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Alan Keyes is Making Sense
Alan KeyesMay 20, 2002
ALAN KEYES, HOST: Welcome to MAKING SENSE. I'm Alan Keyes.
Up front tonight, America's national security: where did we fail? Of course, I can say that pretty clearly and openly now. There has been a media frenzy since this news broke last week involving the knowledge that may have been there in the hands of different elements of the government of the administration about the possibility of hijackings, al Qaeda, even the possibility as it turns out that airplanes might be crashed into buildings of major significance, at least in Washington, DC.
At the time of the bombing itself back on September 11, some of you may recall that there was some hesitancy even to suggest that there might have been a failure or to acknowledge that there might have been a failure of intelligence. There was also a sense conveyed to the American people in various ways that the means that were used in this particular terrorist attack were so unusual that no one would ever have thought of any such possibility in terms of the use of commercial aircraft.
Here is what the president and his staff said in the weeks after 9/11, particularly the president and the secretary of state in these two bites.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The intelligence gathering capacity of the United States is doing a fine job. These terrorists had burrowed in our country for over two years. They were well organized. They were well planned. They struck in a way that was unimaginable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATIE COURIC, NBC NEWS: Was this, in your view, a massive intelligence failure, as it has been called?
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: I wouldn't characterize it that way. We spend many billions of dollars on intelligence. And that intelligence allows us to thwart many attacks. There are many terrorist attacks that never took place because of the fine work of our intelligence and law enforcement experts.
But, in this case, we did not get the queuing we needed. We did not get the intelligence information needed to predict this was about to happen or be aware of this kind of event coming our way.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KEYES: Now, I think that one of the most salient points that was made in the wake of September 11, and that I think helped to assuage any sense of public concern, or possible outrage even, over the failures of the national security establishment was the argument that this use of commercial aircraft to crash planes into buildings, it was unimaginable. Nobody would have thought of any such use of an airplane, a commercial airliner, and so forth.
Now, of course, some of the things that have come out in the course of the last little while raise some serious questions about this assertion, including of course the fact that it was envisaged by people within the intelligence community. In fact, there was a report produced in 1999 that envisaged this very possibility, was produced by an office over in the Library of Congress, a research arm over there. They were talking about the psychology of terrorists. And they explicitly said that one of the possibilities was using aircraft to crash them into buildings. And they alluded to what had been reported intelligence from The Philippines about possible plans to do just that.
But despite the fact that it now is on the table that this use of commercial airliners wasn't, after all, so unimaginable, here is what members of the Bush administration said when the story broke last week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: But I want to remind you, information about hijackings in the pre-9/11 world is totally different from information than hijackings in the post 9/11 world. Traditional hijacking prior to September 11, it might as well be a different word in a different language from what we've all unfortunately come to know about the post-9/11 world.
For decades, governments have taken steps about warnings on hijackings. Never did we imagine what would take place on September 11 where people used those airplanes as missiles and as weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: Now, in the 1999 memo that I referenced, the report that I referenced, in fact, this possibility was raised explicitly with respect to major Washington buildings — the CIA, the Pentagon and so forth and so on. So, it wasn't so unimaginable.
But what's clear from the comments that have been made in the last few days is that a major change is said to have taken place after 9/11, obviously a greater sense of importance in the critical importance of these hijackings. It does lead to a question in my mind, though. And this evening, part of what I'm trying to do is give you a sense of how I'm reacting to this. I'm listening to it all, trying to be as fair minded as I can.
And yet I still have some serious questions, especially because of the contrast. If they're telling me that before 9/11 hijacking meant one thing and after 9/11 it meant something else far more, what, far more urgent, far more important? What is that so say? That before 9/11 if you got various reports that led to the possibility that a bunch of bad guys were possibly going to hijack some American airplanes you didn't worry about it as much because they weren't going to fly them into buildings?
I'm not sure what that mentality suggests, that the mere hijacking of an airplane and threatening the lives of several hundred Americans, that is, what, not quite at the threshold of concern an urgency that's necessary for real action? It's not — I don't understand it.
And yet that does seem to have been somewhat the attitude that characterized the government establishment prior to September 11, that, yes, there were problems, and, yes, there were these reports. They were on the lookout, of course, for pinpoint threats.
And very often what is said in the course of the responses to the information that's coming out is we didn't have a specific threat that specified the time, the date, the circumstances, as if that happens very often, and therefore we couldn't react. And I think that this is a problem in terms of the strategic understanding apparently of the people who are bearing responsibility for national security when they say these things because at the end of the day, terrorism isn't just about specific threats. It's about the existence of a network that threatens the people of the United States and other decent people around the world at all times.
As you get more information about that network and what it's capabilities are and what its possible thoughts are, your sense of urgency about attacking and destroying it ought to grow and should, it seems to me, have grown in the course of the months that the administration was in office. And yet, here is what the president said he thought about Osama bin Laden before September 11 and thinking about whether Osama bin Laden would strike America and so forth. He said, quote: “I knew he was a menace. And I knew he was a problem. I was prepared to look at a plan that was a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice and would have given the order to do that. I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency.”
I think the president has put his finger on a real problem. It was alluded to in an article in the “Washington Post” over the weekend also, that in spite of what had been almost — they described them in the “Post” as frantic warnings from the head of the Central Intelligence Agency about possible attacks and possible hijackings in the summer preceding the terrible events of September 11. The “Post” characterizes the response of the administration as kind of lacking urgency, just as the president has just said.
And yet this was an administration that came in the wake of another that had witnessed several terrorist attack during the Clinton years. Here are some of the attacks and responses during those years: the World Trade Center in '93, the fact that after that attack occurred, Sudan apparently offered Bill Clinton the possibility of a shot at bin Laden, and he wasn't all that interested.
There were the African embassy bombings in which there was an ineffectual response from Clinton that some people believed wasn't motivated by a real security concern but by a sense of distracting the American people from his own scandal, so he wasn't taking it seriously in its own terms.
The attack on the USS Cole in 2000. And in terms of the response they had, the “Boston Globe” and the “Washington Times” both reported last year just prior to the September 11 attacks that a presidential commission led by Vice President Al Gore in 1996 identified extensive airline security deficiencies and made proposals to remedy them.
However, Vice President Gore removed the language in the commission's findings that would have made these changes to safety standards mandatory. He did so after hundreds of thousand of dollars in campaign contributions by the airlines found their way into Democratic Party coffers. That is what these newspapers have juxtaposed.
This idea being, though, that in the wake of the Clinton administration you would have looked at the situation of American national security — and many people did, including myself — and you saw tremendous holes in America's national security, a neglect of our human intelligence gathering capabilities, a failure to have a coherent response to the terrorist attacks that have been brought against us, and a sense that something really needed to be done in order to correct those holes.
The one question that I think does hang in the air is not the silly questions the media is trying to air. What did he know? When did he know it? And all these phony suggestions that this president wouldn't do his absolute best in response to a particular threat. Of course he would.
But that's not the overall point. The point is, in the face of the existence of a terrorist network, real threats, actual circumstances in which they had attacked us during the Clinton years and there had not been a sufficient response to build up American strength, why wasn't there a sense of urgency about developing our overall response and correcting the weaknesses in our national security shield, the kind of urgency, by the way, that did characterize the Reagan administration response when they came in following Jimmy Carter's similar dismantling of America's strength in the national security area.
And this does make a difference, by the way, the sense of urgency and priority within an administration can then call forth a response from the bureaucracy, including the intelligence bureaucracy, that is going to bring forward some of the information that might be in the system but that wasn't served up in a timely way before September 11.
William Sapphire writing in today's “New York Times” recognized this. He talked about Tenet, the CIA fellow, meeting with the president, getting word that the president was interested in al Qaeda. Then Tenet went back to the CIA. But he says, Sapphire says, “Tenet should have gone to the FBI and demanded that they give him information that they had since the president wanted to know about domestic threats.” And then he says the following, quote: “Can you imagine if word had reached the FBI from Tenet at the CIA that the president was personally interested in data about al Qaeda threats in the U.S.? Every field office would have been instantly alerted and recent files searched. The troubling Williams memo would have rocketed up the chain and hit the president's desk the next morning.”
I think that Sapphire's remark is actually a good reminder of the fact that expressions of high-level interest can, in fact, change the priorities within the bureaucracy. But here is the one problem with Sapphire's reasoning. Tenet is the head of the CIA. He is not the individual charged with making sure that when the president expresses an interest in X, everybody in the government, all the agencies and departments that might be relevant, respond to that presidential interest on a national security matter.
