Miscellaneous 9/11 Commission Staff Notes About Drafting The Final Report

Dan Bvman and Mike Hurley
• Start writing conclusions and analysis.
• These will lead to recommendations. Our best thinking.
• Why Dan and I?
• David Tucker and Tim Naftali? Their roles?

. LE intel vulnerability reduction. In Cold War can't shoot all world's communists.
Ideological battle involving religion.
Need an information effort that exceeds what we did against the Soviet Union
Real drain the swamp initiatives, world-wide program, revamping CA for influence
programs, language hard priorities
Battle of ideas, we are fighting an ideology in which religion plays a big part. We need
to address it the way we took on the communist ideology. We need a full counterweight,
and we should not shy from identifying it as a deviant strain a great religion. Battle of
ideas
Systematic inventorying of the country's capabilities and hardening, massive covert

action program, massive public diplomacy, military role, pol/mil, defensive and offensive
Pre 98 disruption liaison, LE, disruption of sanctuary was principal change post 9/11,
how are we bolstering countries as we did in Cold War?
We are still dominated by current options
Shatter the climate of disbelief

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Military Operations in Afghanistan Case Study
Going after Mullah Omar. The risks involved. The losses incurred. How hard this is.
Difficulty of mounting an operation.
Without being glib, they are missing something.
The lethal nature of the threat. Who was watching this? Were they convinced that it was
lethal and required taking risks and leaving a big footprint.
Did they know how dangerous this was, and why not?
Predator Case Study
Magic solution
No one would get hurt except the bad guys. Low and acceptable cost
Use technology as our answer
We rely on hi-tech, enemies rely on low-tech
This reflects just how much no one wanted to go to war
Predator Case Study
Typical American response, solution to a problem: throw technology at it, kill one guy.
Was the answer for CIA and for DoD. Meant none of the good guys would get killed or
injured. American answer, apply technology, solve the messy problem of terrorism with
a magic bullet.
Started out as an intelligence collection platform, then became weaponized, was going to
solve the problem
Big pissing contest b/w DoD and CIA as to who would pay. But, more importantly, who
would have responsibility to pull the trigger, and make a mistake.
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Pentagon: PLANORDS & EXORDS
Operation Infinite Resolve - Follow-on campaign to Operation Infinite Reach

(TLAM strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan)
Able Danger - Information Operations (restricted plan); conducted by J-39
Series of contingency plans, documents, dates, details
Military planning is going on

Political leadership really wanted to be resolute but they didn't go all the way.
Couldn't take it any further.
Why not?
Why couldn't they have gone further?

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10-15 pages of analysis
We were doing many things
Agitating for an aggressive policy against a new and non-state actor.
What does that mean?
Calls on capabilities. We had them, but military is not so strong on this. Lay outside
their comfort zone.
Committed group of people within each agency trying to shake them out of a mindset.
The orders never came from President Clinton, or President Bush. It didn't happen on his
watch. Was not seized with the issue. Never spoke to his top expert on it.
Institutional change. Could it have come without 9/11. Perhaps not. Did not come from
President Bush. Less a chance and less time. Was it a priority? There is some evidence?
Was the level of engagement as high?
Direct presidential involvement?
Less engaged in a shorter period of time.
Needed radical institutional change. When does that come? A radical and new enemy.
Taken seriously, did not have divisions or air force or navy or easily targetable assets. A
hard problem
Outline of the final report
Final report should segue from narrative to policy recommendations
Meta-narrative, with back stories
Narrative analysis, then policy recommendations
Mongraphs: maximum reference value, concise tight standard, no long block quotes
Don't be constrained by classification issues
Work in the interviews
Monographs will be semi-visible bulwarks supporting the final report

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Clarke has his own cell w/i the USG.
Same problems within CIA that you had in the policy community
Change between CSG and Principals, it kept becoming less defined
DCI and other Principals, you've got a problem that cut across the lines
Lots of options, though the first time CIA has control and can plan for lethal action.
Engaged on problem, but not coherent, forward leading or advance looking
Govt had designed a way to respond, a new threat, but only used more $, some
instruments used, but military not fully integrated or included
This big threat required military action, to slam into the places where it was, and act on
intelligence
Willingness to risk lives, all our methods were stand off, TLAMs, proxies, renditions
other liaison services, behind the scenes. There were reasons for this. But we were not
ready to jump in. No mood in Congress. Renditions, liaison, not direct, kinetic action.
What was the difference in the threat between September 10 and September 12? What
was the difference in capabilities?
Intention vs. Threat?
By 2001, UBL has hijacked Afghanistan
Here's what success is. Here's where we're falling short, here's how we're going to get
there
Measures/milestones
Are foreigners just thinking about their own problems?
Beofe 9/11: needed an Afghan strategy, not just a CT strategy; before 9/11 needed a
Pakistan strategy not just a CT strategy
How do you get threat to policy makers in 1997?
And then what priority to you give it.
Use hindsight to improve forsight

Policy people acting differently
Small Group, restricted group. Ask Clarke about this. So that we have our terms right.
What were these called. Principals Small Group.
Small Group and the CSG got it.
Principals intermittently got it. Shelton? Cohen? Tenet? Rumsfeld?
But gets worse because threat grows.
'98 multiple, complex, international, timing
'99 Millenium plots, wide ranging many countries, U.S. homeland, reach us here
2000 - take on a U.S. warship directly
2001 - WMD spectacular attack
Dick Clarke's shop carried over a level of knowledge, it was the constant.
What wasn't constant was access.
Pre-9/11, what strategy was in place? How far short was it?
Safehavens. How do we deny them? What are we trying to do? What is one? When
will we know we have been successful?
Why couldn't we have used SF?
Why couldn't we have seized territory in Afghanistan and ripped up the al Qaeda camps,
gone after al Qaeda, taken the fight to them.
They didn't want to.
It wasn't the military's war. It wasn't their war overseas militarily or internationally, or
domestically.
Leadership was engaged. It was an issue for him. But the forceful push, with follow-
through was lacking.
Politically could this have been done?
John Poindexter: the only person who lost his job as a result of 9/11, and that's only
because he got himself cross-ways on privacy issues. Contractor in the cellar of the
Pentagon. He was in DARPA.
Doomczar: You mean CIA had to develop its own capability because NSA wouldn't
share information? Slow to see that the extreme secrecy of the U.S. government was less
urgent than the exigency of responding to UBL.
Read Mike DeWine statement in the JI
President Clinton's concern, commitment, determination. Indicators?
SEIB: December 16, 2003 "Terrorism Complexities Make Repeating September 11

