Terrorism Warnings
With Dr. Melvin Goodman
Professor of International Studies at the National War College
Friday, May 17 2002; 10 a.m. EDT

"The Bush administration learned in May about an increased danger of hijackings by followers of Osama bin Laden, and President Bush was told in early August, the White House said Thursday.

"The revelation came as the White House fended off questions from congressional leaders of both parties about how vigorously the administration reacted to warnings received before the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon." Read the full story Questions Swirl Around Bush Over 9-11 Attacks (Post, May 16).

Dr. Melvin Goodman, professor of International Studies at the National War College and and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, was online Friday, May 17 at 10 a.m. EDT, to talk about communication in the intelligence community and the CIA's early warning in August to President Bush and his top advisers about terrorist attacks.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Alexandria, Va.: People have been hijacking airplanes since I was a child in the 60s. Isn't the significant part of what happened on Sept. 11 that the hijackers crashed the planes into buildings?

Is there any evidence that any western government, including the U.S., Germany, Israel, France, etc., had any evidence that someone was going to crash planes into buildings?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: Yes there is evidence. In 1994, we had the plan for Al Qaeda to weaponize planes from the Philippine government. In the following winter, there was an actual operation in France to conduct such an attack that was broken by French security services. So we knew that that was part of Bin Laden's modus operandi.

Southern California: I'm not sure what the mood in Washington is, but in light of the revelations about our nations intelligence failures which led to Sept. 11, most people out here firmly believe that fingers do need to be pointed and heads should roll.

Our government's incompetence in intelligence, defense, and immigration created the environment that allowed Sept. 11 to happen in the first place. What will it take for real reform? Another terrorist attack. A nuclear weapon detonated in an American city? Smallpox? What? Maybe we're 2,800 miles away but from here you just don't see a sense that Washington is serious about protecting our nation.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I agree that there is no question that the government does not hold people responsible for leadership failures and lack of responsibility in these events. It is very unusual for people actually to lose their jobs in these situations and we spend more time covering up these transgressions than we do trying to get to the bottom of these issues to find actual causes and areas of responsibility. Sept. 11 is a perfect example of that because it took 6 months to even begin to conduct a post mortem to find out what went wrong and we are already finding out in the last two weeks that a great deal went wrong.

Washington, D.C.: Do you think this episode will cause us to go back an re-evaluate these earlier stories?

It is pretty clear to me that Bush Sr. and pals have already, and will continue, to make a good deal of money off of their military investments, and given the recent news, the conflicts of interest are too glaring to ignore. If they knew in advance AND made money off the whole thing (plus got a surge in popularity, and was able to suspend the normal rule of law), they should be thrown in jail or tried as traitors.

I think their inaction, and strange actions, last fall speaks volumes. Couldn't it be argued that they let it happen because it would help them greatly in all respects?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: No I don't believe there was any conspiracy involved. The same thing was said with President Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor and I think that was a very tragic example of conspiracy theory. But I do believe that the government's immediate response to increase funds to the intelligence community was wrong. There is no reason to believe that more money in the hands of the military would lead them to handle the problems of terrorism more effectively. Money is not the answer, they need better people and better organization. You could argue that the best way to reform the CIA would be to cut its budget, you will force them to make the choices to what they need to be doing. It's the case of too many cooks spoiling the broth -- too many people are working on the same problems but they are not communicating each other. Communication within these agencies such as the CIA and FBI is not good and cannot be fixed with more money -- it would need to be fixed with reorganization and leadership.

Mt. Lebanon, Pa.: Nero fiddled while Rome burned. And like Nero, G.W. Bush and his intelligence agencies fiddled while terrorists planned and execute Operation 9/11. So when's the Congressional inquiry going to start deposing White House officials? That would be the Congressional inquiry into the underlying foundation for the tragedy of 9/11. A foundation that includes Congress, intelligence agencies, the transporation department, and the other highly paid security "experts" in D.C. Thanks much.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: The Congressional investigation has begun but it is very limited. There is no chief in the investigation -- he was either fired or resigned , the acting chief is too junior to head this operation, the time they were given to complete the task is inadequate, the number of personnel is too small. It is basically an investigation from the intelligence community into the intelligence community. We need to do what Roosevelt did which was to appoint a high level blue ribbon commission to investigate this. He did that immediately and we have already wasted too much time and now we are getting an actual idea of the intelligence failures.

Gullsgate Minn: Dr. Melvin Goodman: If, we are to accept what that semantical sorcerer, Ari Fliescher says, "in retrospect things look harder to put together"...there I may agree.
But if this debacle sits on a mound of requalified rhetoric and verbal vageries; actions or inactions by the White House or whomever... then too, do we face a least a 'second insecurity'surrounded by the same semantic scorcery? Consider another 'grey area'--the Anthrax issue and domestic terrorism and unanswered questions about the Dedrick connection.
Where next will truth unravel itself for the people and their right to know?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: There are always going to be areas particularly in the problem of terrorism that will have questions that cannot be fully answered. Clearly the Anthrax problem has created a tremendous analytical problem for the U.S. and we are no closer to resolving that problems than we were months ago when we were dealing with that issue. In terms of intelligence collection, we have the general outlines of the problem and the evidence of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda and a good idea of how this group operates. So we do not have a problem with collection, we have an analysis problem. We have the same problem as Pearl Harbor where we don't get information to the people who need this information. We don't have a centralized intelligence community that can look at the information and deal with the problems -- that was the lesson of Pearl Harbor.