Who was responsible for that? I asked this question last week. I ask it again. I'll continue to ask it. The national security adviser, charged by law with this very process of coordination, of making sure that the agency respond to the president's priorities so that there is a coherent and coordinated response on national security matters. That's the job that is defined in law for the National Security Council and that is to be supported by the national security adviser and the National Security Council staff. Why does Mr. Sapphire say Tenet should have done what Condoleezza Rice is charged to do?
There has been a failure here. But I think we need to start taking a hard, close look at what the actual nature was of that failure, not hurling partisan accusations and going after the president personally or anything. No, what the American people need now is somebody who is just going to look at the facts and let the chips fall where they may in terms of Clinton's responsibility, the responsibility of more recent times of the folks in the bureaucracy — the CIA, the FBI, and folks in the White House I think badly served this president.
Next, we're going to get to the heart of the matter with two former officials of the Defense Department, one from the Reagan years, one from the Reagan/Bush years, one from the Clinton years. You're watching America's news channel, MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The prospect of another attack against the United States is very, very real. It's just as real, in my opinion, as it was September 12.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not a matter of if, but when.
CHENEY: Not a matter of if, but when.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: Vice President Cheney said it yesterday. He believes another attack is being planned. The question is, what can we do to stop it? We'll discuss that in our next half hour.
A reminder that the chat room is humming tonight. Pete says: “I know I've changed my mind about an investigation about 9/11. I think they should have one, but start in 1993.” And you can join in right now at chat.msnbc.com.
But first, let's get back to our discussion about where America's national security failed in order to produce the tremendous disaster that we faced on September 11. Joining us to get to the heart of the matter, Jed Babbin, the deputy undersecretary of defense in the Reagan administration and a columnist for the “Washington Times.” Also with us, Joseph Nye, former assistant secretary of defense for international security in the Clinton administration and currently dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School, author of “Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone.” Gentlemen, welcome to MAKING SENSE.
JED BABBIN, FORMER DEPUTY UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Thank you, Alan.
KEYES: Joseph Nye, I would like to starts with you tonight because one of the things that I've been thinking about as I've watched the — let's call it frenzy — over the last several days is inevitably the fact that even though I believe and have said on this program that we need to take a careful look at the sort of failures that might have occurred during the course of the present president's tenure and the lack of coordination, other things, that need to be looked at and carefully discussed, we were facing I think some very, very serious deficiencies coming out of the Clinton years that this president then had to deal with. Isn't that a fact?
JOSEPH NYE, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I think the problems of inadequate intelligence are bipartisan. We haven't handled it well in the '90s, we as a people, not just the Clinton administration, but the Congress, general public concern and awareness, and the press, and so forth.
But it is also true that that carried over in the first eight months of the Bush administration. Jim Woolsey and I wrote a report in 1996, which we published a small unclassified version of, in which we said the gravest danger that the country faced was catastrophic terrorism, but we didn't think anybody would pay attention until there was a domestic Pearl Harbor. I'm afraid that was true.
KEYES: I'm afraid that there are a number of folks who said and wrote in that vein I think on both sides of the spectrum. And it raises the question that has been nagging at me about the possibility that we'll actually get a factual, clear investigation of this but not with any partisan aim, with an aim to improve things. Since both parties are in a way implicated in the problem, doesn't that create an incentive for everybody to sweep it under the rug?
NYE: Well, I think the recent revelations there was much more information in the system that hadn't been used properly may overcome that sweep-under-the-rug. I think you're now getting a — beginning to see, at least, a bipartisan feeling that we have to have a serious investigation of how the system failed.
KEYES: Now, Jed Babbin, if we go into this with a sense that we'll look at and acknowledge the deficiencies on the part of the Clinton administration, on the part of the Congress as an actor tying the hands of different security agencies in ways that inhibited our intelligence capacity and so forth, if we're going to look at all those things at the same time, isn't it fair to take a nonpartisan, clear, hard look on behalf of the American people at what might have been the lack of urgency and the deficiency of response during the early months of the Bush administration?
BABBIN: I think it would be, Alan. But I think we have to go to a much more basic issue.
The issue of responsibility for this is bipartisan. It goes way back to the Church Committee in the late 1970s. What we need to do is take the investigation out of the hands of Congress, which can't be anything but partisan no matter how hard they try.
What we need to do is have some sort of a bipartisan presidential commission. I'm thinking somewhat in the order of the aforementioned Jim Woolsey, a Democrat, maybe with Boyden Gray (ph), a Republican, have them be able to work in a manner which can protect the classified information they're going to have to reach, methods and means, sources and so forth, which have to be looked at to assess what happened and then find out what the failure is. I suspect it's a failure of cooperation among the various agencies.
KEYES: Well, let me ask a question, though, because that to me, though I understand exactly what you're saying and given what I think we would hope to achieve in this, it certainly has the proper foundation of trying to do this in a nonpartisan way that just serves the security of the country. But isn't that a way of saying that our constitutional system is unworkable now and that Congress can't do its job? After all, it is Congress' job on behalf of the American people to look at matters like this in an oversight capacity so they can respond properly to exigencies as they appropriate and pass other legislation. Are we going to say then that Congress just can't do that because of partisanship?
BABBIN: I'm sorry. I think we don't need to have Congress do it first. I think we need to have the professionals look at it in the way I'm describing with a presidential commission. Congress certainly has a constitutional role to play. But Congress can't help but be partisan when it talks about things like appropriations and authorizations.
And right now we have a much more fundamental question. It's not a matter of pinning the tail on somebody for blame. It's a matter of fixing this problem very urgently because we do have threats that are existing right now. And if we don't have the means of tackling them, which we probably don't, we're going to have another 9/11. And it may be sooner rather than later. I would rather have Congress pursue its constitutional role after we have the real pros look at this thing.
KEYES: Now, Joseph Nye, in light of what we're all acknowledging to be, I think, the sort of bipartisan implication of these failures that stretch back over time, that reach into several administrations and so forth, do you think that Jed Babbin's suggestion here and one that has been brought about in the public at large is the best way to try to handle this so we get the kind of investigation that will actually produce positive results we can build on?
NYE: I think you could either have this independent commission, or you could have a serious congressional investigation by the intelligence committees. But I think the danger that I see is that we're going to look backwards so much that we're not looking forward.
I would like to see a lot more attention to beefing up Tom Ridge's Office of Homeland Security. We have a clear and present danger. I agree with Vice President Cheney on that.
And we should be giving far more authority, including budgetary authority, to the Office of Homeland Security. When Ridge proposed, for example, amalgamating some of the agencies that deal with defense at our borders — Customs, INS, Coast Guard, and so forth — we haven't done that. Each of the status quo powers essentially protected their own turf.
KEYES: One of the things, though...
(CROSSTALK)
KEYES: ... Yes, go ahead, Jed.
BABBIN: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
KEYES: That's all right.
BABBIN: But I really think what we don't need, the last thing in the world this town and this country needs is yet another bureaucracy. Governor Ridge has pretty much a rah-rah cheerleading job to try to lead people into doing the right thing. We don't need another bureaucracy under him.
What we need is to have the NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office, the NSA, the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the FBI form a high-level steering committee to do what they need to do and have needed to do for years. That's to share information, get the RSGs, the real smart guys, in there to analyze this stuff and give the president a better analysis of what is going on. We don't need another bureaucracy to do that.
KEYES: But in order for all of this to sort itself out — and I address this question to Joseph Nye — one of the reasons I think it's important on an urgent basis — and I don't mean to drag it out over years or anything, but to do it in an expeditious way, to look at what actually happened and what the deficiencies actually were, I'm still wondering if we haven't done that, how do we know what kind of reorganization is, in fact, going to be effective? I don't understand how you can solve a problem you haven't yet understood.
NYE: No, I agree. I think we should be looking at what happened. But we should also be starting to apply it to looking ahead.
BABBIN: Absolutely.
NYE: Just take the case of intelligence failure. We failed in intelligence with a small I, not just a capital I. Capital I means your spies. Small I means being smart.
Take what happened. We knew that you could defeat or you could use airplanes as cruise missiles. What was the answer to that? Well, if you thought through that, you would have had stronger bars on cockpit doors so that evil people couldn't get into the cockpits. We could have thought that through.
