according to a story in The Washington Post, citing an unnamed government official it said had read the report.

Officials told CNN the report will note that both Clinton and Bush took action against al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but that neither administration totally appreciated the threat his al Qaeda terror network posed.

Delays could hamper reforms
Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, said it was unlikely the 9/11 attacks could have been stopped.

"This report's only of value if we use it in a positive, forward-looking way, and not try to get into meaningless blaming, who could have done what when; now that it doesn't matter," Blunt said on CNN's "American Morning."

But Blunt said that because the report was delayed for two months, any reforms it proposes are unlikely to be made until next year.

"If this would have come out in the spring, I would have hoped we could have had, by Labor Day or so, some actual changes to take to the House and Senate floor and put on the president's desk," he said.

Commissioners complained that the White House and other agencies impeded access to documents, information and officials, making the two-month extension of its deadline necessary.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, said the report would include some "very realistic" recommendations.

"It's not about assigning blame, it's about preventing any future acts of terrorism to our country," Pelosi said.

She suggested that a lame-duck session could address the recommendations after the November elections.

Republican Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, said the report will show "there was failure on all fronts."

"What I heard was what most of us already knew," DeLay said Tuesday. "I'm sure the report will give the details substantiating what we've all already known, that basically security is not something that can be 100 percent."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the United States was "not on war footing" before the attacks.

"The threat from terrorism was building for more than a decade; this was a threat that was emerging for quite some time," he said. "I expect that the 9/11 commission will talk about how [the] national security and counterterrorism apparatus of the United States did not evolve with that emerging, building terrorist threat."

Bush will review the full report Thursday, McClellan said.

Intelligence czar recommended
The commission is expected to recommend the creation of a new, Cabinet-level intelligence chief and major changes in "both the structure and the culture" of the FBI, a source familiar with the report said.

The nearly 600-page document criticizes Congress for not having done more over the years to exert oversight authority and correct obvious problems, the source said.

The report concludes in "sharp language" that a main reason the country was ill-prepared for the attacks is that intelligence responsibilities are spread too widely across the government, according to a source who said he had read a final draft.

The report notes there have been too many turf battles and other budget and jurisdictional fights, he said.

Congressional sources also said the report does not recommend the creation of a domestic intelligence agency, similar to Britain's MI5.

But commissioners are expected to call for a new National Counterterrorism Center that would replace the current Terrorism Threat Integration Center, according to congressional and government officials briefed on the report.

The commission feels the current center, which is charged with condensing all threat reporting in the government, is duplicative with other operations, the officials said.

The report will call for unifying government counter-terrorism efforts in this new center, they said.

The document will be published for sale in bookstores for $10. It will also be available online and through the Government Printing Office.

The 10-member bipartisan panel was established by Congress to investigate the events before, during and immediately after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

John King and Elaine Quijano contributed to this report.

[Sparrowhawk]

The Commission will release its final report at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 22, in Washington, D.C and will be available on the internet.



9-11 Commission


If any one finds a link please post it.

Cook

[thedrifter]

Excerpts From 9/11 Commission Report

By The Associated Press

Excerpts from the Sept. 11 Commission's final report:


