9/11 Commission Considered Criminal Charges Against DoD

For those of us who follow what really happened on 9/11 there are two equal poles of pain. One is the common complacency that we “understand” what happened that day, and that the rest is details. The other is the visible and loud 9/11 “inside job” mob. The answer lies elsewhere, there are a host of unanswered questions about that day, and many of them point back to the incompetence of the Bush executive, as well as hint towards just how early the rest of the defense apparatus was being pillaged for parts to build the Iraq invasion. That there were attempts to turn the corner into Iraq within hours after 9/11, indicates that much of the work had already been done.

Apperantly the 9/11 commission had so many unanswered questions that it considered filing criminal charges against the FAA and NORAD for “lying to Congress”

Something is being covered up, the question is what.

One can engage in informed speculation, but let us start from the Commission’s own statements:

For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington.

In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD’s Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft — American Airlines Flight 11 — long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.

In short, the inside provided information designed to cover up just how badly NORAD and the FAA responded to the attacks, and how poorly they managed the metal. It is not merely that the US was conceptually and operationally beaten on that day, it is clear that tactical errors were made as well.

The 9/11 Commission even considering filing charges is a huge step, the Commission was a white wash operation, willing to settle for a great deal less than the truth:

“My view of that was that whether it was willful or just the fog of stupid bureaucracy, I don’t know,” Lehman said. “But in the order of magnitude of things, going after bureaucrats because they misled the commission didn’t seem to make sense to me.”

But it is precisely this that is important, because it is only by unearthing the failures of underlying organization that corrections can be applied. There is a natural desire to protect individuals who made mistakes – simply because it is not their fault in the larger scheme of things if they were improperly trained and prepared, and yet there is the inevitable fear that some unhappy relative of a victim will see it differently – and the covering up of those mistakes to the process of assessment. The first deserves protection, the second does not.

Whether by intent or not is less of an issue, transperancy of command is essential. That the issues have not been resolved years later, and are back into wrangling, indicates that the vaunted “reform” program of the Republicans stopped working even before it started.