Ten Years Since 9/11, & the Years to Come

Sunday marks the passing of a decade since 19 hijackers took control of four commercial airliners and used them as guided missiles aimed at our nation’s government, military, and economy. Those 19 Al-Qaeda hijackers killed nearly 3,000 people, destroyed a building at the heart of our nation’s economic center, and severely damaged our nation’s military headquarters. Were it not for the bravery and courage of ordinary American’s on Flight 93, the hijackers may have struck the Capitol or the White House, injuring and killing hundreds more.

We all remember where we were when we first saw, or heard about the attacks. For a brief time afterwards, we ceased being people of multiple outlooks on life, diverse political views, differing races or religious faiths. We simply became Americans. We all flew our nation’s flag in our communities and in our hearts in the immediate aftermath, and in the weeks that followed.

The brave men and women in the ranks of our first responders fought back in the first hours after the Towers fell, and while the Pentagon and a crater in a Pennsylvania field burned. Then we sent our intelligence services and armed forces into battle in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and the Philippines to hunt down the members of Al-Qaeda responsible for the 9/11 attacks and attempt to halt the spread of a terrorist organization that uses a corrupted interpretation of Islam as its rallying cry. Our service members and intelligence officers went where they were ordered to go, and pursued our nation’s enemies, even if the justification for the war seemed less than completely understood or fully justified in the minds of our nation’s leaders or people. In spite of the terrible hardships of life on foreign battlefields, loss of limbs and of friends and comrades to death, broken marriages and failed relationships, they have kept faith with our nation and held to their oaths. They have continued the fight over these past ten years, and we have stood behind them, and we will continue to do so, so long as they are called to serve.

Ten years later - We have debated and will continue to debate the conduct of what the Bush Administration called ‘The War on Terror’, and what the Obama Administration now calls ‘The War on Al-Qaeda’. As a nation, we learned and will continue to learn from this debate. Challenges to the conduct of intelligence operations like the ‘warrantless wiretapping’ program and the detainment of terrorists and insurgents at Camp Delta were brought to the courts and litigated. The speeches made in Congress, the testimony before various committees, the resounding sound of public opinion, and the resultant new legislation. Legislation like the USA Patriot Act, passed and re-authorized the twice to improve and expand law enforcement and intelligence community capabilities under the law.

Ten years later - Executive Order 12333 has been amended, clarifying authorities and strengthening our nation’s intelligence services, the ‘warrantless wiretapping’ program continues under more rigorous oversight and under the rule of law affirmed in an August 2008 ruling by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. Closer and more collaborative relationships were forged within the intelligence community and between the intelligence community, law enforcement, and the military, and the National Counter Terrorism Center has been created to fuse and widely disseminate within the government all terrorism related intelligence and operational data.

Ten years later - Camp Delta remains open, and while President Obama has attempted to bring some of the detainees to the U.S. for trial within the criminal court system, the U.S. Congress has prohibited any appropriated funding from being used for such purposes. President Obama has since given permission for military trials to resume for the terror suspects, and signed an executive order to formalize the existing system of indefinite detention.

Ten years later - After being wrested from Taliban and Al-Qaeda control, Afghanistan has taken the first uncertain and hesitant steps towards a democratic form of government, but internal tribal loyalties hampering nationalism, dogged Taliban insurgents in the mountains dreaming of a strict Islamist State reborn, and an America strained, but unbeaten from ten years of fighting call into question Afghanistan’s future.

Ten years later - Osama bin Laden is dead. Buried at sea, the best unmarked grave we could find, he was laid to rest after the prayers of the faith he had defiled were said over his body by an American Muslim. He will not be a martyr to the evil cause he cherished, to those who choose hate and intolerance over peace and respect for others in spite of a different opinion or belief. He has paid for the pain and suffering he brought to our nation and others, and surely Allah has explained to him the depth of his mistakes in no uncertain terms.

In the years to come, the healthy debate in our nation will continue. We will continue to refine our approach to the problem of religious extremism used as an excuse to condone violence, while doing all we can to remain true to America’s ideals and beliefs of freedom and tolerance for other races, genders, faiths, and political viewpoints.

In the years to come, Al-Qaeda, its offshoots, and organizations like it will continue to exist in one form or another. Others will join the organization Bin Laden started, or create some splinter group fighting against America’s actions overseas or policies. They will commit acts of terror to further their cause and attempt to change America’s foreign policy, perceived or real, no matter which party holds the majority in Congress or occupies the White House. American citizens will be hurt and killed at home and abroad from time-to-time, and our intelligence, military and law enforcement organizations will do all they can to learn about these plots and then arrest, capture, or kill the plotters.

In the years to come, America will continue its fight against those who chose warfare and terror to attempt to gain political power or intimidate others. That fight will require more than just finding, fixing, tracking, and killing the leaders of these organizations. It will take continued efforts to inhibit radicalization in wherever and however it might occur, in order to break the generational cycle that breeds new radicals of any stripe. It will take several more decades, and it will cost both sides many young lives and billions in unrealized economic productivity; military, diplomatic, and humanitarian efforts. Fortunately we fought a long Cold War once, and while the reasons were different, the lives lost and billions spent were not. We won that long Cold War with the help of our friends and allies.

We and our allies will win this long war too.

