9/11 alerts failed to spur action

WASHINGTON - Earlier this year, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks played four minutes of a call from Betty Ong, a crew member on American Airlines Flight 11. In a calm voice, Ong told her supervisors about the hijacking, the weapons the attackers had used, the locations of their seats.

At first, however, Ong's reports were greeted skeptically by some officials on the ground. "They did not believe her," said Bob Kerrey, a commission member. "They said, 'Are you sure?' They asked her to confirm that it wasn't air rage. Our people on the ground were not prepared for a hijacking."

For most Americans, the disbelief was the same. The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, seemed to come in a stunning burst from nowhere. But now, after three weeks of extraordinary public hearings and a dozen detailed reports, the lengthy documentary record makes clear that predictions of an attack by al-Qaida had been communicated directly to the highest levels of the government.

The threat reports were more clear, urgent and persistent than previously known. Some focused on al-Qaida's plans to use commercial aircraft as weapons. Others stated that Osama bin Laden was intent on striking on U.S. soil. Many threats were passed to the Federal Aviation Administration.

While some of the intelligence went back years, other warnings -- including one that al-Qaida seemed interested in hijacking a plane inside this country -- had been delivered to the president on Aug. 6, 2001.

The new information produced by the commission so far has led six of its 10 members to say or suggest that the attacks could have been prevented, though there is no consensus on when, how or by whom. The commission's chairman, Thomas Kean, a Republican, has described failures at every level of government, any of which, if avoided, could have altered the outcome. Kerrey, a Democrat, said, "My conclusion is that it could have been prevented. That was not my conclusion when I went on the commission."

Bush said last week that none of the warnings gave any hint of the time, place or date of an assault. "Had I known there was going to be an attack on America, I would have moved mountains to stop the attack," he said.

Over an intense two-week stretch this month, the commission pried open some of the most closely guarded compartments of government, revealing the flow and details of previously classified information to Presidents Clinton and Bush and their senior advisers, and the performance of intelligence and law enforcement officials.

Among the findings:

Al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden, did not blindside the United States, but were a threat recognized and discussed regularly at the highest levels of government for almost five years before the attacks, in thousands of reports, often accompanied by urgent warnings from lower-level experts.

Presidents Clinton and Bush received regular information about the threat of al-Qaida and the intention of the bin Laden network to strike inside the United States. Each president made fighting terrorism a stated priority, failed to find a diplomatic solution and viewed military force as a last resort. At the same time, neither grappled with the structural flaws and paralyzing dysfunction that undermined the CIA and FBI, the two agencies on which the nation depended for protection. By the end of his second term, Clinton and the director of the FBI, Louis Freeh, were barely speaking.

Even when the two agencies cooperated, the results were unimpressive. Kean said he viewed the reports on the two agencies as indictments. In late August 2001, CIA director George Tenet learned that the FBI had arrested Zacarias Moussaoui after he had enrolled in a flight school. Tenet was given a memo titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." But he took no action, he testified, and did not tell Bush about the case.

Throughout the 1990s, the panel found, law enforcement and intelligence experts repeatedly warned that bin Laden wanted to strike inside the United States. The threat was plainly stated in documents disclosed by the commission. One, in 1998, was titled "Bin Laden Threatening to Attack U.S. Aircraft" and cited the possibility of a strike using anti-aircraft missiles. Another 1998 report, referring to bin Laden as "UBL" said, "UBL Plans for Reprisals Against U.S. Targets, Possibly in U.S." A 1996 review of a plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific uncovered evidence of al-Qaida's interest in crashing a hijacked plane into CIA headquarters.

During the Clinton years, particularly at the National Security Council, the commission has found, there was uncertainty about whether the threat posed by al-Qaida and bin Laden justified military action. Much of the debate was provoked by Richard Clarke, who led antiterrorism efforts under both Clinton and Bush and argued for aggressive action.

"Former officials, including an NSC staffer working for Mr. Clarke, told us the threat was seen as one that could cause hundreds of casualties, not thousands," according to one interim commission report. "Such differences affect calculations about whether or how to go to war."

In the first eight months of the Bush administration, the commission found, the president and his advisers received far more information, much of it dire in tone and detailed in content, than had been generally understood.

The most dramatic came in the Aug. 6 memo presented in an intelligence briefing the White House says Bush requested. Titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," the memo was declassified earlier this month under pressure from the commission. After referring to a British tip in 1998 that Islamic fundamentalists wanted to hijack a plane, the memo goes on to warn: "Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks."

Kerrey said Bush showed "good instincts" by asking for the material, but said the call from Ong, the flight attendant on American Airlines Flight 11 --which crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in the day's first attack -- showed the threats were not passed down the line.

"I don't see any evidence that our airports were on heightened alert," he said. "A hijacking was not a bolt out of the blue."