Difficult"
What don't we know?
What are the mysteries we don't understand?
Look at prior statements and impeach
Freeh was at the top of the list of officials who didn't get it
Clarke was the longest serving and best analyst and policy maker
CIA had the best record
Why was there no institutional change? The millennium provided good and sufficient
reason to do something other than just handling via surge
Did you change the institutions; no one changed the institutions fundamentally
How many people needed to be killed to work this fundamental change?
Between 17 and 3 000
CIA knew supplemental were coming. They planned on supplemental. But you are not
supposed to know about them. They are supposed to fall from the sky.
Problem is not incident response, assume if there is a bomb in NY there will be a

reaction.
Problem is after the millennium plots, why not a sustained 5-10 year plan post
millennium
But everyone just breathes a sigh of relief
Sandy doing Small Group meetings, pre-millennium, everyone's response was a surge,
not a major institutional change
CIA handled it like a short term, budgets only problem
Not one of major international change
Needed to change your base
They argued it would destroy the DO if you changed the base, but only the DO as they
knew it.
Someone had to develop the urgency
Set and coordinate the priorities.
Is this going to help us fight terrorism?
What difference does it make?
AG says no, no way.
Pull together the key points of the MON
Need to not just side with the people who were fighting the war on terror.
Tendency to say that because no one else got it, what were they doing?
Al-Shifa, end of the campaign.
We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us
Lives at risk would require presidential decision
Clarke's manuscript, no surprises

EO 12333—What does it really say?
Why didn't we use the military?
Sense the rpesident wouldn't do it?
Politically, he had the authority.
They didn't want to violate EO 12333
Why didn't Tenet push it?
Political vibes, wasn't going to take it on?

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Predator Case Study
Another case of a gadget being an answer to a messy problem
Policy side - was this meeting the definition of Covert Action. Using Predator could
only have been the U.S. Not hiding our hand. Same with Stinger program for
Afghanistan
Monograph Quotations for Section Headings
"If you didn't like 9/11, you're not going to like your future.'
"The U.S. has never in its history had a more dangerous or

bitter enemy than al-Qaida."
"I spent most of my time defending the Constitution."
Trying to stop al-Qaida with these methods was like trying to

chop down a tree by picking the fruit.
Were We at War with Afghanistan? From the August 1998 embassy bombings on?
Were we at war with the Taliban?
The Taliban didn't control all of Afghanistan.
We didn't recognize them as the government of Afghanistan.
Did the Taliban commit an act of war against the U.S. by connection to a-Q who
attacked our embassies and later the USS Cole?
a-Q a non-state actor, but so what?
We violated Afghanistan airspace in retaliating with TLAM strike in August '98.
Were we then at war?
Should we have seen ourselves at war?
If we had, would that have made a difference?
What about Serbia?
Did we take these actions with a sense of impunity? Did we go to defcon three?
We wanted to characterize it as a crime.
Not as an act of war because it wasn't a country that attacked our embassies, they
weren't British redcoat regulars.
They were not ordered to undertake this by a legitimate government.
But were those merely our legal constructs.
We had an enemy trying to kill us.
Should these things have been seen as acts of war?
We are at war with terrorism our governments and countries that harbor terrorism
post 9/11.
Why not pre-9/11? At war with Taliban
Magnitude of deaths. Did that change it? These non-state actors just did more
damage.
Their relation with the Taliban had not changed any. Neither closer nor further.
Formula for Addressing Deadly Issues
President
As
Ringmaster
What affects our well-being?

Projects our values?
What can kill us?

In long-term? In short-term
Need a fast track, short-cut
So these issues are lifted out of the background noise
Non traditional deterrence? Can it influence the terrorists?
Traditional deterrence can affect states, great powers, and wmd state actors
Can you institutionalize this agenda?
Euphoria that the Cold War was over
Coming anarchy was a distraction
9/11 has institutionalized a response but there is no guarantee that it will be effective
Steinberg and Holbrooke have written about NSC reorganization
Read it
Staff or NSC - How it addresses the issues

Conclusions from Review of NSC Papers
Clear from NSC and EOF documents that Clarke was driving process in the new Bush
Administration, not Condi Rice or Steve Hadley.
Not much was going on at their level against AQ
Highest levels of government were not engaged, were not driving the process
It's possible to see from the style Dick Clarke wrote his Memos that he was attempting to
influence the new Administration. Frequently, he would use lead-in's such as: The
previous Administration attempted this but failed
But, of course, he was part of the previous Administration. Did he need to do this to gain
influence? Is it further indication that the higher levels were not engaged?
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Counterfactuals and other Essays:
• Sufficiency of the overall pre-9/11 strategy.
• Flying the Predator as an intel collection platform in spring/summer of 2001:

What could we have learned?
• Weaponized Predator: When is the soonest it could have flown in summer 2001?
And what's the best outcome if it had? Could we have averted 9/11?
• Northern Alliance: If the Bush administration had implemented robust support of

the Northern Alliance in spring/summer 2001, what's the best outcome? Could
such a program have averted 9/11?
• Principals' and Deputies' response to 2001 summer of threat: Compare and

contrast with Principals/Deputies' hands-on management of Millennium Plot.
Bush administration P's and D's were engaged on policy management but not
similarly engaged on threat. If they had been, what's the best outcome? Would
we have been at battle stations? Could we have averted 9/11?
• Response to the Cole by either Clinton or Bush administration: Analyze whether

various military options would have averted 9/11 had they been taken.
• If Richard Clarke had been given everything he asked for by summer of 2001 (or
insert other dates) does 9/11 happen?
• Was the TLAM option a real policy?
• Was the Predator a policy?
• The Trouble with Proxies: Analyze what using proxies means.
• The cost of failure to hold Taliban responsible despite at least 2 warnings.
• "License to Kill", the Kill vs. Capture issue: What impact did this controversy
have on dealing effectively with UBL? If it had been clear, could we have
averted 9/11?
• The Hunt for UBL: The difficulty post-9/11 suggests the difficulty of finding him
before before 9/11 in the Afghanistan sanctuary, at least after the August 1998
U.S. retaliation.
• Human costs of boots-on-the-ground: The raid on Mullah Omar's compound in

October 2001.
• UBL and the problem of actionable intelligence.
• The cost of addressing the threat through surges rather than institutional change.
• Result vs. Intent: Before 9/11, al Qaeda had killed only a comparatively small
number of Americans. But given UBL's declared aims (see his 1998 fatwa), the
fact that over the course of several attacks it was clear that al Qaeda had intended
to kill many more than the actual number of fatalities were produced, and the
steady stream of reporting concerning al Qaeda's interest in acquiring WMD,
should that have produced a stronger pre-9/11 policy reaction? In other words,
did our own successes in foiling attacks (the Millennium, for example) cause us to
underestimate the threat and fail to respond with sufficient vigor?
• UBL was at war with us. Were we at war with him? What would that have
meant? Was it possible to be at war with him? How many deaths would it have
taken before 9/11 to make possible the kind of decisive response the USG made
after 9/11? What does it take to get government to change gears?
• The trade-offs in the Global War on terrorism: e.g., to get Russian help have we
had to give Moscow a blank check on Chechnya?
• How sustainable is our long-term Saudi policy?