The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the decade. In February 1993, a group led by Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World Trade Center with a truck bomb.They killed six and wounded a thousand. Plans by Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and other New York City landmarks were frustrated when the plotters were arrested. In October 1993, Somali tribesmen shot down U.S. helicopters, killing 18 and wounding 73 in an incident that came to be known as "Black Hawk down." Years later it would be learned that those Somali tribesmen had received help from al Qaeda. In early 1995, police in Manila uncovered a plot by Ramzi Yousef to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners while they were flying over the Pacific. In November 1995, a car bomb exploded outside the office of the U.S. program manager for the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two others. In June 1996, a truck bomb demolished the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and wounding hundreds.The attack was carried out primarily by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had received help from the government of Iran. Until 1997, the U.S. intelligence community viewed Bin Ladin as a financier of terrorism, not as a terrorist leader. In February 1998, Usama Bin Ladin and four others issued a self-styled fatwa, publicly declaring that it was God's decree that every Muslim should try his utmost to kill any American, military or civilian, anywhere in the world, because of American "occupation" of Islam's holy places and aggression against Muslims. In August 1998, Bin Ladin's group, al Qaeda, carried out near-simultaneous truck bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands more. In December 1999, Jordanian police foiled a plot to bomb hotels and other sites frequented by American tourists, and a U.S. Customs agent arrested Ahmed Ressam at the U.S. Canadian border as he was smuggling in explosives intended for an attack on Los Angeles International Airport. In October 2000, an al Qaeda team in Aden, Yemen, used a motorboat filled with explosives to blow a hole in the side of a destroyer, the USS Cole (news - web sites), almost sinking the vessel and killing 17 American sailors. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites) were far more elaborate, precise, and destructive than any of these earlier assaults. But by September 2001, the executive branch of the U.S. government, the Congress, the news media, and the American public had received clear warning that Islamist terrorists meant to kill Americans in high numbers.


___


On 9/11, the defense of U.S. air space depended on close interaction between two federal agencies: the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) (FAA (news - web sites)) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Existing protocols on 9/11 were unsuited in every respect for an attack in which hijacked planes were used as weapons. What ensued was a hurried attempt to improvise a defense by civilians who had never handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disappear, and by a military unprepared for the transformation of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction. A shootdown authorization was not communicated to the NORAD air defense sector until 28 minutes after United 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania. Planes were scrambled, but ineffectively, as they did not know where to go or what targets they were to intercept. And once the shootdown order was given, it was not communicated to the pilots. In short, while leaders in Washington believed that the fighters circling above them had been instructed to "take out" hostile aircraft, the only orders actually conveyed to the pilots were to "ID type and tail."

In New York City, the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the building employees, and the occupants of the buildings did their best to cope with the effects of almost unimaginable events unfolding furiously over 102 minutes. Casualties were nearly 100 percent at and above the impact zones and were very high among first responders who stayed in danger as they tried to save lives. Despite weaknesses in preparations for disaster, failure to achieve unified incident command, and inadequate communications among responding agencies, all but approximately one hundred of the thousands of civilians who worked below the impact zone escaped, often with help from the emergency responders. At the Pentagon, while there were also problems of command and control, the emergency response was generally effective. The Incident Command System, a formalized management structure for emergency response in place in the National Capital Region, overcame the inherent complications of a response across local, state, and federal jurisdictions.


___


The most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat. The terrorist danger from Bin Ladin and al Qaeda was not a major topic for policy debate among the public, the media, or in the Congress. Indeed, it barely came up during the 2000 presidential campaign. Al Qaeda's new brand of terrorism presented challenges to U.S. governmental institutions that they were not well-designed to meet. Though top officials all told us that they understood the danger, we believe there was uncertainty among them as to whether this was just a new and especially venomous version of the ordinary terrorist threat the United States had lived with for decades, or it was indeed radically new, posing a threat beyond any yet experienced. As late as September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke, the White House staffer long responsible for counterterrorism policy coordination, asserted that the government had not yet made up its mind how to answer the question: "Is al Qaeda a big deal?" A week later came the answer.


___


Terrorism was not the overriding national security concern for the U.S. government under either the Clinton or the pre-9/11 Bush administration. The policy challenges were linked to this failure of imagination. Officials in both the Clinton and Bush administrations regarded a full U.S. invasion of Afghanistan (news - web sites) as practically inconceivable before 9/11.