KEYES: Well, can I raise another question because the one thing that occurred to me actually occurred to me on the very day as I was watching this. It was part of my dismay.
Don't we have technology that, as a matter of last resort, especially around our national security buildings in Washington buildings, don't we have technology that can bring a plane out of the sky without a lot of trouble? I thought we had even shared it with folks, unhappily, in Afghanistan and so forth and so on. It's called a Stinger missile.
Simply, if you knew this was a possibility, if you stationed a couple of mobile Stinger units at Fort Myer, wouldn't you at least have the possibility that as a last resort you could put them in the path of an airplane and keep them from taking more lives in a major national security asset or national asset? Why wasn't this looked at? That seems fairly cost efficient?
NYE: Alan, I think you can do that. Clearly, Stinger is obviously a short-range missile that can down any aircraft if it hits it. The problem is, it's a question of priorities. You have to know that there is a serious threat that something like this is going to happen.
When you look back at what was going on last August when President Bush asked the CIA for a new assessment of what the risks really were. All of these reports were floating out there, all the rumors of what al Qaeda was trying to do. And he gave that order to the CIA. What he got back was more of the same stuff he had been getting for eight months.
KEYES: But Jed, Jed...
BABBIN: ... He need had a better assessment.
KEYES: ... wait, the reason I raise the Stinger thing is because, meaning no particular offense, I can understand that if you have got to do something major and deeply expensive that involves some sort of major reorganization and expenditure, that might take time and so forth and so on. But these are assets we have. And all we had to do was relocate them against a contingency. You mean what we have in Washington in the way of assets isn't worth that kind of a minor redeployment for the sake of the possibility that we might have to defend them?
BABBIN: Absolutely, Alan.
KEYES: I don't understand this mentality.
BABBIN: Absolutely. No, no, you're absolutely right. If we thought there was a substantial possibility. But if that's a one in 100 chance, and there's something else that's a two in 100 chance, what are you going to re-deploy for? The problem is we didn't have enough urgency in that deployment.
KEYES: Joseph, go ahead.
NYE: What I want to say is before you get to the point of shooting down airplanes, if we had a Red Team/Blue Team doing some war gaming on this and you had a report to the National Intelligence Council saying airplanes could be used as cruise missiles, you would say, how could I defeat that? And one of the simplest and cheapest things we could have done is just put strong bars on the cockpits.
BABBIN: Sure.
NYE: That is intelligence with a small I. We just didn't do it.
KEYES: We didn't do it. But first, this was gamed out, as I recall, in the '80s. And second, in the '90s this commission, as I mentioned, with Al Gore was talking about precisely the kinds of steps that were needed, and yet those steps were not mandated and therefore were not taken.
That is both intelligence with a small I lacking, but it's also political will and understanding that was lacking. And it's not just, as I say, during the Bush years. That came before this president even got into office.
And yet as we look forward, if we take that for granted, Jed Babbin, what now needs to be the priority as we look ahead because if the vice president is right — and we'll be talking about this as well in our second half — we're faced inevitably with these threats. They are planning and likely to mount them against us again. What do we do?
BABBIN: Well, one of the things we have to do, Alan, is figure out what is the most likely threat and plan to defend against that. Right now we have Mr. Mueller saying we're going to have Palestinian-like suicide bombers wandering around amongst us in the streets.
We have to educate people as to how to spot risks and do that. But on a national sense, we have to figure out what is the most likely thing? Is it a dirty bomb? If so, we have got to defend against the dirty bomb. Right now, we don't have the intelligence apparatus to give us a good enough assessment as to what is the most likely.
KEYES: Joseph Nye, what is your response? What do we do?
NYE: I would be doing this Red Team/Blue Team war gaming to think through which of these is the most likely, the most dangerous, and what are the most cost-effective ways to defeat the terrorists on this? They're not going to do the same thing again. You've got to ask, what's their next step, and the step after that? And we're not doing enough of that kind of thinking ahead.
KEYES: Well, we're going to — thank you both, by the way, for joining us this evening. Appreciate the very insightful thoughts that you shared with us.
Next, we're going to be looking a little bit further at this very question, the ominous warnings that — and this wasn't the first one, by the way. I want to be fair to everyone and to the vice president in particular. He was simply sounding again a warning we've heard several times in the course of the last several months about the likelihood we'll be struck again.
Well, how do we fight? How can we prevent major disasters like 9/11? What can we do? We'll be talking about that next. You're watching America's news channel, MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: Welcome back to MAKING SENSE. I'm Alan Keyes.
Today, FBI director Robert Mueller said that suicide bombing attacks like the ones we've seen in Israel are an inevitability here in the United States. And yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert that another attack on American soil is surely in the works.
Obviously, we're in a time when whatever may be the feelings, and I've gone around the country recently and I know that as we should, Americans are resilient. We're sort of bouncing back from the shock and dismay of that terrible attack last fall. The country has moved into a situation that I think is getting to be more robust and almost normalcy. And yet, still, we are at war. The shadow of the war hangs over us. And as the vice president is reminding us, we may, at any point, find ourselves facing another terrible episode that shocks us once again with the depth of our danger.
Joining us now, Steven Emerson, MSNBC terrorism analyst and author of “American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Amongst Us.” Also with us, Christopher Harmon, author of the book “Terrorism Today.” Gentlemen, welcome to MAKING SENSE.
Now, we have come together to — or brought you together today to talk a little bit in a forward-looking way about what can be done, in fact, to do something about this threat, because I certainly don't think that the vice president meant to imply we're just to sit here with our hands up in the air saying, oh well, Americans are going to die and so forth and so on.
Obviously we're going to be trying to take steps to both prevent and properly deal with these kinds of terrorist threats. But that requires some thought. Chris Harmon, what are the kinds of things? What is, if you like the coherent strategy or approach that we might take in trying to deal with this inevitable threat?
CHRIS HARMON, AUTHOR, “TERRORISM TODAY”: Dr. Keyes, I think the last guests were very good. But you'll notice they were all talking about us being on the defensive, things we can do to improve our defensive measures, showing more urgency about defense against terrorism.
And I think the biggest sin we've made so far is not being sufficiently on the offensive, at least not until the war that began after September 11. There is a whole series of things that we should do which show initiative and which would take away the initiative from the terrorists themselves. And we haven't been doing these to any sufficient degree.
During the early 1990's, for example, we knew all about bin Laden's presence in the Sudan. Egypt would have been very eager to have us do some forcible activity against the international training camps in the Sudan. We would have had a great partner in that effort. The U.S. declined to do anything. There's a series of renditions that could be done, forcible extractions of individuals who have been involved in terrorism. But we have the special forces to do these things, but we've very rarely done it.
Even during the Clinton administration, there were some successful renditions. Both Democrats and Republicans have used the efforts of rendition. But I would say we should be doing two or three times as many such physical efforts to get people back here for trials.
KEYES: Steve Emerson, what is your thought about the priorities as we face this threat? What do we need to be doing?
STEVEN EMERSON, MSNBC ANALYST: Well, I definitely agree that we need to be doing something more proactive. First of all, there are two aspects to this problem. One is lack of integration and distillation of intelligence. As we see in the breakdown that occurred prior to 9/11, the FBI was not sharing information, not only with its own people but it wasn't sharing with the CIA. So the issue really becomes integrating forcible integration of intelligence and distillation of it. And that means, as somebody just told me, we have got to have basically the CIA spying on the FBI, the FBI spying on the CIA to make sure they're honest. That's No. 1.
No. 2, there has been to be a series of proactive efforts, and I think covert action definitely needs to be employed. And even though it means rolling back some of the restrictions, Congress needs to approve it.
No. 3, I think we have to be very careful here to make sure that we pinpoint the terrorists that are carrying out these attacks. It's not just the generic terrorist, the thrush that used to be in the comic book. It is militant Islamic groups. We need to be leaning on the Saudis to stop their funding of these radical charities and we need to be demanding that Islamic leaders around the world forswear the use of suicide bombings and stop the use of violence. It has to be proactive and we have to reward them and punish them. And that's not something we've been willing to do.
KEYES: Well, one of the things that has surprised me, I'll have to tell you, is that in the months since this whole episode, we have yet to come together something that I thought would be perfectly natural in response. Given the cross-cutting nature of terrorism, it's obvious that we need interdepartmental, interagency, cross-cutting action group that would include the intelligence arm, the analysis arm, the policymaking arm and the execution arm both in covert activities in a military sense, bring them all together under a single head reporting directly to the president and responsive to his directives with the advise and consent of a select group of people, leadership from the Congress, so that we can make decisions as to what we need to do and do it. And I think that is the sort of thing that could be openly established and yet it would operate in total secrecy to pursue the agenda of counterterrorism. Why hasn't such a force been established?