For CIA and the military the Predator was the magic bullet. The answer. UBL could be
killed without endangering the lives of U.S. personnel
A strategy in which negotiations on arms control would have a place
US military didn't act as a military. Didn't support covert action.
From 1998 on, CIA functioned as the military, defending the country.
The State Department didn't do very much
What were the most important options, dates, windows for the use of force.
When did the windows close?
What are the key dates?
Window of opportunity?
Do a time line
CT decision making time line
Warren?
What they didn't choose to do
1998 George Tenet declared war on terrorism
No declaration of war within the Pentagon
For the Pentagon, 1996 and Khobar Towers was a more decisive date than the Embassy
bombings in 1998
Tell Bonnie that with DoD we need to go back to Khobar towers and we should ask for
that, Pat Downs, on the theory that that sets the stage for the military
GT delivers the war on terrorism aQ speech
What happened at the other agencies?
Did the declaration have any effect?
What changed at CIA?
What did DO do, with resources, $, CTC?

Post 9/11 shock when Bush declared war on Afghanistan
How do you keep bureaucracies from retrenching back to the old ways and patterns of
doing things?
Need to sustain the effort
What happened after Tenet delivered the we are at war speech?
Policy and intel fusion. Not divorced. Should be closer
Clinton Admnistration can shape opinion on Kosovo and Bosnia but not on Afghanistan
Was Europe with us?
We need to look at our allies
Balkans needed our leadership, Europeans could not do it alone. Bosnia, Kosovo more
directly affected their interests
Europe did not care as much about aQ, because aQ not really killing them
Need to look at the quality of cooperation with the Saudis, with Saudi Arabia now
Was DoD cooperating with CIA?
Why was there no joint plan?
How much was each agency doing?
No effective plan or measures
Why was DoD not aggressive?
Africa embassy bombings; TLAM response, Clinton public statements, GT declaration of

war; what changed?
What happened in CTC
Shift of resources? Expansion? Augmentation of personnel?
DoD not going to war on Dick Clarke's say so
What did administration do?
1998: a window of opportunity; why not with DoD?

What if we made a trade with Europeans? We support you in Bosnia, Kosovo; and you
support us in Afg and against aQ
What if Clinton administration worked as hard on aQ as it had on Bosnia and Kosovo and
getting that story right
Not at war with them. They were at war with us. Ragtag group of shitheads
Swatting the Mosquitoes
Draining the Swamp?
Taking adequate defensive measures?
Are we doing on offense everything we need to be doing on offense?
Are we doing on defense everything we need to be doing on defense?
Review Families concerns about CT policy
No one anticipated (well a few like Clarke, Black, Blee) what these people would do, or
their single-minded determination, or that it would adapt to events and change to be more
lethal
Bear in mind the field
Was there a Grand Strategy or not? Did it incorporate a domestic strategy? And a
"draining the swamp" strategy?
Homeland security?
What is the system? Describe it now
Do we need a blueprint?
Director of Operations
Saudi Arabia relationships with Muslim terrorist groups or Saudi cooperation or lack of it
in the war against terrorism
The 9/11 report has given Americans a window into the failures of their government in
responding adequately to the threat of al Qa'ida. The public should also have the
opportunity to hear about—and from—foreign governments, even putative allies, that
may have erred as well.
The broader questions are whether the kingdom is still supporting extremist schools and
preachers in other countries, and whether it is doing enough to make sure al-Qa'ida is not
the beneficiary of its charities. Since the bombing in Riyadh this year, the Saudi
government has emphasized its break with past practices, and its movement has been
encouraging. But that fact does not wipe the slate clean.
Factors Contributing to the Spread of Terrorism -- 24 Feb 2003 KSMfile

CMH Thoughts
Keep Phillip and Chris informed
Create big questions/big focus
What does the public want to know?
Approach this linearly
Buck stops here; at that level that's their responsibility
They could have dealt with it
Recommendations: We are always fighting the last war.
How do we break this pattern?
For a new kind of enemy, one not tied to land, or protecting a sovereign state?
Are we doing the right things?
Do we need an outline?
How will our product look?
Separate pieces?
A report, key questions, 5 parts

Multiple products
9 or 10 monographs
Written/sourced answers
Lehman: Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, Sadat's assassination, Hezbollah role in '83

bombing; bombing of Beirut Embassy, of Marine barracks (killed lots of Americans—
241 Marines); Madrassas, schools, teaching
January 1, 1998-2001
Will Commission be in a position to recommend awards for some people? Should we?
Commendations?
Policy Team's biggest issue is: Was there a policy failure?