___


Before 9/11, the United States tried to solve the al Qaeda problem with the capabilities it had used in the last stages of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath.These capabilities were insufficient. Little was done to expand or reform them. The CIA (news - web sites) had minimal capacity to conduct paramilitary operations with its own personnel, and it did not seek a large-scale expansion of these capabilities before 9/11. The CIA also needed to improve its capability to collect intelligence from human agents. At no point before 9/11 was the Department of Defense (news - web sites) fully engaged in the mission of countering al Qaeda, even though this was perhaps the most dangerous foreign enemy threatening the United States. America's homeland defenders faced outward. NORAD itself was barely able to retain any alert bases at all. Its planning scenarios occasionally considered the danger of hijacked aircraft being guided to American targets, but only aircraft that were coming from overseas.


___


The most serious weaknesses in agency capabilities were in the domestic arena. The FBI (news - web sites) did not have the capability to link the collective knowledge of agents in the field to national priorities. Other domestic agencies deferred to the FBI. FAA capabilities were weak. Any serious examination of the possibility of a suicide hijacking could have suggested changes to fix glaring vulnerabilities: expanding no-fly lists, searching passengers identified by the CAPPS screening system, deploying federal air marshals domestically, hardening cockpit doors, alerting air crews to a different kind of hijacking possibility than they had been trained to expect.Yet the FAA did not adjust either its own training or training with NORAD to take account of threats other than those experienced in the past.


Throughout the 1990s, the FBI's counterterrorism efforts against international terrorist organizations included both intelligence and criminal investigations. The FBI's approach to investigations was case specific, decentralized, and geared toward prosecution. Significant FBI resources were devoted to after-the-fact investigations of major terrorist attacks, resulting in several prosecutions. The FBI attempted several reform efforts aimed at strengthening its ability to prevent such attacks, but these reform efforts failed to implement organization-wide institutional change.

continued.........

[thedrifter]

The intelligence community struggled throughout the 1990s and up to 9/11 to collect intelligence on and analyze the phenomenon of transnational terrorism. The combination of an overwhelming number of priorities, flat budgets, an outmoded structure, and bureaucratic rivalries resulted in an insufficient response to this new challenge. Many dedicated officers worked day and night for years to piece together the growing body of evidence on al Qaeda and to understand the threats. Yet, while there were many reports on Bin Laden and his growing al Qaeda organization, there was no comprehensive review of what the intelligence community knew and what it did not know, and what that meant.

___

Hijackers studied publicly available materials on the aviation security system and used items that had less metal content than a handgun and were most likely permissible. Though two of the hijackers were on the U.S. TIPOFF terrorist watchlist, the FAA did not use TIPOFF data. The hijackers had to beat only one layer of security: the security checkpoint process. Even though several hijackers were selected for extra screening by the CAPPS system, this led only to greater scrutiny of their checked baggage. Once on board, the hijackers were faced with aircraft personnel who were trained to be nonconfrontational in the event of a hijacking.

___

Before 9/11, the United States could not find a mix of incentives and pressure that would persuade Pakistan to reconsider its fundamental relationship with the Taliban. From 1999 through early 2001, the United States pressed the United Arab Emirates, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off ties and enforce sanctions, especially those related to air travel to Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/11. Saudi Arabia has been a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism. Before 9/11, the Saudi and U.S. governments did not fully share intelligence information or develop an adequate joint effort to track and disrupt the finances of the al Qaeda organization. On the other hand, government officials of Saudi Arabia at the highest levels worked closely with top U.S. officials in major initiatives to solve the Bin Ladin problem with diplomacy.

___

Following the August 20, 1998, missile strikes on al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, both senior military officials and policymakers placed great emphasis on actionable intelligence as the key factor in recommending or deciding to launch military action against Bin Ladin and his organization. They did not want to risk significant collateral damage, and they did not want to miss Bin Ladin and thus make the United States look weak while making Bin Ladin look strong. On three specific occasions in 1998-1999, intelligence was deemed credible enough to warrant planning for possible strikes to kill Bin Ladin. But in each case the strikes did not go forward, because senior policymakers did not regard the intelligence as sufficiently actionable to offset their assessment of the risks. The Director of Central Intelligence, policymakers, and military officials expressed frustration with the lack of actionable intelligence. Some officials inside the Pentagon, including those in the special forces and the counterterrorism policy office, also expressed frustration with the lack of military action. The Bush administration began to develop new policies toward al Qaeda in 2001, but military plans did not change until after 9/11.