Alexandria, Va.: Ugh. We can't have it both ways. If the hijackers had been rounded up before the attack and "detained," then the feds would have eventually been attacked for violating their civil rights, and there's no way to say that similar attacks would not have occurred. The only sure way to stop the attacks would have been an indefinite shutdown of our aviation services, and we all know the uproar that would have caused. Even if the government had issued public warnings that there were hijacking threats, post-Sept. 11 experience with terror warnings indicates that the public would have maybe flinched but gone on with their lives and those planes still would have flown.

Terrorism experts have been warning for years and years that it's inevitable that something would happen. CIA, FBI, and other federal/military units have certainly prevented many, many unreported terror plots, but to act shocked that one, albeit a big one, slipped through is naive at best and two-faced at worst. We can't have our open society and true counterterror mechanisms at the same time.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I think that is the key problem that we are an open diverse society and we have become very complacent. Sept 11 was a very expensive wake up call to get us to understand the severity of the problem. The FBI had sufficient reason to be more aggressive in their investigation -- there complacency cannot be excused.

Arlingon, Va.: Quite frankly, I am incensed by the irresponsible coverage of this story and the tremendous spin -- which based on the comments already posted here has been quite successful -- that the anti-Bush, anti-government folks are putting on it. This has to be looked at in context. I mean, since he took office, how many of this type of warning has the president received from intelligence agencies? If this was the only one, or one of a very few, then okay, it may be a legitimate story; however, my guess is that these types of warnings are a heck of a lot more frequent than any of us want to know. Please give us some sense of the frequency of these types of warnings in recent years.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I agree with the question. These are warnings that the government has been every day that some kind of attack will happen. You cannot respond to every piece of information. What the intelligence commmunity never did was look back and look at seriousness of this and the assumption was that this would happen abroad and not at home. No one challenged convential wisdom and other ways that Bin Laden would attack this country.

There are certain warnings that get into the President's daily brief for his briefing each morning with the CIA. This warning dealt with hijackings and just as the reader mentioned, this would not set alarm bells because these warnings have been going on for over 25 years.
The scenario that was never investigated was one within the U.S. itself as opposed to attacks overseas.

The FBI culture does not lead to a sharing of intelligence information and that culture needs to be corrected. The correction in CIA is to improve the longterm strategic analysis -- this is terribly deficient and must be fixed.

Fairfax, VA: BTW, similar warnings were received before the first WTC bombing, the embassy bombings, and the USS Cole incident. These were all disclosed in the press. Where was the public outrage with the Clinton administration? In all cases it comes down to the inability to deal with the mountains of intelligence data. With 9/11, is it the numbers of dead that stirs the outrage? That it happened on American soil? That GWB was at the helm?

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I think the problem goes back 20 years ago. Where was the outrage when the U.S. embassy was attacked in Beirut. Why did the Reagan administration not do more instead of an evacuation of Lebanon. When American embassies are attacked, it is an attack on the extension of American soil. The reactions of the Reagan administration and Clinton administration were weak and feckless.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: I think the evidence was clear over an 8 year period that Bin Laden was targeting the U.S. overseas and within the U.S. itself. I think his motus operandi was well established that if he failed a mission, he would return to it. For example, the WTC in 1993 and 2001 but Bin Laden perceived that American responses were weak and therefore no act on his part would be too audacious and he kept raising the stakes against us while we became increasingly complacent. It was a tragic convergence.

Arlington, VA: To some extent, Congress must take responsibility for any discovered "intelligence failures." We elect our representatives and send them to Washington to oversee government activities, including those acivities related to counterterrorism. We cannot expect our Senators or Representatives to step up and admit any responsibility (I think it goes against their grain), so it is up to us the voters to decide if we are sending the right people to Washington in the first place.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: Clearly the Congress is not doing its job of oversight of the intelligence community. For the past 8 years, Senate intelligence committee has been in the hands of Sen. Bob Graham of Fla and Sen. Richard Shelby of Ala. --neither one of community and how it works nor lead a bipartisan representation. They have failed the country and the overall membership of the committee has failed to do its job of oversight.

I think it is time for the constituents and voters to be more aggressive in lobbying their congressmen and representatives to be more vigilant and have more insight. We instituted the Senate intelligence committee in the 1970s because of the domestic abuses of the CIA and it is important to the Constitutional checks and balances that this committee conducts rigorous oversight over the CIA. It is unacceptable that after Pearl Harbor, we have experienced Pearl Harbor 2. This is negligence on the part of the intelligence community.

Dr. Melvin Goodman: It is clear that a major intelligence failure took place on Sept. 11. On Sept. 12, National Security advisor Rice told the country that this was not another Pearl Harbor but she was tragically wrong. This was worse than Pearl Harbor, the losses were greater and the consequences was just as profound and the failure of the intelligence community was overwhelming. The failure of the Bush administration was in not investigating this failure immediately in the wake of the attacks. Now we are learning from weaks from one document and another that the intelligence community failed miserably and it is now time to address those problems.

washingtonpost.com:

That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the discussion.

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