AQ declared war on America. When?
9/11 was a history changing event. Because of its magnitude, accountability should be
found at the top; did they take strong enough action? That's where fault is, with those
entrusted to act and to protect the public.
If nobody made any mistakes there wouldn't be a big smoking hole in lower Manhattan.
There were a small number of obsessed people in government who were unfashionable in
their opinions and their exigency. Caused AQ fatigue?
CIA
Designed covert action

But also pressed and pushed for it
Argued for it and to expand its prerogatives
Tried to make it stronger
Tried to press the military
Tried to have its authorities expanded
What authorities was CIA operating under? 1996? 1998? 2001?
Need to look closely at MONs and look at the debate over sufficient authorities
Did the findings say that they had to attempt to capture bin Ladin first?
(recommendation: do these controls make sense now? Do we have to quibble about this
now? An enemy who will commit mass murder. Can we not have robust response. Do
we want to be involved in these niceties? Streamlined review of lethal action/authority?
How many attempts to expand their authorities?
How did policy makers respond to these requests?
NSC
Position is that they asked CIA and CIA responded that it had sufficient authorities and
sufficient funding.
Who was speaking for CIA? Director? Lawyers? CTC?
Military
Said it did not have actionable intel

What level of intel do you need?
No CSAR capability
How do you build that? Who has the lead in building it? State? OSD?
What steps did the military take to build the capability between 1998 and 9/11?
Bases?
Readiness?
Work with allies?
Had our policy makers articulated the danger?
In spring and summer of 2001 the meetings of Principals and Deputies not greater than
on other topics.
Characterize the responses of the players
Did we fail?
Did policy makers fail?
We should prioritize the threats against us
Why did this happen?
Why wasn't it snuffed out?
Was is the scale and place of the attack? On U.S. soil? 3,000 killed
Nothing like it since Pearl Harbor
Were we conditioned by the way we had responded to terrorism since the early 70's?
Should our report have a WMD section?
Was there strategic warning? If so, did the strategic warning resonate. If not, why not?
Did we think we just couldn't be attacked?
Did the policy makers fail to push hard enough?
What about military
Why didn't they just give the orders to wipe out AQ in Afghanistan. That was the issue.
What would trigger an invasion of Afghanistan?
The families: at some level they are never going to be satisfied. They want what
happened not to have happened. They want their loved ones back.
Tell the story the way the story is. Tell the story, that's all we can do. And ask the
questions.
We knew AQ was audacious. But it was audacious overseas. Not on U.S. soil. Attacks
on U.S. Embassies and on a Navy vessel killing 17 did not amount to much.
Was it the fact that only 12 Americans were killed? The rest were foreigners? Was the
response to East Africa Embassy bombings sufficient? What would trigger a military
response?
Who laid out the redline? The line in the sand? What was it? Where was it?
Somewhere between 17 sailors and 3000 citizens on U.S. soil.
There was not much out of the box thinking.
Who really was asserting we must go in there and wipe them out, now.
After 9-11 the bar was set much lower. The bar that you had to clear.
Before 9-11 the bar was higher? Why? Should it have been lower before 9-11. We were
still using traditional instruments
What would have prevented it? Too much hindsight? Too complicated.
US military not focused n the US homeland.
Focused overseas.
If there had been an attack against AQ in Afghanistan, it would have amounted to a

disruption. Not gotten them all with the black Ninjas, but disrupted them.
Maybe 9-11 would have still gone forward, hard to say, from Hamburg cell.
Very little imagination or out of the box thinking at the policy level. And not much risk
taking in any of this, except from CIA. At lower levels people were doing their jobs.
Not at higher levels.
What would it have taken. They had the JSOC options. Was there a decision on part of
policy makers or military command that sending these guys in would have resulted in
unacceptable casualties? Where did these decisions come from. Long and deep roots
about how these views were conditioned.
What would have triggered a response? An order from the President and policy makers.
At some level the President has to act. This is history changing stuff, why didn't they
act?
They still were using traditional instruments to wage battle against counterterrorism,
against a limited enemy with limited goals.
This was a new enemy. Not satisfied with regional/local aims, but lashing out at our
democracy and our way of life. Traditional instruments INSUFFICIENT. And yet our
thinking appeared to be limited to them.
Policy makers use of OMB
Chart of all things we have to ask.
To consider
What resources were devoted to learning more about the threat at the time.
Military was calling it a backwater issue.
What was the resistance?
Did they just not want to do this—the military?
Did the military have a plan. Since 1993 they were told to have a plan. Was it a good
one? Was it on the shelf? Was it adequate or just pro forma response?
Did military slow roll all of this?
Did they not get the message?
Was there a communication problem?
Did they just not want to do this.
Did they not trust the Democrats?
Many levels: Principals, Did CentCom have a plan? JSOC'srole.
What can we learn from this?
Or is it just military stuff?
Germany: What was going on there? What did CIA know? When did they know it?
When did Mohammad Atta first come on the scope? Were the Germans covering him
and the group? What info was CIA getting? What did they do about it?
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Issue: National Command Options
How hard did policy makers press?
Is it the military's job to interpret?
Mixed messages being sent?
Mixed messages to the field?
What did the military think?
Trying to push it over on CIA?
Was it viewed as a military problem?
Who decided that the lead should not be the military's; Earlier CT policy? What was it?
There were other things that were urgent that captured the Bush Administration's
attention
Did the military come up with good options, or didn't it? If not, why not?
Did the U.S. have to be struck at home in order to get the full range of responses?
How many deaths?
Did policy makers order the military to make the right preparations?
Did the military take the required steps?
Wrong to say they had strategic warning. In hindsight, yes. At the time, no.
Regarded as low probability but high impact.
Warning, but who was listening?
Urgent?
Did not have a sense of urgency or of contingency. Only some.
GT beating the drum. Armitage said he was pounding on the doors.
They heard it but were not persuaded.

What is the duty of intelligence.
If they had been persuaded we might not have a big smoking hole in lower Manhattan
What is the duty of intelligence?
Don't just do something, stand there.
Start with proposition that they would have done something.
Why didn't they do something.
They weren't convinced it was a major strategic threat. They believed the blow was
coming overseas.
North Korea and Iraq were more important to the military and to others
Our job: Tell the history. What happened? How do we deal with it now?
What more should we be doing?
What should we be doing differently?
Lash-up b/w CIA & military
Smaller and more effective
What did we do right after 9/11
Some god things?
How do we lock those good things in?
Danger of agencies reverting, falling back, retrenching
How do you attack this?
What can be done?
Is this a pathology? What can be done? How do you attack it?

A complex strategy! This is one element. Need many elements
Are we on the right track?

How do we need to evaluate it?
Absence of attacks?
Well known penchant to bide time
Passage of time is not sufficient
Are these questions even answerable?
Will this die a natural death? But when?
Lessons learned
An unprecedented opportunity
To speak to the American public
Cumbersome
Can it move fast enough?
Sense of urgency
Analysis & warning
Examine the NSC: Does that system work?
Did we require a catastrophic event on our territory to get the country to respond?
Bush "swatting flies"; "time to go on offense".
When do we exert military force?
When do we use force?
Non-state actors?
When
Look at what happened
Understand it
How are we dealing with it now?

