St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 7
Denver Post, September 21
POSNER DETAILS SYSTEMIC FAILURE IN PREVENTING
9-11 ATTACKS
- Any literate person who cares about the future of humanity has absorbed a mind-numbing number of words since Sept. 11, 2001, attempting to explain how America-haters managed to ram airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
Given the billions of dollars in taxes citizens pay every year to support the armed services, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security A1gency, the National Security Council and other bureaucracies meant to protect the U.S. population, did nobody see the attacks coming?
Until now, figuring out the blame game has been difficult, because those who are supposed to be monitoring the evildoers tend to point the finger elsewhere. The disgraceful competition between leadership of the CIA and the FBI to find each other at fault has been especially prominent.
As a result of the confusion among literate laypersons, Gerald Posner's book is a godsend. With a significant caveat to be supplied in a later paragraph, Posner has done an amazing job of cutting through the layers, laying out a complicated situation through dramatic narrative. He does not provide a simple answer. It is impossible to write a simple opening paragraph relating his "shocking" findings. The findings are disturbing, to be sure, but much too subtle and complex to be summarized.
Readers familiar with Posner's previous books will not be surprised at his success this time. A former Wall Street lawyer, Posner has helped make sense of a crazy world in eight previous books. Those books have covered the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., the political-business phenomenon of H. Ross Perot, among other topics. Posner has never been a sensationalist. Rather than seeking the angle that will maximize book sales - as too many authors do - Posner lets the evidence determine his conclusions.
Before summarizing Posner's conclusions about the blame for 9/11, mentioning the caveat is appropriate here. Posner has conducted lots of original research, including interviews with current and former government officials holding sensitive positions. But huge portions of the book rely on the research of others - newspaper reporters, magazine writers, book authors, congressional committees, international spies, convicted criminals. Posner weaves information derived from them into his text as if he knows that information is true. Maybe it is. But when Posner cites, for example, an article from the ideologically driven National Review magazine as containing truth about a controversial incident, it is fair to ask whether Posner evaluated the information presented by the magazine writer.
Even with that caveat, Posner's book contains copious footnotes and endnotes. Readers are not without means to evaluate Posner's information. Here is what all that information has led Posner to believe, first in his own words:
"The failure to have prevented 9/11 was a systemic one. Investigators did not get a lucky break early on, and there were many blunders in the immediate run-up to the attack. The seeds of failure, however, were sown repeatedly in almost 20 years of fumbled investigations and misplaced priorities. After awhile, the revelations of ineptitude presented in this book no longer cause surprise, but only anger ... Could the attack on America have been prevented? Yes."
Posner's presentation is mostly chronological, sometimes thematic. In Chapter One, "The Takeover," he presents the historical context of decade upon decade of Middle Eastern immigrants harboring disrespect for the very U.S. culture they chose as home. Posner vividly describes neighborhoods in Brooklyn settled by wave after wave of men and women from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and other nations bound by their hatred of the Israeli state and of the U.S. government that is Israel's most prominent ally.
Those neighborhoods in Brooklyn and elsewhere became the great American melting pot, and that is good. But a melting pot can conceal evildoers as well as immigrants striving to be law-abiding citizens.
In Chapter Two, "The Intelligence War," Posner introduces what could fairly be called the book's dominant theme - how petty rivalries between CIA and FBI bureaucrats allowed evildoers to escape detection in the United States and elsewhere while plotting to destroy American ships, airplanes, monuments, government edifices and commercial office buildings.
Posner names names. He does not hide behind the journalistic facade of stating, "The CIA did this," "the FBI did that," "the White House did the other." When he takes the CIA, FBI and White House to task, he identifies individuals, rather than anthropomorphizing a lifeless building or bureaucracy.
Most of those who blame Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, a succession of CIA and FBI directors, etc. - are mentioned so harshly with such frequency that a reader might wonder how anybody who has achieved such professional stature can be such a screw-up. This is one of those powerful books where even if only 10 percent happened to be true, those accused of misfeasance or malfeasance should hang their heads in shame the rest of their lives.
Occasionally, Posner identifies an individual who tried to solve the problem of terrorist infiltration. One candidate for hero based on Posner's research is Richard A. Clarke, first appearing on page 91. Clarke served as chair of the Counterterrorism Security Group, an interagency melange cutting through the FBI, CIA, State Department, Defense Department and Justice Department. A civil servant in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, Clarke was a "lonely voice" within government, Posner says. "As early as 1996, Clarke was the one senior official genuinely troubled by (Osama) bin Laden, but he was not able to convince others, including the CIA, that his concerns were warranted."
Posner chronicles all the missed opportunities to capture bin Laden, or at least cut deeply into his power base. If bin Laden had been neutralized, the evidence is strong 9/11 would have been avoided.
Steve Weinberg is a 35-year veteran of investigative journalism. He lives in Columbia, Mo.