EMERSON: Alan, I think that one of the problems — I mean, I think it's a great idea because you're absolutely right. There has to be some type of integration. The problem really is how do you know that the agencies are going to be honest? Most of the agencies — look, even as we speak right now, there is bitter infighting between Justice, between the FBI, Customs, Treasury, INS, the Coast Guard.
There's tremendous — I think the public would be shocked to know that nine months after 9/11, there are cases and prosecutions that are being delayed on terrorism because of the infighting and rivalries and jurisdictional disputes. So I think you're right. Something needs to be seamlessly formed that would allow the clashing to stop and forcibly integrate this. Now, I don't know how you do it though. That's the problem. The president has to be involved.
KEYES: One of the reasons I suggested that this would have to be under the president and directly responsive to him and one of the reasons I have kept harping, not intending anything personal, but just harping on the role and function of the national security council adviser is that it is the president who can cut across all that. It's the president who can pick up the phone and ask anybody in the government to send him what they've got and they have to do it in the executive branch.
And those acting on his behalf with that kind of mandate could then break through the usual chain of command to get at the kind of information they need. Isn't that what we need, Steve Emerson, something like that established in an office directly responsive to the president?
EMERSON: You know, I think basically you're right. The president has to create something because I've had this — this discussion with other people about whether we're creating another bureaucracy. How are they going to make sure that people are honest in the agencies, they're going to be forthcoming? How do we know they are not going to withhold information because their budgets depend upon them making scores and arrests.
So I think the president has to be involved here. He has to demand this type of reaction from his representatives and the government and only he can make it happen. Nobody else can make it happen. I think you're right.
HARMON: I would like to add that I think there is a couple of things that could be done with existing agencies which are very important. In the first place, I think everyone recognizes that the Central Intelligence Agency's budget should go up considerably, especially in its focus on human intelligence. There were some shocking stories, not just by bad journalists or anything, but by actual former members of the CIA who talked about the inadequacy of resources dedicated to places like Afghanistan, even after we had known of years of trouble from there.
We need to have a far better budget for human intelligence. You know, Sun Tzu said so many years ago that the good general is actually inhumane if he's unwilling to spend inadequate gold to buy good spies. We've been unwilling to spend that money, and we've had too many concerns about snooping.
And the second thing I think we ought to do is...
KEYES: Chris, hold that thought one second. Chris, hold that thought one second because we're up against the wire here.
We're going to come back for more with our guests right after this. And later, my “Outrage of the Day,” a suggestion from a fellow at the Vatican that bishops aren't responsible for the moral behavior of priests. Interesting idea, but not very acceptable.
But first, does this make sense? The six terrorists in jail in Jericho as a condition for the withdrawal of Israel's tanks from Ramallah include the leader of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmed Sadat (ph). Reports coming in from Israel now indicate that Sadat was responsible for planning the terrorist attack on Netanya on Sunday.
Sadat and his men have complete freedom of action, a senior defense source told the “Ha'aretz” daily newspaper. He said Sadat and his men are allowed to use both cellular and regular phones freely with no supervision from either the British or Palestinian wardens and are also allowed to receive visits from other PFLP activists.
Do you remember when I told you on this show that this particular form of so-called imprisonment might just become a protected form of terrorist activity, with the warden standing there to make sure the Israelis can't get to the guys who are planning the terrorist actions? Looks like I may have been right. Does this make sense?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: We're back with Steve Emerson and Chris Harmon talking about how we can respond to the ongoing threat of terrorism highlighted by Vice President Cheney's remarks over the weekend.
Want to address a question first to Chris Harmon. Now, it's not exactly a backward-looking question, Chris, though in a way it is because I think it's the kind of analysis that's needed at least to think about what we ought to be doing.
This isn't the first time that we have faced questions about coordination, turf warfare, interagency problems when it comes to producing a coherent national security approach. I have spent the last little while reviewing, as some of my viewers probably have noticed, the history and legislative basis of the national security council system and the national security council staff.
And when you read it through, a lot of the rationale for it sounds just like what you were talking about just now in terms of coordination, turf warfare, cutting through this and that. It seems as if the NSA hasn't been — the national security adviser position and the staff position hasn't really worked to respond to these kinds of problems even though this was the sort of thinking that led to the establishment of this system. What is the problem here, Chris?
HARMON: I think there has been a number of things done that are actually very positive. and I would mention those quickly. The Coast Guard's focus, for example, has considerably changed. Now I think drug interdiction is probably not going to increase, but the Coast Guard is looking very well now at prospect for terrorism, the concern about smuggling a nuclear device into the country and so forth. They've completely changed the focus of the kinds of inspections they do. That's been a very successful thing.
There are some other things that we've been doing well. I approve of the notion of a homeland defense group in the White House, although I don't think up-gunning it by three or four times would be key. I do think there has to be constant pressure...
KEYES: Now, Chris, can I interrupt you for one second though?
HARMON: Yes, sir.
KEYES: Because I know, it's very interesting what you're saying. But it is not at all a response to my question. I asked a specific question about the national security council system. Everything you guys have talked about, and I've heard it before in terms of coordination, turf warfare, the need for this kind of effort to get at information and coordinate it in light of our national security requirements. All that kind of thinking, rhetoric, speeches and all that went into the history, the legislative history and the creation of the national security council, national security council staff.
Why is it that we're having this discussion again? Has that system failed?
HARMON: No. My answer is...
KEYES: Now why are we sitting here talking about the need to reinvent the wheel of coordination among the agencies?
HARMON: We're not. At least I'm not. Alan, I think that reorganization is not the key. I think taking the initiative to the terrorists abroad is the key and I think reforms at home which have to do with particular things about how investigations can begin, what kind of aggressiveness we show about investigations. These are things that don't require reorganization. The NSC gets reorganized with every single presidency. It didn't get wonders done to it under the Clinton administration. And I don't think a reorganization is the key. I do think that organization...
KEYES: But you don't think some kind of counterterrorism strike force that has this kind of interdepartmental, interagency capability with respect to intelligence and action, covert and military, is in fact necessary?
Because I don't see how you get what you're talking about in the way of an assertive, aggressive strategy if you aren't able to pull together all the intelligence you need to identify your targets, to make sure you're going after the right people at the right time and then to move against them in an effective way drawing on the elite forces this government has to provide. If you're not going to set up a force to do that, how is it going to get done?
HARMON: There is a very good coordination in many levels between the senior agencies that are involved in intelligence. I've spoken with a number of FBI and CIA and state department people who say it's at unprecedented levels. There has been quite a lot of emphasis on coordination. Now I completely agree that the bureau field office report on the enrollment of various Middle Easterners on aircraft training should have certainly arisen. There's no question about that...
KEYES: Before we go, we just have about 30 seconds. Steve Emerson, what is your thought on this, quickly?
EMERSON: I think there has been a break down in the intelligence. And I think all these agencies have gotten too large in terms of their budgets. And up until this terrorist attack, their bureaucratic imperative was just expanding budget and it didn't respond to the NSC. I think you're right. The NSC, last summer by the way, I think worked under the leadership, under the counterterrorism security group under Richard Clark. He tried to fashion a policy, but the problem is the agencies weren't listening. So maybe you now need to mash them all together under the leadership of the president.
KEYES: Now we're out of time. Gentlemen, thank you both for a very interesting and enlightening discussion.
HARMON: Thank you, Alan.
KEYES: I hope you think seriously about what you're raising.
Next, my “Outrage of the Day.” Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEYES: Now, time for my “Outrage of the Day.”
According to an authoritative article in a Vatican journal, bishops cannot, in most cases, be held morally or legally accountable for child abuse committed by priests in their dioceses. The 12-page article by Reverend Gianfranco Ghirlanda, dean of the canon law faculty at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, follows similar comments by the head of a Vatican council, Archbishop Julian Herranz.
Now, I've got to tell you, for things that they don't know about, I will certainly acknowledge that you can't hold prelates and higher-ups responsible. But once that knowledge has come their way, it seems to me they are morally and legally responsible for how they act on it. And I think that if the church doesn't recognize that, it is going to get in serious trouble.
That's my sense of it. Thanks. “THE NEWS WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS” is next. Good night from New York.