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We thought we could contain UBL, that there would be some overseas attacks but that we
could absorb these
Disruptions
Renditions
That we could go along and do this for awhile
We did not perceive just how much of a threat we were in, and did not translate this into
action?
We thought we could contain him and put a fence around him and figure out ways to deal
with him
What was the Bush administration strategy for dealing with UBL?
They didn't have one; Clarke was just "maintaining", we were on cruise control
Foreseeability: "tort doctrine", what standard? A high standard for those entrusted with
national leadership. Apply legal doctrines
Palsgraf doctrine, negligence?
Robert Samuelson: "if the Times were serious about self-examination, it would have
assigned the task to outsiders. It is hard for insiders to be too critical of their organization
for both psychological reasons (their assumptions may be part of the problem) and
economic self-interest (they may censor themselves to protect their job and to not impede
advancement)
Candid appraisals
Pentagon
What you couldn't get past, or get done
Tenet's declaration of war, but doesn't shift policy process
What was his sense of dealing with Pentagon?
FBI: useless and obstructionist
Why didn't Clinton cut through this b.s.

Was the system not giving you the full range of options to engage the problem?
Did the president sink his teeth into it?
Leadership — the truth is somewhat more activism on specific things-but the nsc was
insulated, no one was saying let's put boots on the ground, it didn't happen
Concept of use offeree against aQ was limited
Why didn't it shift after '98
Shock of something new creates new opportunities
How hard were Clinton folks pressing for greater activism?
12
At levels higher than Clark?
How hard was Cohen pressing for greater activism?
Shelton?
Was the military just not going to do anything unless ordered otherwise?
'98 was not going to get sold on invading Afghanistan

12 Americans killed
can't find on a map
no imagination as to what they could do
Military still don't see it as their problem

It's an intelligence matter and a civilian war
Pentagon/military didn't trust him as a commander
Which president in '98 would have gotten this right.

A democrat or a republican?
Turf is not going to decide this
You have to have a strategy
We are in this for the long term
Where is the strategy?
National Strategy for Combatting Terrorism 7-8 pages, overall plan
Hard part is changing the landscape

Easy part is killing people
Did we have capabilities and technologies?

What was keeping us back?
Would we have done it?
Did we have the level of reliable intelligence we require?
Assumptions—should the threshold have been lower for so grave a threat
Contingencies
Institutional culture vs. capabilities
What about this?
Bickering on Preadotr went away on 9/11
No problem post-9/11
Only a problem before, which shows that it wasn't a priority, or a first priority
Money no longer a problem
Military: had the capability, not he will, or the interest, didn't' see terrorism or aQ as
their problem
13
Even after the Cole?
CIA: had will and interest and knowledge but not tactical information, and not capability
Predator was an instrument
They wouldn't share it and wouldn't fix it
Different culture
Something new that can overcome this, still don't want to play
DCI's declaration of war: but, if we're at war, some people will die? It is the highest
priority. Was it the highest priority?
What about the administration? It wasn't really at war. Was CIA the only executive
agency at war?
Warning: needs to be rigorous, disciplined, ask many what-ifs
What dci was doing in spring and summer of 2001 was alarmism, keep the system up and
on red alert.
What happens when this is going on. Are people on a higher state of alert?
What about F AA? Was it on a higher state of alert? Was word getting out to it? Why
not?
DDCI should have been driving this, or DI—who is responsible for managing analytical
resources of the U.S. government
This stuff did not rise to warning level
Need risk management
And crisis management
Should Deputies be specified as a Warning Committee for the USG?
Crisis Management Committee
Authority and accountability
How should it be done?
Need analytic warning training
John Gannon:
Why do you have a structural solution to a functional problem?
14
No one accountable for domestic threat 2 years after the attack
After 9/11 there was a perceived presidential commitment
Administration decided to stay with its same team
But need an objective assessment of what changes are needed
Enterprise management experience
People are too vested in the policies
Non-accountable, defensive role
Admin made decision to let them fix themselves
No accountability in this decision
Major achievement, support of president, drive it through chief executive
Structural change required?
CIA is privileged, has sole access to president, cuts everyone else out
Warning something is going to happen, going to happen here, going to happen now
But a lot of things are going to happen

CIA couldn't prioritize
If there is too many priorities, there is no priority
Widening series of threats
Rich threat environment
CIA: When the political will caught up with what they were doing, which unfortunately
took September 11, then they were in a position to take quick action, because of all the
legwork they had done. The plan worked marvelously, ousting the Taliban from
Afghanistan within months. The CIA director became a valuable asset to Bush. Tenet
now briefed the president daily at 8 a.m. He had gained greater access to the White
House than any director since Ronald Reagan's, William Casey
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What was Congress doing?
Kevin Shaeffer's Point:
Don't just focus on the event. The threat was there. False to say it took 9/11 to make this
happen, to get bureaucracies really focused on this.
After 1998 we knew they were a strategic threat, many supposed they would use wmd if
they had it, by summer 2001 some thought attack would come in U.S.
Can't say we weren't warned, can't say that couldn't have used force, and deployed
troops to take them out.
ALREADY WE WERE OVER THE LINE. THE LINE HAD BEEN CROSSED
Focus on the threat of a possible 9/11. Why wasn't this envisioned?
Why wasn't more done?
CIA seemed to be functioning like DoD. Sort of doing it all.
How much was DoD doing really.
Most of this depended on CIA CA campaign
Predator seen as a kind of deus ex machina
By '98 there was ample strategic warning awareness. Should this have risen to priority
number 1
Fear of catastrophic deaths and mass deaths
Later fear of attacks in the U.S.
As of August '98 there was awareness of a threat that could go all the way up to '98
Did earlier DOJ prosecutions and the fact we treated terrorism as a law enforcement
problem color our views: Blind Sheikh, 1st World Trade Center bombing in 1993—a-Q
looked like the gang who couldn't shoot straight
Why didn't we do more about it?
No excuse for not devising a serious strategy to counter the range of threat
Strategy assumed too much time, that there was time to do this, higher levels did not have
the same sense of urgency
While we hadn't had a 9/11 attack yet, that was no excuse

No excuse to say we needed a 9/11 to wake up
Principals were awake
They didn't take the necessary action. Why?
Evaluate the threat, design an appropriate strategy
Appreciated the strategy but didn't take the next step within a timely fashion
Tenet and Clark beating the drum but they were from the previous administration
Point of intersection
Leadership issue
Mindset issue
MONs - why did it take so long?
Why didn't the system work?
Go back to fundamentals
Why does this system exist
NSC has gotten away from that which will kill us.
A mini-NSC - that which will really kill us, so that it doesn't get mixed in with other
things.
Focus on econ and all these issues, not as critical, preserving the safety, protecting our
people is the most important thing, national security has become a catchall, too broad,
maybe we need a tighter group
Terrorism and wmd now
1998-2001: did system effectively identify aQ as a threat? Yes or No? Did policy
makers appreciate the threat? Implementation of the policy?
They were on edge
If Bush has had 6 more months and nothing happened? Would they have done anything?
Would they have been out in front more? Working on the new MON because of this
Niagara of threat in spring and summer of 2001
How did system respond to millennium threat? Why were we still playing defensive?
WHY WERE WE PLAYING DEFENSIVE AT TIME OF MILLENNIUM THREAT?