Memorial Day

The price of our Freedom -

Dead or Wounded in service to our nation: 50,000 in the Revolutionary War; approx 31,700 in the Quasi & Barbary Wars & other actions against pirates; ~25,000 in the War of 1812; ~900,000 in the Civil War; 4,068 in the Spanish-American War; 7,126 in the Philippine-American War; 320,518 in WWI; 1,076,245 in WWII; 128,650 in the Korean War; 211,454 in the Vietnam War; 1,231 in the Gulf War; 36,231 in the Iraq War; and 7,125 in the War in Afghanistan.

There are also more than 2 Million active duty, reserve and civilian members of the U.S. Military; whose families also serve, often preforming a much tougher mission than their loved ones - they worry and wait for them to send word, and to come home again when the mission is done.

For those who paid the ultimate price, who were wounded on a battlefield and returned to a grateful nation, and those that still serve - Thank you and God Bless.

Some Reasons the Attempted Bombing of Northwest Flight 253 Succeeded

Here are a few facts culled from recent news reports from the New York Times and Fox News websites about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to destroy Northwest Flight 253.

- In August 2009, NSA intercepted conversations among Yemeni based Al Qaeda leaders discussing a plot to use a Nigerian man, who we now know was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, for an upcoming terrorist attack – the intercepts were translated and the resultant intelligence disseminated within the U.S. Government and its Counter Terrorism community (comprised of specific elements of the various intelligence agencies).

- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, visited the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria in November and expressed concerns about his son’s increasing radicalization to State Department officials and a CIA representative or representatives. Mr. Mutallab apparently went so far as to show the U.S. embassy and CIA personnel his son’s text messages.

- Shortly after the meeting in Abuja, embassy officials sent a “Visas Viper” cable to the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) on 20 November 2009.
- Also In November, the CIA compiled some biographical data on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, but waited to disseminate that data until photographs of Umar could be obtained.

So why did Abdulmutallab nearly succeed?

He succeeded do to a nasty combination of poor IT infrastructure within the intelligence community, inattentive and negligent intelligence analysis, a visa revocation process that is not appropriate to a nation in a war with violent extremists, and the end of the calendar year.

Part of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s challenge in the 21st Century, particularly in the global information age, is to establish and integrate the various agencies stove-piped information systems. While the agencies have made great strides in modernizing their individual internal infrastructures, they have been less successful in designing and building information systems that can cross-connect and share information efficiently, in a common understandable format. Progress is being made in this area, but it will be many years before it can happen. One of the major problems is the institutional mindset that will not, for example, permit CIA to use the same integrated IT system that NSA uses. Neither agency wants the other able to potentially see everything the other agency is doing, in spite of the fact that it is technologically possible now to have both agencies share a common system, but keep vital sources and methods data separate from the usable intelligence. If this antiquated mindset could be set aside by political mandate, it would likely take five years before the USIC had one integrated system that would provide all analysts with all available intelligence information. Had this common analytic knowledge system been available, Abdulmutallab would likely have been identified as a serious threat much sooner.

Naturally, identifying Abdulmutallab as a threat would have required an analyst or analysts to correlate the data from the CIA, NSA, and State Department reporting and then flag him on the no-fly list. If nothing else, when his father reported him to the State Department and CIA officials in Nigeria, the embassy personnel should have had the common sense to check to see if he was a holder of a current visa and the immediate authority to suspend it, pending further inquires. The U.S. is not obligated to allow non-U.S. citizens into this country. The temporary suspension of a travel visa should not require a committee decision in the D.C. area, nor should we operate under a “come one, come all” mind set, when common sense would dictate otherwise. Further, the CIA analyst who created the biographical information on Abdulmutallab should not have waited until he had photographs to share it. CIA, being a “people focused” business, undoubtedly breeds an analyst that is focused as much on a physical description as the relevant intelligence a human asset can provide. These analysts must better learn how to live in the information age, where a data file can be constantly updated as new information presents itself, and not waited to share. As is demonstrated in this case, even an incomplete picture of the facts could have been helpful.

The analysts in the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), who without doubt are working long hours and receiving very little public fanfare for all the attacks they have helped the military and U.S. law enforcement stop, also need to work on their procedures. Certainly no one can expect an analyst to work with no facts at all in hand, but the NSA reporting that a “Nigerian” was going to be used by Al Qaeda to conduct an attack, should have triggered an immediate scrub of all terror watch lists for Nigerian nationals, and subsequent alerts to the TSA and our foreign partners to give additional security screening to all Nigerians destined for the U.S. We don’t know everything that the people in NCTC did and didn’t do in response to the admittedly minimal data that current news reporting indicates was available, but I suspect NCTC’s internal procedures and analytic methodology will be getting a thorough review.

Lastly, the end of the calendar year didn’t help us much. As someone who spent long years in government service, I can tell you for a fact that many of the most experienced, and capable people in the civil service begin to burn through their accumulated leave at the end of the year. Much of this happens during Thanksgiving week, and in the week prior to Christmas through the New Year. Does that mean that the watch standers at the various agencies and centers are poorly trained, inexperienced dullards? No. But it does mean that there are less of our best paying attention, because they are looking after their families during the holiday season. Is it an excuse or even a major contributing factor, probably not. Did it contribute to Abdulmutallab’s ability to successfully board a plane and nearly destroy it on Christmas Eve but for luck and the courage of the passengers and cabin crew? It did to some degree.

The poor visa denial procedures, the less than ideal IT systems, and the potential analytic failures, and our own holiday schedule enabled Abdulmutallab’s attempted act of terrorism and mass murder on Al Qaeda’s behalf, proving again the truth of the statement, “We have to be perfect every time. They only have to get lucky once.”