The Commission's report did pinpoint policy and management issues, weaknesses in agency capabilities and lost opportunities at lower government levels to disrupt the attacks. The Commission recognized that federal agencies never mobilized a response, got direction or had a plan and that the public was not warned. The report, however, did not identify responsibility for these failures or explain why they occurred in view of all the threatening circumstances. The most serious omissions from the Commission report, however, were these:
The omission of specific warnings received for months from Heads of State and other close foreign allies, revealing among other things the actual means of attack.
The omission of the CIA Director's final desperate act to confront the White House in the strongest possible terms and plead for military and covert action now.
The omission of any explanation for the President's failure to act on top expert advice from (1) the previous President, (2) the CIA Director, (3) the White House Chief Counterterrorism Coordinator and (4) the Chair of the 21st Century National Security Commission.
The omission of an explanation for serious conflicting information (1) The Joint Senate/House revelations about use of hijacked aircraft as weapons and (2) The Time Magazine's special cover story about collapse of the White House's national security apparatus.
The Commission said senior (unnamed) officials across government share in the responsibility and that our national leaders could have done more. It laid much of the blame on intelligence, FBI, immigration and Congress. The scapegoats came from lower ranks and middle management upper echelons must have breathed a huge sigh of relief. It would have been useful if the Commission had first defined what any reasonable and prudent President would have done under similar circumstances and assessed U.S. preparedness on this basis.
Based on interviews with 9/11 Commissioners and key staff members, Elizabeth Drew concluded in The New York Review of Books that "In an effort to achieve a unanimous, bipartisan report, the Commission decided not to assign individual blame and avoided overt criticism of the President himself." She reported further:
"They also knew that if they explicitly blamed Bush and his administration for failures to prevent the attacks, the energies of the White House and its political allies (including those in the press and television) would have been devoted to discrediting their work."
Years afterwards Commissioners are beginning to break ranks from their agreement to withhold conclusions on presidential responsibility. Commissioner Ben-Veniste was the first to disclose on CNN the absence of conclusions in their report on presidential responsibility. In a new book in 2009, he spoke more candidly:
"the summer of 2001 marked the most elevated threat level the country had ever experienced, providing evidence that a spectacular attack was about to occur", and after being told Bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States, "the President had done absolutely nothing to follow up".
Commissioner Bob Kerrey expressed it more strongly in a film, 9/11: Press for Truth (film is on the internet):
"The promise I made to keep this out of the campaign is over. Mr. President, you knew they were in the United States. You were warned by the CIA. You knew in July they were in the United States. You were told again in August that it was a dire threat. Didn't do anything to harden our border security. Didn't do anything to harden airport security. Didn't do anything to engage local law enforcement ... and didn't warn the American people. What did you do? Nothing as far as we can see."
In 2009, the White House Chief Counterterrorism Coordinator, Richard Clarke, also confirms responsibility at the highest level of government in two newspaper articles. In the Washington Post, he reported that the White House had ignored the 9/11 warnings and feared their disclosure would eliminate a second Bush term. In the New York Daily News he reported:
"... the historical record is pretty clear by now that Bush did virtually nothing about the repeated warnings to him that those cataclysmic attacks were coming. Unfortunately, I can personally attest to that".
CONCLUSIONS
Faced with warnings of an impending catastrophe, our national leaders did not act with the required sense of urgency, lead a response to the threat, prepare a civil defense, or share crucial information with the American people. The threat had reached a heightened state and the timing was imminent. There was specific advance information about the hijacking of commercial airplanes and the presence of al-Qaeda members in this country. This intelligence came from reliable foreign sources, including three Heads of State -- the King of Jordan, the Prime Minister of England and the President of Russia. Taken individually, the threat information was highly disturbing but, taken collectively, the information was overpowering. The failure of the President, Vice-President and their nation security team to act constituted a grave breach of official duty.
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