Up front tonight, America's national security: where did we fail? Of course, I can say that pretty clearly and openly now. There has been a media frenzy since this news broke last week involving the knowledge that may have been there in the hands of different elements of the government of the administration about the possibility of hijackings, al Qaeda, even the possibility as it turns out that airplanes might be crashed into buildings of major significance, at least in Washington, DC.
At the time of the bombing itself back on September 11, some of you may recall that there was some hesitancy even to suggest that there might have been a failure or to acknowledge that there might have been a failure of intelligence. There was also a sense conveyed to the American people in various ways that the means that were used in this particular terrorist attack were so unusual that no one would ever have thought of any such possibility in terms of the use of commercial aircraft.
Here is what the president and his staff said in the weeks after 9/11, particularly the president and the secretary of state in these two bites.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The intelligence gathering capacity of the United States is doing a fine job. These terrorists had burrowed in our country for over two years. They were well organized. They were well planned. They struck in a way that was unimaginable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATIE COURIC, NBC NEWS: Was this, in your view, a massive intelligence failure, as it has been called?
COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: I wouldn't characterize it that way. We spend many billions of dollars on intelligence. And that intelligence allows us to thwart many attacks. There are many terrorist attacks that never took place because of the fine work of our intelligence and law enforcement experts.
But, in this case, we did not get the queuing we needed. We did not get the intelligence information needed to predict this was about to happen or be aware of this kind of event coming our way.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KEYES: Now, I think that one of the most salient points that was made in the wake of September 11, and that I think helped to assuage any sense of public concern, or possible outrage even, over the failures of the national security establishment was the argument that this use of commercial aircraft to crash planes into buildings, it was unimaginable. Nobody would have thought of any such use of an airplane, a commercial airliner, and so forth.
Now, of course, some of the things that have come out in the course of the last little while raise some serious questions about this assertion, including of course the fact that it was envisaged by people within the intelligence community. In fact, there was a report produced in 1999 that envisaged this very possibility, was produced by an office over in the Library of Congress, a research arm over there. They were talking about the psychology of terrorists. And they explicitly said that one of the possibilities was using aircraft to crash them into buildings. And they alluded to what had been reported intelligence from The Philippines about possible plans to do just that.
But despite the fact that it now is on the table that this use of commercial airliners wasn't, after all, so unimaginable, here is what members of the Bush administration said when the story broke last week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: But I want to remind you, information about hijackings in the pre-9/11 world is totally different from information than hijackings in the post 9/11 world. Traditional hijacking prior to September 11, it might as well be a different word in a different language from what we've all unfortunately come to know about the post-9/11 world.
For decades, governments have taken steps about warnings on hijackings. Never did we imagine what would take place on September 11 where people used those airplanes as missiles and as weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: Now, in the 1999 memo that I referenced, the report that I referenced, in fact, this possibility was raised explicitly with respect to major Washington buildings — the CIA, the Pentagon and so forth and so on. So, it wasn't so unimaginable.
But what's clear from the comments that have been made in the last few days is that a major change is said to have taken place after 9/11, obviously a greater sense of importance in the critical importance of these hijackings. It does lead to a question in my mind, though. And this evening, part of what I'm trying to do is give you a sense of how I'm reacting to this. I'm listening to it all, trying to be as fair minded as I can.
And yet I still have some serious questions, especially because of the contrast. If they're telling me that before 9/11 hijacking meant one thing and after 9/11 it meant something else far more, what, far more urgent, far more important? What is that so say? That before 9/11 if you got various reports that led to the possibility that a bunch of bad guys were possibly going to hijack some American airplanes you didn't worry about it as much because they weren't going to fly them into buildings?
I'm not sure what that mentality suggests, that the mere hijacking of an airplane and threatening the lives of several hundred Americans, that is, what, not quite at the threshold of concern an urgency that's necessary for real action? It's not — I don't understand it.
And yet that does seem to have been somewhat the attitude that characterized the government establishment prior to September 11, that, yes, there were problems, and, yes, there were these reports. They were on the lookout, of course, for pinpoint threats.
And very often what is said in the course of the responses to the information that's coming out is we didn't have a specific threat that specified the time, the date, the circumstances, as if that happens very often, and therefore we couldn't react. And I think that this is a problem in terms of the strategic understanding apparently of the people who are bearing responsibility for national security when they say these things because at the end of the day, terrorism isn't just about specific threats. It's about the existence of a network that threatens the people of the United States and other decent people around the world at all times.
As you get more information about that network and what it's capabilities are and what its possible thoughts are, your sense of urgency about attacking and destroying it ought to grow and should, it seems to me, have grown in the course of the months that the administration was in office. And yet, here is what the president said he thought about Osama bin Laden before September 11 and thinking about whether Osama bin Laden would strike America and so forth. He said, quote: “I knew he was a menace. And I knew he was a problem. I was prepared to look at a plan that was a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice and would have given the order to do that. I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency.”
I think the president has put his finger on a real problem. It was alluded to in an article in the “Washington Post” over the weekend also, that in spite of what had been almost — they described them in the “Post” as frantic warnings from the head of the Central Intelligence Agency about possible attacks and possible hijackings in the summer preceding the terrible events of September 11. The “Post” characterizes the response of the administration as kind of lacking urgency, just as the president has just said.
And yet this was an administration that came in the wake of another that had witnessed several terrorist attack during the Clinton years. Here are some of the attacks and responses during those years: the World Trade Center in '93, the fact that after that attack occurred, Sudan apparently offered Bill Clinton the possibility of a shot at bin Laden, and he wasn't all that interested.
There were the African embassy bombings in which there was an ineffectual response from Clinton that some people believed wasn't motivated by a real security concern but by a sense of distracting the American people from his own scandal, so he wasn't taking it seriously in its own terms.
The attack on the USS Cole in 2000. And in terms of the response they had, the “Boston Globe” and the “Washington Times” both reported last year just prior to the September 11 attacks that a presidential commission led by Vice President Al Gore in 1996 identified extensive airline security deficiencies and made proposals to remedy them.
However, Vice President Gore removed the language in the commission's findings that would have made these changes to safety standards mandatory. He did so after hundreds of thousand of dollars in campaign contributions by the airlines found their way into Democratic Party coffers. That is what these newspapers have juxtaposed.
This idea being, though, that in the wake of the Clinton administration you would have looked at the situation of American national security — and many people did, including myself — and you saw tremendous holes in America's national security, a neglect of our human intelligence gathering capabilities, a failure to have a coherent response to the terrorist attacks that have been brought against us, and a sense that something really needed to be done in order to correct those holes.
The one question that I think does hang in the air is not the silly questions the media is trying to air. What did he know? When did he know it? And all these phony suggestions that this president wouldn't do his absolute best in response to a particular threat. Of course he would.
But that's not the overall point. The point is, in the face of the existence of a terrorist network, real threats, actual circumstances in which they had attacked us during the Clinton years and there had not been a sufficient response to build up American strength, why wasn't there a sense of urgency about developing our overall response and correcting the weaknesses in our national security shield, the kind of urgency, by the way, that did characterize the Reagan administration response when they came in following Jimmy Carter's similar dismantling of America's strength in the national security area.
And this does make a difference, by the way, the sense of urgency and priority within an administration can then call forth a response from the bureaucracy, including the intelligence bureaucracy, that is going to bring forward some of the information that might be in the system but that wasn't served up in a timely way before September 11.
William Sapphire writing in today's “New York Times” recognized this. He talked about Tenet, the CIA fellow, meeting with the president, getting word that the president was interested in al Qaeda. Then Tenet went back to the CIA. But he says, Sapphire says, “Tenet should have gone to the FBI and demanded that they give him information that they had since the president wanted to know about domestic threats.” And then he says the following, quote: “Can you imagine if word had reached the FBI from Tenet at the CIA that the president was personally interested in data about al Qaeda threats in the U.S.? Every field office would have been instantly alerted and recent files searched. The troubling Williams memo would have rocketed up the chain and hit the president's desk the next morning.”
I think that Sapphire's remark is actually a good reminder of the fact that expressions of high-level interest can, in fact, change the priorities within the bureaucracy. But here is the one problem with Sapphire's reasoning. Tenet is the head of the CIA. He is not the individual charged with making sure that when the president expresses an interest in X, everybody in the government, all the agencies and departments that might be relevant, respond to that presidential interest on a national security matter.