___

Since 9/11, the United States and its allies have killed or captured a majority of al Qaeda's leadership; toppled the Taliban, which gave al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan; and severely damaged the organization. Yet terrorist attacks continue. Even as we have thwarted attacks, nearly everyone expects they will come. How can this be? The problem is that al Qaeda represents an ideological movement, not a finite group of people. It initiates and inspires, even if it no longer directs. In this way it has transformed itself into a decentralized force. Bin Ladin may be limited in his ability to organize major attacks from his hideouts.Yet killing or capturing him, while extremely important, would not end terror. His message of inspiration to a new generation of terrorists would continue. Because of offensive actions against al Qaeda since 9/11, and defensive actions to improve homeland security, we believe we are safer today. But we are not safe.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp..._11_excerpts_1


Ellie

[Sparrowhawk]

Download the 911 report

[thedrifter]

The 911 commission does not hold Bush and Clinton responsible for mistakes leading to the attack. Do you think they both bear responsibility?

Fully responsible
Somewhat responsible
Not responsible at all
Only President Clinton
Only President Bush

Ellie

[Sgted]

Somewhat Responsible

[Sparrowhawk]

a copy of the 9/11 Commission Report.

567 pages

Bought it a Barnes & Noble For $9.00 got a $1 buck discount for being a member.

Got some reading to do.......

[Sparrowhawk]

It's a lot easlier to just have every news organization tell us what it says.

But there is a lot of info in between the lines that as a law enforcement officer can have a lot of clues as to what we should have done, and what we did.

It will be interesting to read all the conclusions and see where there are others that law enforcement agencies could use that were not discussed or recommended.

because the bottom line is going to be what we as Americans can do with the information.

One thing for sure that is already evident, if we want to be policially correct and not stero-type people we will loose this war.


SF

Cook

[Osotogary]

I agree, Sparrow Hawk. A book has just been released (and I can't for the life of me remember the title or author) dealing with the very subject of being so politically correct and so worried about what the "world" thinks of these United States that we will never be able to properly protect this land or it's citizenry.
From what I have read I would be happy to have Wild Bill Donovan come back from his immortal rest and reinstall the OSS and it's highly successful methods. In this respect I acknowledge that I am , in a fantasy, living in the past but crapola he was good at what he did and he made sure the people who worked for him knew what they did.

[rsta]

Right on, Gary! Like I heard a preacher say once that you can become so "heavenly minded" that you're no earthly good. It seems that we are so wrapped up with "what will the world think", that we can't think on, or for, our own behalf. Most Americans don't realize that we are involved in a world-wide war, even after the tragedy of 9-11. Most people want to sit around and whine about what's going on, or find someone to "blame" for what's happened. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened; we let our guard down. Is there cause for blame out there, sure, there's plenty, in retrospect. I say we find what's wrong and fix it, but politically correctness probably won't allow that to happen.

You know what, we haven't learned anything from 9-11! The recent incident, I believe it was on Northwest Airlines with the band of Syrians, showed us that. Cops in Boston and NYC, where the national conventions for dems and reps are being held, going on strike. What gives with this? Knowing the target these conventions make and they're threatening not to work! Putting a union ahead of their duty and honor! That is wrong!

Who they all going to blame for the next terror attack? Better line up in front of the mirror, folks.

Wake up, America!

[Choppergunner]

Boston cops struck a deal with the city to work the DNC convention as long as they can still picket. This has been approved, so the cops are working.

There will be plenty of security personnel in Boston next week/
hell, we won't be able to get into town because of highway closures, train and bus schedules changed.

Hope the weather is good at the beach!
Fugget 'bout getting into Boston next week.