WHY WEREN'T WE DOING MORE?
The threat should have triggered a serious response.
Why weren't all capabilities engaged?
Could we have had a policy in effect that would have prevented this?
A grand strategy with aggressive elements?
Need a doctrine to take away for policy makers to approach this.
We have gotten away from that which can kill us: Bosnia, Kosovo, even Iraq. So, that
which could kill us was not a higher priority. Put it on a special track: WMD; terrorism
Things where conventional deterrence doesn't work.
It was not a failure of information.
A failure of strategy and leadership
What actions could have been taken at the time.
Why was a more aggressive military action ruled out
Even if the FBI had been more aggressive and done things right, it's still playing
defensive.
We weren't playing offense much?
Should not have needed 100 killed
Political will lacking

Leadership will lacking
A lethal threat. What more do you need?
Chem/bio
A big problem
We were asleep
Responding from crisis to crisis.
Who really proposed snuffing it out
Was there a coherent strategy that had buy in
Shouldn't what had happened have kicked in a maximum level of response?
Is it the system, the mindset?
Are we set up for asymmetric threats
IF FUNDAMENTALS HAD WORKED CORRECTLY WE WOULD HAVE SEEN

THE THREAT AND WE WOULD HAVE STAMPED IT OUT.
STAMPED OUT THE REMAINING SANCTUARIES
NOW WE ARE ON A HAIR TRIGGER
Learn these lessons
How this evolved
Guidance
Can never solve 9/11
Examples: make the case

Decisive
Warning; beating the drum; critical mass of intelligence; standard is a reasonable national
security official's level of critical mass should be sufficient
Didn't evoke a response of stamping it out
Stamping it out
Strategy
After 1998 they just improved embassy security, we did not address the underlying
causes
Employing every capability at the earliest stage, when threat has been identified
What actions have been taken

John Lehman's position is that need to think about recommendations very early
Doctrines: pre-emptive, lessons or guidelines
Future dealing with the next big one
Need to engage the full attention of policy makers
What are the things that have worked post -9/11?
De-centralizing
Need to break through the noise
Break through the barriers
Listen to the field
More empowered on the action level
Do changes have staying power over a period of years
Systematically lock in and enable the good things that have been done to continue
Government wide lessons or review
CA focus on the monograph
Key points windows
Saudi Arabia: quality of participation
Are Saudis following through?
Immediate threat that can kill us. Groups of people at our door
Immediacy and urgency of the threat
What happened didn't push the threat to the top of the list
CA by CIA: proxies, Predator, indirect approach, not going to be able to take on

thousands
Critical mass of intelligence that you need

When do you reach it
Clinton administration years: 3 wars: Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan?
How many can you do at once?
What did the State Department do?
What were the priorities
What clear guidance came from the President. Who set the agenda. It wasn't clear. No
orders
How do we help these folks understand what they need to understand
State Department did not do much
Character of Strategic warning that we have on aQ changes in '98, FDD 62, UBL fatwas,
9/11 plot hatched
Gore Commission came out in '96 and '97 time frame

Points to Consider
Drain the swamp vs. swat the mosquito
Long-term vs. short-term
Nations are a threat to us, not because of their power, but because of their weakness
(Afghanistan)
Non-State actors
Lessons Learned
No follow-through
People were on different wavelengths
There were disconnects
They were not persuaded
They were told but they were not persuaded
Disconnect with the top people
Not enough people, or not people of sufficient weight challenging conventional wisdom
How do you ensure they understand the seriousness of the exercise
If you had it to do over again would you do anything differently?
Did the process go fast enough?
Is it a process question or a substance question
Not enough intel on plans
We knew they would attack inside the U.S. but were not prepared. Did not know where
or when
Why didn't we get them before 9/11? Who were they? Would we have gotten them?
Not perceived by key people as a mortal danger
Is Bush now overcompensating for that?

Not going to be accused of ignoring the signs on Iraq, North Korea
Was it a failure of intelligence?
Or of policy?
Or of leadership?
What do you do for someone who is tone deaf?
Give them music lessons, or music sign language?
A hearing aid?
This is a new enemy
One we were not ready for
Bureaucratic problems
Focus was on the economy, not on what could kill us
We are better at process; this is not a process problem
Failure to see what could happen
Problem is in the competing priorities
And that it would take many deaths to cause us to change and realize how much danger
we were in
Team 3 Key Questions
How do we tell - What is the best way to tell - the story?
Do we need to do an outline
What does the public want to know?
What was the response of the U.S. Government to the threat of Al-Qa'ida?
What was the threat?
Before 9-11 we used less than full means available to us.
Were means that we used appropriate?
Who took what positions?
How during the period from January 1, 1998 - September 11, 2001 did the system
change to deal with the threat?
What happened from July - August 01?
This was a critical period. Did the instruments change? Yes? No? If not, why not?
Was the system ramped up?
If not ramped up, should it have been?
Given what they knew at the time, should they have taken greater measures?
What would have been the impetus for such changes? Intelligence? Analysis?
Did the 1998 Embassy bombings raise covert action to a new level?
How good was Agency's strategic warning?
Was there warning fatigue in spring/summer 2001?
What effect did the length of time it took to get Bush Team deputies into office have on
decision making?
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Did the Pentagon accept the mission of defending the U.S.? What infrastructure? What
bases? Did Rumsfeld have to invent this in Fall 2001? Hard questions.
Did the military ramp up in the 80's? Had these measures fallen off by the mid-90's?
What was the template for Somalia? After WTC bombing in 1993? After Khobar in
1996? After East Africa Embassy bombings in 1998? After bombing of USS Cole in
2000?
Did the military assert it couldn't do this?
Were their reasons plausible?
Was it the number one priority of the Clinton gov't? Of the Bush gov't? If not, why not?
Post-9-11 the situation/response changed dramatically. Why not before? Should it have?
Full strategic warning