Who was responsible for that? I asked this question last week. I ask it again. I'll continue to ask it. The national security adviser, charged by law with this very process of coordination, of making sure that the agency respond to the president's priorities so that there is a coherent and coordinated response on national security matters. That's the job that is defined in law for the National Security Council and that is to be supported by the national security adviser and the National Security Council staff. Why does Mr. Sapphire say Tenet should have done what Condoleezza Rice is charged to do?
There has been a failure here. But I think we need to start taking a hard, close look at what the actual nature was of that failure, not hurling partisan accusations and going after the president personally or anything. No, what the American people need now is somebody who is just going to look at the facts and let the chips fall where they may in terms of Clinton's responsibility, the responsibility of more recent times of the folks in the bureaucracy — the CIA, the FBI, and folks in the White House I think badly served this president.
Next, we're going to get to the heart of the matter with two former officials of the Defense Department, one from the Reagan years, one from the Reagan/Bush years, one from the Clinton years. You're watching America's news channel, MSNBC.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The prospect of another attack against the United States is very, very real. It's just as real, in my opinion, as it was September 12.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not a matter of if, but when.
CHENEY: Not a matter of if, but when.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEYES: Vice President Cheney said it yesterday. He believes another attack is being planned. The question is, what can we do to stop it? We'll discuss that in our next half hour.
A reminder that the chat room is humming tonight. Pete says: “I know I've changed my mind about an investigation about 9/11. I think they should have one, but start in 1993.” And you can join in right now at chat.msnbc.com.
But first, let's get back to our discussion about where America's national security failed in order to produce the tremendous disaster that we faced on September 11. Joining us to get to the heart of the matter, Jed Babbin, the deputy undersecretary of defense in the Reagan administration and a columnist for the “Washington Times.” Also with us, Joseph Nye, former assistant secretary of defense for international security in the Clinton administration and currently dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School, author of “Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone.” Gentlemen, welcome to MAKING SENSE.
JED BABBIN, FORMER DEPUTY UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Thank you, Alan.
KEYES: Joseph Nye, I would like to starts with you tonight because one of the things that I've been thinking about as I've watched the — let's call it frenzy — over the last several days is inevitably the fact that even though I believe and have said on this program that we need to take a careful look at the sort of failures that might have occurred during the course of the present president's tenure and the lack of coordination, other things, that need to be looked at and carefully discussed, we were facing I think some very, very serious deficiencies coming out of the Clinton years that this president then had to deal with. Isn't that a fact?
JOSEPH NYE, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I think the problems of inadequate intelligence are bipartisan. We haven't handled it well in the '90s, we as a people, not just the Clinton administration, but the Congress, general public concern and awareness, and the press, and so forth.
But it is also true that that carried over in the first eight months of the Bush administration. Jim Woolsey and I wrote a report in 1996, which we published a small unclassified version of, in which we said the gravest danger that the country faced was catastrophic terrorism, but we didn't think anybody would pay attention until there was a domestic Pearl Harbor. I'm afraid that was true.
KEYES: I'm afraid that there are a number of folks who said and wrote in that vein I think on both sides of the spectrum. And it raises the question that has been nagging at me about the possibility that we'll actually get a factual, clear investigation of this but not with any partisan aim, with an aim to improve things. Since both parties are in a way implicated in the problem, doesn't that create an incentive for everybody to sweep it under the rug?
NYE: Well, I think the recent revelations there was much more information in the system that hadn't been used properly may overcome that sweep-under-the-rug. I think you're now getting a — beginning to see, at least, a bipartisan feeling that we have to have a serious investigation of how the system failed.
KEYES: Now, Jed Babbin, if we go into this with a sense that we'll look at and acknowledge the deficiencies on the part of the Clinton administration, on the part of the Congress as an actor tying the hands of different security agencies in ways that inhibited our intelligence capacity and so forth, if we're going to look at all those things at the same time, isn't it fair to take a nonpartisan, clear, hard look on behalf of the American people at what might have been the lack of urgency and the deficiency of response during the early months of the Bush administration?
BABBIN: I think it would be, Alan. But I think we have to go to a much more basic issue.
The issue of responsibility for this is bipartisan. It goes way back to the Church Committee in the late 1970s. What we need to do is take the investigation out of the hands of Congress, which can't be anything but partisan no matter how hard they try.
What we need to do is have some sort of a bipartisan presidential commission. I'm thinking somewhat in the order of the aforementioned Jim Woolsey, a Democrat, maybe with Boyden Gray (ph), a Republican, have them be able to work in a manner which can protect the classified information they're going to have to reach, methods and means, sources and so forth, which have to be looked at to assess what happened and then find out what the failure is. I suspect it's a failure of cooperation among the various agencies.
KEYES: Well, let me ask a question, though, because that to me, though I understand exactly what you're saying and given what I think we would hope to achieve in this, it certainly has the proper foundation of trying to do this in a nonpartisan way that just serves the security of the country. But isn't that a way of saying that our constitutional system is unworkable now and that Congress can't do its job? After all, it is Congress' job on behalf of the American people to look at matters like this in an oversight capacity so they can respond properly to exigencies as they appropriate and pass other legislation. Are we going to say then that Congress just can't do that because of partisanship?
BABBIN: I'm sorry. I think we don't need to have Congress do it first. I think we need to have the professionals look at it in the way I'm describing with a presidential commission. Congress certainly has a constitutional role to play. But Congress can't help but be partisan when it talks about things like appropriations and authorizations.
And right now we have a much more fundamental question. It's not a matter of pinning the tail on somebody for blame. It's a matter of fixing this problem very urgently because we do have threats that are existing right now. And if we don't have the means of tackling them, which we probably don't, we're going to have another 9/11. And it may be sooner rather than later. I would rather have Congress pursue its constitutional role after we have the real pros look at this thing.
KEYES: Now, Joseph Nye, in light of what we're all acknowledging to be, I think, the sort of bipartisan implication of these failures that stretch back over time, that reach into several administrations and so forth, do you think that Jed Babbin's suggestion here and one that has been brought about in the public at large is the best way to try to handle this so we get the kind of investigation that will actually produce positive results we can build on?
NYE: I think you could either have this independent commission, or you could have a serious congressional investigation by the intelligence committees. But I think the danger that I see is that we're going to look backwards so much that we're not looking forward.
I would like to see a lot more attention to beefing up Tom Ridge's Office of Homeland Security. We have a clear and present danger. I agree with Vice President Cheney on that.
And we should be giving far more authority, including budgetary authority, to the Office of Homeland Security. When Ridge proposed, for example, amalgamating some of the agencies that deal with defense at our borders — Customs, INS, Coast Guard, and so forth — we haven't done that. Each of the status quo powers essentially protected their own turf.
KEYES: One of the things, though...
(CROSSTALK)
KEYES: ... Yes, go ahead, Jed.
BABBIN: I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
KEYES: That's all right.
BABBIN: But I really think what we don't need, the last thing in the world this town and this country needs is yet another bureaucracy. Governor Ridge has pretty much a rah-rah cheerleading job to try to lead people into doing the right thing. We don't need another bureaucracy under him.
What we need is to have the NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office, the NSA, the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the FBI form a high-level steering committee to do what they need to do and have needed to do for years. That's to share information, get the RSGs, the real smart guys, in there to analyze this stuff and give the president a better analysis of what is going on. We don't need another bureaucracy to do that.
KEYES: But in order for all of this to sort itself out — and I address this question to Joseph Nye — one of the reasons I think it's important on an urgent basis — and I don't mean to drag it out over years or anything, but to do it in an expeditious way, to look at what actually happened and what the deficiencies actually were, I'm still wondering if we haven't done that, how do we know what kind of reorganization is, in fact, going to be effective? I don't understand how you can solve a problem you haven't yet understood.
NYE: No, I agree. I think we should be looking at what happened. But we should also be starting to apply it to looking ahead.
BABBIN: Absolutely.
NYE: Just take the case of intelligence failure. We failed in intelligence with a small I, not just a capital I. Capital I means your spies. Small I means being smart.
Take what happened. We knew that you could defeat or you could use airplanes as cruise missiles. What was the answer to that? Well, if you thought through that, you would have had stronger bars on cockpit doors so that evil people couldn't get into the cockpits. We could have thought that through.
KEYES: Well, can I raise another question because the one thing that occurred to me actually occurred to me on the very day as I was watching this. It was part of my dismay.
