The 9/11 Commission Report is not only readable, but absorbing, at times riveting. And so is the companion volume, The 9/11 Commission Investigations. I bought both of them at once, the Investigations mainly for reference in checking context and questions behind certain responses. After finishing and taking notes on the Report, I opened the Investigations to see what it looked like, started reading The New York Times' Craig Whitney's introduction, and couldn't put it down. 

For busy people to read the 428 pages of the Report (not including appendices and notes) and then the Investigations on top of it sounds like a great deal to ask, but there's no doubt in my mind that the effort is well worth it. Published by Public Affairs, both books are available at Amazon.com for $8 a piece. They are also available for download at http://www.9-11commission.gov. 

        Two new, Additional Reports

As of August 21, 2004, the 9-11commission site has two new reports, released just before it disbanded, both monographs covering two important parts of the Commission's study. The titles are  Monograph on Terrorist Financing and Monograph on 9/11 and Terrorist Travel.  I haven't had time to read these documents. I only know that they can be found at the same Internet address as the Report and the Investigations --  http://www.9-11commission.gov.

Though I've always found reading books of such a substantial size from the computer screen difficult, the download of the first report, the main report, does have the benefit of the search function. Though the Investigations has an index, the Report does not -- a frustrating lack that the otherwise excellent editors should not have let pass.

       Excellent Writing and Editing

The Investigative Staff's reports and the selected individual testimonies in The 9/11 Investigations were arranged and edited by Steven Strasser, Writer and Consulting Editor for Newsweek. The undertaking would have had to be a monumental one, for the results are impressively easy and compelling to read. In both the Report's and the Investigations' introduction, full credit is given by the writers to the 9/11 victims' families for their persistent, unflagging efforts to get to the bottom of what happened on the morning of September 11, 2001 and why.  Encouraging is the announcement that the 9/11 victim's families plan to keep up the pressure for adopting the recommendations for change outlined by the 9/11 Commission.

Made abundantly clear in both main reports was the daunting task the 9/11 victims' families faced in their campaign for the Commission's birth, since, regardless of a bipartisan effort to introduce legislation for an independent commission with subpoena power to make the investigation, the White House adamantly opposed it. Citing the decision in February 2002 by the House and Senate select committees on intelligence to conduct a joint investigation of their own, the administration hoped a stone wall would spell the end of it. (The key findings of this House and Senate investigation are included in The 9/11 Investigations.)

However, as Craig Whitney in the Investigations puts it, "the White House did not reckon with the families of the victims of the attacks .... who were insistent that an even broader inquiry was needed, one with the power and prestige to explore all the reasons behind the attacks, and [they] mounted an effective campaign to persuade individual lawmakers of their case."

The wider investigation finally made it through the opposition. The Commission was formed with (eventually) acceptable directors. The funding problems, after much wrangling,  were finally resolved. And a hard-won extension to the end of July was obtained to finish its job. Now the battle is on to see that its recommendations are actually brought into effect. Especially important to the commission was the appointment of a National Intelligence Director (NID).  As Commission member, Jamie Gorelick told the Associated Press, "Anyone who would have to give up authority or turf is resisting." And the department slated to give up the most turf is the Defense Department which controls  over 80% of intelligence funding.

The NID would have two main areas of responsibilty, according to the Commission: "(1) to oversee national intelligence centers on specific subjects of interest across the U.S. government and (2) to manage the national intelligence program and oversee the agencies that contribute to it."(p411R) The Commission was adamant that the NID have both hiring and firing authority and budgetary control of the fifteen intelligence agencies.

        Check the Appendices!

A word of caution before beginning to read the first, very confusing chapter on the chaos of 9/11 -- put a marker on the first page of Appendix A, "Common Abbreviations." I discovered this indispensable aid many pages into the first chapter after shuffling back and forth time and again to find the first mention of, for instance, NMCC and NEADS, to see what the SamHill the letters stood for, who was talking to whom. What a relief!  Also back there is Appendix B, "Table of Names," which helped in keeping people straight, especially the hijackers, but also officials and their functions at the time of the attacks.

A group of extremely helpful visuals were maps of the hijacked airplanes' flight paths with times to the fraction of a second of their takeoff, radio contacts, the transmissions between the various airline controllers and managers, and the subsequent crashes. These excellent, easy to understand maps are quite a feat of compilation, considering the confusion among agencies, passengers and stewards using airplane and cell phones, and observations from civilians on the ground.


Reliving 9/11

The first chapter of the Report, "We Have Some Planes," is every bit as gripping as the first chapter of  Richard A. Clarke's Against All Enemies, in which Clarke describes so well the tense atmosphere in the basement of the White House during the hijacking of the four planes on September 11, 2001.  But the scene portrayed in Clarke's Washington conference rooms was as nothing compared to the utter chaos in the air-to-ground, ground-to-air, and ground-to-ground conversations and commands during this totally unexpected series of attacks.

Indeed, the most dismaying lines in the report's narrative are variations on the statement, "The plane had already crashed by the time they had learned it was hijacked." (United 93). Also dismaying was the chasing by radar of the wrong plane, Delta 1989, and the continuing search for American 11 long after it had hit the World Trade Center's North Tower.