Knew where they lived, where they were training, that they were training to attack
Know their capabilities and their general intentions
What were Dick Clark, Sandy, GT, Bill Cohen, Rumsfeld, Madeleine, Shelton, Myers
going to try to avert this
Need to nail core policy story

Must be authoritative account
How did we deal with this threat?
Were the means devoted equal to the threat? At what times. Did the government move
fast enough? With appropriate sense of urgency?
Team 3 Questions
• To what extent does a CinC have the responsibility to be taking steps, basing, etc.,
in the absence of explicit instructions from SecDef or the Chairman.
Could/Should Franks have been making arrangements to be prepared to attack
AQ along a range of options when the orders came. What was happening
between August 1998 and September 11 2003?
• The issue is not that the military didn't act robustly; we know that. That is not
news. That story has been told. But the rationale for why no robust action was
taken, and why there were no serious preparations has not been fully articulated.
That is where the story is: Vietnam Syndrome; Somalia; Desert One;
Commanders couldn't lose men, if they did their careers were over. Rumsfeld
and the Powell Doctrine; exchanged between then Ambassador to the UN
Madeleine Albright and Chairman Powell over Bosnia: "What good is an army if
we never use them?"
• What about the military's relations with President Clinton? Was that a factor?
• What was the relationship?
• Recommendations should respond to the above. How do we fix those problems.

Is there a fix? A fix for a military that doesn't respect the President. How would
you go about fixing that?
• How would you go about fixing the problem of how long it takes to get a
government into power after an election? Were we vulnerable?
• And what about after the Cole? Why wasn't this at the top of the Presidential
agenda following January 20, 2003?
• JSOC was ready to go. They are always ready to go. That is their job. Higher
command was holding them back?
Why not covert or clandestine unilateral military operations in Aghanistan pre-9/11, what
we're doing now?
What were the capabilities of CIA's military force. The strategy was based on the use of
regional proxies. There was doubt in the community at the strategy level and growing
frustration. Failure at the political level to do this. Failure at the DoD level to do the
planning and to be forward leaning.
Interaction with other instruments

Capabilities of CIA paramilitary force
Was it treated as a joke?
Risk? Was CIA willing to take risks?
Hidebound bureaucratic organization
How do we sort this our?
Policy makers, did they give you all the authority you needed?
Who were they asking about authority?
Are you satisfied with the legal authority to carry out what you want? Kill him? Write it
down, give us the authority to kill him, if you want him dead?
What is the commander's intent?
What did Clinton mean?
In considering this a catastrophic event like 9/11, any American leader would have acted
decisively, but it was the wrong analysis
The risk was not just putting boots on the ground, the risk was it would take time to do
this through proxies, and might not succeed, we did not have an offensive strategy with
all of our capability
All this had to be weighed and considered
What did you think about the timing and the urgency?
What can you tell us?
We never used certain capabilities. Why?
To do that things need to come together. At the Deputies and above level
"If we are indeed in a war, shouldn't the Generals
be on the battlefield instead of sitting in a spot
removed from the action while still attempting to
call the shots?"
Colleen Rowley
FBI Special Agent
Minneapolis Field Office
Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller
May 21, 2002

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Special Issues
• John Poindexter: the only person who lost his job as a result of 9/11, and
that's only because he got himself cross-ways on privacy issues. He was in
DARPA.
• DOOMCZAR:
o You mean CIA had to develop its own capability because NSA
wouldn't share information?
o Slow to see that the extreme secrecy of the U.S. government was less
urgent than the exigency of responding to UBL.
What was the threat?
How many aQ in Afghanistan
How many had been trained in the camps
A shadowy network
Intel on WMD
So, needed to be using all instruments
CIA could do its part
It wasn't enough to take this on
Could not be handled through proxies
Problem integrating it into regional strategy. Pashtun problem
Did not want to have Northern Alliance take over
Needed offensive punch
At a time when you needed the military fully engaged we did not have it
Problems within CIA, because even though it would not have been enough, still wasn't
getting all the internal support it needed.
People within CTC coming up with the strategy
Pushing it on the CSG
Support within the CSG
But not above it
They were trying to say there was not a policy or strategy was insufficient
They come up with the Plan, or The Way Ahead
This is going to beef up proxies
Ask for 35 million but they didn't get it
This was being blocked, but where?
1
Had to be at the Deputies level, because there was no CSG
There was an army out there taking training to kill Americans
Should have used all instruments of American power
Classic multi-instrument of power problem
What wash the difference between 9-10 and 9-12. The threat hasn't changed really. AQ
has no more divisions.
What were you trying to do with the Predator?
Clarke grabs this because it's a killing instrument we can use now, in real time. Actually
make something happen. Don't have to wait. Take the fight to them. Not by proxy, not
in the firebox, not NA. but can do this.
What risks are you willing to run? Are you willing to put people into harm's way. Can't
do this with an 8,000 mile screwdriver. Have to be on the ground mixing it up.
We could have done in and seized bases and had our CSAR there.
Look at how we are using SOF in Iraq pre-that war. They were there for months.
Basically, Philip's saying that in March 2002, based on what had happened in August,
early September we would have been pretty well set up to avoid this because of the
strategy that was in play.
But were we well set up in spring 2001.
Cofer Black memo. Why did it take a month to get a PC after the DC was held, to get
strategy going.
You have to deal with this problem.
Bush did a lot. Did he do enough?
What would killing Usama bin Ladin have done?
Zawahiri? KSM?
CIA had 20% of this. Northern Alliance could get you part way, maybe to 30%. No
further. Was this just doing things to be doing things?
This was not enough
Needed more direction than CIA
Firm offensive commitment from the military
We still didn't have the Predator flying
No $ to NA
Read the 86 Finding.
More of a hunting license in September 2001
What had changed on the ground?
Mindset is not good enough. What had changed on the ground? Answer.
Need 1986 Finding, broad authorization, everyone thought they had the authorities, or did
they?
2000 Blue Sky Memos
Was there a strategy to destroy a Qaeda's infrastructure? To do what the military does,
rampage around the world
Were we using CA in the right way? Were we using it in a way that was inefficient
Strategies
Capabilities
Authorities
Was the process inherently insufficient?
Were we using CA to do things we should have had the military doing?
Taking out camps? Thousands of jihadists. This was beyone the capability of CIA
without enormous help from the military.
Where does this die, the question of the military? Where does it die? Tenet? Berger?
Shelton? Coehn?
Did we want him dead bad enough to do real things to him?
Actionable intelligence, did they have it? Did they have a means to get it?
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Did we use all methods to fight new threat
Strategy for stasis, for containment? Or a roll back strategy? What were we trying to do?
AQ terrorism going up, government response not going up fast enough
Minimal offensive strategy, but that is hardest o sell. Without public support you can't
get it. How do you sell and offensive strategy. Strong political leadership
CIA's offensive capabilities had been diminished.
CA - use of proxies means time, reliability, they have their own primary concerns,
consistency with our law
Fighting with only some of our weapons
By making choices it means you can absorb these hits, they are coming
We accepted certain things
We can absorb
State, DoD, harden, take anti-terrorism measures, it means we are impervious, but you
have a big problem because it means go after softer targets: Hotels, corporations
Defense is only a mechanism or a responsibility to carry out an offense
Damage our will and our psyche is the goal
CIA used offensively is only a part of our capability, but CIA was a limited response, this
was damage limitation rather than an offensive strategy
What was the info that was in our hands at the time?
What did we do with it?
What collection activities?
Team 1 timeline
Team 2 what was produced?
Team 3 what was the impact it had on decision makers
What impact did this have on the top policy makers? How did it feed back into intel
actions?
Intel/policy nexus: What information did we have? When did we have it? What did we
do with it?
What did we learn from this?
How did we communicate it? Who did we communicate it to?
What finished intel was done at these points?
How did we fight this battle?
What worked?
What didn't work?
How do we correct this if that's what we missed?
What could we have been doing at that time?
How are we going to suggest intelligence problems? What do we need to do that wasn't
done?
Can't look at 9/11. Look at what we knew.
Why wasn't this pulled together intel wise?
Was 1998 a watershed?
Was the Cole a watershed?
Were these critical moments? Windows? How were they regarded? How did we
respond?
TLAM is not a stategy: needed a larger, and broader strategy, entire array of elements of
national power
12 TLAM missiles in the box within 48 hours
assets with 48 hrs sailing range
B-2 fixed wing options
TLAM strategy, no strategy, killing UBL not a strategy