Don't we have technology that, as a matter of last resort, especially around our national security buildings in Washington buildings, don't we have technology that can bring a plane out of the sky without a lot of trouble? I thought we had even shared it with folks, unhappily, in Afghanistan and so forth and so on. It's called a Stinger missile.
Simply, if you knew this was a possibility, if you stationed a couple of mobile Stinger units at Fort Myer, wouldn't you at least have the possibility that as a last resort you could put them in the path of an airplane and keep them from taking more lives in a major national security asset or national asset? Why wasn't this looked at? That seems fairly cost efficient?
NYE: Alan, I think you can do that. Clearly, Stinger is obviously a short-range missile that can down any aircraft if it hits it. The problem is, it's a question of priorities. You have to know that there is a serious threat that something like this is going to happen.
When you look back at what was going on last August when President Bush asked the CIA for a new assessment of what the risks really were. All of these reports were floating out there, all the rumors of what al Qaeda was trying to do. And he gave that order to the CIA. What he got back was more of the same stuff he had been getting for eight months.
KEYES: But Jed, Jed...
BABBIN: ... He need had a better assessment.
KEYES: ... wait, the reason I raise the Stinger thing is because, meaning no particular offense, I can understand that if you have got to do something major and deeply expensive that involves some sort of major reorganization and expenditure, that might take time and so forth and so on. But these are assets we have. And all we had to do was relocate them against a contingency. You mean what we have in Washington in the way of assets isn't worth that kind of a minor redeployment for the sake of the possibility that we might have to defend them?
BABBIN: Absolutely, Alan.
KEYES: I don't understand this mentality.
BABBIN: Absolutely. No, no, you're absolutely right. If we thought there was a substantial possibility. But if that's a one in 100 chance, and there's something else that's a two in 100 chance, what are you going to re-deploy for? The problem is we didn't have enough urgency in that deployment.
KEYES: Joseph, go ahead.
NYE: What I want to say is before you get to the point of shooting down airplanes, if we had a Red Team/Blue Team doing some war gaming on this and you had a report to the National Intelligence Council saying airplanes could be used as cruise missiles, you would say, how could I defeat that? And one of the simplest and cheapest things we could have done is just put strong bars on the cockpits.
BABBIN: Sure.
NYE: That is intelligence with a small I. We just didn't do it.
KEYES: We didn't do it. But first, this was gamed out, as I recall, in the '80s. And second, in the '90s this commission, as I mentioned, with Al Gore was talking about precisely the kinds of steps that were needed, and yet those steps were not mandated and therefore were not taken.
That is both intelligence with a small I lacking, but it's also political will and understanding that was lacking. And it's not just, as I say, during the Bush years. That came before this president even got into office.
And yet as we look forward, if we take that for granted, Jed Babbin, what now needs to be the priority as we look ahead because if the vice president is right — and we'll be talking about this as well in our second half — we're faced inevitably with these threats. They are planning and likely to mount them against us again. What do we do?
BABBIN: Well, one of the things we have to do, Alan, is figure out what is the most likely threat and plan to defend against that. Right now we have Mr. Mueller saying we're going to have Palestinian-like suicide bombers wandering around amongst us in the streets.
We have to educate people as to how to spot risks and do that. But on a national sense, we have to figure out what is the most likely thing? Is it a dirty bomb? If so, we have got to defend against the dirty bomb. Right now, we don't have the intelligence apparatus to give us a good enough assessment as to what is the most likely.
KEYES: Joseph Nye, what is your response? What do we do?
NYE: I would be doing this Red Team/Blue Team war gaming to think through which of these is the most likely, the most dangerous, and what are the most cost-effective ways to defeat the terrorists on this? They're not going to do the same thing again. You've got to ask, what's their next step, and the step after that? And we're not doing enough of that kind of thinking ahead.
KEYES: Well, we're going to — thank you both, by the way, for joining us this evening. Appreciate the very insightful thoughts that you shared with us.
Next, we're going to be looking a little bit further at this very question, the ominous warnings that — and this wasn't the first one, by the way. I want to be fair to everyone and to the vice president in particular. He was simply sounding again a warning we've heard several times in the course of the last several months about the likelihood we'll be struck again.
Well, how do we fight? How can we prevent major disasters like 9/11? What can we do? We'll be talking about that next. You're watching America's news channel, MSNBC.
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KEYES: Welcome back to MAKING SENSE. I'm Alan Keyes.
Today, FBI director Robert Mueller said that suicide bombing attacks like the ones we've seen in Israel are an inevitability here in the United States. And yesterday, Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert that another attack on American soil is surely in the works.
Obviously, we're in a time when whatever may be the feelings, and I've gone around the country recently and I know that as we should, Americans are resilient. We're sort of bouncing back from the shock and dismay of that terrible attack last fall. The country has moved into a situation that I think is getting to be more robust and almost normalcy. And yet, still, we are at war. The shadow of the war hangs over us. And as the vice president is reminding us, we may, at any point, find ourselves facing another terrible episode that shocks us once again with the depth of our danger.
Joining us now, Steven Emerson, MSNBC terrorism analyst and author of “American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Amongst Us.” Also with us, Christopher Harmon, author of the book “Terrorism Today.” Gentlemen, welcome to MAKING SENSE.
Now, we have come together to — or brought you together today to talk a little bit in a forward-looking way about what can be done, in fact, to do something about this threat, because I certainly don't think that the vice president meant to imply we're just to sit here with our hands up in the air saying, oh well, Americans are going to die and so forth and so on.
Obviously we're going to be trying to take steps to both prevent and properly deal with these kinds of terrorist threats. But that requires some thought. Chris Harmon, what are the kinds of things? What is, if you like the coherent strategy or approach that we might take in trying to deal with this inevitable threat?
CHRIS HARMON, AUTHOR, “TERRORISM TODAY”: Dr. Keyes, I think the last guests were very good. But you'll notice they were all talking about us being on the defensive, things we can do to improve our defensive measures, showing more urgency about defense against terrorism.
And I think the biggest sin we've made so far is not being sufficiently on the offensive, at least not until the war that began after September 11. There is a whole series of things that we should do which show initiative and which would take away the initiative from the terrorists themselves. And we haven't been doing these to any sufficient degree.
During the early 1990's, for example, we knew all about bin Laden's presence in the Sudan. Egypt would have been very eager to have us do some forcible activity against the international training camps in the Sudan. We would have had a great partner in that effort. The U.S. declined to do anything. There's a series of renditions that could be done, forcible extractions of individuals who have been involved in terrorism. But we have the special forces to do these things, but we've very rarely done it.
Even during the Clinton administration, there were some successful renditions. Both Democrats and Republicans have used the efforts of rendition. But I would say we should be doing two or three times as many such physical efforts to get people back here for trials.
KEYES: Steve Emerson, what is your thought about the priorities as we face this threat? What do we need to be doing?
STEVEN EMERSON, MSNBC ANALYST: Well, I definitely agree that we need to be doing something more proactive. First of all, there are two aspects to this problem. One is lack of integration and distillation of intelligence. As we see in the breakdown that occurred prior to 9/11, the FBI was not sharing information, not only with its own people but it wasn't sharing with the CIA. So the issue really becomes integrating forcible integration of intelligence and distillation of it. And that means, as somebody just told me, we have got to have basically the CIA spying on the FBI, the FBI spying on the CIA to make sure they're honest. That's No. 1.
No. 2, there has been to be a series of proactive efforts, and I think covert action definitely needs to be employed. And even though it means rolling back some of the restrictions, Congress needs to approve it.
No. 3, I think we have to be very careful here to make sure that we pinpoint the terrorists that are carrying out these attacks. It's not just the generic terrorist, the thrush that used to be in the comic book. It is militant Islamic groups. We need to be leaning on the Saudis to stop their funding of these radical charities and we need to be demanding that Islamic leaders around the world forswear the use of suicide bombings and stop the use of violence. It has to be proactive and we have to reward them and punish them. And that's not something we've been willing to do.
KEYES: Well, one of the things that has surprised me, I'll have to tell you, is that in the months since this whole episode, we have yet to come together something that I thought would be perfectly natural in response. Given the cross-cutting nature of terrorism, it's obvious that we need interdepartmental, interagency, cross-cutting action group that would include the intelligence arm, the analysis arm, the policymaking arm and the execution arm both in covert activities in a military sense, bring them all together under a single head reporting directly to the president and responsive to his directives with the advise and consent of a select group of people, leadership from the Congress, so that we can make decisions as to what we need to do and do it. And I think that is the sort of thing that could be openly established and yet it would operate in total secrecy to pursue the agenda of counterterrorism. Why hasn't such a force been established?