SF

[thedrifter]

9/11 panel spreads the blame


By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


U.S. officials failed to grasp the seriousness of the threat posed by al Qaeda and lacked the "imagination" to stop the worst terror attacks in American history, the September 11 commission said yesterday in its final report.
The 567-page document, released after much fanfare and 12 public hearings over 15 months, calls for a vast reshaping of intelligence services and the creation of a national intelligence "czar" to oversee them.

The report does not blame President Bush or President Clinton personally for mistakes contributing to the 2001 attacks, saying legions of leaders bear some responsibility for failing to embrace post-Cold War changes needed to combat the rising threat of international terrorism.
The September 11 panel also offered the sobering conclusion that "we cannot know whether any single step or series of steps would have defeated" the 19 hijackers.
The commission's purpose was not "to assign blame," said Chairman Thomas H. Kean, who added that the nation's "failures took place over many years and administrations."
"Any person in a senior position within our government during this time bears some element of responsibility for our government's actions," the Republican former governor of New Jersey said at a press conference releasing the report.
The conclusions by the panel — officially called the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States — are based on more than 1,200 interviews and will be available for $10 in U.S. bookstores.
The document paints the pre-September 11 U.S. government as a body of agencies and policies gripped by a system that was shaped decades ago to respond to the threats of the Cold War.
"America stood out as an object for admiration, envy and blame. This created a kind of cultural asymmetry," the report states. "To us, Afghanistan seemed very far away. To members of al Qaeda, America seemed very close. In a sense, they were more globalized than we were."
Although large sections of the report are devoted to offering the most graphic account to date of how al Qaeda operatives turned four U.S. commercial flights into airborne suicide bombs, it also includes a multitude of recommendations for protecting the nation against future attacks.
The central recommendation calls for the establishment of a national intelligence-gathering center, unifying the more than a dozen U.S. agencies, including the CIA and collecting and analyzing national and international intelligence.
The center would be under the direction of a Senate-confirmed national director reporting directly to the president from a position ranking just below a full Cabinet member.
The intelligence "czar" would have the power to hire and fire deputies such as the CIA director and would be given control over the intelligence community's multiple budgets.
President Bush did not comment on those specific recommendations yesterday.
From the Rose Garden, the president said the report by the 10 panel members, five from each party, "puts out some very constructive recommendations."
Later, in a speech in Illinois, he said, "I agree with [the commission's] conclusion that the terrorists were able to exploit 'deep institutional failings' in our nation's defenses that developed over more than a decade."
"The commission's recommendations are consistent with the strategy my administration is following to address these failings and to win the war on terror," he said.
A senior CIA official, meanwhile, said that the agency is "very open" to the report and that the proposal to create a senior intelligence post to oversee U.S. spy agencies "deserves careful study."
"There is no inclination at the senior levels here to reject this idea," the official told reporters. "Nor is there an inclination to embrace it without looking carefully at it and asking a lot of questions.
"We have to make sure that this isn't some sort of an exercise where boxes are moved on a chart and everyone feels better when the exercise is over, and we move on, and the basic problems are not addressed," the official said.
In its report, the September 11 commission report hits the intelligence community particularly for the failure of multiple agencies to share information before the terror attacks.
The CIA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity yesterday, said critics have called the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies "a federation of loosely affiliated stovepipes."
"It isn't that anymore," the official said, while noting, "Yes, we could be more closely integrated."
In a statement, acting CIA Director John E. McLaughlin said the agency will study the panel's conclusions and recommendations.
"We appreciate the commission's observation that the [CIA] is in the foreground of the story, and of some of its criticisms partly because before 9/11, no agency had more responsibility — or did more — to attack al Qaeda," he said.
The report also criticizes Congress for failing to "reorganize itself after the end of the Cold War to address new threats."
From a congressional oversight standpoint, "issues such as transnational terrorism fell between the cracks" throughout the 1990s, the report said. "Terrorism came under the jurisdiction of at least 14 different committees in the House alone, and budget and oversight functions in the House and Senate concerning terrorism were also splintered badly among committees."
The report recommends the creation of either a joint committee or a single committee in each house that would combine authorizing and appropriating authorities to fix the "now dysfunctional" congressional oversight of intelligence and counterterrorism.
Although it says specific details of intelligence appropriations could remain classified, the report recommends that the "overall amounts of money being appropriated ... no longer be kept secret."
In recommending such large-scale changes, the report urged that the American public "should not settle for incremental, ad hoc adjustments to a system designed generations ago for a world that no longer exists."
Citing the present threat of terrorism, commission members yesterday challenged the White House and Congress to act immediately. Commission member Jamie S. Gorelick said she hoped the recommendations would be debated in the upcoming elections.
Mrs. Gorelick drew applause from family members of September 11 victims gathered for the report's release when she said: "There are bad consequences to being in the middle of a political season, and there are also good ones, because everyone who is running for office can be asked: 'Do you support these recommendations?' "
Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential candidate, said he thought legislation "that contains the commission's recommendations" would be introduced in the Senate soon.
"This is a time to come together. This is a time for bipartisan solutions. And this is a time to act — now," Mr. Kerry said in Detroit. "The terrorists will not wait for us, and we must not wait for them."
Mr. Kerry then said Mr. Bush has failed to make reforms in handling the threat of terrorism.
"Mark my words: If I am elected president and there has still not been sufficient progress on these issues, I will not wait a single day more," he said. "I will lead."
Reaction to the report on Capitol Hill was positive, but few expected radical changes in the less than four months before the presidential election.

