The controversy over Donald Trump’s debate with ABC News has somehow obscured the anniversary of 9/11. Twenty-three years down the road, there’s a few things people should remember. With 3000 dead, countless numbers injured, and billions in damages, it was the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor in 1941. The Central Intelligence Agency, specifically tasked to prevent such an attack, utterly failed to stop it. In his 2020 Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies at Home and Abroad, former CIA boss John Brennan offers some clues for the failure.
The attackers were Islamic jihadists of al Qaeda, the “death to America” crowd, but Brennan believes jihad is “a holy struggle in pursuit of a moral goal” and that violence and jihad are “not necessarily synonymous.” The 1998 attacks on US embassies in east Africa should have tipped them off but on September 11, 2001 the CIA wasn’t even looking. Brennan describes the senior executive staff meeting:
At the very end of the meeting, the head of CIA’s Operations Center opened the conference room and announced that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center. He had no further details on whether the aircraft was large or small, and it was unclear at that moment whether it was a tragic accident or the intentional targeting of the iconic twin towers. The staff meeting ended abruptly and we all headed back to our offices with an uneasy feeling about what we had heard and what we might soon find out.
Reports that Brennan had authorized severe interrogations of terrorists, what some called torture, got him in trouble with the Hollywood left. The Report, released in 2019 and “based on actual events,” cast Annette Benning as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Ted Levine, of Silence of the Lambs fame, plays John Brennan. The former CIA boss was not pleased.
While CIA officers made some serious mistakes in their efforts to stop al-Qa’ida’s murderous agenda, demonizing and fictionalizing their actions in a movie is simply beyond the pale.
Failing to stop 9/11 is not “beyond the pale” but there’s plenty of blame to go around. The FBI also failed to stop the attack, and in the wake of 9/11 the Bush administration created yet another bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS, in turn, failed to prevent terrorist attacks at Fort Hood in 2009, the Boston Marathon in 2013, San Bernardino in 2015 and Orlando in 2016, all with massive loss of life. The late Frank Zappa was on to the dynamic in play.
‘Cause what they do
In Washington
They just takes care of NUMBER ONE
An’ number one ain’t you
You ain’t even number two.
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