EMERSON: Alan, I think that one of the problems — I mean, I think it's a great idea because you're absolutely right. There has to be some type of integration. The problem really is how do you know that the agencies are going to be honest? Most of the agencies — look, even as we speak right now, there is bitter infighting between Justice, between the FBI, Customs, Treasury, INS, the Coast Guard.
There's tremendous — I think the public would be shocked to know that nine months after 9/11, there are cases and prosecutions that are being delayed on terrorism because of the infighting and rivalries and jurisdictional disputes. So I think you're right. Something needs to be seamlessly formed that would allow the clashing to stop and forcibly integrate this. Now, I don't know how you do it though. That's the problem. The president has to be involved.
KEYES: One of the reasons I suggested that this would have to be under the president and directly responsive to him and one of the reasons I have kept harping, not intending anything personal, but just harping on the role and function of the national security council adviser is that it is the president who can cut across all that. It's the president who can pick up the phone and ask anybody in the government to send him what they've got and they have to do it in the executive branch.
And those acting on his behalf with that kind of mandate could then break through the usual chain of command to get at the kind of information they need. Isn't that what we need, Steve Emerson, something like that established in an office directly responsive to the president?
EMERSON: You know, I think basically you're right. The president has to create something because I've had this — this discussion with other people about whether we're creating another bureaucracy. How are they going to make sure that people are honest in the agencies, they're going to be forthcoming? How do we know they are not going to withhold information because their budgets depend upon them making scores and arrests.
So I think the president has to be involved here. He has to demand this type of reaction from his representatives and the government and only he can make it happen. Nobody else can make it happen. I think you're right.
HARMON: I would like to add that I think there is a couple of things that could be done with existing agencies which are very important. In the first place, I think everyone recognizes that the Central Intelligence Agency's budget should go up considerably, especially in its focus on human intelligence. There were some shocking stories, not just by bad journalists or anything, but by actual former members of the CIA who talked about the inadequacy of resources dedicated to places like Afghanistan, even after we had known of years of trouble from there.
We need to have a far better budget for human intelligence. You know, Sun Tzu said so many years ago that the good general is actually inhumane if he's unwilling to spend inadequate gold to buy good spies. We've been unwilling to spend that money, and we've had too many concerns about snooping.
And the second thing I think we ought to do is...
KEYES: Chris, hold that thought one second. Chris, hold that thought one second because we're up against the wire here.
We're going to come back for more with our guests right after this. And later, my “Outrage of the Day,” a suggestion from a fellow at the Vatican that bishops aren't responsible for the moral behavior of priests. Interesting idea, but not very acceptable.
But first, does this make sense? The six terrorists in jail in Jericho as a condition for the withdrawal of Israel's tanks from Ramallah include the leader of the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmed Sadat (ph). Reports coming in from Israel now indicate that Sadat was responsible for planning the terrorist attack on Netanya on Sunday.
Sadat and his men have complete freedom of action, a senior defense source told the “Ha'aretz” daily newspaper. He said Sadat and his men are allowed to use both cellular and regular phones freely with no supervision from either the British or Palestinian wardens and are also allowed to receive visits from other PFLP activists.
Do you remember when I told you on this show that this particular form of so-called imprisonment might just become a protected form of terrorist activity, with the warden standing there to make sure the Israelis can't get to the guys who are planning the terrorist actions? Looks like I may have been right. Does this make sense?
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KEYES: We're back with Steve Emerson and Chris Harmon talking about how we can respond to the ongoing threat of terrorism highlighted by Vice President Cheney's remarks over the weekend.
Want to address a question first to Chris Harmon. Now, it's not exactly a backward-looking question, Chris, though in a way it is because I think it's the kind of analysis that's needed at least to think about what we ought to be doing.
This isn't the first time that we have faced questions about coordination, turf warfare, interagency problems when it comes to producing a coherent national security approach. I have spent the last little while reviewing, as some of my viewers probably have noticed, the history and legislative basis of the national security council system and the national security council staff.
And when you read it through, a lot of the rationale for it sounds just like what you were talking about just now in terms of coordination, turf warfare, cutting through this and that. It seems as if the NSA hasn't been — the national security adviser position and the staff position hasn't really worked to respond to these kinds of problems even though this was the sort of thinking that led to the establishment of this system. What is the problem here, Chris?
HARMON: I think there has been a number of things done that are actually very positive. and I would mention those quickly. The Coast Guard's focus, for example, has considerably changed. Now I think drug interdiction is probably not going to increase, but the Coast Guard is looking very well now at prospect for terrorism, the concern about smuggling a nuclear device into the country and so forth. They've completely changed the focus of the kinds of inspections they do. That's been a very successful thing.
There are some other things that we've been doing well. I approve of the notion of a homeland defense group in the White House, although I don't think up-gunning it by three or four times would be key. I do think there has to be constant pressure...
KEYES: Now, Chris, can I interrupt you for one second though?
HARMON: Yes, sir.
KEYES: Because I know, it's very interesting what you're saying. But it is not at all a response to my question. I asked a specific question about the national security council system. Everything you guys have talked about, and I've heard it before in terms of coordination, turf warfare, the need for this kind of effort to get at information and coordinate it in light of our national security requirements. All that kind of thinking, rhetoric, speeches and all that went into the history, the legislative history and the creation of the national security council, national security council staff.
Why is it that we're having this discussion again? Has that system failed?
HARMON: No. My answer is...
KEYES: Now why are we sitting here talking about the need to reinvent the wheel of coordination among the agencies?
HARMON: We're not. At least I'm not. Alan, I think that reorganization is not the key. I think taking the initiative to the terrorists abroad is the key and I think reforms at home which have to do with particular things about how investigations can begin, what kind of aggressiveness we show about investigations. These are things that don't require reorganization. The NSC gets reorganized with every single presidency. It didn't get wonders done to it under the Clinton administration. And I don't think a reorganization is the key. I do think that organization...
KEYES: But you don't think some kind of counterterrorism strike force that has this kind of interdepartmental, interagency capability with respect to intelligence and action, covert and military, is in fact necessary?
Because I don't see how you get what you're talking about in the way of an assertive, aggressive strategy if you aren't able to pull together all the intelligence you need to identify your targets, to make sure you're going after the right people at the right time and then to move against them in an effective way drawing on the elite forces this government has to provide. If you're not going to set up a force to do that, how is it going to get done?
HARMON: There is a very good coordination in many levels between the senior agencies that are involved in intelligence. I've spoken with a number of FBI and CIA and state department people who say it's at unprecedented levels. There has been quite a lot of emphasis on coordination. Now I completely agree that the bureau field office report on the enrollment of various Middle Easterners on aircraft training should have certainly arisen. There's no question about that...
KEYES: Before we go, we just have about 30 seconds. Steve Emerson, what is your thought on this, quickly?
EMERSON: I think there has been a break down in the intelligence. And I think all these agencies have gotten too large in terms of their budgets. And up until this terrorist attack, their bureaucratic imperative was just expanding budget and it didn't respond to the NSC. I think you're right. The NSC, last summer by the way, I think worked under the leadership, under the counterterrorism security group under Richard Clark. He tried to fashion a policy, but the problem is the agencies weren't listening. So maybe you now need to mash them all together under the leadership of the president.
KEYES: Now we're out of time. Gentlemen, thank you both for a very interesting and enlightening discussion.
HARMON: Thank you, Alan.
KEYES: I hope you think seriously about what you're raising.
Next, my “Outrage of the Day.” Stay with us.
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KEYES: Now, time for my “Outrage of the Day.”
According to an authoritative article in a Vatican journal, bishops cannot, in most cases, be held morally or legally accountable for child abuse committed by priests in their dioceses. The 12-page article by Reverend Gianfranco Ghirlanda, dean of the canon law faculty at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, follows similar comments by the head of a Vatican council, Archbishop Julian Herranz.
Now, I've got to tell you, for things that they don't know about, I will certainly acknowledge that you can't hold prelates and higher-ups responsible. But once that knowledge has come their way, it seems to me they are morally and legally responsible for how they act on it. And I think that if the church doesn't recognize that, it is going to get in serious trouble.
That's my sense of it. Thanks. “THE NEWS WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS” is next. Good night from New York.