Positively frightening was NORAD, Langley, and other commands sending aloft separate sets of fighters to intercept the hijacked planes, some fighters with no clear instructions as to where the planes or dangers were located and with  conflicting orders of engagement if they were found.  For instance, we learn that "[t]he Pentagon had been struck by American 77 at 9:37:46. The Langley fighters were about 150 miles away." Actually, these fighters were out over the Atlantic Ocean, assuming, as per the prevailing emphasis on ballistic missiles, that any danger would be coming over the water from the east. In fact, the Langley fighters were never briefed about the threat, as the lead pilot explained,

Moreover, snarls and contradictions reigned about a  shootdown order for the interceptor pilots if the hijacked plane refused to divert. The order was to come from the president, but the president was somewhere aloft on Air Force One. Vice President Cheney finally gave the shootdown order in his stead and then gave it again. The order made it down through NORAD eventually, though it still isn't clear how the shootdown order was communicated. It is known only that at 10:31, General Larry Arnold sent the shootdown order over a NORAD instant messaging system.

         Who Was To Blame?
The report declines to place blame on the individual agencies. The procedure was indeed chaotic but, as the report points out it was "improvised by civilians who had never handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disappear (by turning off its transponders), and by a military unprepared for the transformation of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction." What it did blame was the lack of a clear chain of command in a sprawling nationwide network of agencies that must work together for the nation's defence. 

       The New Terrorism

It was a relief to turn from the draining reenactment of the 9/11 attacks to the Report's chapter on the foundations of the new terrorism. This excellent short history, dating back to the 1970s and covering the reasons behind the rise of militant Islam, the steady escalation of terrorist attacks, and the rise in importance of bin Laden and his lieutenants, is an important addition to the public's knowledge of terrorism and the difficult choices involved in the United States' and the World's defenses against it. 

Augmenting the historical overview of terrorism and its evolution in the Report is the section in the Investigations on the rise of global terrorism drawn from the House-Senate Joint Inquiry Report on 9/11, and the staff statement on the entry of the 9/11 hijackers into the United States.

Aside from the appalling lack of communication among intelligence agencies in tracking known terrorists, the most disquieting to me in these sections was the ease of obtaining counterfeit passports and visas. The monographs mentioned above on both terrorist financing and terrorist travel may well cover these two problems in more depth. Certainly much needs to be done to both streamline and secure passport protocol, and it appears that progress on that front is being made.

CNET News.com, for instance, reported in an August 18, 2004 dispatch that  a number of countries are working on passports and visas incorporating biometric information about the document holder, such as a digital facial images.  Belgium is mentioned as the most likely country to act first, conducting an e-passport trial later this year.

This information, while encouraging, suggests a tremendous global challenge, since countries differ among themselves in many respects on their passport and visa information storage. Proponents are hoping for the new protocol to be in place by the end of 2005, but a quick changeover appears problematic at best.

       Did the 9/11 Report go far enough?

There have been many complaints voiced about The 9/11 Commission Report. The 9/11 victims' families say it does not go far enough, or high enough in either describing shortcomings or placing blame. More than one commentator felt that when no one in particular is blamed, as occurs in the Report, everyone is blamed.  Bartcop's resigned comment goes further, "Bush got the verdict he paid for -- nobody was responsible (Bartcop.com 8/11/04).

Others complain of things left out; for instance, domestic terrorism, such as the Oklahoma bombing, and any admonishment by the Commission for the misleading statements made by the Bush administration underpinning its rush into the Iraq war -- especially egregious on this score being the president's constant juxtaposition of Iraq and 9/11 in his speeches, implying a terrorist connection between the four hijacked airplanes and Iraq without coming right out and claiming one.

Indeed, this juxtaposition has made enough of an impression that there is a sizable percentage of citizens in the United States believing to this day that Iraq and Saddam were behind the attacks of 2001. The only mention of the Iraq-9/11 made-for-the-polls imbroglio was the short statement on page 66 of the Report which assigned no blame,


In the coming months there will be increasing discussions going on in Congress and elsewhere concerning the recommendations offered by the 9/11 Commission, and public input will be needed more than ever. A reading of one or more of these reports or, at the very least, The Executive Summary, is necessary to understand the dialog and offer an opinion as necessary.

Do take advantage of the inexpensive paperback editions or the downloadable versions, and read as much as you can. For yourselves. Don't be dependent on what you read about it in the corporate media, especially on what you hear as sound bites on television. As Eric Alterman wrote this morning (in the online blog, Altercations),

---

Click to buy--The 9/11 Commission Report

Click to buy--The 9/11 Investigations

Click for the Downloadable Versions of The 9/11 Commission Report and The 9/11 Investigations, The Monographs, and The Executive Summary.

Click to buy Against All Enemies



Back to Review Index
Home

---

Blog links: The Agonist - Late breaking news from around the globe Americablog - Political news, commentary, leaning left Atrios.Eschaton - Political and world news and commentary, leans left Buzzflash - Daily headlines with a liberal slant Common Dreams - Breaking News and Views for the Progressive Community Crooks and Liars - Video clips of mostly political news, leans left DailyKos -- Leading blog for liberal/progressive activists, lively Democratic Underground - Articles, discussions, forums, links James Wolcott's Blog - excellent writer on entertainment and political affairs Mark Fiore - Great  cartoon animations on current topics McClatchy News Outlet - Broad-based  and unbiased Raw Story - Breaking news, a lot of it political Working for Change - Progressive news and commentary AlterNet - Commentary and news logs Salon - Online magazine: news and politics, links to mainstream media Slate - Online magazine: commentary, links Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall - Excellent site, daily posts The Young Turks - Video, streaming, breaking news, commentary

U.S. news links: LA Times New York Times The International Herald Tribune United Kingdom news links: BBC Online The Electronic Telegraph The Financial Times The Guardian The Independent Canadian Globe and Mail Toronto Star Times of India

---

Jkshaw photo by Jonathan A. Shaw

Designed and Produced by jkshaw
Qestions and comments - jkshaw

All contents copyright (c) 2000-2009 by Joan K. Shaw. All rights reserved.

---