continued......

[thedrifter]

The report also is fraught with details discovered about the September 11 plot, drawing on information extracted from al Qaeda members arrested in the war on terror, such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), a top Osama bin Laden lieutenant captured in Pakistan last year.
The result is a fuller picture of al Qaeda dynamics and the personal lives of the hijackers, 15 of whom were of Saudi origin.
"KSM, for instance, denies that Saudis were chosen for the 9/11 plot to drive a wedge between the United States and Saudi Arabia," according to the report.
"He says that so many were Saudi because Saudis comprised the largest portion of the pool of recruits in the al Qaeda training camps. KSM estimates that in any given camp, 70 percent of the mujahideen were Saudi, 20 percent were Yemeni, and 10 percent were from elsewhere.
"Although Saudi and Yemeni trainees were most often willing to volunteer for suicide operation, prior to 9/11, it was easier for Saudi operatives to get into the United States," the report said.
The opening chapters of the report offer a description of how events unfolded on the morning of September 11, including previously unreleased details about cockpit recordings from United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field.
The report hails the plane's passengers as heroes for their brave attempt to overcome the hijackers, but never says the passengers' revolt took them into the cockpit.
Earlier accounts have suggested that the plane's crash was the result of the passengers actually overcoming the hijackers and entering the cockpit. The commission concluded that hijacker Ziad Samir Jarrah "began to roll the airplane to the left and right, attempting to knock the passengers off balance" during their assault on the hijackers.
The cockpit voice recorder captured "the sounds of the passenger assault muffled by the intervening cockpit door," the report says. "Some family members who listened to the recording report that they can hear the voice of a loved one among the din.
"Jarrah then continued to roll the plane sharply to the left and right and to pitch the nose of the plane up and down to disrupt the assault on the cockpit," the report said.
At 10 a.m., the plane stabilized, and "five seconds later Jarrah asked, 'Is that it? Shall we finish it off?' "
Another hijacker responded: "No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off."
Moments later, Jarrah stopped the violent maneuvers and said: "Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!"
He then asked again: "Is that it? I mean shall we put it down?"
The other hijacker replied, "Yes, put it in it and pull it down."
The report maintains that the "hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them."
•Bill Gertz contributed to this report from Washington; Charles Hurt contributed from Detroit; and James G. Lakely contributed from Illinois.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/natio...5450-8953r.htm


Ellie