Needed forward operating bases
No real time response until we had armed Predator, that did not exist until summer of
2001
Direct action forces, basic JSOC readiness
Special Technical means
Conventional forces for Afghanistan, no conops for a general invations
Shelton tasked late in Clinton administration
Shelton, no detailed plans for execution of any of these options

President let him off the hook
Don Kerrick was briefed on slide presentation
Newbold: Too reliant on technical means, criticisms for unimaginative planning and
reluctance probably valid.
Need an agile ability to use CT forces, deploy forces, apply force
Force posture
Make it more agile
Hadley sent a memo to deputies to resolve funding issues, and indemnification. How did
he follow through on this? How did Rice and Hadley follow through on this?
Look at out statute: The Commission's. What are we supposed to do.
Integration of FBI and CIA.
How did the Small Group address the threat?
Was there institutional change?
How do you get it?
The standard is not who was less engaged, it is whether either President was
appropriately engaged?
Level of the threat, what was it?
Where was the policy direction in this fight
Needed to use national instruments

Problem: not law enforcement, not military, not CIA (intelligence); it fell in between all
of these. Nobody wanted it. Military certainly didn't want it. CIA took it on but it was
not enough.
Not all fighting up to their capacities.
Not a sufficient recognition that this would require a greater commitment. Recognition
was lacking at the Principals' level
What did they do differently after these threats? What did they do differently? Or was it
just a slow-roll?

Miscellaneous 9/11 Commission Staff Notes About Drafting The Final Report

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Dan Bvman and Mike Hurley

• Start writing conclusions and analysis.

• These will lead to recommendations. Our best thinking.

• Why Dan and I?

• David Tucker and Tim Naftali? Their roles?

Systematic inventorying of the country's capabilities and hardening, massive covert

We are still dominated by current options

Shatter the climate of disbelief

Without being glib, they are missing something.

Operation Infinite Resolve - Follow-on campaign to Operation Infinite Reach

Able Danger - Information Operations (restricted plan); conducted by J-39

Series of contingency plans, documents, dates, details

Military planning is going on

Couldn't take it any further.

Why couldn't they have gone further?

'£'•> ' A/f ^ ^^;y,

We were doing many things

Agitating for an aggressive policy against a new and non-state actor.

What does that mean?

Direct presidential involvement?

Less engaged in a shorter period of time.

Final report should segue from narrative to policy recommendations

Meta-narrative, with back stories

Narrative analysis, then policy recommendations

Don't be constrained by classification issues

Work in the interviews

Monographs will be semi-visible bulwarks supporting the final report

RG: 148 Exposition, Anniversary, and Memorial Commissions

WITHDRAWAL DATE: 12/03/2008

BOX: 00002 FOLDER: 0001 TAB: 30 DOC ID: 31207918

FOLDER TITLE: Analysis & Recommendations [2of2]

DOCUMENT DATE: 01/01/2004 DOCUMENT TYPE: List

SUBJECT: List of Questions

This document has been withdrawn for the following reason(s):

Change between CSG and Principals, it kept becoming less defined

Engaged on problem, but not coherent, forward leading or advance looking

Intention vs. Threat?

By 2001, UBL has hijacked Afghanistan

Are foreigners just thinking about their own problems?

How do you get threat to policy makers in 1997?

And then what priority to you give it.

Use hindsight to improve forsight

Small Group and the CSG got it.

Principals intermittently got it. Shelton? Cohen? Tenet? Rumsfeld?

But gets worse because threat grows.

'98 multiple, complex, international, timing

2000 - take on a U.S. warship directly

2001 - WMD spectacular attack

What wasn't constant was access.

Why couldn't we have used SF?

They didn't want to.

Politically could this have been done?

Read Mike DeWine statement in the JI

President Clinton's concern, commitment, determination. Indicators?

SEIB: December 16, 2003 "Terrorism Complexities Make Repeating September 11

What don't we know?

What are the mysteries we don't understand?

Look at prior statements and impeach

CIA had the best record

How many people needed to be killed to work this fundamental change?

Between 17 and 3 000

Problem is not incident response, assume if there is a bomb in NY there will be a

But everyone just breathes a sigh of relief